So somebody needs to pinch me. I just made my last college tuition payment…ever! Damn that felt good!
Even cooler, I just picked up my graduation cap,gown,tassel,Masters hood & stole. Looking like the manequin may not be the sexiest, or the coolest thing, but it’s worth it. It represents 2 years of hard work,sacrafice and inconvienece. Boom!
To commemorate, I also bought the mug to add to our college mug collection: Penn State, San Diego State and Long Beach State. Reppin!
I came home from work tonight and had this waiting for me. It was a letter and a brochure outlining all the details of my graduation. I immediately started tearing up. What a journey this has been. I NEVER thought this was a possibility for me. But here I am, holding this in my hand. Now, granted, I still have to finish my Thesis, defend it, etc, but knowing I don’t have to drive to school twice a week a sit in classes, do papers, projects, powerpoints, evals, etc. It feels good. It’s humbling. I know it sounds cheesy, but I made my dream a reality.
Now, the only question left is …..what is next for me?
I am rapidly approaching a time in my life where some pretty important decisions have to be made. How do I know which choice is the right one?
Have you ever seen the movie Castaway, with Tom Hanks? Here is a clip of the ending, and offers an insight to how I feel. Start at about 1:20 seconds in…
In keeping with this theme, the poem by Robert Frost – “The Road Not Taken” is another way I feel.
From another perspective:
Bottom line is the semester is over and I’m now running down the home stretch of this journey. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel – so to speak. With that glorious light comes fear. I’m scared. What road is “the right one”. So many choices ( and changes) are in front of me.
I love my comfortable life of my home life with my hubby, my job, friends and school. I love the consistency, the routine, familiarity of it all. With graduation looming on the horizon I’m faced with the expectation from many people that now I must go off and put my “education to good use.” Furthermore, when school ends in May, my hubby and I can move out of the hellishly boring suburb we had to move into to be closer to school, and finally buy a place closer to Downtown San Diego. To add more pressure, S and I “pulled the goalie” last year, and I honestly thought I would either be pregnant or have a baby upon graduation. Doesn’t look like that is happening anytime soon, but who knows.
So I guess I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the impending changes and expectations that I will encounter within the next 6 months. No more school, look for a new job that my family finally approves of, buy a house and possibly have a kid or be knocked up. No pressure. Did I mention that I need to finish my thesis my mid-March?
I know that change is a good thing, and I am trying to be positive about it, but I just hate the pressure of it all. What if I can’t find a job? What if I can’t get pregnant? What if my Thesis sucks and I don’t graduate. My head is full of questions, worries and what-if’s.
The stress gets to me sometimes, but I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, trying to enjoy every moment from now until the day I graduate and recognize that this is a special time in my life, one that I am going to look back on quite fondly and think of the good times, and not the bad stuff. My yoga practice has helped with the stress. I guess bending myself into a pretzel and sweating like a pig is helpful for these things!
So a few days Scott and I went to P.F Changs and this is what my cookies had to say. I am hoping this is a good sign because I am really struggling with the whole Thesis thing…..I need motivation and inspiration….
Which I am getting neither of in my Physical and Motor Assessment class. UGH. The material itself is and CAN BE really interesting, but sadly my initial excitement for this class was washed away and replaced with overwhelming boredom. Just gotta put my head down and plug through my professors boring and uninspiring lectures.
Inspiration was indeed found by my little study buddy one night. He loved picking out the letters and sounding out words. So incredibly cute, and wow, what a smarty pants.
So this week has been HOT AS HELL. We had 109 degrees here in parts of San Diego. And it’s mid-September!!! I was getting in my car from school the other day and saw this crow sitting under a bush. I thought to myself “Don’t blame you buddy! Its too hot to fly”
S0 to prove a point, my class is so exciting to its students that they watch live TV (tennis matches) during lectures. I tried really hard to not burst out laughing!
If you have read earlier posts, I find beauty in strange places…. I just thought the structure looked cool with light and dark squares with the shadows dancing across it.
So it came and went. My first day at CSULB for the Fall 2012 semester. Holy cow, I cannot believe how fast the first year flew, and Summer just passed in the blink of an eye.
I sat in class tonight cracking up at my professor, who I had last year. It’s another Motor Learning class, and I was excited to see that the required text book
is one that I bought 2 years ago just because it looked interesting on Amazon. As predicted, he lectured for 55 minutes and let us go. Part of me is so grateful that I get home early on Tuesday nights, and the other part of me is so annoyed that I drive 80 minutes each way for such a short lecture. Would it be rude to ask if I could just Skype \Facetime the lectures? 😉
I giggled as I overheard excited freshmen chatter about the SWRC, how lost they were, how many hot girls\guys went to school and blunt declarations of their professors. ( My math prof is such a “bro”, I may even friend him on Facebook!) I must admit I missed those excited, overwhelmed and nervous feelings. This time last year I was a bundle of emotion… feels kinda nice being super chill about this semester.
That being said, I cannot wait for Thursday. I’m enrolled in a class designed for individuals with disabilities and we are assessing motor function and skills. Its a requirement for students enrolled in the Physical Therapy program, and considering I already work with kids with disabilities in the water, it’s going to be a great class. I will try to post pics.
Another thing I will try to do is update my “Chalkboard Chit Chat” category more frequently. The stuff these kids write is hysterical!
One side note, the Huntington Beach Core Power Yoga off Beach Blvd is the BOMB! I’m so excited to keep up my yoga practice while in school and use my CPY membership to its fullest potential. I am so excited that I held my Crow Pose for 5 seconds this week.
Victory! The cool thing with my membership is I can use 3 locations in OC, as well as my “home base” studio is San Diego. #Winning!
….and speaking of winning, check out the recently held Alumni game at CSULB featuring gold medalist Misty-May! Go Beach!
For the longest time, I looked down on yoga as some “fru-fru” artsy -fartsy thing where you lay on a mat, chant and harness your chi. I was always seeking the latest fitness craze and serenity and I weren’t exactly friends. Then I started taking basic yoga classes at my gym, and became friends with a girl who taught yoga.
Things began to slowly change when I ran the Rock and Roll marathon in 2008. As a supplement to the rigors of long distance running, I tried yoga and reformer Pilates, and began to see glimpses of why is was so popular. In seeking different studios, I struggled with the idea that yoga is both a physical AND spiritual practice. I wanted to grunt, sweat, feel my pulse race, muscles sore- I didn’t need bells ringing, chanting or incense burning.
Fast forward several years, and death, cancer, marriage, moving, college (and eventual graduation), and a job change put a serious dent in my attempts to dedicate any time to my physical well being, let alone nurturing my soul. There was this voice in the back of my head imploring me to seek balance, be physically and mentally in tune with the world. Being the ADHD-crazy brain that I was, quieting my scattered, noisy brain had always been difficult, but I kept looking for ways to tap into the mental aspects of exercise.
Cue the introduction of two people who have sparked a new found curiosity into the practice of yoga: a fellow student in my graduate program who is doing research on yoga and related injuries. She is a dedicated student, teacher, writer, lecturer and all around really nice woman. You can follow her by visiting her website -Jules Mitchell Yoga. I love how she is brings the science of biomechanics and injury prevention into the practice of yoga, as well as putting a more scientific, research oriented, academic spin on things. The other person is a feminist scholar and researcher in my department. I wrote a lot about her in the Spring, as I really loved her Sports in US Culture class. Kerrie is doing some great things with yoga research too, as well as some activism with a group called Off the Mat. Check out her contributions to yoga and efforts to abolish sex trafficking in India by visiting her blog.
These two women have sparked a new flame of interest in the meshing of the mind and the body in the practice of yoga. So this summer, I have begun what I call an adventure into learning about yoga from all aspects. I promised myself that I would be open-minded to the idea of chanting, finding my Third Eye, and working on improving the ability to do a headstand AND have a clear mind.
I consider myself like a newborn baby right now, absorbing philosophies, names for poses, the poses themselves and trying to connect into my mind. After a month, I am seeing the puzzle pieces and can see how things fit together- mind, body, spirit. I have dedicated this practice to myself, and given myself one full year to explore this whole yoga thing. So far I am loving it. Every time I am on the mat, I dedicate my practice to my girlfriend. I send her good thoughts and healing vibes in hopes that the cancer that has invaded her uterus will leave, and allow her the ability to bear children.
I hated church growing up, and still dislike church, organized religion, the Bible…. it just hasn’t sat well with me my whole life. What I have allowed myself in my new yoga practice is the belief that good thoughts and good energy can make a difference. So call them prayers if you will, but I liken my time on the mat as a time to worship. Worship my body and its wondrous capabilities. Worship my brain for its powers, but more importantly, I make the time to dedicate my practice to someone or something that I want to send good thoughts and energy to. This is the imbalance that I think I was experiencing, so my hope is that not only will I be able to do the amazing things this woman does, but bridge that gap that I lack between the physical and the spiritual. I look at this woman in envy because she embodies the attributes I seek: strong, flexible, sexy, peaceful, confidant.
I love the idea that for this, I don’t need to go to church every Sunday, I just unroll my mat.
Namaste!
So I found out through a “source” on the inside at SDSU the real reason why I didn’t get into SDSU’s Master’s program, even though I got my BA in Kinesiology there. It proved firsthand that it’s not WHAT you know,but WHO you know. How unfortunate that the Graduate Adviser for the program I was planning on applying for was the same professor teaching my last class as an undergraduate…. the class I needed to leave 10 minutes early every class to get to work on time. The semester in which I was working 50 + hours a week, and dealing with major family health issues. Needless to say, it was not my best semester. I still graduated a full semester early with a 3.0 GPA and worked 50+ hours a week. Regardless, my lackluster performance in his class sure did effect his decision of whether I was ‘grad school material” or not. He thought I wasn’t cut out for it, or so I found out… he denied my admission based on some pretty lame assumptions and personality differences.
Fast forward, when I was accepted to CSULB, I made it a personal goal to get straight A’s in all four semesters. Part of the motivation was to see if I could do it for myself, and part of it was just to prove that bastard wrong. This is my second semester of getting a 4.0.
Behold, Dr. V. at SDSU: Mr – ” she’s-not -cut -out- for- grad- school”……SUCK IT!!!!!! 🙂
Go Beach!
Holy balls, I just turned in my last final of Spring semester, and am officially DONE with my first year of grad school. I knew that time would fly when happily accepted my letter of acceptance, but here I am, a year later, and feeling both relieved and sad that this incredible journey is almost over.
In the Fall, I did recaps every four weeks. This time, its just a semester recap, so here goes.
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly:
The guy “yanked” from the library! LOL
Well, that’s it… year one down. Keep checking in, as I may post about my summer. Lots of plans!!!
So…. many years ago, I arrived on this planet on May 14th. This birthday is a milestone, as one could say I have hit “mid life”. Holy shit. I am more woman than girl, and getting closer to MILF status than anything else. The weird and totally cliche thing is that I feel like I’m in my mid twenties. I am pretty proud to say that I think I look I great for my age ( or so I’ve been told), and while I can’t really party like I’m 21 anymore, I really don’t want to. I’m more about the quality of my relationships now, not the quantity.
Many, many MANY years ago, my dad arrived two days later, on May 16th. He would have been 79 yesterday. Damn, I miss him…..
I can’t help think about my next birthday. Next year I’m giving myself a Masters degree for my birthday, and that’s a pretty awesome present, if I must say. The journey to get here was pretty long, and I cannot wait to walk on stage and get my diploma. Talk about having my cake and eating it…. I get to celebrate a huge personal accomplishment, my birthday and my dad’s 80th birthday too. That’s reason enough to celebrate.
Happy Mothers Day!!
Hats off to my amazing mom, my wonderful mother in law, and all the woman who help raise children!
Beach Time 