Monday, February 6, 2012

Graduation Day: Three



I knew when I graduated with my BA that I wasn't done. I knew there was something unfinished in my educational history. I knew I had to go to grad school. I didn't know it would be so complicated once I arrived.

I didn't love grad school, but I didn't hate it either. I was surrounded my amazing people, both peer and professors, was afforded fantastic opportunities as a teacher, an editor, and a friend. I read and read and read, and wrote and wrote and wrote. I listened and shared and tangled myself up only to untangle and re-tangle. I threw a few books at the wall and cried in my shared office late at night when no one was there, and I wondered why on earth I thought I belonged there.

I didn't feel graceful or natural, but clunky and messy - a roaming cluster of ideas and questions without foundations, the Pig Pen of Higher Education.

But (all good things have a but, don't they?), I made it through, even though I whined I whimpered with the glory of a six year old at times, I completed what I needed to do and at times, though it felt impossible to see in the moment, I even thrived. Those two years remind me that all experiences, even when difficult, or simply just complicated, offer us something, and though my stubborn nature neglects this, I feel it to be true.


1 comment:

  1. You may have felt like the grad school Pig Pen, but I always felt like the biggest fraud. Still trying to figure out how I fooled those people into giving me that degree. :)

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