News!

...But, for the record, "the unknown" (at least in an exciting manner) will, for now, have to wait.

That is because I FINALLY got a job of a semi-permanent sort.  I started waiting tables at a wonderful place here in my home town and I think I like it so far. It's a far cry from digging trenches or German math homework, but I 'll take it for the learning experience it will no doubt provide. One would hope. And the chance to make a little money. One most definitely hopes. Hurrah!

Also, in my fervor for a sense of direction as regards my future edification, I have come to realize that, as with most things in life, there really is not a "perfect time" to do anything. And so, the great and seemingly-never-ending search for M.A.s of Awesomeness continues, if perhaps more slowly than before, as I must now shift my focus to my new employment and only occasionally obsess over the pros and cons of GRE prep courses and/or grad school in general. Though CU Boulder is looking better and better these days...(um, can you say "cha-ching?")

But let's please do ignore me for a moment and direct our attention to some people who have actually managed to make some really hard yet awesomely exciting decisions recently:

Congratulations are most notably due to my dear friends Libby, Aubrey and Devin who recently decided to join the ranks of BU, WWU, and Vanderbilt Law, respectively. I tell you what, dear readers, these ladies are some of the most intelligent women I have ever met--and on top of that, they are kickassinyourfacecrazyawesome. The world of higher academia is lucky to have them. And so am I.

 

Oh, and, double-plus-bonus? 

They are dog people : )

 T.J., Gatsby, and Indy for the win!

School and Life and Mountains

I've been thinking about school a lot lately. I miss the desks. I miss slamming my Norton down on the wood with zealousness and scribbling notes about Elizabethan politics as fast as I can. I miss sitting cross-legged on the tables upstairs in the classrooms in Westminster, reading and re-reading Lear's lines while a classmate cross-references them against a later text. I miss having heated yet beautifully friendly debates with my peers about everything from the merits of fictional characters to the impact of the 16th century Church on modern society. I miss sweating buckets over a presentation that took two people three days and information from four different libraries to complete. (Ok, so I don't miss the perspiration so much as the jubilation that followed.) And I miss the realization that one completed task meant one more mountain climbed, providing guidance and experience to drawn from in all the expeditions to come.

But at this moment I confess to feeling ill-equipped to surmount the next obstacle in my life. School, while indeed challenging, always had a trail, made clearly visible by the countless students who had gone before. Postgraduate life appears to be devoid of any such aids. Perhaps that is why I struggle with it so?

Maybe these new challenges are a kind of cosmic smoke-signal or footprint in the sand meant to lead me back where I began. After all, I feel quite at home in academia, so why not return to base camp and start the journey afresh from a vantage point I am familiar with?

But then I think, hell, maybe striking out on an as-yet un-blazed trail would be better for me! Somebody had to be the first to summit Everest, right? And perhaps, if I'm lucky, I will find illumination in the perspective brought by the view that few ever see, and from the journey that leads not back to the familiar, but onward, into the unknown...