I'm thinking about this degree business. I'm thinking about giving up on a Bachelor of Arts and going for an Associate of Arts in Music or English instead. I'm getting tired of going to class twice a week year round. I just hate having to plough through all the General Education courses even though I know there's no way around them, and even though some of them have been terrific. I'm tired now; I'm genuinely afraid by the time I get to my major I'll be burned out entirely.
Spring semester I'll be taking Chemistry for humanities majors who need a lab class. That will be really interesting. But after that I have to do courses in Political Science, Statistics, and Speech. Oh god, I'd do almost anything to get out of having to take them, but I know I can't. Only once they're completed can I take the courses in a major which would net me a degree. If I went for an A.A. I'd be in school probably another year after finishing the G.E. courses. Or I could transfer to State and keep going for another three to four years and get a B.A. which no one but me appears to value. It's an agonizingly slow process when you do a degree one or two classes per semester, and tonight, sitting here at the halfway point of the boring parts I just don't know if I can keep doing this. The light at the end of the tunnel isn't in sight; I've got my head down while I trudge through the dark trusting the end will be worth it. I'm beginning to think it isn't, at least as currently envisioned. But I don't intend to give up.
So, I'm pondering an alternative. An A.A. might satisfy my desire to obtain a degree without forcing me to jump through progressively bigger bureaucratic hoops for years and years and years.
I have equated getting my degree with validation of my intellect for exactly half my life. I didn't feel that way about college until I left, though. Not getting a degree in 1979 has been a source of burning shame, esteem-corroding guilt, and a convinction that I have no discipline whatsoever. But for pete's sake, it's been 22 years since I dropped out. I've been back to school twice, I've demonstrated ample discipline in many areas of my life since then. I now wonder if that's really how I feel any more, or if a modified version of my goal would meet that driving need. I am not sure I want a 22 year old me determining how 44 year old I spend my free time just so she can stop feeling bad about her choices.
I haven't come to any conclusions yet. I'm simply starting to mull over what's really going on. I need to sort out old motives and new goals, take a close look at what complicated, antiquated fears and motives are mucking about in my subconscious, and make sure I know what will make me happy as opposed to vindicated.
Right now school seems to be stretching out to infinity. I know it's the journey as much as the destination that matters, but I think it's time to reduce infinity.
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