I’m ready to be finished grad school. Lots of people drop out or scale back at this point. I’ve read their stories. They’re burned out, exhausted, disillusioned, and so done. They take a “break” that turns into a six-month hiatus, maybe pick up a course again, maybe put it off, maybe find something other than higher-education to chew up their bank accounts and feed their text addictions…. I get it. I have that It’s Time For a Change feeling going on, and it would be so incredibly, so temptingly, easy to close my textbooks, return the remaining stacks to their associated libraries, pop a double-batch of yellow corn and settle in for thirty-six brain-cleansing hours of National Geographic TV followed by the rest of my life a year or so of reading and writing whatever the hell I want.
Sadly, I suck at giving up. As a matter of fact, I’m horrible at it. Among the sanity-saving lifeskills most adults possess – such as telling white lies, shopping, making conversation, and quitting things – I’m bad at all of them, but the absolute worst at the last one. So, dropping out or backing off is not an option for me. Despite the ongoing state of my eye-bags and tears shed over the last grinds of coffee.
In addition to being pig-headed, stubborn, out of my everloving mind, dedicated, I also happen to be a solutions-focused kinda girl. So, I’ve decided to condense my four-year program into 2.5 years, with the goal of submitting my final project no later than September 2014. I’ve also decided to finish The Fiction Project, obtain my TESL certification and learn to drive…. though I’m somewhat less confident I’ll be able to tick those items off my list within that time-frame. (I do need to sleep. Occasionally.) This worked for me during my last year of undergrad, when I was so sick of being in school I enrolled in the maximum number of courses allowable and just got ‘er done. I had a full-time desk job, then, which was about as demanding as my dayhome crew, and a couple of weekly volunteer commitments. No kids, though….
Come on, now. Kids aren’t that much more work.
Uh huh. You can stop laughing, now.
- D.
