I've been in sort of a funk lately. I think it has to do with the fact that I'm about to go back to school. I'm realizing more and more that this year will be qualitatively different than last. I told Joshua this morning that it's fairly easy to do well in grad school when you are just taking classes and teaching. But, now that I actually have to be a productive member of the department, I'm scared. The other day, a professor emailed me and asked me to do him a favor. He wanted to know about the family structure of adoptive families and, knowing that I'm interested in the topic, he decided to ask me to look at this one survey that I had used before and let him know stuff. I panicked. I managed to pull a slight bit of meaningful data out of it for him, and sent it off via email today. He responded with thanks and a follow-up question that I'm not quite sure how to answer.

Anyway, the whole episode has made it painfully clear to me that I'm not really a "student" anymore as far as the department is concerned. Grad students are treated as colleagues and the expectations are high. I don't feel ready to rise to the occasion. Part of it is that my heart really isn't in it right now. I don't have a very clear goal toward which I'm working. I don't know what I want to do post master's degree. I was in the lab today working on said project for said professor and I was talking to a colleague of mine whom I really like. He is a Christian - actually he's a minister who is working toward a PhD. We talked about a lot of things this afternoon, then he asked the million dollar question "What are you going to do when you are done here?" I said, "Well, Tony, I'm sort of a plan as I go type of girl, so I don't really know." He laughed and said, "That might have been ok a few years ago, but you need to figure it out now!" I realized that maybe he is right. Maybe adulthood means clearly defined goals, plans for the future, saving for down-payments on a house, coming up with a permanent location. But, maybe it also means, living on the edge, doing spontaneous things, changing your plans as life changes, etc. I haven't really figured it out yet. If I can't even nail down a topic for my thesis, how am I supposed to know what I want to do after I finish it???

I miss college, when the point was to get an A on a paper, and maybe impress your professor. Here, it's not so much the grade that counts, but the initiative, the innovation, and the passion. Don't forget productivity! The best grad students are the ones who work on papers not required for a class. I'm not there yet. I don't know if I'm ready to be. Deep down inside, I wish that I was that student. But, I don't know quite how to be her.