Equilibrium

I feel like I need to take a minute and absorb this moment. Six months ago, I moved across the country and landed in New York City. I interviewed for a job and performed my first lesson plan. I went from a queen-sized bed in a spacious home to a sheet-less dorm room. I turned the snow globe of my life completely upside down. It is six months later, exactly six months later, it is the shortest day of the entire year, and I feel that these fluttering flakes are beginning to subside. Soon, the sun will shine longer. Soon, I will not feel so anxious during every prep period of the school day. Soon, I might just feel like I know what I am doing, and I won’t need to sacrifice every weekend of my life for extra planning time. Not yet, but still, I am cautiously optimistic that this tremendous challenge will gradually ease up – that this heavy burden will decline. Maybe it already has. I think back to Summer Institute, of the 42-hour all-nighter, of my panicking fear of failure, of blurry-eyed mornings that “tired” isn’t strong enough a word to describe, and at least now I can say this; I usually get 6 hours of sleep. That is a dramatic improvement. At least now I have a full-time place to stay, a feeling for my week’s routines, an under-represented, but somewhat present work-life balance. I have a handle for what graduate school will require of me – even if I don’t know what I will owe when I get out. I am making it. Like each hour of Institute, I am making it through each day of this experience. Soon it will be the holidays. Soon I will be amongst friends with whom I have difficulty sharing this experience. You cannot describe it. Not because you are arrogant. Not because you aren’t one for words. But because there are no words. I love language, but it is a sorry substitute for the realities of life. Anecdotes cannot represent the complexity of a moment, much less a six-month horizon of events. We grasp for tools to properly explain our world – pictures, poems, songs, and so much more – but the truth is, I am in a bubble of experience that is unlike anyone else. There are others like me across the country, but my experience is even unique from theirs. Right now my bubble is very full of new ideas and notions, memories and questions, frontiers of personal thought. Can I describe it to you? I wish I could. I wish that you could order me a beer, ask me what it’s been like, and I’d be eloquent enough to describe it with justice. But I can’t – and trust me – it isn’t arrogance. I can’t explain it to you because I don’t fully understand it myself. But I know this. I am getting by. These flakes are softly settling. I am ready for another 6 months – but I also cannot wait to be home soon.