The Only Consistent Thing is Change

I have a love-hate relationship with change.

Change can be so amazingly stressful. The upheaval, the uncertainty, the feeling of instability as the ground shifts beneath your feet, when you don’t know what your life is going to look like over the next days, weeks, or months. There’s a certain comfort in routine.

But routine has always been a deadly grind for me, too. I get bored and need to feel some sort of growth happening, or I just get more and more miserable. I’m pretty good at filling my time with projects and activities, as this blog will attest, but what I really need more than anything else is a sense of forward motion. I need goals spaced out over a long road unfurling at my feet to really give me a sense of myself.

I lost that road for a long time. After college, I landed in a job market that disintegrated before I could find my place, and found myself working in retail with a college degree.  I couldn’t progress, and so I moved to another state with greener pastures, and slowly eked out a place for myself in the tech field. When I got the opportunity to take a leap of faith (thanks to Russ), I finally found a career, and one that suited me better than I’d honestly have ever imagined.

When I graduated and entered the real world, I had assumed that my separation from academia would only be temporary. I wanted, more than anything, to go to grad school, get my PhD in Physical Anthropology, and teach. I wanted to study forensic anthropology and use my skills to bring justice to people who desperately need it. That part changed when I ended up with PTSD and found myself testifying in a death penalty murder trial, but I still always thought that I would go back to school, at least.

But life always unfolds in ways we don’t expect, and as much as I wanted to be in school and progressing toward an advanced degree, it’s an expensive endeavor, and difficult to justify when the job prospects after graduation aren’t really substantially better than where you already are. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that teaching, whether in K-12 education or at the college level, is not the stable, dignified career that it once was. Maybe there aren’t any careers like that anymore.

I’d been nagging at Russ for months about wanting to go to grad school. Initially, I thought about applying for a program here that was a combination of a law degree with a Master’s in Public Policy. If I’m being honest, that idea still really appeals to me, but again, the practicality of the thing is difficult to assess, so I wasn’t able to get much traction there.

A few weeks ago, I found a program locally in Curriculum Design and Instructional Technology. It’s basically perfect for my field. Hell, I probably already know a lot of the material. But I’m sure there are parts of it I don’t know, and the degree should let me grow in my current field, which I really love. This time, Russ acknowledged it was a good idea, and things sort of accelerated from there.

Russ does this thing where it can take a long while to get him to consider something, but once I get through to him, things take off pretty quickly. In this case, he went from “we need to save up, but maybe next year” to the current state, wherein I am applying to begin this fall. I don’t think it can accelerate further, but I’m just glad to even be starting the process.

So I’ve begun working on that. They want three references, preferably two of them academic. Somehow, even though I’ve been out of school for a million years (ok, fine, 10 years), the three professors I worked with most consistently have all agreed to give me recommendations for this program. I also asked my boss for a professional reference, and she said she would write one. I am thinking of trying for one more, but even I can concede that that may be overkill.

I’ve written a Statement of Goals, though I still need to edit that and whip it into better shape, but I feel like it’s 80% of the way there. And I have my transcripts ready to scan in for the application process.

I don’t want to get excited about it until I know that it’s really happening, but I admit it’s sneaking in a bit, especially now that my recommendations are lined up.

I finally got around to finishing the enormous Companion Carpet Bag this weekend.

It’s not perfect, but I do love it. I forgot to add the piping around the main panels, but I still love how it came out, and I can’t wait to use it on my next business trip.

Next up, I’m going to make the Renegade Bag from Sew Sweetness. I love the design, and I think I’d eventually like to make it out of glitter vinyl, but seeing as I have more fabric than I could use in a lifetime, I’m going to make one out of some of the vinyl I have first. It’ll be good to practice, since I’ve never made anything with vinyl before.