GFMorris.com

Mom was right, as always.

It doesn’t make it any easier to take.
All along, I thought I needed to do graduate school to get ready for seminary. It was a wrong-headed thought process, really. I stuck it out long enough in my class this semester to prove to myself that I could move to the top of the class in a liberal arts graduate school manner, even if I was relatively unprepared for the class.

And, having proven that to myself and spent about $800 on the class, I’ve learned my expensive lesson and am dropping the class. [Am I keeping the textbooks? You bet your ass I am -- they're great texts on American politics, and I've always read stuff about American politics for "fun".]

But simply put, work has to be more important than school. I am no longer a co-op, and I have to stop working like one. Mind you, I work a hell of a lot harder now than I did six months ago, but I could be doing more around here.
This says nothing, of course, about my ministerial leanings. Other than work–and, okay, the hockey stuff–I’ve been doing everything half-ass of late. Amy said to me today:

I’m going to say this as nicely as I can, which ain’t real damn nicely. *grin* you know me. You’re overcommitted to too many things. You know it, I know it, we all know it, but you’re a very determined juggler. But *please* make the ministry stuff your first priority and if it requires dropping out of the MA program to do it, do it. I’ve heard you talk about this for the entire time I’ve known you, and I’ll be damned if I sit back and watch you do this ministry stuff half-assed. Do it right or no feedings for you.

Mind you, this was after I’d been talking for a bit about dropping out.

Heh, all that brainwashing they did in the ’80s makes me feel bad about dropping out of grad school. But didn’t you do the same thing, Andy? Tell me it’s okay, will ya?
I’m not going to say that it’s easy for me to leave UAH, because that would be lying. I’ve really enjoyed getting involved in SGA again the last couple of months, and I hate to give that up. I argued with myself about that last night for a while–balancing what I wanted to do with school and all that.

Of course, what’s really funny is how motivated I was about class as recently as three weeks ago. It was about then that I started looking at what I might take in the spring and then the summer … and then I realized that there aren’t any summer classes in PSC in the summertime, other than an Internship that I certainly can’t take and be a full-time engineer. It started dawning on me then … what was three years had morphed into four and then six.

I should have known then.

There are some other things likely to go away, like the hockey writing I do, but they won’t go away immediately. I owe those guys time for transition, and hell, I enjoy it. I think I’ll stay through the season and then leave for greener pastures–to quit midseason would be absolutely inconsiderate of me.

But today, on the six-month anniversary of the day I walked across a stage and got the degree that sits at arm’s length from me, I realize that my time at UAH as a student is done. It’s time to be an alumnus. It is time to lay down that burden.