Higher Education
Just some thoughts on my higher education. I loved it, absolutely. But I regret taking things way too fast and not letting it absorb me more, or not absorbing it itself more. I remember while I was in school, for a while there I just could not wait to be done with it, it felt like it was taking forever, I was so annoyed with the bureaucratics of it all that it made me frustrated on a whole. I think I was set in this pattern before I got into the real heart of what I wanted to learn, I just was trying to discover something I guess and was upset about everything else because I hadn't found what I was there for yet.
I realize now that I graduated college in 3 years! That is much too short! Although I graduated high school in 2004, I kind of lamed around for a while, dabbling in UNLV courses for fashion design certification for that first fall after high school. At that time I thought I wanted to go into costume design for my career, but soon found it wasn't stimulating enough for me and I was yearning to develop my thinking skills more than my sewing skills, though I still love sewing and fashion! So I wasted away my entire first semester at "college" and for the second semester, I took a whopping ONE class, and guess what it was, ITALIAN! I loved Italian, well I love language in general, and really took it to see if it would stir up that passion inside of me that I had for language in high school (I took 2 years of Spanish, and 2 years of Japanese!) or if I should maybe go back to fashion - and it did, and I knew that I needed to stop pursuing fashion and go find what I really wanted to have fun with. So realistically, I didn't start college until Fall 2005, and I graduated in Fall of 2008... If I had started my real course of study right after high school, I could have been done a whole year in advance! Who knows how different things would be! I don't regret starting late, not in the least, because I know that new professors came in during my latter years, and I would've missed so much had I graduated earlier. Plus I probably never would've ended up presenting my paper at that Anthropology conference earlier this year... No I don't regret that, I regret not spending MORE time in college for my undergraduate... I think I was rushing things, there were outside forces that were rushing me. I rushed myself. I think I am just missing it right now, and wondering how much I missed out on because I didn't soak up the experience more. I didn't get all that I could've gotten out of it because I was a little too naive in my younger years. Plus the whole UNLV college "experience" or attitude/outlook is just weird and a whole other topic in itself.
I guess it is just driving me more and more to get to where I want to be right now, financially, so I can eventually go back to school, take my time, and really take everything in that I rushed through the first time. I know graduate school will be multiple times more difficult and time consuming, but I think that's ok. I don't think I necessarily want to rush through grad school like I did undergrad... But the catch is that they, they being those that be in the higher education system, they who oversee money and ratings of departments, they who deal with all the bullshit that is higher education, they the bureaucrats, they don't want you to take your sweet time in grad school! They need to churn out graduates, they need numbers, they need to see their departments perform! So we'll see how it goes, if and when I eventually get there. Day-dreaming right now.
I realize now that I graduated college in 3 years! That is much too short! Although I graduated high school in 2004, I kind of lamed around for a while, dabbling in UNLV courses for fashion design certification for that first fall after high school. At that time I thought I wanted to go into costume design for my career, but soon found it wasn't stimulating enough for me and I was yearning to develop my thinking skills more than my sewing skills, though I still love sewing and fashion! So I wasted away my entire first semester at "college" and for the second semester, I took a whopping ONE class, and guess what it was, ITALIAN! I loved Italian, well I love language in general, and really took it to see if it would stir up that passion inside of me that I had for language in high school (I took 2 years of Spanish, and 2 years of Japanese!) or if I should maybe go back to fashion - and it did, and I knew that I needed to stop pursuing fashion and go find what I really wanted to have fun with. So realistically, I didn't start college until Fall 2005, and I graduated in Fall of 2008... If I had started my real course of study right after high school, I could have been done a whole year in advance! Who knows how different things would be! I don't regret starting late, not in the least, because I know that new professors came in during my latter years, and I would've missed so much had I graduated earlier. Plus I probably never would've ended up presenting my paper at that Anthropology conference earlier this year... No I don't regret that, I regret not spending MORE time in college for my undergraduate... I think I was rushing things, there were outside forces that were rushing me. I rushed myself. I think I am just missing it right now, and wondering how much I missed out on because I didn't soak up the experience more. I didn't get all that I could've gotten out of it because I was a little too naive in my younger years. Plus the whole UNLV college "experience" or attitude/outlook is just weird and a whole other topic in itself.
I guess it is just driving me more and more to get to where I want to be right now, financially, so I can eventually go back to school, take my time, and really take everything in that I rushed through the first time. I know graduate school will be multiple times more difficult and time consuming, but I think that's ok. I don't think I necessarily want to rush through grad school like I did undergrad... But the catch is that they, they being those that be in the higher education system, they who oversee money and ratings of departments, they who deal with all the bullshit that is higher education, they the bureaucrats, they don't want you to take your sweet time in grad school! They need to churn out graduates, they need numbers, they need to see their departments perform! So we'll see how it goes, if and when I eventually get there. Day-dreaming right now.