Things Have Changed

I feel like I'm sitting on the edge of a long journey about to happen. I felt excited and rarin' to go at the outset of last year's first year back in academia. Now that I'm approaching the real beginning of year two, many things are different. I feel that I actually have a marketable skill and that I will actually get a job when I finish school and this is somehow frightening and amazing at the same time. My mom used to tell me about getting her masters and her PhD and I used to think, there's NO WAY I can ever do that. That's way too much work. Here I am just two classes and one exam away from my degree and I can hardly believe it. I had a summer full of travels and adventures, and I keep having to remind myself that this is not a dream, that I actually can do and have done these things.

As I approach the end of my academic life (I hope...), I start to wonder how I'll actually fare in the world of 9-5, five days a week, two weeks vacation per year. It sounds so limiting, so constricted. I think it's going to be really important for me to find a job that keeps me mobile and keeps me thinking outside borders. I don't mind being in one place for a while, but it's hard to think of not traveling very much and not having a lot of time to do so. After such an amazing trip to Africa, I can hardly think that my life shouldn't include the other three continents I haven't even touched and many, many more long and involved explorations into other cultures and the people that comprise them.

Whatever awaits me at the end of this year, I know it's gotta be good, and it's gotta be big.

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