Losing Myself

(Image from http://www.friendsacrossamerica.com/)

Sometimes - especially around the holidays - I pause to wonder whether I'm losing myself. While most people enjoy some family time (or at least most people my age), I mostly dread it and now, more than ever, I find myself pulled in every direction. I spend so much time trying to fix things and make things better for everyone in my family AND trying to finish up the semester and do everything for my boss(es) and for group projects that I sometimes wonder what I'm supposed to be doing or what I would really like to do - not just what everyone expects me to do.

Maybe the rest of the world doesn't experience this or lose themselves quite like I have a tendency to, and as I get older I suppose I'm more aware of this and more apt to remind myself that it's okay to think about myself. I guess I just thought about it a lot today as I realized I had a lot of work to do before Monday - including a final exam Monday night (but seriously, who does that?!) - and I'm exhausted, but haven't even gotten much of "my" work done. Instead of helped do house repairs and keep the parents updated while they've been in another hemisphere, I've shopped for presents and groceries, stocked the fridge and the pantry, loaned out my car and cleaned up a ton of stuff. It's tough and I have to drive back tomorrow and cram like nobody's business because I really don't know what's happening with that exam. But at least I'm going back to my own little sanctuary, with my dog and my own work and problems and issues to take care of... and if everything's not perfect here, well, I just have to let it go. Even if it feels a bit selfish.

The End of Another Semester

As I type this, we near closer to the end of another semester. It's funny how my life has ceased to be measured in blocks of time used by the normal world (you know, months, years, seasons) and instead, these blocks of 15 weeks are almost like separate chapters in my own autobiography or acts in the play that is my life. But right now, I wish I could spend more time describing the ways in which my life as a student has ceased to mirror that of "normal" people who don't pursue such masochistic ends, but I'm working on finishing up one of the hardest semesters I'll have in grad school (if I believe what I'm told anyways).

My program is known for its rigorous statistics program and curriculum, for a very tough and very brilliant professor who piles on work and impossible exams, who dreams of tricks to play on us... on our exams, he'll have us analyze data that's been run in SPSS incorrectly (and so the answer to a big section might be about how it should have been analyzed instead, but you have blanks and space to answer impossible questions) or questions that are supposed to be true or false, but you're supposed to write in for one of them that it's "almost always true" and other items that you should circle two answers for and printouts from SPSS that have values or whole boxes deleted or placed out of order and you have to figure it out. They are these terrible stress-power things that are a right of passage for us. You warm up with one of this man's classes your first year and then finish off your second year with the BIG one. The one with a project due and a big final exam on the same day, where you analyze more data than you'll have in your thesis and even some dissertations. Where people finish and immediately start drinking. Where people say that nothing you do after this is as hard. Seriously, I xeroxed an old project someone did a few years ago (where less was required... they get harder each year, seriously) and it was over 200 pages. Needless to say, I've been putting in a bare minimum of 8 hours a day on statistics for more than a week now and I'm so unbelievably exhausted. I did stuff like this as an undergrad, but somehow, it's harder for me now... maybe I'm more out of practice, maybe my performance is just so much more public, who knows, but it's just much more difficult and exhausting.

I'm honestly not even that stressed, I just want to fast forward to Wednesday night when this is over. But it will be over soon and I won't have to do it again and that's a pretty awesome reward. I just have to remember that....