Done!

Bllllrrrrrgggghhhhh sums up nicely how my brain feels right now. With a month of finals and final projects, back to back weekend field trips and 48 hours in New Haven between exams, I'm just happy I can still form sentences. Mostly.

Such a good semester though! And a great year. It's crazy to me how much I managed to squeeze into my head in the past nine months. I know most of the trees I see walking around town, depending on the street, which I love. And by love I mean LOVE. I'm proud of myself getting in with the USDA peeps and making friends with the Ecology lab to suss out what-all they do exactly. I started a vegetable garden finally for the first time ever. I can make an educated guess about why my chard leaves are turning purplish. Now I'm looking forward to what will hopefully be a somewhat laid back summer to try to sort it all out.

I'm getting cold feet about grad school again. The thought of committing to any one discipline gives me a yucky feeling, but I still really want to go. I just wish I could see something beyond the school part of it. Something beyond wanting a terminal degree as an end in itself. I just like knowing things to know them. And I want to know Everything.

I think my ideal life pursuit is to learn everything and then explain to people why this is this and that is that and what we should or could do about it and how. And ideally there would be presentations and lectures and photographs and writing and traveling and people-meeting and hand shaking and smiling and challenge involved.

I told someone today that I want to be John McPhee. Which is true. I do want to be John McPhee. I want to be John McPhee and Barbara Kingsolver and Jad Abumrad. If I do research, I want the world to be better for it. I think what I'm most best at is being excited about everything. At trying every new thing and remembering it. Or telling stories.

Sorta kinda also toying with the idea of landscape architecture, though. I might see if I can meet up with my Trees prof to chitty chat about what that means exactly and how one makes a living doing it. Hmm hmm hmm.