Finals (+) Anxiety
While standing outside, talking to my roommate earlier, I realized that exactly one week from that moment (and well, I suppose from this moment too--and a great many moments to follow as well), I will be in Kentucky, catching up with friends that I haven't seen or spoken with in depth for two months! I can now hardly contain my excitement.
I was then moved to reflect back upon my experiences in Philadelphia this past year. Have they been worth it? Have I "grown" as a person? Have I had fun up here? Has it been an enjoyable past year? How would the anxiety I've felt since I arrived compare to the hum-drum comfort of staying in Louisville and working a job?
I don't know if I can answer those questions right now. I do know that staying in school has forced me to keep reading, has introduced me to ideas and books that I never, ever would have come across otherwise (Dos Passos, for example: I doubt I'd have thought to read or come across U.S.A. if I hadn't gotten into graduate school). Sadly, I know deep down that if I had just gotten a job, all of my intellectual aspirations would have melted away. I wouldn't have stayed together with her, either. Maybe things would have lasted longer, or maybe I could have patched things up for a bit when the split began, but it wouldn't have lasted.
So while I can't yet fully comprehend how I've grown over the past year or so, I do know that I wouldn't have matured as much as I have if I'd remained in Louisville and worked. I was given a chance at something and I'm deeply glad that I grabbed a hold of it, despite the pain I've been in up here.
The most painful moments of all have been those where I became aware that my future still isn't, and probably never will be, decided. This time next year, I don't know whether I'll be accepting an M.A. and getting ready to transfer, or accepting one and preparing for a year and half (or more, *gulp!*) of downtime, or continuing onward here through to the end. I just don't know. Everything is far too confusing and probably will remain so until I land a career, until tenure is mine, or until I'm an editor somewhere, or until I'm a manager, or a lawyer, or something with a steady salary and a house and a wife and children, and even then nothing is guaranteed.
Now, when I watch tv shows off the Internet or movies or read a book, I look at the characters and study how they're something. They have paths, goals, accomplishments...in five years, everything I'm doing here could be meaningless if my wings turn out to be made of wax. I can't face the prospect of starting over again. Rediscovering literature after dropping out of the engineering track was hard enough.
Nothing in real life is ever like it is in fiction. And that is why, as much as I love studying literature, as purely pleasurable reading normally is to me, I sometimes secretly despise fiction. Even the desperate, miserable characters in modernist works are surrounded by some sort of fashionable aura. In life, those same sorts of people are just stepped on, spit on, thrown in institutions, worked to death, or just plain overlooked.
I think I've been hanging from a precipice for the past few weeks. To look below is to succumb to pressure, to slip into a nervous breakdown, and to fall into madness. I've been struggling to find the strength to pull myself up. Hopefully in a week, I'll be up and walking away rather than imagining that I'm up and walking away as I fall...
I was then moved to reflect back upon my experiences in Philadelphia this past year. Have they been worth it? Have I "grown" as a person? Have I had fun up here? Has it been an enjoyable past year? How would the anxiety I've felt since I arrived compare to the hum-drum comfort of staying in Louisville and working a job?
I don't know if I can answer those questions right now. I do know that staying in school has forced me to keep reading, has introduced me to ideas and books that I never, ever would have come across otherwise (Dos Passos, for example: I doubt I'd have thought to read or come across U.S.A. if I hadn't gotten into graduate school). Sadly, I know deep down that if I had just gotten a job, all of my intellectual aspirations would have melted away. I wouldn't have stayed together with her, either. Maybe things would have lasted longer, or maybe I could have patched things up for a bit when the split began, but it wouldn't have lasted.
So while I can't yet fully comprehend how I've grown over the past year or so, I do know that I wouldn't have matured as much as I have if I'd remained in Louisville and worked. I was given a chance at something and I'm deeply glad that I grabbed a hold of it, despite the pain I've been in up here.
The most painful moments of all have been those where I became aware that my future still isn't, and probably never will be, decided. This time next year, I don't know whether I'll be accepting an M.A. and getting ready to transfer, or accepting one and preparing for a year and half (or more, *gulp!*) of downtime, or continuing onward here through to the end. I just don't know. Everything is far too confusing and probably will remain so until I land a career, until tenure is mine, or until I'm an editor somewhere, or until I'm a manager, or a lawyer, or something with a steady salary and a house and a wife and children, and even then nothing is guaranteed.
Now, when I watch tv shows off the Internet or movies or read a book, I look at the characters and study how they're something. They have paths, goals, accomplishments...in five years, everything I'm doing here could be meaningless if my wings turn out to be made of wax. I can't face the prospect of starting over again. Rediscovering literature after dropping out of the engineering track was hard enough.
Nothing in real life is ever like it is in fiction. And that is why, as much as I love studying literature, as purely pleasurable reading normally is to me, I sometimes secretly despise fiction. Even the desperate, miserable characters in modernist works are surrounded by some sort of fashionable aura. In life, those same sorts of people are just stepped on, spit on, thrown in institutions, worked to death, or just plain overlooked.
I think I've been hanging from a precipice for the past few weeks. To look below is to succumb to pressure, to slip into a nervous breakdown, and to fall into madness. I've been struggling to find the strength to pull myself up. Hopefully in a week, I'll be up and walking away rather than imagining that I'm up and walking away as I fall...