It's my first day of school and I'm excited. Even though I know in a month I am going to be miserable writing stupid papers that include words like "hegemony" and "juxtapose", I'm happy to know I will be utilizing my brain again. I always thought I would have a future as an academic, even though both of my parents are professors and we grew up without much money. I was really disappointed to find out that in order to pay for my master's degree, I would have to work full time and take out loans. I really wanted to be a full time student. Then I started making a tiny bit of money working and I realized, it's kind of nice to be able to pay for stuff. It would be even nicer if I didn't have to pay back these big fat school loans. I think, if I could do it again, I would have worked more at my regular job and just taken fun classes here and there. But I do need to take classes, because working a 9-5 job in something you don't really care about can feel kind of pointless. My degree in media is likely to also be pointless, but doing the two at once makes me feel better about both. Some days I think school is total bullshit and then I think, "Well, at least I have my 9-5 job to support myself." Other days I think my job is so stupid and I am thankful to be in program studying something that really interests me. I've been asked a million times what my degree and my job are "leading up to." My answer is, I don't know that they are leading up to anything, they just are. I am envious of people who have a real passion for doing something and then find a way to get paid for doing it. As of right now, I am not one of those people. Sometimes I detect some criticism from other people, like I am wasting my life because I don't have some clear cut path. I also hear it a lot when I shrug my shoulders about whether I want to get married. I don't know. I am still figuring things out, day by day. My first strategy when I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life was to lie around, doing nothing and feeling miserable. I learned that this does not work. In general, the busier I am, the happier I am. I hope I still feel that way at the end of the semester.
August 29th, 2006 at 12:12 am
Tell people they can just bite you (and bite you hard) if they try to rush you - you are living your life - not wasting it. What I thought I'd be spending my life at 25 doing became different in my early 30'a and different again in my late 30's (except the illusion it may remain the same is gone this go-round).
I know MANY people who went into a totally different career in their 30's from their 20's and taught many a non-trad student who did the same. There is no endpoint per se - there is only all this space between and if you try several different paths between now and retirement and get something different and special from all of them - alls the better.
Of course - I'm Wimpy McWimperson in telling people that even now and used to be 1,000,000 times wimpier