Succeeding Successfully

I have emerged from my first year of graduate school (relatively) unscathed. After countless hours of studying, reading and preparing, 15 weeks of class, about 80 pages of papers written, three exams, I have succeeded successfully. Though I am still waiting on one final grade in one class, I feel pretty good about my performance.

Thoughts for next year? Care less. That is basically what people have told me. "Try to not stress so much." Well, I am a highly stressed person. That is who I am. That is who I have always been. And that is why I succeed, I think. I am absolutely terrified of failure and I push myself to the point where it would be devastating to my sense of self to fail. Is it healthy? Probably not. But it gets the work done and allows me to succeed in my life. There are some things that I can get away without stressing about and school isn't one of those things. More reasons that I am not continuing on to PhD. But I get it done, which is really what I care about.

I have talked a number of people about these issues of mine. Mostly my mother. Because I have inherited my father's pessimism and stress levels and my mother's emotional responses. Times 10. I dunno. I have been thinking about all of this this morning for a myriad of reasons. I have started the neverending packing and cleaning process involved in relocation (which is happening in, like, 5 days). I got an obnoxious message on facebook from a guy I don't know very well that said that I should calm down in order to come out of my graduate experience with peace and clarity (which pisses me off because how bloody condescending is that?! And how dare he purport to know what my experience has been/will be?! Grumble, grumble...). A bunch of people that I know and care about just graduated and it finally hit me that two years isn't very long. I talk about it as being temporary but yesterday it finally hit me that I am halfway through. And it feels like I just started. A year from now, I will be the one walking in graduation (barring any serious crisis, of course), hoping that I have everything figured out for the (temporary) future, saying goodbye. It makes me reflective.

Generally speaking, I like school. I like learning, I like pushing myself to new limits, I like discussing topics that I care about with other people who care about the same things I do. There are things that I don't like about school (being forced to put up with people who I feel are unworthy of my time and intellectual discourse, writing papers about things I don't care about, the whole construct of exams...), but they are outweighed by what I gain from my education. Greater perspective of the world and my place in it. I don't know for sure what I will be doing in five years but I feel a sense of purpose. Maybe it will change over time, maybe it will deepen and turn into something bigger than I could have imagined, or maybe it will just let me (generally) be happy. I like who I am today. That is enough for the time being.

OK, I should really get back to cleaning. My apartment is so disgusting from the two weeks of not really having time or energy to do anything other than schoolwork.

-B