2008

So it’s a new year. 2008 has officially arrived. This is going to be a big year for me. I will be taking out my first official loan in January, turning 21 in February, and I will be finishing up my final semester of college and graduating in May. After graduation I will have to pay my first bills from college and will be renting my first real apartment.

And, the really big news is that, hopefully, I will be moving across the country in August and starting graduate school in September.

I have been toying with the idea of grad school for a while. I searched online for countless hours trying to figure out which program would fit me best. The three universities I selected were APU and UCLA in SoCal, and Northeastern, which is located in Boston. UCLA was my first choice. It is an 11-month intensive program and my dad told me I could live in his condo in Century City while I attended school so I wouldn’t have to worry about rent. I would have my master’s degree at 22 years old. But, unfortunately, I was too late. Deadlines had passed by the time I even thought about applying. Then I thought about APU. They have a great Student Affairs program, and if I worked an on-campus full-time job, it would be paid for. But I realized staying in the APU bubble would feel a little too claustrophobic. I needed something with a little distance.

Then I found Northeastern. As I read about the program, I realized how incredibly it would fit what I was looking for. When I saw that the deadline was January 15th, I was bummed. I still have yet to take my GRE, so I decided to take a year off and apply to go to grad school next year. But Northeastern was just sitting on my mind. So I browsed the website again.

Needless to say I was shocked and excited to find that the deadline to apply for the program I want to be a part of, College Student Development and Counseling, is a month later than all of the other programs and that is ONLY if I want an assistantship, which I don’t have to do. So, technically, I don’t have to send anything in until August 1st at the very latest.

I can’t even begin to express how excited I am. I called my Uncle Jim, who lives in Hamilton, MA, and talked to him for a while about what would happen if I moved out there. My uncle is my dad’s twin brother, and I have always been extremely close with his family. He has a HUGE house and there is a kind of loft apartment that is over his garage that my two cousins have always used as a game room. Both of them are in college now and Jim told me I could LIVE THERE if I moved out for school… FOR FREE. Hamilton is only a 30-minute drive from Boston, and it is a perfect place to live until I find friends and a job and an apartment closer to Northeastern.

I freak out all of the time. I recently realized that I have anxiety. I get nervous. The thought of graduating – the idea of starting over with a life separate from everything I have grown accustomed to over the past 4 years – is terrifying. Well, WAS terrifying… until this. Now, all I can feel is a rush.

It might not work out. I might end up living in an apartment in Pasadena and just being a waitress for a while. But it is a cool thought. When I moved to New York for the summer, I came back with the decision made that living in that big city is probably not for me. But the idea that I could start over in a place I have known for so long, the idea that I could start over but still have family and somewhere safe to call home, is extremely satisfying and a great way to start out the new year.