It feels SO strange not be starting classes this August! I've got a year hiatus from classes (still enrolled at my university) to collect data for my thesis, and it feels so.strange. My brothers are starting back to school, my friends, my cousins, my Match, even my momma, and it feels really alien to not be filling my planner with dates from each course syllabus, packing the coffee and notebook each early morning and heading out to be a student.
I'm kind of nostalgic about the whole thing. Yes, classes can be stressful, but I am really so intrigued and enamored of my field of study that I love them anyway, I cannot get enough of it.
Of course it's not that I'm not learning this year. I'm juggling preparing 2 manuscripts for publication right now and have a couple more coming up after that, managing data from my fieldwork and preparing for the next trip, setting up a side project to do in between visits to Tropical Field Site, doing some guest lectures for my adviser's undergrad classes, video-conferencing with my lab members once a week, etc etc...
I guess I feel kind of like a pseudo-student. In some ways, I know that classes are formalities. Considering my field and my fascination with it, I don't plan to ever STOP being a student, I plan to learn new things every day for as long as my cells are firing.
But it still feels odd that my backpack hasn't left its spot on the corner of my room since I first moved in here almost a month ago.
3 comments:
This is my first year not being a student as well. It is completely foreign to me. I feel complete nostalgia towards college and I just want to go back to the mindlessness and routine I had...
take care of yourself
xoxo
-Lisa
I understand your feelings, because the idea of not being a regular student with campus and labmates is weird...actually being a student was always "here", a constant, something what defines me and gives me hope and fuel. Scientists- even professors- are some kind of neverending students and that is what makes any science so fascinating, you know it!
Perhaps you will find a niche or new perspective, new unsurweyd area of being another student and being you. Actually I am sure you will. Good luck!
My first year out of school (after going straight from high school to college to grad school) felt the same way. Weeeeiiiird.
Just wait until the school year gets to finals time, though. Then it'll feel awesome. ;)
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