Step Up & Scale Back

Happy Belated Halloween! It’s officially November, which means we’re done with one of the busiest months at William & Mary that I can remember. Looking back on the second half of October, I could write about any number of on-campus lectures or concerts, or describe my increasingly frequent forays to the silent corners of third floor Swem, or give you the details of Halloween, Homecoming, or Revelation, or even share an overview of the indisputably rad student calendar for November. But I wanted to write about something that’s been on my mind over the past two weeks. Guess this gorgeous, chilly rain made me a little reflective this morning!

Thanks to this one glorious mash-up (Lana Del Rey’s Without You and Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams) and the new emojis, it’s been a really great two weeks since my last post. But it’s not quite all business as usual on my end. We’re past midterm season, which means I’m closer to the end of this semester than the beginning, closer to being a second-semester junior than to being a sophomore. Hmm. That’s a terrifying prospect, and it just sunk in this past week.

At first, I credited the Cohen Career Center’s email blast with creating this awareness that I’m over halfway done with my time here, that I need to finish strong, all that jazz. While these emails certainly encourage me to think more about the future, they aren’t the only contributing factor. My decision on Monday to complete a B.A. in Government with a double major in English, after all, definitely made me think about saying that combination aloud to a potential employer. Besides just the Career Center and majors, October provided countless other reasons to be more aware of the time, each of which deserves its own blog post and then some: the thesis I want to write on the history of medicine; my involvement in the hiring process for a new professor in the Government Department; soul-searching about graduate programs; the local election that one of my sorority sisters, a woman in my pledge class, is running in as a candidate. (To learn more about Colleen Heberle and her campaign to represent Williamsburg as the Soil and Water Conservation District Commissioner, check out The StudentImpact on Facebook!) The point is, I am, for better or worse, more aware than ever that there are certain doors closing and opening, responsibilities and rewards out there that might need a year or two to unfold properly; I am thinking hard(er than usual) about The Future, and that’s obviously and frankly scary if you’re not ready. I can only really make sense of that awareness and the process of preparing through one of my classic—‘iconic’ seems to be pushing it—ampersand titles.

Just like I wondered in my last post, where do I need to say yes, please, and where can I say no, thank you? Or, as my timeline suddenly grows from assignments due next week to a thesis that I’ll defend in the spring of 2017, where do I need to step up and where do I need to scale back to be ready for whatever’s next? I’ve never talked with a professional at the Career Center about this, and I think this week is as good a time as ever!

In my next post, the first one for my November, I’ll let you know how it goes! I also plan to share the highlights of the next two weeks, which will most likely include more meetings with potential Government faculty members, another trip to Richmond, some quality time with the existing literature on my anticipated thesis topic, and roundtable discussions on diversity and identity, hopefully with a bit more of campus activities (and less of my own personal academic journey) this time. Stay tuned!