Sunday Night With John: The Finish Line

I hit send on the button and there it was, confirmation I had just signed up for the last two “classes” requirements to finish my Master’s Degree. Readings and Research is all I have left on the agenda, minus the last four papers due in Environmentally Policy. That class is well over half over so I’m rounding up and counting it as done in my head. Quick side note, environmental policy is really hard and I don’t think I will be searching out any jobs in that field. Lots of people need too, but it will not be this guy. The point today is that I can see, smell, and hear the graduate school finish line and what a glorious sight it is.  

I love training for a marathon but I dislike running. During my 20 mile run yesterday, I spent at least 15 of miles talking myself out of quitting. It was windy and rainy and there are a ton of activities I would rather be doing then running for 3 hours praying I don’t chaff so bad I can’t walk the next day. The reason I run and train for a marathon is the mental work out I have to go through to reach the finish line. My goals have always been long term. Become a public speaker, open my own abused teen rehabilitation center (working on it) and hiking the Superior Hiking Trail, all are long term goals where I can not see the finish line. I must trust that one step and one action after another will produce an outcome moving me closer to the end.  Training and running a marathon builds that mental muscle to accomplish any task. No one crosses a marathon finish line by luck.

The same thing has happened in graduate school. A two year, no break program caused me great joy and heart ache over the last two years. I remembered the parts of school I liked, reading and learning about historical moments, and the philosophy that went into land mark decisions. I cursed out the subject of math again for the one-thousandth time in my life. Math is stupid. I had to talk myself into attending class on numerous occasion. And last summer trying to balance two grad school classes, a 10 hour a week internship, and a 45 hour a week job was a brutal gauntlet. I forget what free time was but as I hit send to confirm I was signed up for my last two requirements, signaled the home stretch and a burst of momentum arrived. The moment when all the hard work crescendos and morphs into an accomplishment. When all the mental gymnastics of writing one more line in a paper, fighting through mile 18, which was all uphill, and when I’m slated to speak in a new state this summer (Tennessee), the feeling of it was all worth it arrives. There isn’t a better feeling in the world than crossing the finish line and telling the side of my brain that said I can’t do it, that I did it.