I have always been fascinated by blogs and people who keep blogs. Every other week I tell my mom about a new blog topic that I want to write and every time one of my friends makes a big decision (i.e. traveling, moving, accepting a new job, getting engaged) I yell at them, "you should keep a blog!" So I have decided to take my own advice and keep a blog!
To give this blog some background, I graduated from University of Maryland in May 2011 and started my life in the real world. I was incredibly lucky to have been involved with an organization in college that led directly to a job offer after college. Turns out that getting a job really is all about who you know, not what you know. In my case, as a result of my involvement with a fundraising-centered student organization on campus I was hired to do fundraising for the same cause. It was amazing to jump into a full-time position with a great salary and benefits. I was shocked that someone would pay me to help a cause that I cared so deeply about and would gladly have helped on a volunteer basis. Another idiom that turned out to be true, however, is that it can be hard to turn your passion into your career. When I was volunteering for the cause, I could make my own decisions about what I wanted to focus on and I could balance my passion with the other things in my life. When the same types of tasks became my job, there started to be a lot more rules and a lot more pressure. I constantly felt like I wasn't doing enough and in a small way, I started to resent the cause that I cared so much about. At a certain point, the only thing that kept me going to work was knowing that I would interact with college students who were the way I used to be- excited to make a difference and eager to learn. I owed it to these students to show up and be the mentor they deserved.
My anxiety towards the job started a line of questioning that I've heard is common for recent graduates- What am I doing with my life? Is this really what I want to be doing? Am I accomplishing the things I want to? Is this providing what I want and need? Who do I want to be in the future? How do I get there?
The answers came for me on a visit to a friend in graduate school at a university in Michigan. While there, I met her diverse group of friends who were studying the subjects of their interest. One such subject was higher education, a topic I had never really understood before. My new friends explained to me that higher education is basically all of the people who run a college or university but aren't faculty members. This includes the administrators, the admissions counselors, the academic advisers, study abroad planners, resident life staffers, student organization advisers, and so many more. They described a course of study and profession that focused wholly on the student experience outside of the classroom and aimed to create positive environments for students to grow. It sounded like everything I loved about college, my job, and my personality all wrapped up into one!
With the deadlines for the masters programs set at less than a month from the time of my discovery, I had a big decision to make. Should I apply this year or wait another year? I made the extremely rash decision (a highly unrecommended one for anyone who would like to keep their sanity) to quit my job and apply to school. I spent all of December 2011 researching schools, preparing my personal statements, speaking to professionals, and ultimately submitting my applications.
Which puts me up to now- January 2012 with no job, grad school decisions looming, an apartment I can't afford, and a lot of major decisions ahead of me. On the whole I am very lucky to have the stability in my life to make this large of a move and I am so much happier than I was. With an excess of time on my hands and a lot of decisions to process, I decided to start a blog to help me (and possibly others who are struggling with similar issues) to work through everything.
So, why nine months? Most people associate this amount of time with having a baby and while I can confidently say that I will not be having a baby nine months from now, this is the inspiration for my blog title. Assuming that September is the month that most university fall semester's start, I will hopefully be embarking on my next big journey nine months from now. Just like a baby goes through the stages from conception to birth, I hope that these nine months provide a lot of growth for me and prepare me to enter the new world I've chosen. In this time, I will hear back from schools, go on visit weekends, wrap up things at home, prepare for my first move out of Maryland, and select my new home for the next 2 years. It is a fragile process and just like with baby, there is a possibility that I won't make it. I may not get accepted to any schools. I may not get any money from schools and therefore be unable to attend. Scariest of all, I may just be too nervous to go and refuse to take the next step. Regardless of what happens, these next 9 months have the potential to develop into a new life for me and I want to embrace every moment of that. I hope that this blog can be the platform to embrace the moments, a memoir of an important time in my life, and ideally a haven for others in search of guidance.
Thank you to anyone who reads this and feel free to give me any feedback along the way.
Cheers to babies and big decisions!
Amy
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