My Mother's (strange) Advice

Hello world and all who inhabit it,

So. It's been a while. Like, a year. Over a year. I apologize for that.

Look, let's be honest for a second. As of right now, this time in my life, this blog is not going to have steady uploads. I've got a lot of stuff going on and this isn't my focus. The whole reason I started this blog was just to get my own thoughts out and help my anxiety, not to start a blog or gain followers.

(I looked at the stats. I'm not starting any revolution here.)

So please don't look to this blog for any source of routine frequency. It won't be there. I will probably start writing in here a little more often to get rid of the amount of stress that has built up in the past few months, but I'm not promising a timetable. Sorry about that...

I'm in Ireland right now. I don't think I mentioned that in a post. I'm over here studying to get my master's degree. And let me tell you- I hate it.

Ireland is fine. The people are great and the traveling around is awesome. But the school- the school is the worst.

Let me explain something first: I have always loved school. All through public school and my undergrad at BYU, I would actually get sad when summer came around and I wasn't able to be at school for three months. Even when the curriculum wasn't easy, school, to me, has always been enjoyable. So for me to say that I hate this university is actually a big deal.

I could go into many reasons why I don't like this school- the program, the grading system, the pretentious attitude of the whole college, but that's another post for a later day. Right now I want to talk about how it's been effecting my life and how I want that to change.

Coming over to Ireland was hard. Harder than I expected for much, much longer than I expected. I had a lot of things go wrong the first month I was here and it didn't set the whole thing off on a good foot. And then, once I found out how much I didn't like the school, it just got worse. I'm about 6 months into this adventure and I still find myself crying about the whole thing. Which normally means my mom also gets to hear that crying, because I Skype/call her often with these worries. The other day, we had another similar talk about how I feel like I should be enjoying this more and I'm wasting my time and I'm tired of always feeling sad, and my mom asked this question:

"If you didn't hate the school, would you still be questioning your decision to go?"

And the answer is, "no."

I say that this has been full of hard things and terrible times, and it has, but it's also been full of great things. I've gone to so many countries. I've made some great memories. I've been given an amazing experience. Yes, it's been hard, but it's also been awesome.

The only thing that's been ruining that is this ridiculous school. Granted, this school is a big part of my time over here. But my being over here is so much more than just this stupid school. So I told her "no." If this school wasn't in the picture, or at least wasn't this terrible, I would probably be enjoying most of my time here.

My mom then proceeded to give me some advice that I never thought I'd hear from her:

"Blow it off."

She said that I need to learn that this school doesn't matter in the long run. It's not worth ruining this whole experience. She said that I won't be happy until I accept that, and if I can't calm down about it while I'm in school, then just blow it off.

Now, I don't plan on blowing school off. I made it this far, so I want to finish. But I see her point. I will try hard in my program and I will turn in my best work, but if this school is making me cry so often; making me physically sick to my stomach; making me question my whole European adventure, then it's not worth it.

No matter how much it may think so, this school is not that important.

So, that's my update. I have been working on my degree, and stressed out of my mind, and spending the last few months trying to figure out why I felt the desire to even come over here in the first place.

Basically, I'm living life in my twenties. Confused, scared, happy, and frustrating. The complete package. Did someone say these were the golden years?

RB