Finished my first semester of grad school and I am tired. To make matters worse I feel so far behind on my reading. School is one place you can feel fast and slow at the same time. I look around at all these first year grad students who seem to have it all together and I feel like it's freshmen year all over again. What is my purpose? Why do I love what I love and what is an acceptable answer when people ask me "what do you want to do with the rest of your life?" or "with that degree?" Usually I get by with a smile; sometimes I reluctantly add "I just love researching and writing." But I never have a concrete answer. People expect me to have my future carved in the same rock as my headstone. I shutter at the thought. I'm studying Economics, a social science, not aerospace engineering where the destination seems to go in one direction.

It was quite an exhausting semester, and to add to the exhaustion I had to wake up every morning and look at the growing pile of books I haven't gotten around to reading (and in some cases editing) yet. The pile just kept growing. I didn't think trees came from books, I always thought it was the other way around, but my room resembles a forest.

My dog enjoys the extra attention I'm able to give him now. He likes that I can stay up until 1 petting him. We've finally entered the world where he is my world. He's a pretty cute world so I don't mind.

I just can't tell if I am filled with excitement or stress. I have a month of free time to focus on reading and writing, so of course all I want to do is read and write, but since I had so much potential energy building up over the course of the semester I'm worried I won't be able to use it all and feel incomplete when I start econometrics II at the end of January.