Grad school officially ended two weeks ago. I sat through a 4 hour long graduation ceremony in which I was jealous of our commencement speaker who passed out five minutes into her speech and got to leave early, albeit carted off in an ambulance. She’s fine by the way.
Since finishing that two year jumble of high stress and anxiety, I have begun tackling my “after grad school” to-do list. At the top is “read more books”. There is quite a stack of books that I’ve bought over the years but haven’t had time to read. I picked one out recently and started reading.
Today, the high was about 80 degrees and since the gross humidity hasn’t shown up yet, I took my book and a tumbler of ice water to my backyard and sat under our magnolia tree and read my book while my dog ran off her energy from being crated all day while I was at work. It was glorious! Truly. I sat and read, listened to my neighbor doing yard work while my dog barked at him, and watched some kids come to our fence looking for a lost football. I came back in when I heard the baseball game at the high school field adjacent to our backyard get started. It started at 6 and I knew it, so I also knew I should probably come in and start cooking dinner. I had left my phone inside on purpose.
This is exactly what I have longed for lately. The time to sit and do whatever it is I want to do simply because I want to do it and I have the time. I don’t regret grad school, I have a shiny new master’s degree to hang on the wall (when I get it in the mail I will), but man am I glad it’s over! I could really get used to moments like I just had!
(I’m reading Simon Pegg’s autobiography Nerd Do Well in case anyone was wondering—it was published in 2011 and I bought it when it first came out. That’s how long it has taken me to start reading non-school books).
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