Alive again

I am officially done with the semester...except of geek extra-curricular work: research and reading books from the library (but that's for pleasure). I cannot believe this first semester is over..I keep repeating that, it's not good. But I don't feel that satisfation of a completed semester, I feel like there's something I have forgotten to do, some assignment, some handout I missed. I think it's because I felt I had not learned this semester. Sure, I got new words to put add to my SLP terminology, and I got more clinicial experience (barely). But I don't feel I have added any significant piece of knowledge, perhaps I sieved it out. I think I've developed life lessons, such as being professionally friendly with peers and professors, and knowing how to act when you really hate the situation but really need to do well in it, knowing how to keep a neutral yet positioned stance when you're caught in the middle of backstabbing, knowing how to live offcampus, how to go after what you really want and set priorities. I guess it's been a semester of heart knowledge, rather than head knowledge. Somehow I feel cheated out of the academic experience, but perhaps this is what grad school is about. Perhaps next semester will be of new knowledge. I have a suspicion that there's a secret delight and superiority complex that this place has to keep the students nervous and in awe of the greatness of the unknown that we don't know but they do. Tuition has gone up 15%, hopefully, they won't increase it anymore for next academic year, cause I can't pay it. I feel dead, not living, not knowing, just breathing. The semester is over but I haven't done much, perhaps this is my own fault.

I went through my craft box while trying to figure out Christmas gifts and the like. I found the papers from my Hungary semester, our group's collective essays and journal entries, and my own papers. I think about that experience a lot. Is it healthy to dwell on it? I do realize it's over and I move on, but every time I think about it, I just find such pleasure and it calms me down. I read my papers, they were good, I write good. I don't think I write as good now, my creativity has just gone downhill, actually, I noticed the aesthetic quality of my writing has gone down since high school...perhaps it's the thing about the older we get, the more limited our minds become once out of childhood. That semester was the one I studied the books and lectures the least and came out a genius. Maybe I can make the arguement that I'm an experiential learner (get me those clinic hours!) and quit classes. Looking back, I am honest when I say that was the semester that I felt most alive. I remember really being in the moment, feeling what I was doing, experiencing with my mind still in my head, grounded yet learning. Alive, truly living. Yet, this can happen anywhere, right...I mean, it's a choice to make, to be alive, to live. Passion, that's it. Passion.