If you had asked me 6 months ago what I would consider to be a 'good time' to break up with someone, I would have put "Right at the beginning of graduate school" at around number 26 on my list, below "Just before winning the lottery" and above "While being stabbed." (Number 1 on the list of Good Times to Break Up With Someone: "Uh, never?")
I'm surprised to find out that breaking up right at the beginning of graduate school is actually not that bad. I mean... it's bad of course, because breaking up blows in a serious way, but it's not as bad as I would have expected, given the timing. I mean... I don't know, let's not get sidetracked quantifying how shitty it is. What I'm trying to say is, even though there's no good time, I can think of worse times than this. Grad school so far has been an adventure, for sure. And there's a lot of work, and an insane amount of reading, and it's pretty stressful at times, but occupation-wise I'm SO much happier than I was this time last year. This time last year, I was working a decently enjoyable job that paid well and pretty much left me to my own devices, and I wasn't unhappy by any means, but I wasn't that deep-down satisfied that people say you feel when you're doing something you love. At the time, I thought that maybe my something that I would love was going to be social work, and I was just slowly working my way toward it.
[Let us pause for clarification: social work is a lot of things other than Child Protective Services snatching up people's children and placing them in foster care. I mean yes, sometimes that's what it is, but it's also much more than that. In general, a social worker is someone who's devoted to fighting social injustice, through a variety of means. I just thought you might like to know, for perspective. OK, moving on...]
Obviously, I didn't know a whole lot about social work, but I thought I had an idea of what it stood for, and I thought that it was right for me. I could have started grad school and found out that I totally had the wrong idea and I had made a huge mistake and I was miserable and totally at a loss. But luckily, that's not what happened. I moved here and I started school and I met almost a hundred other people with worldviews, concerns, and aspirations that were eerily similar to my own. (I also had almost a hundred conversations exactly like this: "Where are you from? Oh cool! Me? North Carolina. Where'd you go to undergrad? Sweet. Wake Forest. What are you interested in? Awesome. Child poverty.") Obviously, it's dangerous to only ever associate with people that agree with you on everything, and of course there's a lot of diversity in my class. But there's something just so damn magical about being surrounded by people that understand where you're coming from and share your passion and are looking forward to the same goals as you. It's like... by God, it's like coming home!
(I'll give you a minute to throw up, if you need to. Ready? OK.)
I look around at school and I feel comfortable talking with just about anyone about what I believe and what I want to do with my life. I look around and I see great people with good hearts and amazing aspirations, who can and will change the world for the better. Maybe I should feel that way about people all the time, but the truth is that I don't. I (usually) look hard for the good in everyone, and I really believe that it's there, but it's nice to just be able to see it, right there on the surface, and feel good about people right away. Of course there are one or two people at school that I'm less than warm and fuzzy about: the girl that talks in class as if she's doing everyone a favor by being there, or the one that only wants to be friends with guys, if you know what I mean. But for the most part, I have to keep physically restraining myself from exclaiming "Man, I love you guys!" several times a day. And I'm not even drunk! (Generally.) It's crazy!
Even in class, I sit and I listen and I get straight FIRED UP. I want to stand up and yell Amen! like I'm in church or something. (Not that I'd know what that's like, being a godless heathen and all.) I start thinking that EVERYONE needs to go to social work school, and meet the people I've met, and learn the things I'm learning, and then wouldn't the world just be a better place, and we could all link hands and have a Coke together.
There's no denying that things aren't ideal write now. It's hard to read 7 chapters and write a 5 page essay when in the back of your mind you're reevaluating your life and your priorities and your plans and your dreams. And I've got other things going on, family things, that are sometimes a little worrying and distracting. But school is AWESOME. I'm happy as hell with school, and I can say that if I know nothing else, I know that I'm in the right place, right now. Of course, it's easy to get all het up about social work and social justice when it's all shiny and new, and I'm sure that as time goes on I'll come up against frustration and disappointment and disillusionment, and I'll learn from it. But I see too much raw power in the hearts and minds of the people I'm working with right now, both the brand new students and the people that have been social work workers and scholars for 25 years, to ever passively give up my belief in and my willingness to fight for a better world.
So, uh. That got a little impassioned there at the end, huh? My point isn't just "social work is awesome!" - my point is that every day since mid-August, even the days when I'm unbelievably frustrated or stressed out or depressed or not totally sure where I'm going with all this, I've believed that I'm on the right path, and that makes it so much easier to deal with whatever other bullshit might be thrown at me. I'm going to do whatever I can to hang on to that feeling of peace and happiness, and I sincerely hope that all of you, my tens of thousands of readers, can find it too.
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