It’s a new year. Almost.

I’ve been gone for a while enjoying some time at home over the holidays, but I’m slowly starting to remember that I don’t do well with doing nothing.

Today I received my new iPhone in the mail. It was incredibly exciting, very frustrating to activate, and pretty much just like having my old phone by now. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve moved from the Dark Ages of iPhone times to the future, and it’s great. My apps work correctly. I can tell my phone to text message someone, and it does it. It’s very fun, but in the end, it’s just a phone. I need something to work on, to accomplish.

What does that mean? Well, it means I’ll be spending several days of the next few weeks at Starbucks working on conference papers. Did I mention that my paper was accepted to the NJCEA conference? Yay, me. Moving up in the world of academia. I have to edit, cut down, and prepare my paper for presentation now. I also need to get working on another paper I’m submitting to the Plymouth Medieval Forum. Hooray for me again. Exciting stuff is happening.

It’s nice to remember that every once in a while, especially when being forced to let go of a lot of other things. It’s nice to look forward to what is coming.

Anyway, if I’m gone until the New Year, now you know why.

Happy 2012!

And then I woke up.

I’m a big believer in fate.

Those who know I come from a religious background might question this, but fate can take many forms. Does it matter if God, gods, or bundles of sticks are controlling things? Not really. I have my own beliefs in the behind-the-scenes of it all, but the essential and important part is that I believe in fate.

Not the kind of fate that means I have no free will or that my life is predetermined by my saved or reprobate soul (sorry Calvin) or the kind of fate that one can ruin by making the wrong choices throughout life (sorry ancient gods of yore). I just believe that life presents us with situations and events that we need. They could be as simple as getting stuck in a rain shower with no umbrella to remind us that we should be more organized or as complex as a relationship meant to change our lives and alter our perceptions of the world.

I believe that fate will take me where I need to be in life. This place may not be where I envisioned it to be, and the path may not be the one I planned out for myself. Yet, I know and truly believe that it will be what is right for me and right in my life.

It seems easy, right? Just believe in fate and all will be great. Well, no. Like I said, I don’t believe that fate will simply hand me everything I want. If I want my life to go a certain way, I need to work for it. If I do, fate will make sure that I get where I’m supposed to be.

Perhaps an example will help clarify some points:

When I was applying to colleges for my undergrad studies, I had my heart set on moving out of state. I knew that CUA was the place I needed to be. I could feel it, and I wanted it so badly. I made sure that I got myself into a position come high school graduation to make this dream a reality. As much as I knew CUA was the place I needed to be, I knew that UCF was the place I did not want to be, the place that would be a terrible life decision. I’m sure that many of you are laughing right now. See, I lost hours and hours of sleep trying to figure out why I couldn’t commit to CUA. Everything had worked out like I’d planned, but something was stopping me from sending in my deposit check. Then, I woke up one morning knowing that I needed to attend UCF, knowing without a doubt that I needed to be there. I sent in the deposit check that afternoon.

I joke around sometimes, saying that I was divinely inspired to choose UCF for my post-secondary education. It makes for a more exciting tale that way, but the truth is I have no idea why I suddenly changed my mind. Fate.

I suppose there’s no saying that I wouldn’t have found a best friend in Washington, DC or that I wouldn’t have succeeded in my classes. I’m sure I would have. I may even had to chance to study abroad and to fall in love with Medieval literature, maybe. I’m not sure what about my life at UCF was so fated for me to experience, but I know that I don’t regret it and that, for whatever reason, I was meant to be there. I am who I am today because of it.

This belief in fate was difficult to hold on to when applying to graduate schools. I watched dream school after dream school turn me down, say I wasn’t good enough, thanks but no thanks. I thought I’d run out of options, that my dreams would have to wait. Then, I realized that I had all the power in the world to make things happen the way I wanted them to and ended up at a school more perfect than I believed was possible.

I don’t know exactly why I’m here. Maybe to prove to myself that I can leave everything behind and start all over on my own, far from home. Maybe to meet someone who will change my life. Maybe simply to adopt the cutest little black kitten so that he will have someone to love him for the rest of his life. Maybe, like my time at UCF, I’ll never know.

It’s been difficult remaining firm in my faith in fate as I begin to prepare for another round of PhD applications. I’d wanted to be done with this whole process, but I’ve been trying, truly trying, to approach it from a better place this time. Maybe it won’t work out the way I want it to, but it will work out the way I need it to.

I suppose this may be a tribute.

I use the word “tribute” lightly here. I never followed the history of Apple Computer or truly understood the impact Steve Jobs had on the world. I probably still don’t, and I don’t mean to jump on a bandwagon and claim that he changed my life. He may have – without my knowing it, but how will I ever tell? People tell me he changed the world, but I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it while it was happening. I live (and always have) in the already changed world.

See? It's a whale.

Sure, I’ve bought his products. I think iPhones are great and text message whales are cute. I’m eagerly awaiting a new MacBook Air in the mail and am excited to own it and call it mine. All of these gadgets are a part of my life and a part of the way I see the world and perhaps I owe that to their creator.

For me, though, it’s been more of an experience by proxy. I had an iPod because that was the coolest thing in a post-Walkman world. I got an iPhone because my brother’s was neat and I was sick of my 1988 flip phone brick. I bought a MacBook because I was tired of dealing with my old laptop and Windows which couldn’t seem to stop complaining. I even watched Pirates of Silicon Valley because my boyfriend said it was good and I was bored. My experience with what Steve Jobs created has been largely second-hand and influenced by those around me, but today as I was surfing the Internet, wasting time, trying to avoid working on the presentation about Shakespeare’s The Tempest I’m supposed to give on Wednesday, I came across a quote from Steve Jobs. The Internet’s been full of them lately, and I have no way of knowing if he actually said this (or if he did, in what context). I simply stumbled across these words and they awakened something within me again.

As most regular readers of this blog know, I have had quite the tumultuous experience in graduate school so far – I’ve left my family completely for the first time, my boyfriend moved to California 3,000 miles away, according to my professors I don’t talk enough in class, I may want a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric rather than Medieval Literature, I’m still terrified no PhD school will take me, I ended up in the middle of a crime scene the other night (That’s a story for another day), and I’m still trying to figure what the heck I want from this life. Sometimes I lose my faith that it will all work out okay.

Then I read this:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

–Steve Jobs

And I realized that I have been doing just that – worrying about what others think of my goals, fearing that my heart has been lying to me, forgetting to trust my own intuition.

I suppose that now I can say Steve Jobs changed my life – or at least words that some Internet site attributed to him did. I also suppose that I’m a little late to jump onto the tribute ship, but, then again, I’m still not sure I would consider this a tribute – perhaps just a thank you, a thank you for saying something (most likely) years ago that inspired someone to record it so that I could read it today. So, thanks for that, Steve Jobs.

Pressure makes diamonds.

Ever since I can remember, people have told me that “God won’t give me more than I can handle.” I appreciate the cliché, but sometimes I also wonder who God thinks I am. How does he look at my life and myself and say “Yeah, she can handle this”?

My first two weeks of graduate school have been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster. While I feel fulfilled and happy and excited and satisfied on the one hand, my other hand is shaking under the pressure and feeling a little overwhelmed and scared and anxious and nervous. Lately, I’ve been besieged by a multitude of feelings and emotions, feelings and emotions that I have had ample time to investigate over the past two weeks. Perhaps this level of introspection arises from the fact that I have yet to begin working.  I was hired, yes, but I’m still in the paperwork phase. At first I loved all of my free time. Now, I’m remembering why I killed myself with an impossible schedule in undergrad – free time leads to more hours of worry.

I’ve been settling in quite well here, but at the same time I feel as though I’m receiving so many messages that say “Don’t stop and get comfortable here,” “Don’t get too attached,” “Decide where you’re going next,” and “DO IT ALL RIGHT NOW”! The pressure has been building, and because I’ve had so much time to contemplate just how much pressure I’ve been feeling, I’m already beginning to crack. Is it not enough to deal solely with moving hundreds of miles away from my home, my family, my friends, and my boyfriend? Must I also tackle planning the rest of my life RIGHT NOW? According to my school’s advisers, yes, I must.  I must make plans and figure it all out immediately.

In my previous post, I talked about my tendency to plan and the fact that I’ve been struggling with my compulsive need to know the next five steps in my life. Today after a frantic and rather ranting discussion with my boyfriend, I understand that it’s okay to plan as long as I don’t lose my hold on the present. He tells me that I need to stop worrying about what comes next and just live. I agree, but I also know that I will always be a worrier. He says to look to my generally successful past to assure myself that I have carved the best possible path for myself. I agree, but I also know that I have a hard time trusting myself.

See the thing is, I’ve been feeling a little conflicted about my choice of specialization. In my Hurricane-Irene-make-up class on Friday, my professor asked each of us to introduce ourselves and to state why we are currently here pursuing a graduate degree in English. Simple enough. I listened to my classmates as they spoke and lost track of time as I delighted in what a diverse and interesting group we are. Before I knew it, the class was staring at me, and I had not planned my speech. I began talking saying what came to mind and found myself recalling my experiences at UCF‘s Writing Center: “I worked at UCF’s Writing Center for two years and fell in love with working with college students and their writing… Oh, and I love Medieval literature.”

When I finished speaking, I realized that for the fist time my interest in working with students’ writing came before my love for Medieval knights, ladies, castles, and magic. What? Haven’t I spent the last two and a half years killing myself to study Medieval lit and expended all of my efforts getting to Seton Hall to do just that? Aren’t I staring down the woman whose research influenced my outlook on the whole discipline and calling her my professor? Where did this interest in “college students and their writing” come from? I freaked myself so thoroughly that I’ve spent this entire weekend stressing over how to choose a PhD field of study.

After chatting with (aka venting all of my worries and troubles to) my boyfriend tonight, I feel better. He helped me see that, yes, I must choose a field for PhD study, but choosing a primary field does not mean I must abandon all other interests. I can study Medieval literature and work with students. I can become a medievalist (or a medievalismist, as my undergrad thesis adviser called me) and still teach composition and writing (perhaps even direct a Writing Center), and it will be that very second interest that makes me, well, interesting. I am a human and not a machine. My mind and interests and passions will inevitably be multifaceted, and I should not shrink from them – I should, in fact, embrace them all.

Once again I have come to the end of a post in a much more cheerful attitude than I began, but I also know that my worries are not entirely dissolved. They are there, still, beneath my confident facade and my nascent sense of trust in my own abilities. I leave you all with the same quote that my boyfriend shared with me:

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!

–Randy Pausch

I know that I want this, this life in academia. I know that it is right for me. I know that I can do it and that I do not need to sacrifice any of my many interests in order to be successful. I will inevitably face disappointment and will definitely face setbacks along the way, but as my boyfriend pointed out, that has never stopped me before now.

So it is with a confident, but not cocky, voice that I say I trust God’s evaluation of my abilities and that I trust myself to make the right decisions. It is also with steady legs that I say, “Onward.”