The end of the semester.
It usually brings an enormous flood of un-interrogated emotions. The closest, most pernicious emotion is exhaustion, followed closely by analysis of all the mistakes of the semester. The rat-race that is graduate school technically provides a 3 week reprieve from due dates on holiday break, but I always wonder how we are supposed to push so hard during a semester (and finals week) and then are supposed to be able to turn off a switch so that we may rest. I have not yet begun to mention the flood of holiday activities and catching up with folks that I need to do.
The physical, emotional, and mental toll of graduate school, particularly programs that focus on justice-making, is very difficult to understand until one has gone through it. The limited budget, the individuation of self, the constant realization of how much you don’t actually know and that we’ll never know is taxing.
The constant desire to learn is something I would not trade for all the world. It keeps humility and curiosity as constant companions; however, it also means that I do not rest well and boundary-making is a difficult feat. It also means that I set higher goals for myself, which are not always well understood by others.
I have been waiting to post until I had a positive word to write. But after a semester of police brutality, archaic state laws, protesting, writing, listening, and trying to keep some semblance of emotional/ mental stability, I do not have much positive to write.
But even in this exhaustion, I can find gratitude for the opportunity to be exhausted alongside some of the most incredible ministers/ faculty/ activists there ever were.
Thanks be to God.