Not going to school and finishing it up as a young adult, like everyone else does. I’ll still regret it, even on my deathbed; even if the whole of my life turns out to be beautiful. I wasted this head I have on my shoulders by not using it for a good 7 years. Working in retail jobs and factories was the kind of fresh hell I needed to make college look like something worthwhile. I was about 25.

After I started, various interesting jobs presented themselves, but got in the way of my classes. I wouldn’t give back the experience of working as a flight attendant at Northwest or a game master in Middle-Earth, I suppose. And if you were to remove any piece of the puzzle that led me to do those things, they might not have happened.

Here I am, now just about to be a senior. I’m grinding out some serious credits as I finish this out so I may participate in commencement in May.

The problem with attending school full-time and working full-time is, I divide my effort so I can get by and not burn out. I’m not a particularly good employee, nor am I a sparklingly intelligent student with a 4.0 GPA. Paul is right, I don’t give myself enough credit for doing it all. But I see people kicking ass at work and I’m worrying about a midterm I have to take at 5:30. People in class go the extra mile and I’m thinking about how I need to try harder to stand out at my company. It is hard. The pressure I feel is driving me insane, because the perfectionist in me does it right or doesn’t do it at all.

I’m looking to take two weeks off from work in early January so I may bang out some serious credits and get that degree in May.  Then, who knows?  I was looking at a grad program at Lasell which lasts about a year, but it might be nice to focus on work for a while.