Chrisonomicon

Tuesday, April 9, 2002

I made a decision today that could quite possibly change my entire life or at least alter the direction I'm heading in anyway. I'm not going back to school. Not for a while. And I'm certainly not taking the class that began today, known as Modern Operating Systems.

I walk in and the entire classroom is grey: grey chairs, grey walls, grey carpet, grey lights. Even the instructor is wearing a grey striped shirt and grey pants and as I look down I realize that I am too, except for my jeans, which are blue. He drones on about operating systems and I rub my eyes fervently, trying to get the blur out of my eyes.

I slowly talk myself out of it as I sit there in a simmering frustration at having to take the class a second time around, only this time as a graduate course, and the conclusion crescendoes until it is a pounding pressure behind my eyes: I'm not going to do this.

It was all I could do to sit through the rest of the session as not to seem rude or flippant of the instructor's efforts and, after my mind had been made up, I thought about my options should I drop out. After all, graduate school is the sole reason I'm still in my hometown and I have no problem using that as an excuse when people ask me what I'm still doing here, or when I ask myself the same question.

But now the frustration mounts, as I contemplate the implications of this decision. Where am I and why am I here? What am I doing with my life and what do I want all of this to mean? Core questions that bombard my brain at every turn.

I feel relieved now that I've made the decision final in my head, and as this seems to be a common theme lately, I'm going to stick to my guns and see it through. I only hope Mason wasn't right in writing, "When God punishes you, he gives you what you want."