Monday, March 31, 2014

Operative Word Being "Yet"

Hey guys,

Predictably, I'm pretty upset about the fact that we are this early in the year and I've already missed posting for almost two full months.  I have a tiny whiff of the OCD thing going, and I really like shooting for at least a post a month.  Well there goes that pretty much right out of the gate.

In fact, it is precisely because I'd had a post in mind at the end of February and then it was all March first and shit and I was like "SERIOUSLY, TIME??" that I am writing a post tonight, on March 30th, because I don't trust myself to remember to write a post tomorrow, before April.

Don't even get me started on how few movies I've watched since the beginning of 2014.

Bleh.

Basically?  This (academic) year is simply not letting up.  This cruel fact really started to settle in last month, right around the time I was blowing off my post-writing responsibilities.

I got in a car accident.  The week before my dissertation defense.

My sentiments exactly.

Happily, it could have been much worse, and my car insurance company has been really great, and I get acupuncture now so wheeeee(?)!  But still: shitty.

Unpleasant vehicular incidents notwithstanding, I successfully defended my dissertation.  Which was awesome!  My committee was awesome!  FiancĂ© was there, which was awesome!

I was feeling so efficacious and amazing, because the whole time I'd been grinding through that beast of a document (80+ pages!!), I was telling myself that this was the biggest, most significant singular thing I could do to make sure grad school would end.  And I did it!  A whole month before my program's deadline!  The wave of relief that followed was immense, overwhelming, and so deeply gratifying.

And then nothing changed.

Internship is still incredibly hard.  I still had to edit my dissertation (no more tables whyyyyy).  I still have way more to do than I could ever reasonably finish.  I'm still not done, no matter how awesomely my defense went.

But:


Graduate school has seriously outdone itself this year, and it does kill me more than a little bit that I still have four months left to go.  I've been reminded every once in a while of the fact that the first guy who ever ran a marathon died at the end--that it's precisely when the end is in sight that you're at your most exhausted--but still, the end creeps ever nearer.  I just have to keep running.

Just a little bit longer.

{Heart}