Hello Life – Remember Me, It’s Ashley

Carolina, Megumi and I celebrating THE END of first semester with ice cream!

I have successfully completed my first trimester in Graduate School.  I can say, without a doubt, that was the most unpleasant race to a finish I have ever participated, and although I have crossed the finish line, my body still is all too familiar to the pain it endured the past month.

Now – for those of you skeptics who think I am over exaggerating (Dad), let me try to paint my world for the last month.  Because of the floods, my semester was crammed and condensed even more than the original plan of a 2 year Master’s crammed into one year.  I found myself taking midterms within the same month of my final exams and term papers, all the while still taking a minimum six hours of class every day.  This translated to over eighty pages of written term papers, four class presentations, six proposals, two group projects, and three other submitted assignments with over a hundred and eight hours of class.

So, what did my life look like for the last thirty-five days?  (Of course I kept count!)  It consisted of – the library, class, canteen for a dazed recharge of food, the library, and 7 Eleven late night tuna fish sandwiches.  When I was in class, it was a grueling six hours of lecture, before I would pack my bag and head to the library, working until it closed.  On the weekends, when I didn’t have class, I would typically arrive at the library around 9am, work until 1pm, stumble to the cafeteria to try to refresh my brain or at least wake it up with some seriously spicy papaya salad, and then I would work until the library bell closing alarm would rattle, nearly giving me a heart attack, at 8pm.  Then, I went to 7 Eleven every night with Megumi and Carolina, to get our dinner which comprised of one pizza sandwich and one tuna fish sandwich.  Our days became a blur of papers, research and assignments, and soon those sandwiches at the end of the day became the highlight of the night.  In total, I had over 57.5 7 Eleven sandwiches, consumed over 30 papaya salads with sticky rice, and illegally ate over 18 pineapples in the library (they don’t allow food in there).

Megumi and I enjoying our 7 Eleven Sandwiches late one evening!

Despite all of the chaos, having made it to the other side, I am darn proud of what all of us were able to accomplish.  Most of the 26 of us have finished at this time, with a few others nearly complete.  I feel that the final papers that I wrote are some of my finest accomplishments in writing to date.  I have never been more proud of the amount of effort, thought, sweat, tears and toil that went into each and every word on those pages.  For me personally, the topics that I was able to write about were incredibly interesting, causing me to get lost for hours in material wanting to learn more.  This only further reinstated that I am in the right place, studying something I truly love.  My paper topics ranged from:

·        “Fanning the Embers of Marxist Idealism” - exploring whether instances of socialism and Marxism can exist in the current capitalist world

·        “Caste In Stone” – analyzing India’s universal education policy and how it transcribed to exclude Mumbai’s slum children, a population of over 9 million, and;

·        “Exploitation for Exaltation” – examining development projects that do not succeed, perhaps due to self-interest motives

There are a few others that I wrote but some were seen as controversial and I have withheld from including them on this public blog

For me – this was also a personal mile marker.  Every student loves to complain about how difficult their life is, or how many papers they have to write, or “you just don’t get how hard this is.”  While at Lehigh, I would have bitched with my classmates about how much work there was to do, how unfair life was, and how much life sucked.  I would have called my parents and complained about how hard school was, and get frustrated with them when they told me to ‘Suck it up and do your best.’  While I certainly cannot say I made it through thirty five days without complaining, I can say that I tackled this stress with a level of maturity I wasn’t quite sure I had and I’m not sure if it will come back!  But I treated each assignment as a challenge, acknowledged that it sucked, but realizing that once I made this acknowledgement, I could move on from complaining and start researching and writing.  I understand that this sounds like a novelty to most, and it is.  But it is very hard to do.

I wouldn’t be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel were it not for several people who were extremely supportive and behind me even when I was doubting.  Thank you so much for pushing me and giving me that extra kick when I needed it.

Here’s to doing it all over again in the second semester (which started two weeks ago already!)