Current School Endeavors
Am I enjoying it?
Yeah. I guess so.
I’ve written about this a handful of times in my past soul searching. I’m not going to school this time for the same reasons that I did for my first degree.
I’m currently a student as a perk for working at a school. I signed a contract saying I will work at the school for three years upon the completion of my degree. In exchange, I’m getting the degree for free while still gaining full time student status, which makes my current student loans manageable.
I feel that a Digital Arts and Design degree is a nice compliment to my current Computer Animation degree. I feel it is also more marketable in more places, and will provide me with additional freelance opportunities.
It seems smart, so I did it.
I’m not pursuing this degree because it’s my life long passion. I’m not trying to turn it into my career path. I’m not a high school graduate with no direction in life in need of a job to pay for merely existing in the world.
Even though I can logically list reasons why I am taking the classes, I really don’t have any specific drive to do them. I sometimes don’t complete homework assignments. I opt to socialize and go to the gym over investing time into my studies. I do not do extra curricular research into my new field or Internet stalk the Earth shakers who are changing the game.
Honestly I feel like I do the minimum to skate by, which is the total opposite of how I used to be.
I used to be the perfectionist. I had to be the best, even though I never was. I had to make it look easy, as if it were effortless, even though it wasn’t. It was tons of time, countless hours of my life going over my assignments with a fine-toothed comb for the most ridiculous things.
It was a lot of beating myself up for not being better. It was a lot of negativity, and dissatisfaction, and resentment. It was a lot of never accepting myself or acknowledging my own accomplishments.
It was a lot of busy work that didn’t make me any better at anything. It was a lot of being forced to interact in groups with people who didn’t care.
There were a lot of good points about high school and my first degree through college, but I learned a lot about myself, about life, and about other people along the way, and all of that information, all of those experiences are carrying over into this new experience.
I’m handling things differently. I’m handling them the way I want to, and, at times, what feels like the only way I am able to.
I have a full time job this time around, and I have to put those obligations first. Sometimes that means school gets sacrificed even though I don’t want to.
I care about myself more. My own mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing means more to me than my grades. I finally understand that an A+ mark isn’t going to give me the same level of satisfaction and fulfillment as taking the time to go to the gym, or to cook my own meals, or to make sure the apartment is cleaned and an inviting place to be.
My life is more than school. My life is more than projects. My life has people, and events, and hobbies, and other obligations. I can’t, most times won’t, give those things up.
Because of that my relationship with school seems very self-centered and irresponsible from the outside. It may give a bad impression of me, especially for people who haven’t been exposed to my past writings about this very topic.
I do the assignments when they do not interfere with my life. And I stop working on them when I feel like there is nothing left to gain.
Could I change something and make the composition better? Always. Art is never truly done. You just put one project aside and move to a new one.
I’m not trying to prove anything by completing this degree.
I’ve already proven that I can complete school. I’ve proven that I can be a professional who produces quality work. I’ve proven that, for the most part, I am a capable adult who can function in society. I feel like this second degree really doesn’t prove anything at all.
It’s an interest, a hobby, and I treat it as such. It’s not a commitment on my part. I’m not paying for it. I’m not worried about what my instructors think of me when I don’t complete an assignment any more. I am more than a student number with an average attached to it through an Excel sheet.
I am values, and morals, and promises, and priorities. I am dreams, and goals, and ambitions. And right now very little of those things center around my classes.
So am I enjoying them?
Yeah, sort of. Not the same way that others are I’m sure. I am not in the same position as others. I like the assignments because they are creative, because they push me as an artist. And for now, that’s enough for me.
School of Yesteryear
As for the schooling in my past, I miss my teachers the most. I miss the conversations we would have. I miss how they believed in me and thought I was able to achieve greatness even when I didn’t see anything inside of myself worthy of anything.
I miss the days were I could actually focus on school, because despite everything that I wrote previously I actually do love learning. I still plan to get a Web Design degree, and then Phycology and Sociology degrees simply because I find the subjects fascinating.
My ultimate goal in life at the moment is to teach aikido at a dojo.
None of my degrees will help with that. None of my degrees are really moving me towards an end goal. They just seem fun, they interest me, and so I find them a worthwhile investment of my time.
I miss being able to devote all of my time into learning. Into becoming better at something. I miss not having the grind of daily life bogging me down, because that’s what it feels like at times.
While in school you’re expected to grow and flourish, and then you enter the ‘real world’ and it can be hard to not let it cut you down, one hacking slice at a time.
Bills, debt, betrayals, mistakes, regrets, uncertainties, devastations; all of these things that life can throw at you. All of these things that can wear you down and destroy your sense of wonder. All of these things that, if you let them, can eat away at you until the warmth, the growth, the yearning to reach for more, dies, buried under the heaviness of reality.
I miss being sheltered in a way. I miss the bubble of being valued for making good marks. It was so easy for me. I should have been in such higher-level classes, but because I was depressed I didn’t take them. I excelled at mediocrity while I bled on the inside.
I miss having music as an outlet. I miss marching band, and percussion ensemble, and jazz band, and concert band, and clarinet choir, and all of the people associated with those things. I miss the safety of stepping onto a football field in front of hundreds of people and feeling confident because I was with a group of 150 people who considered me a friend and valued my talents.
I miss how it was ok to not have a clear idea of where you wanted to go or what you wanted to do. Now, in my life, people look at you as if you’re irresponsible. How could you not know what you want to do in your life? How could you not want to use your degrees? What’s the point in getting them then? How can you stray away from the original plan? How can you go with art career?
What about the days when it was ok to want to be a ballerina, or the fire fighter? Why are we suddenly judged for our dreams? Why are they suddenly unrealistic? Why is it bad that my end goal doesn’t require a degree at all?
Why do I have to be static and unchanging rather than fluid? Why can’t I dance through my life to the music only I can hear? Why must I stay still, fidgeting in my seat, knowing that I can do so much more, be so much more, if only the glares and disapproval of others weren’t there?
Why is there disapproval at all? What is there truly to disapprove of?
Why do other people feel this need to evaluate my happiness to their standards? It’s not what they would do, it’s not what would make them happy. Therefore it can’t be what will make me happy. It can’t be right, and if it’s not right it’s wrong.
I’m really not sure where I’m going with this anymore. My fingers are wondering over the keyboard as my mind thinks about the past years with rose tinted glasses.
I was so depressed during high school. The only things to kept me grounded were music and band. The only thing that felt worthwhile was my music.
And books. I read constantly. I was always in another world, another place. I was always reading about other peoples problems and how they found solutions. How they overcame their hardships and were victorious. I was always surrounded by dragons and magic and the fantastic, which made my boring, draining, unfulfilling life bearable.
I tried to find myself through other people; the guys I dated. I tried to define myself through them rather than standing on my own because as a 16-year-old girl I didn’t know how to do that. I didn’t know who I was other than a shattered, broken thing.
Even when I moved to Florida I was still in that mind set.
I still had that sick, unhealthy drive to please everyone because I didn’t know myself and that my own needs were more important.
There have been so many things I have learned outside of school. There have been so many things that school would have never been able to teach me. And I am grateful for those experiences even though some of them tore me down so low that I don’t know how I was able to stand again.
I suppose, out of everything, I miss the freedom. I do not regret where I am currently at, but sometimes, like now, I can feel the restrictions, the restraints, the obligations of society.
There’s this pressure to conform, and for a while I did. For a while those glares of disapproval were enough to make me sit still. Silent. Waiting for the chance to be myself.
No longer.
I no longer wait for approval. I no longer seek it out from anyone other than myself. I am no longer silent and still.
I refuse to give up what is important to me simply because other people think I should have different priorities, that I should make different choices. I refuse to back down. I gladly, confidently, whole-heartedly dance on my own, spinning, twirling, shifting from foot to foot, arms waving, gliding, wrapping around myself as the music of my life embraces me.
I dance as if no one is watching because that is what I feel is right. In my core, in my very bones.
I stand behind my choices, and even though I miss things about my past, and the way school used to be, I am in the present, and no amount of wishing is going to bring those days back, and even if it could, I wouldn’t want them.
I am stronger now. I am more myself than I have ever been. I am proud of who I am becoming, of where I am going. I’m trying to be true to myself, my whole self, and that includes more than just a number with the fancy abbreviation of GPA.