A catharsis...

It's weird. I never thought I'd be here. You're wondering where here is. Here is applied for Grad school, waiting, and missing BYUH. I have literally thousands of old emails stored up. I thought I'd go through and delete a bunch. I had some there from 2007. It's really funny to see my emails from 2008 through now. I can tell where in the semester I was without looking at the date of the email simply looking at which professors I was getting emails from: "Oh, that email is from so-and-so, that was my second semester of school" It's odd. Sometimes I feel like I'm having a heart attack all the time (I'm sure my love of hot cocoa and immense dislike of working out isn't helping). I feel stressed all the time. I miss Hawaii. I always knew I would. How does anyone live anywhere for 11 years, and then not miss it when you leave? November wasn't so bad. I had NaNoWriMo to keep my mind occupied. National Novel Writing Month. I did it, by the way. I wrote my 50,000 words. It wasn't the first time I had written that much, but it was the first time I had written it all within the time-span of a single month. This won't make sense. I feel jittery and nervous. I'm a rabbit, and everyone else is a fox. I'm just waiting for the pounce. I can't exactly fully explain what I'm feeling. It's the limbo period, and I hate limbo, the game, the song, the metaphysical meaning... every thing. I'm ready for Christmas. I'm ready for something to take my mind off of school. It's odd that I'm actually somewhere where it could snow (probably won't but still) and all I crave is the ocean and rain. That's Christmas to me: grey skies, rain, and a crashing ocean. It's going to be a long three months...

Nanowrimo

I’ve heard about National November Writers’ Month (NaNoWriMo) for years. I tried it last year and failed only because I didn’t get the words finished (50,000) by the end of the month. I think I only made it to a little over 19K. Here’s the thing: I’m trying again this year. That little 19K novel has grown to over 75K and is barely half-finished. I’m fully confident that I will not only finish my 50K this month, but I will also NOT finish the story by the end of this month. (Did you catch that? Yes on the 50K words, No on the end of the story.)

You see the nanowrimo story I'm writing this month is the second installment of the story i started last November. This story has the potential to be awesome. I just need to write it…

Now we get to the part I’ve come to write about: I’ve been writing (roughly) 1,667 words every day. I needed to double that yesterday (which i didn’t), and triple that today (which turns into quadruple since I failed to double yesterday). Today I sat down to write, and the words are not only not coming to me…I also have been overtaken by an overwhelming desire to take a nap…

When writing is what I want to do, the words flow. When writing is what I need to do, the desire to nap increases…

Waiting for the next set

I’ve always been able to look into my crystal ball and see my destination: AP classes, graduation, college, marriage. Lately, all I can see is fog. White fog. Fog that says, “Girl, you are asking the wrong crystal ball because I don’t see anything in your future.”

Everyone else is moving on. They’ve got their own places, new jobs, new classes, new cities, new towns. I was that girl. The girl who went to college right after high school. The girl who finished college early. Who was going to teach English in a foreign country. Who was going to worry about grad school later.

It’s frustrating. I feel stagnant. Everything around me is moving, and growing, and changing. And I’m here. Still here. Still waiting.

Jake asked me why I was feeling blue, and I confessed everything. Everyone else is starting school. What if I’m out for too long? What if I lose everything I learned? What if I don’t get accepted? There is nothing wrong with being a mom, but I don’t want to give up my dreams of my PhD either. I can do both. I know I can…I know WE can. What if it’s not in the cards?  Then Jake reminded me of something I told him once while we were out surfing: “You can’t worry about the wave that already came, or the wave that’s on its way. All you can do is ride the wave that you’re on.”

I, being in a particularly sour mood, said, “I’m not even on a wave.” Jake, being brilliant and clever, said, “What about all the waiting between sets? That’s where we are.”

and I get that. I get that we’re in limbo. We’re in overqualified-yet-not-qualified-enough land; we’re in going-to-grad-school-but-haven’t-actually-applied land. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not a big fan of limbo (the game or the figurative use of the word).

I get it. We’re in between sets, not an undergrad, but not yet a graduate. I got it.

Thinking about it in surfing terms makes it a little more bearable…a little.

I guess I’m feeling ready to move on, ready for the next challenge, ready to get up and go. But it doesn’t matter, because I can’t make the ocean give me another set. I can’t control how big or small the next set will be, or how many waves will be in it, or when it will come. I just have to sit. Wait. Be Patient.

So, until the next set hits. I’ll be sitting pretty, trying to patiently wait like the shark bait I am.

 

Oo-ha-ha

The ache in writing

I love writing. I adore writing with all my heart. There is one thing that drives me nuts about writing: planning. I have so many ideas racking around inside my head, and I know the answer to my puzzle of storyline is locked away somewhere amongst the other ideas. Here’s the part that gets hard: sorting. I know I need to sit down, turn everything off, and just draw out what is going to happen. Except I’m a people planner. I need someone (usually the hubs) to plan with, and to bounce ideas off of. I need to talk about what’s going to happen before I can write it down. When I say it, I can sort it. I love writing. I adore writing. I just need someone else there to help me plan.

 

Thanks hubs. ;)

Change of Heart?

Not quite yet; I mean, I’m sure I’ll get there eventually. But here’s the thing, every time I think about Europe, a little part of me turns bitter because my sister was sent there and I had to earn it. I don’t want any of my experience with Europe to be bitter. I want to enjoy every second because I deserve it. I earned it; I spent weeks writing the paper that got accepted into the conference that finally gave me the excuse to go; I spent weeks—months even—saving the money so we could go.

I was reading my friend’s blog, and I am a huge believer in Karma. One of the quotes she put up really hit home: “How People Treat You is Their Karma, How You React is Yours” Wayne Dyer. So my parents and sister may be setting up some bad Karma for themselves, but how I react to it is all my karma, and I don’t want any bad juju out there. Am I over it? Not by a long shot, but I’m not going to focus on it anymore. I’m not going to let it taint my taste of Europe.

Working at Walmart

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

― Confucius

 

I’ve never really had a job where I felt like I was working. Don’t get me wrong—there were plenty of days I didn’t want to go to my job, but once there, I never felt like I was working.

When I was lifeguarding, I liked being there. I liked my job. I liked the people I worked with. I wasn’t crazy about jumping into freezing cold water (by Hawaii’s standards) to save the same kid all day after repeatedly telling him not to jump off the rocks, but even jumping in after that kid day after day was worth it because I was helping someone. I was saving someone’s life, someone’s child, someone’s future spouse, someone’s future grandparent. The freezing water was worth it.

As a tutor at the Reading/Writing Center, I never saved anyone’s life…but I saved plenty of grades (or at least, I like to think I did). I loved my job because it meant I got to work with English, one of my favorite subjects, and share my knowledge with others. I got to explain why we use “the” and when we use “a/an.” It was a mentally exhausting job, and I loved it. Even though that job got a little tedious sometimes (like when you felt like you’d tutored the same paper fifty times, or when the same student would come in everyday, ask for a walk-in and then sit there and expect you to do their homework), I still loved it. I felt like I was making a difference, even if it was only to one student, it was worth all the craziness because I was helping people.

I taught English 101, and boy was that a challenge, but it was a challenge I welcomed. I had some students that weren’t the easiest to teach, and others that broke my heart, but I was helping people. I tried to teach my students how to really think. I tried to introduce them to literature in a way that would make them love it

I now work at Walmart. I’ve worked there for about a week and I don’t really feel like I’m helping anybody by stocking mounds of frosting. Sure, I’m helping promote heart attacks and poor cholesterol, but somehow that feels contrary to my previous lifesaving experiences. I feel like everyday is work. It’s a chore to get there, it’s a chore to be there and my only reward is getting to go home. I was told that you don’t need a college education because you can get ahead in life with Walmart. That you’d have to be crazy to want to leave walmart with all the ‘wonderful’ opportunities it offers you. Fine. Call me crazy. I’ll take the student loans and an education over stocking boxes and ripping my hands up for eight hours any day. Yeah, initially, with student loans and fresh out of college, a manager at walmart might be making more money than someone who went to school, but I don’t know if you’ve ever played the game of Life, but going to college ensures you make more money than not.

But is money what it’s all about? Well for me, working at walmart? Yes. I’m only there to get a paycheck. I like the people I work with, but I don’t like my job. What it comes down to for me is making money so I can be Crazy and go to grad school. Is making money what I’m really concerned about in the long run? Nope. I’m concerned about Confucius. I want to love what I do so I’ll never work another day in my life. And if I happen to get paid more than a manager at walmart, well then that’s just a plus. 

Grad School, Grad School, Wherefore art thou, Grad School?

So we’ve been preparing for grad schools. We bought the GRE book, we emailed all of our professors for information about grad schools (and most of them emailed back with terrific information!). So here are our list of candidates (for now, we may or may not add, or delete certain candidates):

1. Oxford
2. St. Andrews
3. University of Connecticut
4. University of Oregon
5. Brown
6. BYU (Provo)

any other helpful hints for us? Anyone know how long it takes to get a student work visa for the UK?