I got my grade for my quiz taken last weekend… 99/99. Honestly, I’m blown away. Once again I don’t know that I necessarily deserved that grade, but I’ll take it and be glad of it. Means that my final this weekend is going to be relatively low stress. I’d love to know how I did on my assignment for last weekend. In the end I was excited that I actually figured out a solution to the problem. So we’ll see if I did well enough on it.
I have the assignment to do for this weekend, plus the 3.5 hour final. Then the class is done. I want to email the instructor and tell him how much I appreciated him and the class. He is most definitely the best prof I’ve had there. I don’t feel like he’s shining us on and I feel like he pushes us, at least as far as he can within the boundaries of the class. We have some truly intelligent and talented people in that class… I don’t necessarily think I deserve an A for it, but I think I’m working at a solid B level.
So going into the final with a 98% feels like an accomplishment with this class. It’s tough because it’s a new way of thinking for me, along with new information. I like it. It feeds my curiosity and my competitive spirt.
I have a headache (semi-permanent now) and the stomach pain is worse. I can’t eat pizza anymore. It hurts way too much. I had social time with my dear friends from my old university this evening. It was like being home. I had social time with my dear (long, long time) friend last night. We talked about things from one end to the other, covering the gamut of our personal/professional lives. We are so different, but so many things she tells me resonate with me. She is also willing to call me on the carpet about things that need to be brought up, something I appreciate even as I wince a bit because it echoes the criticism I target at myself. In the instances I’ve been living through “professionally” over the last year and a half though, I have a calm feeling that no one is to blame for the decisions I’ve had to make or the misinformation I got.
We all work from what knowledge and understanding we have. As we gain new information, we make those choices and decisions… even when they are painful and difficult.
I never expected to take that leap of faith in May and land on my face. I never expected that I’d take that risk, put in all the hard work, and get to the point I am now, the one where I have to imagine myself going to work in a full suit of armor (and it has runes that glow, along with a sword for taking down the beasts that are worrying at me). I was excited about the potential. I had confidence. I was ready to make the change.
I really don’t regret it. Physiological symptoms aside, I learned a massive amount of things over the last 5 months.
I learned that I am best at being a mother and it is what matters the most to me in this life.
I learned that I can think and problem-solve on the fly, under pressure, and with high, high levels of expectation heaped on me – AND I can do it successfully.
I learned that I can function well in crisis situations, even when they continue on and on and on.
I also learned that I cannot keep up that high level of functioning day in and day out, with no relief or break in sight.
I learned that being healthy and being with my family means I’m willing to pay the price and give up on things I thought were important, but have come to understand that they aren’t.
I know who I am now, more than ever.
And I know that I’m not doing what I should be – for either myself or my children. I could say that I wish it was just flimsy hopes that got me where I am, but I went based on what I gathered…. what I was told, what I found in my investigations, and what things appeared to be on the surface. I’ve wondered if maybe I’d have been satisfied if I’d been different… more resilient, more willing to let things go, more interested in the professional world than my own little domain here with my family.
Yes, it’s likely.
This is who I am, though. I’m finally finding some sort of satisfaction in that. I thought I was on the path to a future loaded with potential. I started there and I knew that a LOT was riding on it all. I knew I had to do well and prove to them that their confidence in me wasn’t wasted.
I worked hard. I continue to work hard. But now I’ve got a grasp of what reality is… Do I wish that everything had lived up to the picture I was sold? You know, I’m not sure. If I’m dealing with this level of stress at the basic level, what on earth would it have been like at the supervisory level??
Maybe I’ve become calcified and I simply don’t have the flexibility of spirit that I used to have. This is two strikes out now, in a row, and I’m feeling tired of it.
I’m worn out enough now that I wave the white flag. I surrender. In doing this, I’m ready to go back “home.” I’m ready to rejoin the friends, the dysfunctional family that I loved so much at the university. I believe in what we do there.
I get that it’s a retreat to the comfortable and the familiar. I do. I also have no illusions about what I’ll end up doing there or what the failings are within that system. But I never had chest pains there and I could eat pizza (and yes, maybe that’s not such a good thing, considering the size of my butt these days). Yes, things drove me nuts there and I could bitch with the best of them. But I knew we weren’t going to get raises and there was never any illusion about the fact that working in state government could be frustrating as hell.
I’m not going back because I have rose-colored glasses and nostalgia for what was. I’m going back because out of every place I’ve “lived” work-wise, it is the one place that has always been home. Am I an eternal student? Yeah, maybe. It’s much like the discovery and acceptance I’ve made about myself as a mother. I love being mom. Well… I love being on campus too. I just happen to love working there more than any other place.
Someone asked me tonight if I’d do tech support on campus and I didn’t even have to pause. I told her yes, I’d do it. I’d still be tired and worn out, but I would do it because I know those folks and I know what they’re going through, every day.
I’ll close with this thought: On campus we got emails telling us that someone needed help or a group had sewn a quilt for a fund-raising raffle for one of our staff. When I was out on disability for pre-term labor, they gathered leave hours for me, to help patch the gap between short-term disability and what little leave time I had left after the back injury. I’ve been to retirement parties and I’ve been to memorials. I’ve cussed, endlessly, because of the arrogance of some faculty and staff. I’ve wanted to beat my head against the wall because of inefficiencies that made no sense. I’ve even watched the erosion of the state employees’ benefits over the long years that my mother, my husband, my father-in-law, and I have worked in the state system.
I know the warts. I know the good side.
It’s not perfect, but nothing is.
I’m going back.
cheers from the forever student,
moonfire
Ramblings of a Wild for Words Woman 