Life Update

Firstly, I'm not dead.

I make no excuses for another 6 month absence from the blogosphere.  Last time this happened, I spent most of those 6 months lying on the couch in my living room hating my job, hating my location, and more or less hating my life in what I can only describe as the most depressed I've ever been.  For those keeping score, that was North Carolina.  This time around I wasn't depressed, I was just focused on everything but ye olde blogger.  A week without posting becomes a month, a month becomes a semester, and we end up here. 

So, in the intervening months since my last posting I have done a number of important things.  I wrote my master's thesis... Men's Identity Development in College: A Conceptual Model with Recommendations for Intervention.   I finished my master's degree and graduated from graduate school with a Master's of Education.  And, starting August 1, I will have a new job at Valparaiso University. 

That all sounds well and good, but it now way can explain how much work all of those things required.  First off let me say that grad school wasn't that hard... certainly no more difficult than most of my undergraduate coursework.  But this last semester was rough.  I basically wrote a chapter of my thesis each month, chapter 1 due at the end of January, chapter 2 in February, and chapter 3 in March.  The final finished thesis was due in mid-April, and I think I ended up with three drafts of each chapter through the editing and revisions process.  All the while I was applying for jobs and interviewing at 2 conferences - one in Wisconsin and one in Boston at the end of February and early March.  Not to mention still having to do my job and taking two other classes.  It wasn't hard, it was just time consuming.

All through this, my world became very small.  I've always been one to live in my own head at times, and being so focused on things this semester meant the rest of the world outside of my thesis and other grad school work kind of passed me by.  But, here I am, done now.  I'm moving out of my apartment next weekend, unfortunately to temporary storage and my parents' house for a few weeks until my apartment is ready in Valparaiso.  

I'm in the rather enviable position of graduating from college (again) without having to leave.  I'm just off to another university.