Monday, January 21, 2013

Feeling the Pressure

The whole process of moving onto the next chapter of my life is coming to a head and I feel the pressure.

My timescale of events is compacted and severely impacted. Everything is coming, like a 90mph fastball down home plate...the question is, can I hit it?

In three weeks I am supposed to turn in a rough draft of my thesis to my advisor. Three weeks...I am only 20+ pages in...have easily another 50-80 more to go and my time is rapidly dwindling.

I have a graduate school interview at the end of this week...a 2 day long interview and a day for travel, that eats up a lot of time. I've got a concert to see and a 3 day weekend get-away with my girlfriend for our 3 yr anniversary. I see all of the events I've committed myself to and I question why I painted myself into the corner I now find myself in.

Three weeks isn't a lot of time to finish this thing.

On top of it all, I have yet to hear back from the remaining 7 universities. I've looked at their websites and blogs to check for a date when they would be making their decisions known. One is tomorrow and the others are dispersed through out the next several weeks. The anticipation is slowly killing me and is highly distracting. These emails will decide where I spend the next 6+ years of my life; this process is brutal and I want it, so very badly, to be over. I know I have a wonderful support system telling me it will be okay; my parents and girlfriend could not be more supportive, but there is still a lot of doubt.

I know that only time will tell, and in these moments there is nothing to do but to do my best and be productive. Spend the energy I am wasting worrying on my writing or my final areas of research. That would be marvelously useful, and I will do my utmost to do just that.

At times like these...the ones fraught with stress, worry, and the ever present question "what will happen next?"...I reflect on the words from one of my favorite movies, Big Fish:

"I was thinking about death and all. About seeing how you're gonna die. I mean, on one hand, if dying was all you thought about, it could kind of screw you up. But it could kind of help you, couldn't it? Because you'd know that everything else you can survive."

I know that I'll survive it all...I would, I guess, just love to know...I guess I will soon enough.

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