Finding My Bliss

I keep checking my email, petrified of getting a message from someone–a student or my thesis advisor or a professor or the graduate school–alerting me to something I’ve overlooked. Instead, I’ve received a handful of emails from students thanking me for a wonderful term and for making them confident writers and a few emails from the department congratulating the graduating MAs and MFAs and inviting us to BBQs and end of the year readings.

I’m in serious denial. It can’t be over, can it? Did I really defend my thesis this last Tuesday? Has the big climactic moment come and gone? It feels like a dream, like a ridiculous rose-colored fantasy I thought up this last fall when I was in the thick of it all.

But yes. It’s over. Or at least, almost over. I defended my thesis, turned in final grades, submitted final assignments, and cleaned out my desk. I have to make a few very minor revisions to my thesis that will take no more than an hour and submit it to the graduate school by the end of next week. And then it’s really over. 

Maybe it would feel more real if it felt more like summer outside. Or maybe it will hit me once my parents get here tomorrow afternoon and congratulate me. Or maybe it won’t hit me until I unload that U Haul truck in Washington in a few weeks. 

For now, I’m enjoying my denial, my bliss. But I can’t help feeling like I’m forgetting something, like I’ve overlooked some important detail. I keep going over old to-do-lists, searching for an incomplete task. But the boxes can all be checked off. And slowly, the weight is beginning to lift off my shoulders and as a result, I suddenly feel like me again. I want to write and read for enjoyment and cook and research anything that strikes my fancy.

And dammit, I’m going to do it all. Because I have a goddamned Master’s degree!

Alki Beach… a change of scenery over the weekend. #selfie

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Glimpses of the future…

I remember being in Seattle almost three years ago and imagining myself as a graduate student. I saw myself in one of those shabby chic coffee shops like the Bauhaus. You know the type–worn-in cushioned chairs, exposed brick, scarred wood tables and chairs, hanging bar lights, thirty-year-old hipsters smoking cigarettes around the corner. I saw myself in a sweater, jeans and glasses, looking 25 rather than 23, which in my mind really just meant some semblance of cheekbones appearing on my face. I’d be sitting at one of the tables near a window, typing away at my laptop, looking more serious, scholarly, and wise than I felt then. Between taking sips of my latte and flipping through pages of a dilapidated library book, I’d be writing something startlingly eloquent for my thesis, a project I’d be deeply and passionately committed to.

This romanticized vision of myself brings a smile to my face now. A few days ago, I sat at my local coffee shop, the one with the wood tables and exposed brick, and wrote notes for my thesis conclusion. It has taken a lot of effort to become deeply invested in my thesis project, but I am, and I have discovered and learned so much because of it. I’m still in disbelief that I am twenty-five, and although my wish for cheekbones never came true, I have some pretty dark under-eye circles to show for it. And I am smarter, more scholarly (despite being burned out), and self-assured than I was three years ago. Or six months ago, for that matter.

It’s a pretty good feeling to know that I more or less embody an image that was once a romantic goal. I by no means have it all figured out, but I don’t think I ever expected to, and I probably never will. But here I am, tired but excited, finishing up the last steps of a Master’s thesis that I actually feel proud of and getting ready for yet another chapter of my life to begin. Not knowing the details of that chapter yet is both exciting and terrifying, but it’s reassuring knowing that I am finishing this chapter on a high note. I don’t believe in destiny, that things are meant to happen, but I do believe in foreshadowing, and the hints from this chapter point to plenty of upcoming positives. And I’m not one to be optimistic.

I feel older, more mature, smarter, and more in tune with myself than I ever have before. I know who I am, and for now that’s enough. I don’t need to know what career I’ll end up in, or where I’ll end up living, or when/whether I’ll have children.

I’ve made a lot of huge decisions in the past three years, both good and bad. And maybe it’s making those big decisions that has made me relatively calm about the future. I’m not afraid to be thrown into new arenas or to make many inevitable bad decisions. I trust myself to make decisions and to deal with the consequences maturely–unlike some people in my family right now…

Tonight I am converting my 100-page thesis into a PDF so that I can send digital copies along with my four hard copies to my committee members. Then it’s just a waiting game. Yes, I still have to write an abstract, some acknowledgments, and notes for my defense presentation. But my thesis is done. And it feels pretty damn good.

One of my favorite songs and ads. I’m having my students do a quick rhetorical analysis of it Wednesday–teaching visual rhetoric and advertising appeals is one of my favorite parts of my job. I wish I could teach a college class on just that. #twoweeksleft #feelingnostalgic

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It’s All Happening…

It has been a weird week. People are driving me insane…. I need a new crowd….

My thesis is done though (for now). So I’m watching Almost Famous and grading… tomorrow. Or Thursday. Or never.

Morning Musings

We all spend our lifetimes trying to elicit, avoid, and comprehend human reactions. Our only point of comparison in making sense of others’ reactions, of course, is our own way of dealing with things. When someone acts irrationally, or in some way that does not fit our perceptions of normal behavior, we react with fear or anger. I should clarify what I mean by normal here. In this case, normal is any reaction with which we can relate our own human reactions, and we all have pretty huge ranges. And those ranges are expanded as we grow older and experience new things and observe a variety of others. Yet people still surprise us, act outside of our predetermined lines of normalcy, fairly often. And that’s when we start to moralize and create taxonomies that attempt to create order by sorting people in to categories. Insane. Disturbed. Socially awkward. Weird. Etc. And yes, some of these are borderline real diseases that go beyond the schoolyard labels we toss around. And I am not trying to suggest here that categories are not useful or even necessary. No, that’s not the point at all.

So what am I getting at? Nothing, really. That’s why these are musings. I’m just thinking, trying to make sense of things…

People do some seemingly insane things when they have been hurt. As a woman, I am most familiar with emotion-driven acts of making others feel guilty or with vengeful acts that revolve around an attempt to ostracize and personally insult others. I have a more difficult time understanding emotion-driven acts of violence, which often seem to be carried out by men. The need to physically harm someone who has emotionally harmed you seems to oppose logic. I do understand the comparatively brief repercussions of resorting to physical reactions over emotional. A bruise or broken bone heal much quicker than a betrayal or personal insult in most cases. But what happens when these acts of violence go too far, when they result in permanent damage or death? And does this seem like such an extreme? How easy is it to cross that line when adrenaline or anger are pumping through your veins?

There is no grand lesson I’ve come to here… just morning musings from a couple days ago I needed to type up…