Pre-Defense Ramble
I will not win this game today. I worked from 9 to 7:30 with a 45-minute break in the middle for a little lunch with Aaron. My new rotation is a little overwhelming, but they keep me very busy, which I like a lot. It’s so much easier to work hard when there’s lots to do and when I’m in one building all day. It’s so different from being in the schools. I meet for the very last time with my two main counseling cases in the high schools. I’ll miss ’em. It’s been a long road. I doubt there will be tearful goodbyes, but I leave hoping I’ve made some difference in their young lives.
After meeting with those two kids, I will come back home and start packing for my trip back to Bloomington, the closest place to home I have, really. It’s weird. Atlanta is really my home, but my parents aren’t there anymore, so it doesn’t really feel like home. Bloomington was a place where I lived the 7 years before coming here last August. I really did a lot of growing up there. It’s where my ex and I began our married lives. It’s where we adopted Jeep and Maggie. It’s where I discovered my profession. I was living there when my marriage ended, when I learned how to live alone, where I learned how to be a School Psychologist, and where I learned how to be a college teacher. Bloomington is where I learned Yoga and a million other hobbies. It’s where I really came into my own as a cook.
I’m so happy to go back, to see my friends that are still there. The defense is really the last thing on my mind, but it’s also the first. It’s a source of anxiety, but I’m not doing much about it. There just isn’t that much to do. On Wednesday, I’ll sit my ass down to read through all 139 pages and to try and remember what it was I was trying to find out. I’ll go into a room with four white learned men and tell them all about my study and what worked and what didn’t, and I’ll hope the conversation goes off on to some lovely tangent, like my chair’s new twins that will by then be 6 days old… but alas, I’m sure that will not be what happens. It’ll be all business, and hopefully, Wednesday will be enough time to remember what I was up to for all that time!
Clarksdale was a nice break. I wish there was time for recovery afterwards. I have elected to not go through graduation ceremonies. Honestly, it isn’t all that important to me. I may walk in December, but I may not. I may just throw myself one hell of a party after internship ends. I don’t even know where I’d have it. Last year, so many of my friends graduated. There were little envelopes handed around. There were relatives everywhere. Grads posed for pictures. I don’t know. It all seemed a little silly. It didn’t feel like it related to the preparation involved. OK, so I work my ass off for 7 years, live in virtual poverty, racking up $100K+ in loans, so that I can satisfy my goal of having a satisfying and meaningful career. In return, I get to wear a little outfit and eat crudites with old relatives? Hmm… I’ll pass. I’ll just take the meaningful career! Oh, and maybe one of those little envelopes.
I haven’t completely ruled out a December graduation, but honestly, it seems like a lot of expense channeled in the wrong direction.
Comment by Len Cleavelin
May 10, 2005 @ 9:01 am
I did my college and law school commencement exercises for my mother, who was still alive at the time and wanted the pleasure of actually seeing some pomp and circumstance in return for all the love, moral support, and money she’d sunk into my education.
When I got my master’s, I skipped the commencement, on the theory that I’d done the pomp and circumstance and was, truth be told, pretty underwhelmed by it. About the only temptation I had to attend my master’s commencement was that, given how anal academia is about protocol, and given that my law degree is a doctorate, I was tempted to see if I could force them to let me wear a doctoral gown and hood to stride up on stage and receive a master’s (surely, it’s happened before?)….