Apple Bonkers' Journal

Catching Up
Weekend Assignment #214: Sooner or later, pretty much everyone makes one or more major changes in their lives, sometimes several at once. We leave home, go off to college, get married, get divorced, change jobs, change careers, have kids, move to another house or another state, etc., etc. These things can be very stressful, but we do them in the hope of being better off in some way. Tell us of one change you voluntarily made in your life at some point, that worked out really well.

Extra Credit: Tell us of a little tiny change that also went well!

This is actually last weekend's weekend assignment, but I gave myself a bit of an extension, without asking Karen's permission first. Since the most recent life change I initiated was becoming a graduate student, I've been a little bit busy. My first semester is wrapping up in the coming week, and the reason I didn't get to this assignment before last Thursday is because I was hard at work on a 17-page research paper for my "Information and Society" class that was due on midnight on Wednesday. I slept much less than usual last week! I held my breath when I turned in my paper on the American Library Association's response to the USA Patriot Act, because who ever knows how the professor is going to react to your paper? I was thrilled to find out on Friday that my paper earned all points possible for the assignment. I'm winding down the semester with a 97% in one class and a 99% in the other. It's working out well so far. I find the work and the reading interesting, I enjoy the virtual interaction with classmates dispersed across the country, I feel like my brain is engaged with something I care about . . . in a nutshell, I couldn't be happier that I made this decision.

Now I still have a long way to go before I can declare the whole thing "worked out really well." I still have to complete 36 more units, which is probably going to take me the next two years. And the ultimate goal is a career that brings personal fulfillment to me . . . that seems kind of far out there in the future too. But for now, I'm enjoying myself (although if I went back in time and said that to my Tuesday night self, who was producing much mental sweat in the process of trying to get her paper organized, she might shoot me).

As for a little tiny change that worked out well (and I'm defining "change" as "new discovery" and "worked out well" as "is making me happy"), I recently discovered http://www.singsnap.com, with which I can indulge my penchant for karaoke during study breaks. I certainly don't have the most robust voice in the world, but no one could ever accuse me of not having fun with it. Wanna listen to me sing along with myself?

Tomorrow, I plan to respond to this weekend's assignment by reviewing a movie all about singing!

Current Mood: happy

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