Friday, July 9, 2010
Fast Forward a Few...
Going for the Gold and going for Grad School... University of Texas here I come! Well perhaps... awaiting response from the dean of graduate studies, so it could be a whirlwind of activity in the last few months, or not so much... regardless of acceptance or not, I am preparing to go back. I have yet taken the GRE... which is why I applied to UTA for their deadline was June 1st and though I still missed that deadline, talked with the adviser and she said to go for it anyway, so I have... so trying to get everything prepared without making the full commitment. Perplexing and quite complicated but how fitting that is to mirror the rest of my life. So now I am studying for the GRE, looking at apartments (pretty set on Huntington Meadows, right around the corner from a park which would be perfect for Connor), hunting for a job, and looking into student loans, grants, and fellowships. My life not quite on hold, but held captive by the sheer thought of change...
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Expectations
With ample amounts of free time I decided to get in the habit of writing again. It is what frees the soul after all... or is that just mine?
Currently I feel as if my life is on hold because I have all this education and working experience and nothing has come of it, my expectations of what life was supposed to be like after graduation have not come to fruition and because of that I am without direction and feel helplessly lost. Oh woe is me... blah.
I think expectations in general, are more problematic than helpful. Let me explain. An expectation is, by definition of Webster is:
1. an expecting; anticipation
2. a thing looked forward to
3. a reason for expecting something.
My gripe is not with the first two, for they are part of our every day existence: we expect to have lunch, Jane is expecting John Doe over for a visit, Jillian is expecting, Kristina expected Brooks to propose during Christmas. These are all good and dandy but the third... ah the third... it is the one that has led me to my predicament. I went to college, my reason why I expected to get a job upon graduation. I worked for several years in retail, my reason to expect a better paying job on the higher end of the business. I settled with a desk job and worked there for a while, my reason why I expected I would be able to advance to a somewhat tolerable position in the company. It is this aspect of cause and effect that should take place... but does not, well not always. Common sense, I suppose, is no longer so common after all. Or I just put too much stock into what I think should be the effect based on my sense... and maybe it is me that is flawed.
But a lesson I have learned from this, is unless you work hard and verbalize your goals, your intentions, your... expectations... you will be disappointed. A wise friend once told me, having high expectations without sharing them with anyone is like directing a play without anyone having a script, and getting mad because no one is doing what you want them to. So map out what you want, your expectation, and then ways you will get it. Steps, checkpoints, small victories that you can accomplish and will fuel you to, and please forgive me for the saying but, get 'er done. So if your life is 'on hold', look around and most likely you will find that either you are expecting things to fall into place that you have had no active part in and they are not, or you can not see that where you currently are positioned in life at the moment is exactly where you were intended to be and you need to learn how to make the most of it and learn everything you possibly can from it.
There probably are some other aspects as well, but every time I have been unhappy because things are not as I expected them to be, it's one or the other. Of course both have a lot to do with Pride.... oh that terrible snare, but I will save that for another day.
Currently I feel as if my life is on hold because I have all this education and working experience and nothing has come of it, my expectations of what life was supposed to be like after graduation have not come to fruition and because of that I am without direction and feel helplessly lost. Oh woe is me... blah.
I think expectations in general, are more problematic than helpful. Let me explain. An expectation is, by definition of Webster is:
1. an expecting; anticipation
2. a thing looked forward to
3. a reason for expecting something.
My gripe is not with the first two, for they are part of our every day existence: we expect to have lunch, Jane is expecting John Doe over for a visit, Jillian is expecting, Kristina expected Brooks to propose during Christmas. These are all good and dandy but the third... ah the third... it is the one that has led me to my predicament. I went to college, my reason why I expected to get a job upon graduation. I worked for several years in retail, my reason to expect a better paying job on the higher end of the business. I settled with a desk job and worked there for a while, my reason why I expected I would be able to advance to a somewhat tolerable position in the company. It is this aspect of cause and effect that should take place... but does not, well not always. Common sense, I suppose, is no longer so common after all. Or I just put too much stock into what I think should be the effect based on my sense... and maybe it is me that is flawed.
But a lesson I have learned from this, is unless you work hard and verbalize your goals, your intentions, your... expectations... you will be disappointed. A wise friend once told me, having high expectations without sharing them with anyone is like directing a play without anyone having a script, and getting mad because no one is doing what you want them to. So map out what you want, your expectation, and then ways you will get it. Steps, checkpoints, small victories that you can accomplish and will fuel you to, and please forgive me for the saying but, get 'er done. So if your life is 'on hold', look around and most likely you will find that either you are expecting things to fall into place that you have had no active part in and they are not, or you can not see that where you currently are positioned in life at the moment is exactly where you were intended to be and you need to learn how to make the most of it and learn everything you possibly can from it.
There probably are some other aspects as well, but every time I have been unhappy because things are not as I expected them to be, it's one or the other. Of course both have a lot to do with Pride.... oh that terrible snare, but I will save that for another day.
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