Approximately 2.5 years ago I started out the journey on my second Master’s degree…yes one was not punishment and torture enough, I decided to go back for more. I do these things not just to torture myself, but also to keep myself busy. I’m that type of person that if I am idle and in the case of the military life, living separated from your spouse, I will drive everyone insane: from my husband to my family and friends. Therefore, for everyone’s sanity, I generally have to take classes after work so that I’m completely pooped out and won’t bother anyone.
The operative word there being pooped, as in I always underestimate exactly how physically, mentally, and emotionally draining “keeping busy” can be… especially since when I began the program, I was, ahem, seeing the end of days as a 30-something. About midway through the program I found myself telling my husband, this is the last higher education thing I’m doing: it’s a bad sign when you start feeling sleepy by 8:00 pm and the lecture only started two hours ago, or when you seriously don’t really want to get out of bed on a Saturday for an 8+ hour class from 7:30 am to 5 pm, or when you start getting irritated with the 20-something members of your group because they work nights and are amping away at the group text message at 11:30 pm and you’re the cranky one having to remind them that “some of us fools” work day shift and need to be sleeping right about now.
The other half of the equation is that we have two very bouncy (read needy, lovely, but needy) boxer girls who have tons of energy and need mama to help burn off all of that bouncy goodness. It’s kind of like coming home from class and your kids are still up and bouncing off of the walls. That’s what made this second master’s journey doubly hard and that much more important once I finished it, my husband was away and I had to suck it up, pull up my bootstraps and literally work all day, go to class at night, take care of our girls, and function (sort of). I do have to admit though, having the girls helped me push through those moments where I literally looked into their eyes and said I’m too old for this shit…the look I got back along with the big heavy paw on my leg, or my arm said no mama you got this…we promise we will keep our slobber off of your computer for 5 seconds.
Luckily I managed to literally crawl over the finish line, in December I received my second master’s degree…now my husband and my dad call me masters squared. Seeing as how I’m so awesome with math, yea right, it took me a little bit to get the joke.
los Garcia en Hawaii 