My Last Spring Break

We all know that I have dragged out my Master's program beyond belief. The main reason for this is that it's not just a program to me. I'm not going to school just to get a degree; I'm going to integrate myself into a whole new career (or bits and pieces of several careers put together) and that takes more than two years. Plus, I'm getting a graduate certificate in Women's and Gender Studies in addition to my M.A. in Literature, so there's that.

As of this semester, I have been in grad school for three years. I have one more year to go, and will graduate next spring. That said, next fall will be my last tough semester: two back-to-back intense literature classes. By next spring, though, I will only (hahahahahaha) be working on my graduate portfolio and thesis. While that's not a cake walk, it won't involve going to multiple classes. I'll only be teaching and doing the writing consultant job; all the work I'll do for my portfolio will be on my own. I'll have many meetings with professors, and the semester will be full of deadlines, but by next spring break I will, for all intents and purposes, be done with my graduate work.

This time next year I will be free falling into graduation.

So, this is my last real spring break.

We took this pic after I found out I was accepted to the MA program. We were touring campus. That building behind us? I've taught in it for three years now. Little did I know at the time.

To make a long and bureaucratic story short, as a grad student, I am able to teach and do the writing consultant job. Once I graduate, I only get to do one or the other. So, when I say that I've stretched out my degree to accommodate for a new career, that's what I mean. It was never my intention to fly through a graduate degree. It was my intention to take advantage of the opportunity to gain experience teaching and consulting.

And I have!

I'm now a manager at the writing consultant job and have many semesters of experience teaching at the college level. By the time I graduate, I'll have even more and will look for teaching positions (classes here and there) at other colleges. I'll keep the consultant job at my current college. And I'm trying to build up freelance work to round it all out.

This was taken when we went to Red Cloud, Nebraska, to tour Willa Cather's home town.

And I'm ready to graduate. Like, mentally ready to move on to the next thing. The next thing being no homework and papers and constant reading. School is a lot of things, but it is not flexible. Not even close. Not that working in the real world, the 9-to-5 world, is a dream. After all, that's what I left because it was so stifling. It was crushing my soul.

School has allowed me, because I'm studying liberal arts, to experience a mixture of real life and the life of the mind. No one needs school to develop a life of the mind, of course, but I think I did. I needed the discipline of the mind, people pushing and pushing me to think more and better and then write about it and then try to pass a variety of skills on to other students as well. I needed to be immersed in it and to grow in a way that wasn't so skill-based, but that was thought-based, rooted in ideas and their history and the world of literature. It's like I got grounded again.

Presenting at a conference in SLC last year.

So, here's to spring break!

I'm one day in and have read a book for fun, watched an entire Netflix show (try The OA!), started a new book, graded four papers, and started a work project.

I'm also looking for more Netflix rec's. Send them my way!