The Secret Sharer

Done?!

I turned in my dissertation on Friday and am no longer a student. I must admit that it's taken a few days for this to sink in. I thought a lot about the last year being a student at University of London and a weekend visitor to Tupa in Devon. The most obvious thing is that it has been hard, damn hard. I found a quote by Yeats last week that sums up how I felt throughout much of the last year. The aptness of this quote needs to be clarified first. The biggest thing I've learned this year is that I don't know much about this business of living, especially in my own pursuit of happiness. The second was that I really began to discover how much Illinois still had a grip on my life even though I was thousands of miles away. This led to much navel gazing concerning childhood, etc. Now for Yeats:
For some months now I have lived with my own youth and childhood, not always writing indeed but thinking of it almost every day, and I am sorrowful and disturbed. It is not that I have accomplished too few of my plans, for I am not ambitious; but when I think of all the books I have read, and of the wise words I have heard spoken, and of the anxiety I have given to parents and grandparents, and of the hopes that I have had, all life weighed in the scales of my own life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
I did often feel sorrowful and disturbed, and it was often because I had no idea how to apply what I had been hoarding in my mind. Not only that, but I was totally untrained in the methodology of academia. I did feel for a long time that nothing ever would happen, and like Yeats, felt tremendously guilty to those I had given just cause for anxiety and disappointment. Then something broke in me, and I began to look for ways (any way) to act. Once I began looking, answers came and for once I began to feel like I was in charge. This feeling sometimes fades but never totally leaves, and is the one thing that I can have whether I stick in academia or not. It only happened because I felt out of my depth and was in a position of no comfort.
However, today I am not a student and not employed and am free to do as I chose. I have comfort, and also the feeling that the work I've done is of quality. I'm looking forward to going home and having my evening walk and enjoying the feeling of possibility....

posted by moor-rambler @ 8:22 AM