So it's been awhile since last I posted. I'm afraid that I've discouraged people from checking up here. Anyway an update is due.
I'm finished all of my courses for undergrad and now I have only to write my honours paper. I am a little excited and anxious to get it on the go because it is a really interesting topic (at least I think so!) and I'm anxious to pick up the slack which I collected this semester. I'm working at Omnifacts again, but am on the hunt as well because many of you may very well know how reliable it is to live off of Omnifacts. I have a tiny research job pretty much lined up this summer as well with Valerie Burton, in which I'll be gathering up course materials for a new women's history course. That'll be pretty cool I think, actually. I'm also moving at the end of April and I am kind of sad to be leaving Victoria St. It's been a good run, but I need a bit of a cheaper place and it'll be nice to just hand over money to someone else for a change. I hate feeling like "the Man" taking everyone's money away.
I feel like now is the time to write the obligatory "finished my degree" reflection journal. The end of this semester was pretty anticlimactic. I just feel like it ended and didn't affect me much beyond not needing to grieve over marks or agonise over papers anymore. It just sort of passed away noiselessly. It really is bittersweet partly because of my fear of not "making it" in the real world, partly because after all that I still feel mediocre (I blame all of you, friends of mine, who are brilliant and make me look bad by comparison! :P), partly because there is so much more I want to explore in the university context. I think that last point is a foreshadowing of things to come. I can't imagine my curiosity ever being satiated. The four years I spent at university can be characterised as "the era of changing my mind about everything almost weekly." My devotion to the medieval period remained consistent at least if not my romantic life, living arrangements, or plans for the future. And that is encouraging I think. I think if I can hang onto that, I'll have some sort of guiding light.
People ask me all the time why I came to Newfoundland. I give them the tripartite explanation: tuition, archaeology, curiosity. Of the three, the latter is probably the most important. It was a whim. There has never been any contemplation about whether it was the right choice. It reminds me of what Rob used to tell me about how I needn't worry about the choices I make cuz whatever it is, it'll be the right one. At the time there was no real value attatched to where I went to uni. It wouldn't have mattered where I went, anywhere probably would have been a "right" choice. From my present stance, though, there could never have been a more correct choice than to come here. [insert sappy soliloquy about the beautiful land, people, and experiences]
I don't really want to leave. I don't know where else I feel like I should be. It's tricky to talk about belonging, because I'll always be a CFA, I'll never be a Newfoundlander in the true sense which includes a lot more than birthright. It's maybe cliché or lame-sounding or whatever, but I certainly belong in the little bit of space I occupy in St. John's, whether it agrees or not.
In terms of having a bachelor of arts (completion pending) it sometimes feels like just another hoop I've come through rather than a major achievement. Maybe that's because most of the people around me went through the hoop too, so we're all nothing special in each others' eyes. And sometimes I think of all the sleepless nights and migraines and tears and cursing in order to get some numbers on a page that apparently summarises my worth as a human being, and I wonder: "why the fuck?" It's pretty useless to try and assess whether it was worth it or not. It was obviously worth doing, getting a degree. I don't understand how it could ever have been not worth the struggle. What else would I have been doing with my time? I have clearly gained a great deal besides numbers on a transcript. And it's not a matter of right choice/wrong choice as we've already seen. [insert internal existential debate]
I feel suddenly exposed. Now that I've got this feeding into my facebook profile, a lot more people are gonna see what only a few people would have previously. 140 people of varying degrees of connection to me are gonna make varying degrees of assumptions about me, and that's kinda unsettling. Damn BlueKaffee getting me in the habit of rambling on the internet. These things are always necessarily self-conscious and therefore usually pretty intentionally fabricated. And then there's that stigma of emotional weakness or something that seems to come with revealing too much about yourself to too many people.
I'm not truly feeling poor self-esteem by the way. I'm not meaning to be self-depricating. These are just things I've thought about. Everything's pretty excellent with me at the moment. I've been feeling pretty good for a number of reasons.
Soon I'd like to write up something heartfelt about my next life goal, which will hopefully precede the realisation of my other next life goal. And there will be pictures and scholarly and historical references, and other cool things. I'd also very much like to finally catalogue and organise into a binder my coin collection this summer.
I really do feel like a peregina all the time.
