Closing In

In many ways, I'm having a different experience than other graduating seniors. While many of them a scrounging for internships or fretting about resumes and interviews and their first fully for real and for true full time job, I'm very much looking forward to getting back to work. If I learned anything in the last two years, it's that work is where the money is. And while that might seem self-evident, it took me *checks calender* two years to be able to appreciate that.

Coming back to school, I imagined having my mind expanded and horizons broadened, driven to daily fits of intellectual ecstasy. Instead, it's just been a lot reading, a lot of writing, and a lot of spending.

The fact that I'm a primary source of income representing a necessary evil for an entire group of people who literally have better things to do than to lecture me on the 6th Amendment for 90 min and then read my hastily-written-the-night-before-or-morning-of paper about it - that hasn't been lost on me. In fact, there's hardly a professor who doesn't just about groan aloud at the thought of shepherding undergrads through a class they don't like toward a degree they'll likely never use.

And, sure, that's cynical. But it's also mostly true - at least, a version of the truth.

But I needed (ok "needed") the credentials if I ever hoped to get beyond the type of jobs I was getting. Though, all of them, honest and worthwhile ways to make a living, they mostly bored the #$@*& out of me. I wanted something more meaningful than a paycheck. I wanted a personally satisfying career. And, hey, if it happened to pay well, I wouldn't turn down the check.

Two years later and I'm on the verge of being one very big step closer to that goal. Along the way, I made some friends and learned a great many things about myself and what I might want to do when I grow up. It's an exciting place to be and I cannot wait to be finished. As interesting as this semester's classes are, I can already feel myself looking ahead, far ahead (but not so far ahead) to the day when I'll finally be doing something that I love.

Until then, a paycheck is fine to start. After two years of spending, I'm more than ready to get out into the real world and get my hands dirty again.

UGH, May! Hurry up! You're taking forever!