Happy 2011! I'm back after the most grueling five months of my life. That's right, I completed my first semester of graduate school (I'm getting a Master's in English).
A lot has happened since I first started this blog about a year ago; I started off by posting about the books I read as a way to keep myself in a semi-academic mindset in the gap year between graduating college and starting graduate school. Now that I'm here in grad school, academic exercises do not require the kind of extra exertion that they did when I was out of school. Academics now take up a large portion of my life-- in this first semester, it felt like an excessively large portion-- and that requires a redirection of energies. Reading and scholarship will take care of themselves now; I have and will put in the necessary hours of studying, writing, editing, etc., but I need to be as diligent about not letting other areas of my life slide for the sake of scholarship as I was about keeping up with reading and thinking critically when I wasn't a student.
I will always think of myself as a student and learning will always be an important part of my life, but now that I have this first semester behind me, I know better what it's place should be. Academia is not the place for me, and I will be very happy to finish this program next spring. I value all that I have learned and I look forward to my remaining time as a Masters student, but I would not consider going for a PhD. Scholarship cannot be my entire life.
As far as this blog is concerned, well, I'm not really sure what shape it's going to take now. I want to hold myself accountable for being healthy, nurturing my relationships, and enjoying the new city in which I live. I suppose now its focus will broaden to include all the aspects of living on my own and shaping my adult life. Still much to be learned, so I'll keep the title as it is.
I particularly want to make sure that I keep art in my life as I press onward with graduate studies. I did not take time to paint or draw at all this semester, and I noticed a change in my mood as a result, so I will probably use this blog to document some of my artistic projects (like the mural I started on the back of my bookcase in August, which I'm working on presently).
That's all for now; the new semester starts in less than two weeks and I intend to make it a more balanced one than the first.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
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