Halfway there

I finished my final project for my media relations class yesterday. This morning I'm just going to proofread it one last time and then submit it and then I will officially be halfway done with graduate school. I feel like I should be having a party or something to celebrate. It is kind of a big milestone. The thing about grad school is that the old parenting cliche fits perfectly: the days are long but the years (or sessions, whatever) are short. So, on the one hand each class seems to go by really fast. On the other hand, it feels like I've been doing it forever. Callum wasn't even one when I started, and now he's pushing two.

So, yes, paper about to be submitted, halfway there, and now hopefully it's all downhill from here. One more class this year (nutrition, which should be very interesting) and then a month-long winter break (with bonus trip to Europe!) and then it's next year, the year I will graduate. And then: no more school ever again in my entire life, please and thank you.

Meanwhile the thing about grad school is that it makes you plan your time in chunks. Especially travel time. Like, we've been thinking that next year we'll do another road trip kind of similar to this one, though we're thinking we'll do Bryce Canyon this time instead of Moab. But we can't just pick a quiet week at work and go, because if we're gone for 10 days I'll either have to spend the trip doing schoolwork (no thank you) or end up hopelessly behind (no thank you). Most of the school breaks are only a week long so I COULD schedule it in such a way that we leave right before the end of a class and I get all my work done early, or that we get back after a new class starts and I assume that there won't be an assignment in the first few days (which is usually, but not always, the case). But I'd rather squeeze it into the one two-week break that we have available, which is in May, but that might not fit with our work schedules.

SO. Whatever, there isn't really a point to this except to say that I look forward to being able to do things on MY schedule, and that includes not just planning trips but also sleeping and hanging out with my family and watching TV.

And yet, I'm glad I'm doing it. I'm learning a lot. And this is the thing that I have to keep reminding myself: time would be passing whether I were doing this or not. Eventually it will be next fall whether I do this or not. So I might as well spend this time in grad school, knowing that there is an end in sight, and when the end arrives I will be very glad I did it. I'm already glad I'm doing it. But I will be even more so when I have a degree in hand and no more extra demands on my time.

In the meantime, it's not like grad school is taking away ALL of my free time. The workload has been surprisingly manageable, really. And now I have a week-long break during which we will finally head to the pumpkin patch. BEFORE Halloween! That definitely counts as a win.