Boy, I have never, ever been so close to clicking away a degree than I am this morning.
Every time I login to my summer course, I find I can only last about three minutes and need to get out of there. I have dropped a course before–this one, as a matter of fact–but with the thought of taking it later. This time, I just don’t want to follow through with it at all, but the stakes are higher. It means giving up the degree.
I wish I’d had the sense or the direction to have found the way to get this substitution made last year. The "walk" part of the deal was just a stall, and one I found that many, many students had taken advantage of. Both graduates on either side of me at the ceremonies were doing the last elective in this summer session, one is in my course.
For them, they need this. For me, well, how important is it, really? I want to do the things that the education has directed me towards, and even this eight-week session is a delay and a serious time consumer. The usual argument would be that I’ve come this far, suffered through language and math and essays and exams and I’m so close to the end. The counter argument is naturally, why put myself through more when it is interfering with what I really am destined to do and nutrition has no part in it, nor does the course help as just another way of thinking.
Man, this is going to take all the resolve I have to punish myself with going through with it and put off the pleasure and rewards of that part of education that has given me the drive and a glimpse of my goals. When I took the step to enter higher education, the thought was simply to get the needed "piece of paper." That’s changed. What I see as the value now is what I’ve learned in doing it. About myself, about new ways of thinking, and about the path that’s most clearly marked for me to travel. Even these damned eight weeks of reading, exams and heavy participation are a roadblock on that path. I could have instead been learning more about what has me excited in learning about. At my age, that piece of paper is useless, except what it represents in my own journey, and that already has been made clear to me. I’m following the road beyond the point where I need to turn off, but that piece of paper says I have to stay on the main road.
That line of poetry I mentioned that keeps going through my head is shouting now: I do not want to.
Which in truth is more courageous, to follow through with the original plan and put off temporarily a no longer important result, or to jump into what has become important as an unexpected early result of the plan?
(Note: This happens to be my 1900th entry–on Spinning only. Isn’t it obvious where my heart lies and where my feet must follow?)
(Note #2: I apologize to Feed readers for the constant updating of this post. I did warn you once before–I write directly into Typepad, and so second thoughts and added insight are always an option. Switch me, if you can, to "don’t show updates.")
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology