Reflection

It’s the end of the year. Christmas music is already assaulting my ears (I love it, but not the day after Thanksgiving), and there are only two days left in my college classes. When I look back, I see that I’m a different person than I was three months ago.

I used to be a stay-at-home person, someone who read 3 or 4 books a week, someone who gardened and made her own herbal shampoo, someone who cooked and loved baking bread, someone who drank tea and discussed Anthony Trollope and Georgette Heyer, someone who kept most of her interactions with people to the internet and who had too many blogs and forums to count. That person’s favorite subject was English Lit, with a close second place tie between Language and History. That person collected quotes and had a secret geeky passion for the 1800s, especially British Navy tales, with a side love of fantasy and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Within three short months, that person ran away and left me in her place.

The first half of my waking day is spent at school. I take the bus every morning with my huge backpack, study, go to an education class to talk about teaching and politics, and then pop over to a psychology class to discuss—well, everything. I then hop on another bus to go work for a few hours at a book warehouse, where my job is simply to process books by entering ISBNs and conditions into a computer program and then shelve them in the warehouse. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I go back to school after this for a writing class of reading essays and discussing them, and on Friday I volunteer at an elementary school where I correct papers and tutor kids. I eventually come home every night for a bit of catching up on a couple blogs and forums, maybe a little fun thing like watching an old episode of Stargate or writing some more of my story, and then more studying before bed.

I’m not the same person anymore. I am a person who discusses politics and science instead of books and language, a person who talks to strangers on the bus and has many new friends at school, a person who gets a regular paycheck and who has to manage this and a schedule very carefully, a person whose only experience with books on a weekly basis is putting them on shelves and reading from textbooks. I’m more likely to talk about Wernicke’s area than the genitive case, to say hi to someone as I walk by than be engrossed in a book, to catch a bite to eat on the run than spend the day baking challah. Worst of all, I’ve joined the ranks of science fiction geeks.

And yet, which I’ve yet to understand, I’m just as happy. Sure, sometimes I miss books and cooking, but even more often are times when I wish I could stay at school forever. I hate that classes are ending and I’ll have to have new teachers and classmates next quarter. I have a hard time filling my weekends with anything but studying, and look forward to working full time over winter break. I get more exercise, less sleep, more social interaction, less free time, more writing, less reading—and my happiness level has not changed. Yes, I know that we’re supposed to be joyful always, but I didn’t expect it to be so easy.

I don’t know if the old me is gone forever or not. I would like to have a visit from her, maybe in the summer, or maybe just a virtual visit through doing some of those things I used to love. But if my life continues in the vein that it’s in right now, I wouldn’t mind either. It’s a little frightening to see what happened in three months, but after all, I’ll probably be able to find a psychological reason for it. Now would that be cognitive dissonance or adapting schemas I wonder...