I'm sitting in my first graduate course Wednesday night like a fish out of water. The minutia of the workday's still spiralling in my head--city officials and deadlines, unwritten stories and exhaustion--while recent undergrads yip about signing on for another two years to avoid the "real world", one I seem to have been born in.
That fish-out-of-water feeling's not unlike the one I had in undergrad after landing on a small campus in Florida. I felt like I'd seen and done it all; in Trinidad adolescent freedoms are different, accommodated. While eager 17 and 18 year olds were breaking out of their shells, I'd been working in advertising, clubbing, drinking, traveling and making straight As for years. I already knew what I wanted, what I was about, what it felt to be an alien and a stranger thousands of miles from home, how to be strong and tough and not cry.
Now I'm back on semester time, but as a professional and a student, decompressing and shifting mental states on the one-hour drive to campus, leaving deadlines behind to learn. It's rough.
Already I worry how I'll find the time to make these classes on time, to read chapters, take notes and quizzes, write papers, do group projects while journalism's demands make a crazy woman out of me.
On my first day of school I wrote a story at work, attended class, went back to the office late at night for notes to prep for a morning meeting today, cooked when I got home, slept like the dead.
On my second day of school I took a morning tour for work and a luncheon with officials, drove to another county to interview and arrange interviews for a coming story, went to class, came home and cleaned, and began note-taking in earnest.
I realize this isn't the most interesting thing to chronicle, but I'm trying to make sense of the life I'm trying to build for myself and I'm hoping I can succeed at this balancing act without my job or my education suffering.
I'm already thinking about tomorrow, making lists in my appointment book of things to get done at work. Because even though it's my day off, it doesn't matter. Days off don't exist anymore.
Photo "College students studying outdoors" by Andersen Ross courtesy Corbis
1 comment:
You can make this work!
Trite, but very true.
Don't know what else to say. I'm sure you have the strength and skills to get you through all the little rough spots. You have the determination, and that's more than half the battle.
And you have a lot of people's prayers and good wishes behind you.
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