One month later

My diploma arrived in the mail today, sitting on top of my apartment’s row of mailboxes (mailboxen?) in a white, official-looking envelope. Tomorrow it will have been exactly one month since I graduated. A whole month. How does time pass this quickly? Anyway, finally holding the diploma in my hand seems to have made concrete what was only a glimmer and a wisp before. Sure, I know I graduated, and a week or two after convocation I found to my relief that I even passed all of my classes. (There was one where I wasn’t sure if I would or not. I needn’t have worried.)

But it hasn’t been exactly real. I emerged from the library this morning en route to snag some lunch, and I hadn’t taken ten steps when I myself got snagged, this time by a girl reporting for BYUTV. When I first realized she was beelining for me with her microphone in hand, I instinctively started to reach for my cell phone and call someone — anyone! — to avoid having to be on TV, but it was too late. I thought about making myself immediately busy, on the run, gotta go, sorry, but for some reason that didn’t feel right, even though it was mostly true. And so I followed her off to the side and stood in front of the camera. All the while the thing that was running through my head was, “But you’re not even a student anymore, Ben! You’re an impostor! You shouldn’t be in front of this camera.” She asked me what I thought about gas prices rising. “Well, I don’t have a car,” I said, “but it’s sad that the prices keep going up.” She asked if I thought the government should do something about it. “I don’t know enough about the political situation to say one way or the other.” Embarrassing but true. Honesty is the best policy, right?

Getting back to the theme of this post, I haven’t missed homework at all. Nada. Nor tests. Evenings and weekends have been blissfully free from the burden of Atlas which I bore for so many years. I’m still far too busy, of course, but no longer does homework gnaw at the back of my brain like a buck-toothed Ethiopian rat.

But what I do miss is classes. People. I walked through the basement of the JFSB twice this past week, and as I passed by the classrooms where I spent so much time these past couple of years, stalactite pangs of nostalgia gored my heart over and over again, leaving it bleeding. In those moments, I’d give anything to go back and be a normal student again. It’s part of me. I can’t just abandon it. And yet I’ve got to move on, growing up and learning what life is like in the real world. (Granted, I’ll be a grad student in the fall, but it’s online. Not the same.) Don’t get me wrong — I love my jobs, and I don’t really want to go back and be an undergrad all over again. But I do miss my professors and classmates, dearly.

Looking this post over, I think I should win some points for sappy sentimentality. ;)

A buck-toothed Ethiopian rat?

I object to your stereotypes of Ethiopian rats!

I feel exactly the same way about school - I love having my evenings and weekends to do with as I wish, but I desperately miss class discussions, visiting with professors, Current Events Student Association, etc. It’s hard to move on.

By the way, I’m looking into MLIS programs, and I’m seriously considering doing the program you’re doing (assuming I can get in). I’d love to hear about why you picked it, details about the program that I might not know yet, etc. Thanks!

Katherine: What, you’ve never had a buck-toothed Ethiopian rat gnawing on the back of your brain?

Rikker: Objection dismissed.

Janssen: Welcome. :) It is hard indeed to move on. (Though I just realized that if I do get a full-time position here at the BYU library in the fall, then I can take classes again. Probably just one or two a semester, but that’s enough to fill my need.)

As for the UNT MLIS program, the main reason I picked it was that this fall they have a $10,000 scholarship. :) Some of the librarians here have gone through it (which reminds me, I need to pick their brains about it sometime…), and the head of HR here recommended it to me, which also was a large factor in my decision. But the $10k was perhaps the biggest draw; in fact, I was planning on waiting a year to start library school, but when I heard about the scholarship, I changed my mind within about two days. :) I myself haven’t looked into it too much yet, but it’s entirely online other than four days in Vegas at the beginning of the semester. (But you’re in Texas, right? So you could go to Denton instead of Vegas, and depending on how far away you are, you could even do the classes in real life instead of online.)

In related news, I got an e-mail from them a few days ago saying that they’ll be releasing the names of the scholarship recipients the week of June 11. Forty will get the scholarship, and another 10-15 will be admitted to the program but without the money. (So even though I’ve been admitted to the SLIS, I guess I’m not in the online cohort until after the decision is made.) The e-mail had 68 people listed, so the chance of getting into the program is pretty good, and the chance of getting the scholarship is 59%, which isn’t as good as I’d like.

Anyway, good choice of a degree. Libraries are da bomb. :)

Great post, and great simile. But honestly, when has a buck-toothed Ethiopian rat ever gnawed at the back of your brain? That’s never happened to me; the rat that gnawed at my brain was the Austrian variety.

You’re lucky, then, for Ethiopian rats are stereotypically hungry. But then again, “hungry” is far too weak to describe their insatiable craving, their stomach-churning longing for something to fill the void, to gently pull in their distended bellies, to give respite to the neverending cry within.

:)