Post Grad Blues

Congratulations to me! I completed my Master's! This is how I have celebrated my first week of post-grad life:

Monday: Realize I don't have to go to class, treat self to mani-pedi.
Tuesday: Get home from work, type up a few things, then wallow in weird self-pity nap for next 4 hours.
Wednesday: Go to salon and chop off all my hair, enter into manically giddy mood.
Thursday: Give self good shake, roll up sleeves, draft this blog post detailing the arrival at following conclusions.

I'm the type of gal who lives her life from adventure to adventure, which is perhaps why big achievements and completion of goals leave me feeling mysteriously blue.

Last week, I officially graduated with a Master's from Georgia State University in Early Childhood Education. The past few years have been so essential and transformative, it's almost hard to track the growth I have made from the person I was to the person I am: so much of it has become intuitive.

The things I said I wanted from a graduate degree, I have achieved in spades:

• Teaching skillz; I have theory, research, methods, and strategies coming out the wazoo and I'm not afraid to use them!  
• Confidence: I pity the person who strikes up an education-based conversation with me... they are guaranteed to have their ear very cheerfully talked off. 
• "Professional clout" as I recall referring to it as: This is a product of combining the first two, the sense that I know what I am doing and I have the background and experience to push for what I believe.

This has landed me in strange new territory with a strange new question: What next?

For two years, "next" always referred to graduation. Then I graduated. So, what next? Now that I have no more assigned readings to complete, papers to write, or classes to attend, my afternoon schedule is dizzyingly light. And what should have felt like a huge culmination was somewhat anti-climactic, perhaps because I did not attend any ceremonies or sign any oaths in blood. I don't know what I expected would mark my transition from student to graduate, and although I smile and receive the congratulations of well-wishers and assure them "yes I am so happy, I am so relieved to be done!", I am hiding a weird secret sadness. Despite how I know I should feel, the truth is that the extra hours in my post-graduation schedule have felt oppressive rather than liberating.

Hanging over the whole affair is that same sticky question: Seriously, Katie, What next? It's an exciting question in its open-endedness and limitless possibility, yet a frightening one in its sheer broadness and lack of direction. One thing I have learned in my reflective practice is that one's weaknesses tend to remain one's weaknesses, and lacking concrete vision, structure, and direction has been a longterm challenge for me. Without the guidance of school telling me what to learn next and where to point my energy, I worry I will fizzle out in a beautiful burst of earnest flame.

Enter: REALITY Pro 2015, a 10 day professional development experience in Israel for education reformers.

(via REALITY Pro website)

As I receive the pre-trip information, (listening in on conference calls that describe things like leadership building exercises with sheep herding in the Jordan valley, receiving pre-trip assignments like writing statements of purpose and reflection) my little academic's soul is soothed with the structure and familiarity of it all. Hooray! I get to enter into intellectual territory and adventure, with guides and facilitators scaffolding my journey! I get to write and converse and be challenged and moved! It is just the lift I need to finish up my year of teaching and look ahead to the next one with some semblance of purpose and drive.

While I know I can't expect this trip to magically cure all of my blues, I do see it as a vital next step in cultivating my post-graduate habits of mind. I want to keep asking questions and investigating answers, challenging myself to be my best self, and serving young minds and the global community. And now that I know the steps to taking action, I have no excuses. Getting on a plane to go across the world to herd sheep and climb mountains is one thing, but meeting the likeminded educators and stakeholders from around the world will be quite another, and may just be the push I need to move from Post-Grad Blues to Post-Grad Action. I hope you will keep visiting this space to follow me on this journey. In the meantime, you can watch my extremely dorky application video below and help me remind myself about the teacher and change-agent I am striving to be.