With the first week of my third year of college behind me, there is more that I could talk about than I would typically like. Between waking up Monday morning with a cold, an in your face professor with a hostile political agenda, and getting the time for my Friday classed mixed up so that I walked in an hour and twenty minutes into the lecture, things got off to a pretty rough start. Each morning I woke up with some new mutation of a cold and felt less and less like actually showing up to my classes with each progressing day, but I'm a stubborn and persistent fellow so I forced myself and my fellow classmates to put up with and endure my sniffles all the way through the week.
Thankfully, I feel essentially recovered from the obligatory beginning of the semester illness, and Labor Day is extending my weekend long enough for me to get stuff done, get my feet back on the ground, and come back to week two with a vengeance.
So, instead of spending an entire post listing off my beginning of the semester woes, I'm going to focus on a peculiar phenomenon I've been experiencing since Monday morning. I can't recall whether or not I mentioned this in my last post or not, but I have a rather abnormal class schedule this semester compared to the schedules of days gone by. In the past, all of my schooldays started with a class at 10:00 am and ended before 5:30 in the evening. I did this on purpose because I don't like evening classes, don't like super early classes, and really don't like online classes. Unfortunately, going hand in hand with entering into the upper level classes, my choices as far as days and times for the subjects I wanted to take were fairly limited, and as a result, my first class of the week doesn't start until 5:30 PM on Monday. Consequently, the first day of school was primarily taken up with me not actually being in class and I had plenty of time to mull over this strange realization that dawned on me as I dove into the beginning of my fifth collegiate semester.
Even though I didn't have class till 5:30, I got to campus at 9:00 Monday morning so I could print out syllabi and then assist in manning the Honors Program table at my university's welcome week event. As I sat in my folding chair on the mall of my university campus and watched student walk by, I was struck by two conflicting thoughts. 1) It felt like was returning home, and 2) I felt totally out of place and like the coming to campus wasn't the same anymore. The first thought caused me to realize that my school , despite all my frustrations with it and how little I actually want to be there some days, has actually become a pretty significant part of my current life. After four semesters and quite a few 12+ hour days on campus, I suppose it isn't entirely surprising that a part of me has grown attached to the place, but I have also developed some good friendships and met some rather enjoyable companions over the last two years. Running into many of these people over the course of my first day back felt very refreshing and helped me to realize just how much my life has changed and how much I've developed in so many ways since beginning my adventures in higher education. Jumping back into the swing of things felt almost seamless that first day in many ways, and I could hardly believe that I hadn't been on the campus more than a handful of times since the end of June.
However, at the same time, I could help feeling like some things had definitely changed. For one thing, the fact that I am a junior and more than halfway through my undergraduate degree hit me in full force for the first time. After this semester, assuming I pass all my classes, I will have only thirteen subjects and thirty-seven credit hours left standing between me and my degree. It isn't even accurate to call this my junior year, because I'll be a senior, God willing, come December. Realizing that I was farther along than fifty percent plus of the student body milling to and fro around me was no small thing for my head to grapple with, and it set all sorts of fireworks off in my head. Being halfway done means that I need to actually start looking at internships and graduate school with increased fervor and focus. It means I need to actually start acting like an adult and begin getting things mapped out lest I run full speed into graduation and the future without a satisfactory contingency plan.
All in all, something felt off. I'm not sure if it was my new upperclassman standing, the fact that I am now taking classes all centered around my major, a schedule with two online classes and none in the mornings Monday and Wednesday, the pesky cold that plagued me all week, some other unidentified variable, or some combination of the above, but I passed through the last several days in a dazed stupor at times. Together, all of these things led me to a single extremely obvious but extraordinary epiphany: I'm getting older.
Life is not, in fact, standing still, and while I am most certainly still a sprouting youngster, my twentieth birthday is coming up right around the corner and before too long I will be entering the grown up world for real. Not long ago, the idea of going to college, getting a driver's license, and turning eighteen were all awe inspiring concepts that marked my crossing the threshold of child to adult. Now all three seem terribly mundane, uninteresting, and things of the past. Instead, completed degrees, graduate school, jobs and internships, a living space of my own, and, God willing, a wife and family are all milestones that are not only fast approaching but will probably also seem incredibly normal and routine before too long.
The fact is that adulthood and the real world are hot on my heels, and while I like to think that I have not been idle or negligent in preparing for their arrival, it is time that I actually start thinking in concrete terms and begin making plans to actually handle them when they get here. Applying for jobs and looking into purchasing living quarters will not remain hypothetical situations to be examined in the future for long. Life's rolling forward and I'm getting older.
As I have told my friends and peers many times before, I don't actually consider myself an adult yet. Sure, I am eighteen, I vote, I attend college, have a part time job, can drive myself to and fro, manage my own schedule, and am responsible for getting myself up int he morning and putting myself to bed at night, but I honestly don't feel like any of these things are really signs or indicators that I have shaken off the title of child and grown into the realm of "grown ups." I still live with my parents, they pay for almost all of my food, my dad still cover's my car insurance, and I do not make enough money that I could fend for myself if my parents chose to kick me out. Thankfully, I have been blessed with absolutely amazing parental units who have graciously allowed me to save quite a bit of money by inhabiting their basement and consuming their food while I tackle this thing commonly referred to as college, but as long as I take advantage of their generosity and remain dependent on their finances, their home, and their edible products, I am not entirely comfortable calling myself an adult.
My reluctance in calling myself a fully fledged grown up extends beyond the fact that I am not self sufficient at this time. As I read the news, look at the parents and adults around me who have to deal with the trials and tribulations of world, and as I sit and think about all of the demands upon my time and attention that will come hand in hand moving out, getting a career, and starting a family, I cannot help but feel woefully unprepared for the responsibilities that will be laid upon my shoulders. Not because I feel like my parents, friends, and society have failed to train me and give me the resources necessary to take on life, but because I feel like I have yet to fully grasp that mysterious beast known as maturity by the horns and embrace the necessary mindset in becoming a real adult.
However, as I wrestle with these thoughts of inadequacy and the impending demands of the real world, I have found myself panicking far less than I would have previously predicted; this whole being adult thing is actually what I have been trying to work towards ever since I figured out that I could graduate high school in three years instead of four. All my efforts, not just academically, but in finding campus jobs, in learning how to drive, and in getting involve in school activities have been focused on reaching the point where I can confidently call myself a grown and meet the world head on.
I told a friend earlier this week when discussing a particularly frustrating professor that I have this semester: "I've got too many things to do and too many places to go to let a professor stop me." Likewise, at this point, the issues and responsibilities that will come with graduating, moving out, and coming into my own are part of the package deal and even though they often seem overwhelming and positively crippling, they are part of life. I will handle them, one way or another, because I have to. After all, I've got bigger fish to fry.
All of this is not to meant to be an attempt to brag or show of pompous self confidence, but rather a recognition of the fact that I am coming to terms with the fact that the up and down roller coaster of life is no longer a distant image on the horizon and that I am genuinely eager to start tackling it. More than likely, I will trip and fall on myself numerous times along the way. Honestly, that seems pretty inevitable, but that's all part of the process.
I'm growing older whether I like it or not so I might as well choose to like it, make the most of it, and be as prepared for it as possible.
Looking forward, I have three regular semesters counting this one before I get my undergraduate degree in Accounting. After that I plan on nabbing and internship before coming back to school for a graduate degree also in Accounting. Between now and then, a lot of stuff is going to happen, and a lot of it is going to be entirely out of my control, but by the time I graduate with a Masters I plan on being able to finally call myself an adult.
After all, you only live once, and while being a kid forever might sound awesome, ain't nobody got time fo' dat.
Pax
(Note: I should write these things before midnight... not after)
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
The Epic Summer Adventures of Me (aka, making up for lost time)
After fourish month hiatus, I felt like it was time to return to my neglected but not forgotten blog. A wide array of variables resulted in nothing getting posted here over the course of the summer, but I haven't been entirely absent from the blogging sphere. Back in June a new blog titles The Conciliar Post went live and I have penned two full articles for that blog since it got up and going. The CP is a series of writings collected by Christians of various denominations across the States on anything and everything from ethics in the workplace to relationship advice. If you're interested in checking out the thing you can traverse the interwebs via this.
Anyway, now that the sales pitch is aside, I shall get to the meat of this post.
This past summer has been a rather unusual one for me. Not only did I find myself with a car and driver's license for the first summer of my life, but I also had my first go (and hopefully last) with summer classes. A week after the spring semester finals were completed with my usual grace and humility (read whining and moaning), I began an online course in Nutrition alongside an physical course in Political Science. Both courses led by helpful and engaging profs and managed to prove both mildly interesting and fairly informative, but they were still school and they were still taking place during the summer. During this time I was also working a very modest 8 hours a week as a math tutor still and the consequence was that my weekdays were not exactly the dog days of summer freedom that I have grown to appreciate over the course of my life. However, I knew this was going to be the case and chalked it up to this whole adulthood thing that I am still getting used to.
I was determined not to let my education and employment get me down however and I managed to make several trips to visit friends and attend graduations in another city. Oh, and I played quite a bit of video games too... still haven't shaken off that childish past time quite yet. All in all, the first two months of my summer were a slightly less demanding and hectic version of the school year and hold a relatively straightforward "meh" rating in my memories.
The second half of my summer was significantly more eventful and nomadic. Less than a week after I finished my summer term, my family set off in our caravan for not one but two family reunions out on the great plains. Unfortunately for us, the day before we were to depart, a storm passed through our neck of the woods and managed to drop a particularly vindictive piece of said woods upon our house. With a tree sticking out of our room, a vehicle shorted out by electrical damage, no power, and a street covered in wood chips, we spent our last day at home attempting to patch things up to the best of our ability before abandoning the premises for a week. Thankfully the storm didn't end up delaying our vacating as we feared initially but we are actually still waiting on a final fix to the hole in our roof...
Vacation consisted of two weeks with more relatives than I can recall ever seeing gathered in a single place before... at the very least since my older brother's wedding six years ago. My dad's parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and we were able to gather almost all of their children, all of their grandchildren, and all of their great-grandchildren under one roof for a whole week (there were something like 35 of us I think). It was a magnificent experience that will continue to live on in my memory for a long time, but even that big party wasn't quite the size of my mom's grandmother's 90th birthday celebration a week later. While the full gathering for my mom's family reunion was not nearly as lengthy, it was more than twice the size with somewhere between 70 and 80 of my great-grandmothers descendants gathered on a single farm property.
Less than 24 hours after returning home from our adventures out west, I headed a few hours out east to visit some friends for a week. On the drive over however I discovered that a tree branch had apparently fallen upon my poor vehicular unit. Said branch had apparently hit with enough force to leave a crack in my windshield in addition to a dent in my roof, but the crack was small enough to begin with that it did not immediately catch my attention. After being on the road for two hours, however, it took up about half of my windshield. Unfortunately I didn't think to get a picture, but the crack was a pretty intimidating thing to behold when driving 60 miles an hour down the highway. Thankfully my friends on the other end of my destination we able to help meet get my vehicle to a very friendly and efficient window repair shop several days into my visit and the whole things was solved with minimal effort and only a couple hundred dollars out of pocket. (Oh cars...)
After returning home from that trip I was back on my family's turf for a few days before heading up north to the not currently frozen wild lands of Wisconsin for a long time friend's wedding. I car pooled with a handful of other excellent friends and while I felt like I had spent enough time road tripping to last several summer by the end of it, I enjoyed myself very thoroughly.
After the wedding I was home for two and a half days before driving down south to the watery lands of Missouri for a four day canoeing trip with some of my church's youth group. Another epic adventure for the records, I managed to canoe for hours and hours with only occasional whining and a single flipping of my canoe. I also learned how to canoe by myself standing up in the middle of the boat so that was pretty awesome.
After an entire 48 hours of rest back at my primary place of residence, I headed east again for a several day conference visit with friends again before heading slightly more east and kinda north for yet another friend's wedding. The day after wedding number 2 for the summer I had to head back home speedy quick so I could make it to a third wedding that evening. (This one was only 45 minutes away from home so it was practically in my backyard compared to my trips this summer).
Since wedding number three I have remained pretty stationary. The last two weeks have taken longer to pass than the entire month of July it seems. I acquired my textbooks for the fall, gathered the necessary educational resources for maximum learning potential, (read pencils) and played more video games. Last week I participated in two days of training for my position as a math tutor, and while the training was not actually mandatory (I've been tutoring for three semesters and two summers already at this point), I was told that I would get paid if I chose to show up. After very little deliberation, I determined that two days of pay and two free meals were worth sitting through a handful of tedious training exercises.
That pretty much brings us to today. At some point in the next week or so I have another blog post I want to write, but I figured a filler post to make up for the silent summer was called for. Tomorrow I begin my fifth regular semester of college. I still feel like a newbie, but when I consider the fact that I am actually 20 credits into my junior year already, I don't think I can really claim new student status any longer. Looking forward, I am estimating two more semesters after this one before I can actually call myself a college graduate.
I don't know how I feel about that yet.
Either way, this semester looks to be the most challenging and complicated yet. With only one class on Mondays/Wednesday, three on Tuesdays/Thursdays, and two online classes, my schedule is completely different from any of my previous escapes into higher education.
In case anyone is interested, this semester I'm taking six classes:
BUS A311 or Intermediate Accounting I
BUS A325 or Cost Accounting
BUS B399 or Business and Society
BUS D300 or International Business Administration
BUS K321 or Management of Information Technology
SPCH S223 or Business and Professional Communication
Gone are the days of Geology and Sociology. My last two general education classes were vanquished over the course of the summer months, and I only have upper level business and accounting classes left to go. This is both highly intimidating and extremely refreshing. While I expect this semester to be extremely challenging, I look forward to actually learning more about the field I actually plan on going into. This is the semester where I will likely figure out whether or not this whole Accounting degree idea was a big mistake or the right choice.
No pressure.
In any case, after all the curve-balls and new experiences I've seen over the summer, the fact that my life is going through a rapid series of growth spurts is really hitting home. I can't even begin to guess where I'll be two years from now and I expect the coming months will hold plenty of change and new adventure for me.
Here's to Fall 2014 and the class of 2016!
Pax
Anyway, now that the sales pitch is aside, I shall get to the meat of this post.
This past summer has been a rather unusual one for me. Not only did I find myself with a car and driver's license for the first summer of my life, but I also had my first go (and hopefully last) with summer classes. A week after the spring semester finals were completed with my usual grace and humility (read whining and moaning), I began an online course in Nutrition alongside an physical course in Political Science. Both courses led by helpful and engaging profs and managed to prove both mildly interesting and fairly informative, but they were still school and they were still taking place during the summer. During this time I was also working a very modest 8 hours a week as a math tutor still and the consequence was that my weekdays were not exactly the dog days of summer freedom that I have grown to appreciate over the course of my life. However, I knew this was going to be the case and chalked it up to this whole adulthood thing that I am still getting used to.
I was determined not to let my education and employment get me down however and I managed to make several trips to visit friends and attend graduations in another city. Oh, and I played quite a bit of video games too... still haven't shaken off that childish past time quite yet. All in all, the first two months of my summer were a slightly less demanding and hectic version of the school year and hold a relatively straightforward "meh" rating in my memories.
The second half of my summer was significantly more eventful and nomadic. Less than a week after I finished my summer term, my family set off in our caravan for not one but two family reunions out on the great plains. Unfortunately for us, the day before we were to depart, a storm passed through our neck of the woods and managed to drop a particularly vindictive piece of said woods upon our house. With a tree sticking out of our room, a vehicle shorted out by electrical damage, no power, and a street covered in wood chips, we spent our last day at home attempting to patch things up to the best of our ability before abandoning the premises for a week. Thankfully the storm didn't end up delaying our vacating as we feared initially but we are actually still waiting on a final fix to the hole in our roof...
Vacation consisted of two weeks with more relatives than I can recall ever seeing gathered in a single place before... at the very least since my older brother's wedding six years ago. My dad's parents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary and we were able to gather almost all of their children, all of their grandchildren, and all of their great-grandchildren under one roof for a whole week (there were something like 35 of us I think). It was a magnificent experience that will continue to live on in my memory for a long time, but even that big party wasn't quite the size of my mom's grandmother's 90th birthday celebration a week later. While the full gathering for my mom's family reunion was not nearly as lengthy, it was more than twice the size with somewhere between 70 and 80 of my great-grandmothers descendants gathered on a single farm property.
Less than 24 hours after returning home from our adventures out west, I headed a few hours out east to visit some friends for a week. On the drive over however I discovered that a tree branch had apparently fallen upon my poor vehicular unit. Said branch had apparently hit with enough force to leave a crack in my windshield in addition to a dent in my roof, but the crack was small enough to begin with that it did not immediately catch my attention. After being on the road for two hours, however, it took up about half of my windshield. Unfortunately I didn't think to get a picture, but the crack was a pretty intimidating thing to behold when driving 60 miles an hour down the highway. Thankfully my friends on the other end of my destination we able to help meet get my vehicle to a very friendly and efficient window repair shop several days into my visit and the whole things was solved with minimal effort and only a couple hundred dollars out of pocket. (Oh cars...)
After returning home from that trip I was back on my family's turf for a few days before heading up north to the not currently frozen wild lands of Wisconsin for a long time friend's wedding. I car pooled with a handful of other excellent friends and while I felt like I had spent enough time road tripping to last several summer by the end of it, I enjoyed myself very thoroughly.
After the wedding I was home for two and a half days before driving down south to the watery lands of Missouri for a four day canoeing trip with some of my church's youth group. Another epic adventure for the records, I managed to canoe for hours and hours with only occasional whining and a single flipping of my canoe. I also learned how to canoe by myself standing up in the middle of the boat so that was pretty awesome.
After an entire 48 hours of rest back at my primary place of residence, I headed east again for a several day conference visit with friends again before heading slightly more east and kinda north for yet another friend's wedding. The day after wedding number 2 for the summer I had to head back home speedy quick so I could make it to a third wedding that evening. (This one was only 45 minutes away from home so it was practically in my backyard compared to my trips this summer).
Since wedding number three I have remained pretty stationary. The last two weeks have taken longer to pass than the entire month of July it seems. I acquired my textbooks for the fall, gathered the necessary educational resources for maximum learning potential, (read pencils) and played more video games. Last week I participated in two days of training for my position as a math tutor, and while the training was not actually mandatory (I've been tutoring for three semesters and two summers already at this point), I was told that I would get paid if I chose to show up. After very little deliberation, I determined that two days of pay and two free meals were worth sitting through a handful of tedious training exercises.
That pretty much brings us to today. At some point in the next week or so I have another blog post I want to write, but I figured a filler post to make up for the silent summer was called for. Tomorrow I begin my fifth regular semester of college. I still feel like a newbie, but when I consider the fact that I am actually 20 credits into my junior year already, I don't think I can really claim new student status any longer. Looking forward, I am estimating two more semesters after this one before I can actually call myself a college graduate.
I don't know how I feel about that yet.
Either way, this semester looks to be the most challenging and complicated yet. With only one class on Mondays/Wednesday, three on Tuesdays/Thursdays, and two online classes, my schedule is completely different from any of my previous escapes into higher education.
In case anyone is interested, this semester I'm taking six classes:
BUS A311 or Intermediate Accounting I
BUS A325 or Cost Accounting
BUS B399 or Business and Society
BUS D300 or International Business Administration
BUS K321 or Management of Information Technology
SPCH S223 or Business and Professional Communication
Gone are the days of Geology and Sociology. My last two general education classes were vanquished over the course of the summer months, and I only have upper level business and accounting classes left to go. This is both highly intimidating and extremely refreshing. While I expect this semester to be extremely challenging, I look forward to actually learning more about the field I actually plan on going into. This is the semester where I will likely figure out whether or not this whole Accounting degree idea was a big mistake or the right choice.
No pressure.
In any case, after all the curve-balls and new experiences I've seen over the summer, the fact that my life is going through a rapid series of growth spurts is really hitting home. I can't even begin to guess where I'll be two years from now and I expect the coming months will hold plenty of change and new adventure for me.
Here's to Fall 2014 and the class of 2016!
Pax
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