setbacks

My celebration was a bit premature.

So in this post, I was congratulating myself on a job well done that had not yet actually been done. I had a goal and a plan and everything was set in motion but then life happened. Any my incredibly ambitious strategy was put to the wayside over something that I thought was more important (I still do, in fact). But the result is that I will no longer be meeting my goal of graduating by December. This isn't a huge deal. My diploma will arrive in the mail in April instead of January. So what? In the grand scheme of things, that's really not a big difference, right?

But here's the deal: this is not an excuse to let my goal slip further away. Dropping one term of classes makes me want to drop another and another. I've done it before. I'll tell myself that I'll pick them back up again "when I feel like it" or when I'm "ready". 

I'm young I should be living life instead of spending my free time taking classes and reading about things that I will forget within a month. Think of all the plays I've missed because I couldn't commit to a rehearsal schedule! Pretty soon I'm going to be out of the age range of 90% of lead female roles, and won't I regret that? I'm not even studying a defined course, how I can be sure that college is even going to improve my career prospects? The $30,000+ dollars that I've spent on my degree could be in a savings account right now working towards a down payment on a house instead of squandered on some giant, governmental business... 

So anyway it can be easy to convince myself to skip a term or two and let that lead to more until I'm 8 years into a 4 year degree without a whole lot to show for it. But that's not what is happening this time. This is a minor setback that will remain a minor setback. One small concession is not a platform for other concessions to join the party and that miasma of brain rot does not affect the goal I have set out for myself. Education is important. For many careers, a degree is a necessity. I told myself a long time ago that, no matter what, I was going to get a college diploma. So setbacks be damned, I AM GETTING THAT THING! RAWR!