Institutionalized

"I've only got a minute," seems to start the majority of blogs these days. I'm sorry, it's just...well, it doesn't matter how busy I am, I only have a minute.

I'm getting ready to brave the rain and the early-morning, angry traffic for day number two of the last round of classes. [DING!] It's bizarre to think that this way of life will be over in four months. In four months I'll be finished. No more 8am classes that I cannot, for the life of me, make it to on time. No more last minute research papers on business culture and the hierarchy of corporations that I do not support or praise.

It's funny, that's all.

If I said that I wasn't looking forward to graduation day, I'd surely be lying. It's been a really long time coming. But every time I consider the day following graduation, I think of that scene with Morgan Freeman standing in the grocery store asking his manager if he can go to the restroom. The guy tells him several times that he doesn't have to ask, but prison has conditioned the ex-con. I'm afraid that I'll be the same, a student for all but four years of my entire life, suddenly set free. I'll be given my paper bag of belongings and a small envelope of cash, and maybe a bus ride into town, and the whole, uncharted world will just be sitting there, waiting, ready for me to seize. I worry that I won't know what to do without the regiment of coursework and strangely broken-up daily schedules. I lust after that freedom, yet it terrifies me, too. I think I begin to panic at the sheer size of "adulthood."

I have no idea what I want to do with a degree.

[the next chapter, I believe, will take us to grad school]