As promised.

So, as everyone knows, I recently visited Orlando, my former home-away-from-home and land where most of my best friends still live. I knew I would kick myself if I didn’t make it up to Orlando during my month-long vacation at home, but at the same time as I was extraordinarily excited to get there, I was also a little worried about possible ramifications. Namely, I was worried that I would remember how much I loved it there and would never want to leave, that I would once again be unable to see New Jersey as my new home-away-from-home and would fall back into terrible homesickness.

Quite the contrary happened while I was there. I spent some time in the UCF library, my old haunt, and walked all around campus. I revisited some of my favorite restaurants and reconnected with old friends. It was, all in all, in every way, a fantastic trip.

It was so great not only for the fact that I got to spend some time with people I have sorely missed (and continue to), but also because I was finally able to come to terms with leaving it behind. I’ve spent the last four months wondering (and wishing it were the case sometimes) what my life would be like if I had chosen to stay in Orlando. I would still be able to see my best friends on a daily basis; I would know my way around; I would have a car. I would still be living in my old comfort zone. I would not be growing and changing. (I also would not have the most adorable kitty in the world to call my own.)

As I sat beside the UCF reflection pond with book and coffee in hand, just as I’ve done 1000 times before, I finally realized that my moving away was the absolute right choice. I needed to do it, and no matter how scared I was (and still am sometimes), I know in my heart I made the right choice. I am supposed to be where I am. If I had stayed (in other words, given in to some of my biggest fears), I probably would have suffocated from claustrophobia. I’ve said it before, but now I truly believe it, I needed this change in my life.

When I moved to New Jersey, I felt that I had lost a lot of things. I worried that I would forget them, that they would no longer be a part of my life. Now, I can look at all that I have gained and appreciate where I came from. I’m no longer clinging to the past, crying over what could have been. While I was home, I spent some time trying to work out the particulars of a rather complicated relationship in my life right now, a relationship I’m not quite sure how to define. As we talked it over, the other half of this bundle of complications told me I needed to let go of things and move on. At the time, I brushed it off. I truly believed I had already done that (see here).

However, as I sat that day by the pond and thought about all the other times I had come to the very same place for solace, for peace, for comfort, for joy and about all the people I had shared parts of myself with while watching the water spill from the fountain, droplets dancing in the sun or moon, I finally did what I had been trying to do for so long (what I believed I’d already done). I just let it all go. It wasn’t a conscious decision, just a simple revelation. Something so simple, but I could feel the change in me instantly.

Now I can begin to build a new life and know that in building it I am not forgetting or forsaking all that came before, but rather relying on my strong foundation to grow even higher.

Delays

I am at the airport, and my flight is delayed. There are signs all around me advertising free wifi throughout the airport. This is great. However, my computer will connect to the Internet but won’t open any web pages. So much for a newly updated Hulu queue to keep me busy.

Isn’t that always how it works, though? Things seem too good to be true and usually are. Things seem to be working out when really they’re just falling apart, and nothing seems to work correctly when we need it. This, I have learned, is the story of my life.

I was planning to write a long post that I’ve been swishing around my brain for a while about my return to Orlando this week. The trip was excellent and just what I needed (in more ways than I expected). Despite my fears that returning to my alma mater and all my favorite places and reuniting with friends I have sorely missed would spin me into a second terrible bout of home-away-from-home sickness, my trip actually gave me time to clear my head, to consider a lot of things I had been ignoring. Anyway, I was going to write that post, but seeing as I’m stuck with nothing but a phone on which to type and my thumbs are already cramping, it will have to wait.

Guess I’m off to count the speckles in the airport tile for a few hours. Yay me.

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.

Never far enough.

Sometimes I wonder why life plays cruel tricks on us. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve resolved to forget something, or to wipe it from my mind, only to find reminders of it around every corner.

In high school I couldn’t wait for college. By the middle of my Senior year, I was ready to be gone. I wanted a whole new life in a whole new place. I wanted to move beyond high school, to leave it in the past, and to embrace something entirely new. Looking back, I know this feeling of restlessness and my somewhat overwhelming feeling of needing to escape led to my obsession with moving out of state. As those of you who know me or who can recall old posts know, I did not leave my home state of Florida for college. I moved from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando – a whole three hours away. As soon as I started at UCF, I found reminders of home and my high school everywhere. I saw people from back home in my classes and walking around campus, my high school played the football states championship game in Orlando, and on and on. I felt like I’d never be far enough away from it all.

I cannot say that I felt the same when leaving UCF as I did when leaving my high school. I was so connected to UCF and to Orlando; my whole life was there. Yet, I finally achieved my goal of moving to a new state. As a friend of mine said the day before I left Florida for good, “You’ve finally done what you always said you wanted to do. That must feel great.” And it did, and it does. You learn things about yourself when you leave behind everything you’ve ever known and loved in order to pursue a dream – things that you’d never learn any other way.

I have grown and changed and become a new person in the few short weeks I’ve been here, but I’ve also been clinging to aspects of my life in Orlando. I’ve been wishing that I could have moved them here with me – my favorite UCF Starbucks, UCF’s beautiful campus that I knew like the back of my hand, my RA apartment, my level of comfort, everyone I care about. Recent events, however, have taught me that clinging to the past is the best way to ruin the present and to occlude the future. In some respects I’ve embraced my completely new life here, but under the surface, I know I’ve been desperately clutching at my comfortable UCF existence – at lunches with my older brother every week, at living mere feet from my best friend, at everything that made my life so perfect for the last few years.

I need to stop. I need to stop wishing that my UCF life will magically repeat itself here. I need to stop looking for people I know and love around every corner. I need to accept that everything is different now, even me.

And as I try to move forward, just when I think I’m no longer homesick or wishing to rewind time to the gloriousness of the summer, I’m reminded of all that I left behind in Orlando. An episode of House Hunters featured the Winter Park Farmer’s Market this afternoon, and I almost cried. I had to change the channel. I couldn’t take it – all the talk about people loving and enjoying the things I can no longer have, the things that are no longer a part of my life, the memories I want so desperately to be more than memories.

The other day I came across a quote while browsing my Pinterest feed.

You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

It’s time for me to stop re-reading, revisiting, and attempting to rewind. It’s time for me to acknowledge the passage of time, the change of place, and the birth of a new me.

I suppose it’s time to let go.

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.”

 

Sometimes you just need a daily jigsaw.

Click here to try it out!

If jigsaw puzzles aren’t your thing, try out Gluey.  It’s kind of like Bejeweled, but with blobs that have eyes (aka, much more fun).

In case you can’t tell, I’ve been procrastinating a lot.  A LOT.  See, I have this epic exam tomorrow.  Why so epic?  Well, it determines whether or not I will be certified as a teacher in Florida.  It determines whether or not I will graduate from UCF in one month.  It basically determines whether or not the rest of my life will happen.  No big deal, right?  Well, I tried to study.  I really did.  Honestly.  I simply could not bring myself to read past Chapter 3 of my practice book.  I felt like I was going to explode, so what did I do?  I took a practice test to gauge my knowledge and to hopefully find some motivation to study.  Well, I scored a 90% on the practice exam without ever reading any of the material.  I suppose you can see how I ended up doing virtual puzzles and playing with blobs.  Today was supposed to be my productive day.  Hopefully you all did better at sticking to your goals for today than I did.  Hopefully I don’t fail tomorrow.  Wish me luck, okay?

The day that loves all days.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

I decided today that my life might be a little bit sad.  Recently, I’ve been having intense separation anxiety from the library.  I miss it with its rows upon rows of books, mediocre coffee shop, and graffitied wooden study carrels.  I’ve begun to envy my friends’ freedom to spend a day in the library.  I’m even missing long nights of reading and paper writing and getting kicked out via announcement over the loud speaker.  I’m dying here.  This is just sad.

Then again, what kind of student would I be if I didn’t yearn for more free time in the library?  While I love my students and my support staff at my internship, I hate the way I’ve become so removed from UCF, from the campus, from the student life…. I miss the days of waking up for class, meeting friends for lunch, reading in the library, and staying up late to finish a paper.  I am not an 8-5 kind of person.  It’s too confining, the schedule.  I am gone all day, and by the time I get back to campus, pretty much everything is closed.  People are gone; classes are all ending.  I haven’t even been to the middle of campus for weeks.  I miss my life as a student.

If I had been smart enough to put the pieces together last semester, I would have appreciated my last semester as an actual student more than I did.  I was jaded and unaware, unaware that December 7th, not May 6th, marked the end of my days of being a full-fledged UCF student.  Yes, I’m still enrolled right now and yes, I still live on campus, but I feel so disconnected.  I feel like a pretend student.  I do not like it.  I am not an 8-5 person.

Perhaps this is why the life of a grad student and a college professor appeals to me so much.  If my dreams come true, I will never have to be an 8-5 person.  I will always be able to pencil in lunch with a friend, to read a book in the afternoon.  I will be able to move around, walk from building to building during the day.  I will not be confined to one room in one building all day.  I don’t know how people do it.  Let me reinforce, I am not an 8-5 person.  I am not a cubicle person.  I am not even a huge corner office with panoramic views of the ocean person.  I am a student’s life kind of person.  I am an academic.

I am an academic eagerly awaiting her place in higher academia.  I am in love with learning.  Happy Valentine’s Day.