I've taken to my sick bed today. Yesterday, during a chemistry exam, I am pretty confident my fever broke. While walking to my car after class, I could not stop shaking, and I blasted the heat in the car on my drive home. I'm sick. Its unfortunate timing.
The nice thing is its giving me a moment to rest, and breath, and get inspired once more. These past few weeks have been great, but also quite intensive (and it doesn't seem like they'll get less so any time soon). I have had to take two steps back in order to go forward, and even though I have completed the organic chemistry requirements for grad school, I am currently enrolled in Chemistry I at the local community college.
Unfortunately, because of how my college AP credits worked, I never actually took Chemistry I and II, so now I am sitting through the basic classes, and trying to remind myself that I should not get too comfortable in them. So now, four nights a week, I am going to my chemistry class, along with working at Northwestern, and I was supposed to start volunteering, well, today. That didn't happen.
I guess my past few weeks have been about repetition, or more like, swallowing your pride and accepting that you have to go back and re-do things sometimes, even if you really don't want to. I think we can all agree that no conservator (or aspiring conservator) dreams of re-taking chemistry, or, in the case of a recent book treatment of mine, undoing the entire treatment to reduce the size of the end bands, and re-doing the whole thing. It's frustrating. But the best way to learn is to repeat, and so I continue on.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Nothing good happens after 2AM
Sometimes things happen that totally throw you off balance. At this point, everything is okay-ish, but things happened yesterday that really knocked me out of whack. Its almost silly at times to think about how life works out and how things can surprise you, how quickly life can be great, and then go to, well, poo. We as people are so easily breakable, and fragile, and we have so little control about so many things in the world. Sometimes life surprises you, and all you can do is keep on trying your best. I guess that's what this post it actually about. TRYING.
Being a conservator is generally a 9 to 5 gig, but at the same time, it becomes your life. There is a lot of sacrifice that goes into following your dream, and a lot of rejection during your pursuit. At times it seems like I'm not sure how one can work so hard and tirelessly for something that isn't guaranteed, but you realize quickly that's its only through sacrifice and endless tries that you can finally make it. At least I hope so.
I am generally a very indecisive person, indecision is something I am known for. Never ask me to pick a place to eat lunch, I won't decide until dinner-time. One thing I have never questioned, however, is my interest in conservation. I want it. I really do. I question my abilities. I question my weaknesses. I question my natural disposition. I have never questioned my true desire for it.
That desire is what makes its easier for me to bleed for it, sometimes literally (hello scalpel!). I have decided to pursue conservation, and although I plan to apply to programs in the fall, I do not plan to get in (very few do the first time). I have accepted that I must keep taking classes, keep bending over backwards to get a moment in a lab, keep calling random people and inviting myself over to their place of work, and above all else keep learning. I must push myself farther, and wear myself out, trying, because if I don't, well then, nothing will happen. And nothing happening is the biggest fear.
You never know where life will take you, or how it will take you there, but all you can do is try to get where you want to go, and hope that what happens retains some semblance to what you wanted out of it all. I guess that's what I feel today.
Being a conservator is generally a 9 to 5 gig, but at the same time, it becomes your life. There is a lot of sacrifice that goes into following your dream, and a lot of rejection during your pursuit. At times it seems like I'm not sure how one can work so hard and tirelessly for something that isn't guaranteed, but you realize quickly that's its only through sacrifice and endless tries that you can finally make it. At least I hope so.
I am generally a very indecisive person, indecision is something I am known for. Never ask me to pick a place to eat lunch, I won't decide until dinner-time. One thing I have never questioned, however, is my interest in conservation. I want it. I really do. I question my abilities. I question my weaknesses. I question my natural disposition. I have never questioned my true desire for it.
That desire is what makes its easier for me to bleed for it, sometimes literally (hello scalpel!). I have decided to pursue conservation, and although I plan to apply to programs in the fall, I do not plan to get in (very few do the first time). I have accepted that I must keep taking classes, keep bending over backwards to get a moment in a lab, keep calling random people and inviting myself over to their place of work, and above all else keep learning. I must push myself farther, and wear myself out, trying, because if I don't, well then, nothing will happen. And nothing happening is the biggest fear.
You never know where life will take you, or how it will take you there, but all you can do is try to get where you want to go, and hope that what happens retains some semblance to what you wanted out of it all. I guess that's what I feel today.
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