January 3: Orientation Thoughts

[kinetic_elaboration]

Just finished my all-day school orientation and I am so exhausted. It was a lot. Some thoughts from this very particular state of mind:

 

The first half of the day got me really excited, especially about the archives stuff, but also about the other classes and the different professors’ specialties and so on. Yay, learning and new skills!

The second half of the day, though, was mostly q&a sessions and also an hour with some current and recent students talking about their experiences (and also answering questions). And that just made me anxious, to be honest. It just sounded like a lot. Plus, I never find the less structured/planned/prepared q&a to be that helpful. Most of the q’s aren’t my q’s. A lot of the conversation is about people’s various anxieties, and a lot of the advice is pretty general/stuff I already know from having 2 degrees/stuff I could guess (when you work full time and go to school you have to manage you time :) )/stuff that I know but it’s easier said than done (meet and interact with people!). So now I feel like I’ve been bombarded with a lot of stuff but the majority of that stuff is emotion, not content.

The experience as a whole was useful. It made everything a little more real and a little more normal, especially to see my cohort’s names and my professors’ faces, etc.; and I got some concrete pieces of information, certainly. I have a few specific things I need to do and want to do. I think once I sort through all of that, the stuff I added to my to do list and the concrete notes I made, it will shake out to be something pretty manageable.

I think the biggest thing that’s been haunting me and that felt like this unspoken cloud over orientation is that I’ve never done anything quite like this before. I’ve done school/grad school but I’ve never worked full time and been in school, and I’ve never done this particular course of study. I honestly have a hard time picturing what the assignments are going to be like? I’m good at school but I’m intimidated by the thought of projects/group work/being creative or whatever. But at this point I’m also intimidated by doing research and writing papers so! Can’t win!

I’m also really torn between my desire to change my life/my belief that the changes I’m planning will seriously and materially improve it, on the one hand, and my fear of change on the other. There are a lot of things I do like about my life now and maybe when they change it will be better, or maybe not, and I can’t know which, but I also can’t do nothing. So–I think that’s just a feeling I’ll be grappling with for the next few years, off and on. It’s okay to feel things. And the biggest thing for me to remember is even if I did absolutely nothing, things would still change, but I’d be less able to meet those changes. Also, at various times in my life I have just felt myself to be ready for something to end or begin, and I don’t know that that won’t happen again.

I really am so ambitious for 2026. I want to do so much, I want to organize myself so well, I want to accomplish so many things, I want to be so on top of things. The new year plus the new endeavor really puts me in Make Lists and Magically Succeed mode. Which is good and bad I guess.

But right now at this exact moment, I’m also tired and hungry. I did a lot today, though, and the next days are also busy. BUT–no matter what, it’s always one day at a time, one hour at a time.