Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

free at last

Tuesday at noon marked the end of the final day of my final class as a CCT master’s degree student at Georgetown. (Assuming, of course, that my professors don’t savage my final papers and fail me. Hopefully that’s not a scenario I need to consider.)

Notice my detailed qualifier on “CCT master’s degree student…” The other day, I caught myself looking at other grad programs at Northwestern and Columbia. Should I just accept the inevitable, that I’ll probably find myself going back to school yet again sometime in the future? In the abstract, I do enjoy school (although the grade-related deadline pressures do wear on me). I feel more mentally and intellectually engaged when I’m in school, because I get to read and discuss topics outside the normal realm of day-to-day conversation, and in much greater depth. However, there’s also a question of how practical pursing another degree might be, both financially and career-wise. How can I become a serious journalist if I spend the bulk of my 20s hiding out in academia? (Let’s not talk about the student loans.) And I think by being in school all the time, I lose some freedom to be spontaneous, or to involve myself in other things that I might want to experience.

I should leave the academics question alone for now and just enjoy the present, and the feeling of freedom after all the work of the past two years (and, particularly, the past two weeks). When I called my mom on Tuesday afternoon, she asked me what the first thing I wanted to do was now that I was done. My response? Sleep. Lots of sleep.

The strange thing, though, is that while I have a small list of things I’ve been putting off until after classes were over (file bills, clean the apartment, get a haircut), I never really came up with some kind of overarching goal to shoot for, an incentive to will myself through the past few weeks, other than simply the relief of being done.

And perhaps part of my ambivalence is due to the fact that I have a full-time job (and, in fact, have worked full-time since my junior year of undergrad). The mix of full-time work and full-time school is exhausting, with far too many ideas and projects and deadlines competing for attention. And while finishing school is certainly a relief, I can’t completely relax and rest on my laurels because I still have to come in to work everyday.

In some ways, I feel a bit of that “quarterlife crisis” lack of direction that I felt after graduating college. In academia, there is, more or less, a set “to do” list. Once you’re out, you’re on your own, to make your own path — a prospect that’s both exhilarating and terrifying. In the three years since ASU — and particularly in the past year — I think I’ve developed a better idea of what I want and where I want to be. And while I’m still not quite sure how I’m going to get there, it’s a comfort to have the beginnings of an idea.