2. I am not (as of yet) totally done with all of my finals for this semester. See previous post for an explanation on why the hell I'm blogging in the middle of finals week.
3. I am done with two of the most difficult things from my semester. (If you couldn't tell from the title, the focus of this post is going to be on this point. This one right here. About being done with difficult things.)
So much of this semester was me looking forward to this exact point: being done with two of the most time-consuming and emotionally draining things I have done as a student. As of Sunday night after a Christmas party, my official responsibilities as Director of wheatonIMPROV are done. As of this today at 9:50am my academic obligations as a Macroeconomics student are done. Done. Done. Done.
It may be that I haven't really comprehended yet what it actually means for me to be done, but as of now I don't feel much different. There hasn't been a huge psychological weight lifted, no teary realizations of how much I'm going to miss what I've already idealized from the past, no overcompensatory rejoicing over past suffering that doesn't seem so bad in hindsight, nothing. I'm glad to be done, for sure, but I don't think that I'm as glad as I thought I would be. Throughout the semester I kept myself going with thoughts of: "Think how great it'll be when you're done!" and "This will be so worth it when it's over!" Now that it's over I can't help wonder why it is that I thought a deadline would redeem everything.
As a caveat: I am not a bitter person, and nothing I am saying here is intended to passive-aggressively lash out against either my Macroeconomic professor (who I actually respect very, very much.) or anyone involved in wheatonIMPROV (as I truly love them all). I'm simply trying to honestly analyze myself and my experience. I'm also honestly simply procrastinating.
Now that these two things are done, I can't help but wonder what it is about finishing that supposedly transforms a painful experience into a worthwhile one. I am absolutely not trying to say that painful experiences aren't worthwhile, let me just get that out there right now. However, in my specific case I'm legitimately wondering if what I went through in each of these "character-building experiences" was ultimately worth what I'm supposed to have learned. Maybe it takes being removed from the exhausting over-involvement to see how it has shaped, challenged, and grown. I'm sure I'll look back sometime in the future and see how great the skills* I've had to develop are. (Maybe.) Knowing myself, it will take a while for me to process through as much as I can. I don't expect to ever be able to process through everything. Heck, I'm still processing through a ton of stuff that happened at the beginning of Freshman year. I'm a processor. I process. It's what I do.
As I process, I think what I've learned so far from this semester is that I shouldn't be so forward-looking to the end that I don't give proper weight to what it is I'm ending. Yes, I realize the majority of my peers learned this in second grade, but...whatever. It's a revolutionary thought for me. By looking forward to the end I robbed myself of a lot of what I could have learned in the moment. While there is still the opportunity for me to be shaped by these experiences as I reflect on them, I think I could have learned as much (if not more) had I taken the time to process through as I was in the thick of it rather than sprinting to the end with my eyes on the prize of "being done. Done. Done. Done."
I've really enjoyed being Director. I've really enjoyed truly challenging myself academically in Macro. I know I've grown a lot from doing both of these things, I'm just trying to figure out how.
*Here I'm talking about coping skills, interpersonal skills, learning skills, skills of self-discipline, etc. I'm NOT talking about the skills of analyzing and utilizing Macroeconomic ideas such as the Solow, the IS-LM, or the Mundell-Flemming Model. Come now, my existential crises [usually] consist of much deeper things than a handful of Macroeconomic graphs and charts! (Usually.)
