Tag: graduate school

sober lifestyle

Redirection

jenwielgusjournalism

Graduation has seemed like a forgone conclusion, and a bit of an anticlimax, for much of these last few months. But if I needed a reason to get pumped about crossing the stage in cap and gown this weekend, all I needed to do was remember: No more summer sessions, with their excruciating four-hour classes and overwhelming onslaught of assignments! No more group projects or presentations where I’m at the mercy of other people’s shitty organizational and time management skills!

No more Wednesdays arriving at work before 5AM and driving home from class after 8PM! 🙏🏻

Those were the jubilant thoughts I summoned to make me smile as I took my last stroll around campus last week on my very last hellish hump day. Shuffling along the lake- and farm-side nature trail where I’d decompressed after many a long, emotional day at practicum/internship, and looking up at the vibrant green trees that have always calmed and comforted my jacked-up nervous system, I felt a bittersweet mixture of melancholy and relief.

I “did the thing,” as we said in my counseling cohort. I successfully walked this grad school path and took my first baby steps into the mental health field. I “made it through the woods,” if you will, and now, it’s time to pause and take in the scene/enjoy the view, then keep walking on whatever path reveals itself to me next.

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sober lifestyle

Joy

jenwielgusjournalism

The first few pictures of me with my capstone poster showed me “smiling” with a closed mouth, and my friend called me out: “No no…let’s take a real one where you look happy!”

At that point, it hit me. 💥 🤯 I’ve been acting like a joyless ghoul over the past several months.

I’ve been a raging insecurity monster as I near the end of school and internship, having not yet secured a full-time job. I’ve been obsessively comparing myself to everyone around me and allowing my baser issues (impatience, envy, suspicion, resentment) to hijack my system. I’ve been behaving like some kind of clueless greenhorn who hasn’t been diligently studying the art of sober living, gaining clarity and awareness like a champ, developing emotional maturity (at a snail’s pace, but still…) and working her ass off, on herself, over the past five years.

Despite all my growth, I’ve not been seeking proper perspective as of late, or practicing gratitude, or enjoying the ride. In other words, I’m batting 0-for-everything that makes me my best self.

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sober lifestyle

Permission

jenwielgusjournalism
In the immortal words of Clarence the Angel, “no (wo)man is a failure who has friends” 😇

I formally resigned from my counseling gig on Wednesday, giving three weeks’ notice, even though my departure from the clinic has been a foregone conclusion for a few months.

I’ve felt like a ghost in the halls, or the walking dead — invisible, ignored — and that’s just as well, because “breaking up” with my clients, as my beautiful friend [name redacted] put it in her text message 👀⬆️, has hit me harder than I imagined it would. I’ve been carrying around a lot of grief and sadness, and it seems intent on leaking out, despite my efforts to contain it.

When I got that text on Friday morning, I was sequestered in my therapy office, puffy-faced and sniffly after spending most of Thursday crying in my bed, and I didn’t think I had any more tears left in me, but my phone buzzed, and whoosh! 😭

Guess I won’t be showing much improvement on my final internship eval under “managing emotions.” My lack of a poker face rubbed them the wrong way from Day One, and while I’m never gonna be hip to the blank slate approach, it’s clear that this will continue to be a “growth area” — euphemism for “glaring weakness” — in my next job.

No, before you ask, I don’t know what that is yet!

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sober lifestyle

Birthday

jenwielgusjournalism

I called out menopausal the other day.

I said “sick,” of course, because my supervisor isn’t even 30 yet, and if some of my elders look at me like I’m a freak when I try to describe what I’m going through, a kid sure ain’t gonna get it.

My favorite is when people go, “Oh, you’re too young to be going through menopause!” 🙄

To be accurate, it’s called peri-menopause, a kind of living purgatory where you ride the insane “change of life” roller coaster for 7-10 years while still needing to buy tampons. There’s no official age when it hits or boilerplate experience of the impact, although the list of possible symptoms will put hair on your che…sorry, I mean your chin.

So you can see why it’s just easier to say “sick.”

The way I have been feeling between the 18th and 26th days of every monthly cycle over the past year or so, perimenopause might as well be the bubonic plague.

There are days I feel so mentally scattered and emotionally unstable that I have no business putting myself in close proximity to other people, for fear of some “Temple of Doom” shit going down. Those people might be counted on to provide a reference for future job prospects!

Kaaleeemaaaaah! Good thing for y’all I’ve become a pescatarian in my old age! 👹
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sober lifestyle

Insecurity

jenwielgusjournalism

Someone recently asked me if I went to rehab to get sober, and I was like, “No, but I wish I could go now.”

I mean, generally speaking, there’s nothing I would rather do than put responsible adult life on “pause,” indefinitely, to go read, reflect, hike, do yoga, get therapized, yak with likeminded folks about recovery, philosophy, history, humanity…which, incidentally, is what I do with my friend Kim on our “Living Sober” podcast. It’s worth a listen, if you’re into all that deep stuff, too! 🗣️🎙️👂🏻

I should probably warn you that some off-color language occasionally slips outta my mouth on the pod. In the only listener feedback we’ve received (from someone other than my mom), an emailer took issue with my “use of profanity.” 🙊

Figures! It’s been that kind of season lately, when my square-peg edges seem particularly rough, and all the world seems especially round. Like any good self-protective human who feels cornered, and like any recovering addict who buried their old trusty escape hatch, I find myself really yearning to run away and leave it all behind. Thus, I guess, the rehab fantasy. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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sober lifestyle

Mediocrity

jenwielgusjournalism

Five minutes into the first class of the final semester, I realized I was done with being in school.

I mean, it was fine to be treated like a fresh-faced noob when this all started three years ago and the experience of academia as a “nontraditional student” was novel; I was so caught up in the adjustment to a full-time job/class/homework schedule that I had no perspective on anything. But to be older and wiser and sitting on achy hips in a plastic chair past my bedtime, dissecting yet another syllabus and engaging in childish icebreakers like, “Tell us what grade you want to get in this class”? 🙄

I at least tried to make this futile exercise interesting. “I’m going to say a ‘B,’ because I used to freak out about this stuff, and now, I’m trying to be more chill about everything.”

B’s, by the way, are the lowest you can go in this Master’s program and still pass, but to suggest that it’s OK to want that was apparently the wrong answer. My professor seemed taken aback, and quickly clarified: she wanted us all to be good little grade-grubbers gunning for A’s! My classmates complied, upping the absurdity ante as they went around the room: “I want an A-plus plus PLUS!” 🙄🙄🙄

The recovering perfectionist/all-or-nothing alcoholic in me wanted to scream, “WAKE UP, YE CITIZENS OF LA-LA LAND! YOU’RE BEING SOLD A LIE!”

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sober lifestyle

Resentment

jenwielgusjournalism

I’d love to tell you that I’ve been using my winter break from grad school to work on the capstone presentation that’s required of all master’s candidates or search for jobs I might want to apply for after graduation…but I’ve mostly been sprawled out on my couch, punching remote buttons in an escapist search for good distractions.

I’ve caught myself barking at the TV more than usual.

For example, just yesterday, I hit on a few old “Intervention” episodes where these families were desperate to get their loved ones to stop drinking. And yet, based on what the “before” scenes showed us, the parents and/or siblings had no qualms about sitting around boozing it up with the “problem drinkers” at gatherings or out at bars. I’m watching this, like, “How the hell do you expect this person to beat their addiction when you’re shoving their drug of choice — and your freedom to imbibe — in their face all the time?”

Pro tip: “Do as I say, not as I do,” is NOT an effective approach to coaxing someone into recovery.

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sober lifestyle

Procrastination

jenwielgusjournalism

My jogging route includes a few steep(ish) hills that never seem to feel easier, no matter how many times I scale them, so I allow myself a break at the traffic light leading from the park back into my neighborhood. I typically have a gorgeous view of daybreak as I shuffle up the final incline, and on Halloween morning, I lingered a little longer at the stopping point to catch my breath and snap the attached pic.

That sky illustrates how my life feels right now — no matter how you look at it. From the “glass half full” perspective, I’m currently, temporarily, mired in murkiness and doubt, but there’s light, hope, room to breathe and seemingly limitless possibility waiting in the distance. On the other hand, I could say I’m floating around on the light side while the dark clouds of reality are looming, creeping in, getting closer every day.

My grad school “commencement” is May 11, 2024, which I suppose could be the line of demarcation in this scenario. The plan is to cross it, grab that diploma, then take a beat to decide on next steps for my counseling career.

I have hundreds of internship hours to log and research papers/final projects to turn in prior to that date. There’s also the minor matter of passing the National Counseling Exam, which students in DelVal’s program are somehow expected to do during their second-to-last semester in school while they’re trying to log all those required hours and turn in all those aforementioned assignments.

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