Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The Albatross

As many of my good friends know, I have spent a long time in graduate school. I pretty much started right out of college. I knew I wanted to continue my studying so I applied immediately after graduation while working at a full time job. I was accepted and then the problems started. I had to work; there was no way around it. But graduate school is a full time job in itself.

I somehow managed to get all my school work done even though I worked and I still have no idea how I did it. But then in 2001, I ended up in corporate America (long story for another blog). Then various events around September happened and my priorities changed. I worked insane hours because that was what was needed. Slowly but surely, only 1 course and a thesis away from graduating, I stopped going to graduate school.

For the longest time, the incompleteness gnawed on my soul. I was so worried about going back – what was I going to do with that Master’s degree in nothing practical? Certainly didn’t get me the jobs I had. I decided to pursue a certification in English Language Teaching along the way and I taught and I loved it. But once again, due to monetary constraints, I had to return to the financial world.

Finally last year, I decided to just finish my masters. I was more aware that my job was not fulfilling to me but that it provided me with the time and money to do the things I wanted to do. So I had to reapply to the original program that I started. And I had to retake my GREs and write another essay and see how many more classes I needed to take in order to finish. Luckily, I only had to take 2 classes and finish my thesis and I’d be done. It seemed easy enough.

But then the economy tanked and lay-offs happened and I got stuck working insane amounts of hours. Somehow, (yet again), not sure how, I got it all done. And officially on Wednesday at 9:47 am, my husband delivered my thesis to my department. I have removed the albatross from my neck!!

Or so I thought. In going over my thesis with my advisor, he suggested, actually he stated, that the concept of my thesis and the research were amazing but that the writing was not on the same level. I always knew my writing took a beating being in the business world but it never really sank in as much as his comments did. I feel like now I have a new albatross on my neck and how I plan to tackle that is yet to be decided. Stay tuned...

1 comment:

M said...

CONGRATULATIONS on turning in your thesis!!! At least, I think congrats are in order, but I'm not sure, since the last para of this post indicates that some rewriting might be in order...? Should we be celebrating? I hope so.