Lost...and found

I have struggled since I started at Tech to continue to write this blog. I have seriously thought about having a copy turned into a book (because I have written a few awesome posts) and then shutting the whole thing down, permanently removing myself from the blogging world.

My reasons for doing this was time. Or so I thought. That's what I have been telling myself anyway. Well, that among other things. I have said that I can't relate to a 30+ year old anymore, and I don't relate to the college students that I mostly surrounded by each day.

I keep getting these emails about college life and adjusting to your first semester and yadda-yadda. About how college is hard and how this is a time that many people "find" themselves.

Hello - I'm 31 years old, I have been found for a while now. Or so I thought.  Don't get me wrong, the nerd in me loves all of the things that I am learning. About Wednesday of Spring break I was ready to go back to school. I had all of the break that I cared to.

However, the self conscious person in me, hasn't been prepared for how unworthy and how much I stood out would make me feel. See my resume should say things like "doesn't like talking to people she doesn't know", "doesn't like standing out in a crowd", "doesn't like being put on the spot", "doesn't make friends easily".

This isn't anything new, I have been this way my entire life. I start second guessing myself and I start thinking things like "I'm so old that I don't get Pokemon". "I'm so fat that all these people are staring at me", "I'm so stupid, why did I ask that question?"

Going back to college has done a lot for me as far as believing in myself with starting something and sticking through with it. I wanted to go back to school, so I did what I needed to, in order to put myself in this position. That makes me feel like I'm more capable of doing anything that I have given myself credit for. I feel good about what I am capable of doing. I've also discovered what they mean about college being the time that you find yourself.

I have been taking out of my comfort zone, which has affected my entire life. My marriage has taken a few hits since January, my relationships with other family has changed, and I didn't realize how this whole process was going to change me. I haven't realized how different this would make me look at the world at at myself.

There are days that I laugh at the level of naive-ness that abounds there. They think that they are going to graduate and life is going to be all roses, they have no idea how quickly their life can change and some of the hardships that they will face before they turn 30. They don't know that they will have their house and their 2.5 kids, they think that they will marry the guy that they have dated for the past 3 years. There are a few that are right, and there are so many who will face things that some can't even begin to imagine. Life will get in the way, and some might not even finish their degree. Yet they are all so full of hope and energy and great ideas and dreams of how they are going to change the world, and some of them will. They can't imagine how immature they are, and how unprepared they are, even though they think that they are such big, bad adults.

I assumed when I joined the ranks at Tech that I would be teaching, offering my experience to the "kids", yet know I see how seriously wrong that I was. I didn't realize how much this little endeavor was going to require of my thinking, my perspectives, and my heart. For someone who has always been self-conscious, college has just magnified those feelings of how "un" I am. Someone else is everything that I'm not, smart, beautiful, capable, thin, funny...the list goes on and on. It's like high school, except minus the drama.

So I got lost. I started thinking about how little I had to offer to these people, about how much smarter and easier they make everything look. How much younger and thinner and smarter and prettier they all were than me. How I didn't really have anything to offer to them or to a future employer. Who was I kidding? I was worse than a joke. So I got seriously lost, and my damn GPS kept telling me I was on an uncharted road. Ya think?!

Then, I got on facebook yesterday and a high school friend posted a link to a blog that a football player at Tech wrote. I'm not a sports person, but man can this guy write. I highly recommend opening up his blog and if you read nothing else, read When Ripples Collide. Then scroll all the way down and read my comment.

I will admit that I haven't been honest with anyone around here, especially me. I do have a lot to offer, to you, to me, to the "kids" at Tech. I have a voice, and I just need to remember that my own actions screw that up, not others. That I am everything that I have always been, I just need to use my voice.

So my question for you today is this - think about your own ripples. Whose life are you changing today? Whose life are you saving today?

Yesterday, I saved my own. Along with several others whose ripples have affected me. Yesterday, I found my voice.

~Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend. ~Walter Savage Landor


~People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates. ~Thomas Szasz