Hello and happy Spring! Last week, Waltham weather decided to give us a quick tease of warmth before reverting back to the cold and rain. Seeing as winter is my favorite season, I am in no rush to get to summer. However, it was nice to experience a bit of sunshine.
Today, I am going to share about something I accomplished this semester that I feel proud of: I made it through midterm season! Now you may be thinking, “Calah… really? That’s the accomplishment you want to highlight?” And the answer is, YES! From March 1st to March 31st, I completed 4 papers, 2 slide decks, 1 accounting midterm test, a 3 year budget projection spreadsheet, ended a Module 1 class, and started a new Module 2 class, all while working 2 jobs, attending board meetings as a board fellow, and engaging in extracurricular activities. *cue applause*
March 2023 was no doubt the longest month of my academic career dating back to preschool. But we made it! And before we start to panic about finals, which literally begin next week, I want to take a moment and celebrate!
When you’re going grad school, oftentimes it can be hard to recognize growth. Waking up and doing almost the same thing every day tends to feel more like just going through the motions rather than frequent eureka moments. This is exponentially true during midterms. When you’re focused on meeting the next deadline, you can lose sight of the knowledge you’re gaining along the way. Sometimes it isn’t until you get to apply your new skills to tasks outside of the classroom that you really see the fruits of your labor. This leads me to the accomplishment I really want to highlight.
A couple of weeks ago, I was on a coordinating call for my job as a program manager at a local non profit. The team was discussing the need to hire a few new people and wanted to figure how changes in hours and pay may affect our long term budget. *Cue my moment to shine.* My boss asks me if I can work on doing some budget projections to figure out the best course of action. Now, had he asked me this in January, I probably would have been able to figure something out over multiple days and through some tears. But it just so happened that the next week I had a midterm due in financial management around budgeting out a new three year program for a non profit organization. So what may have taken me days in January really only took me an hour and a half in March because I had been learning and practicing everything I needed to know for the last two months. *sheds a tear of joy*
I cannot express how great it felt to be able to immediately apply what I was learning in class. Like I said, when your days are filled with reading, Powerpoints, and lectures, it can be difficult to see how all of the learning pieces come together, or how all the theoretical and hypothetical will translate to “the real world”. But that moment of realization was also the moment of reassurance I needed to boost me through the rest of the semester.
So! I made it through March, a little wiser and with the gray stress hairs to match. But I celebrate those hairs with joy. They’re the proof in the pudding. And with that I will bid you all adieu for now. Don’t forget to step outside, get some Vitamin D, and watch the flowers bloom during this lovely Spring season.