One of my favorite Black Keys songs has a line that summarizes my adult life pretty well- “The regular she’d rearrange, the girl knew how to chop and change.” The most consistent thing in my life is change- usually change of address. I’ve been in Gainesville for literally a month and 7 days, and already I’m considering moving. Ridiculous? Perhaps. That’s just how I do things. When something fun shows up, 9 times out of 10, I’m down for whatever it is.
5 weeks into life as a grad student, the real work is starting to kick in. After getting overwhelmed with the reading load last week (for like 5 mins until I found perspective and prioritized life), I plan to devote my entire day to writing my first paper. Ok, I have 2 or 3 side missions planned, too, and if it’s sunny, I’ll likely jump in the pool for a bit, but those will be sanity breaks. I can only sit still for so long. I cranked out a pretty kick ass intro page in about 20 mins last night (writing inspiration comes post-midnight, apparently), so I’m not too worried about it. I’m writing about student-athletes and how the de-personalization of coaching style can hinder their psychosocial development. Already managed to work my existential debate between a career in sports journalism or academic advising into my grad program :)
I’ve been walking the fine line between burning out and failing out, but now I think I’ve found the work/school/life balance I feared was a myth for a while. I started advising students in the office last week, and am told I’ve been progressing well so far. We were told we needed to read for the forest and not the trees in Theory, which helped reduce a good chunk of class stress (I applied it to both reading-heavy classes, even though it wasn’t said in History… hoping that works out ok). I’ve found a bunch of awesome friends that are fantastic at making me laugh out loud even via text at completely odd times (ie: at the bus stop, walking to my apt, any time where someone alone randomly cracking up would make you question their sanity) and I love them all for that. One has even become my scheming buddy, though what we’re scheming for, I’m not at liberty to say yet, lest it ruin the stealthy operation we’ve got going on. Laura visited last weekend and got to meet my grad school friends and go to the Tennessee game with us. It was awesome to have her experience Gator football so she could finally see what I get so crazy about. Hopefully it makes a little more sense now :) Hockey and college bball are about to be back in less than a month, which means it will become work/school/life/sports balance soon, but not necessarily in that order. I’ve severely neglected the sports blog, but once this paper’s done, I’ll get right on it. Life is a little overwhelming right now, but it’s a good overwhelming.
Haha, we all loved the "forest through the trees" Ponjuan-isms :-) & it should be able to be applied to most reading courses, as theories are best taken simply to add to your student affairs toolkit and don't necessarily need to be memorized and applied in-full to each student! You will do fine! Also don't panic if you get a low grade on your first Ponjuan paper: I prided myself on my writing and still got a B- on the first one. BUT he always notices progress and your grades will improve once you know what he wants, and I still got an A in the class so it's OK! Just a warning since most of us were like "WHAT?!" after our first papers! Haha don't want to throw you a curve ball :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely reassuring!! I'm used to writing psych research, so aside from the APA, it's a bit of an adjustment. The heads up is much appreciated! :)
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