Musings on the second semester of grad school

Here's the thing:
I frickin' loved my budgeting class, y'all.

I think focusing on academic disciplines that other people find inherently horrible runs in my family. My mother has a PhD in theoretical mathematics. My sister is a chemistry major. My father is a financial adviser who enjoys reading about investments as a fun hobby, a fact I once found so hilarious that I laughed until tears ran down my face. And now I've completed a class called Public Budgeting and Finance, which I loved. I genuinely enjoyed using Excel to formulate a budget from a complex word problem. In other words, I am a huge nerd (a revelation that will likely astonish very few).

Actually, this family tendency may extend beyond academic disciplines, now that I think about it. My dad is also a marathon runner.

And while we're talking about weird changes that accompany grad school: "This final paper is only supposed to be ten pages, so it's really not that long" is an actual sentence that came out of my mouth the other week. The weirdest part is that it was true.

Life is surprising.

About two or three weeks before the end of the semester, my motivation tanked so dramatically, the whole experience can best be described as temporarily losing my mind. I forgot about everything. (Well, thankfully not the grade-producing assignments, but it was a near miss.) My conscious mind went on vacation. My critical thinking skills hopped a train to the beach, joyously entering summer mode, while the rest of me wandered aimlessly through the halls of my former routine, trying to remember how to book and laptop and research.

I attribute this phenomenon to a classic explanation: the disparity between expectations and reality. You see, I had come to believe that all my big assignments would be turned in by the end of April. But then a couple of unsolicited extensions came along. And then a couple of assignments I had forgotten about cropped up. And then it was the second week of May and I was still trying to schlep my weary self through the paces. Just another reminder that our disappointment and satisfaction usually have more to do with how our expectations jived with reality, and less to do with what actually happened.

Anyway, I'm now officially on break, academically at least. Another change that accompanied this semester was my dropping of the Nonprofit Management concentration. Upon realizing that I was enjoying my non-nonprofit-oriented classes this semester more than I anticipated (looking at you, Budgeting), I decided not to complete the NPM concentration and instead focus as broadly as possible. The Master of Public Administration degree will prepare me to work either in the nonprofit sector or another public organization, and since my work experience thus far is with nonprofits, I didn't want to limit my future prospects. I already have a bachelor's degree in a field I don't plan to work in. As fun as that is, I'm aiming not to do that with my master's.

The completion of this semester brings me to 18 credits: halfway to MPA. I'm looking at 1-2 summer classes (depending on how other job prospects post-Service Adventure pan out), 2-3 fall, and 2 the following spring, one of which will be my capstone project. I'll be graduating a year from now. In some ways, it feels like I've come to the halfway point extremely quickly: a year ago, I had only just decided which program I was going to enroll in. But when I think about how much I've learned and grown since August, it doesn't feel strange at all. Time is like that, I suppose.

Here's to the future, and to life's many surprises.