College Tuition: Paid

Eeek … I’m committed. Even if I’m a commitment phobe.

General Microbiology and General, Organic & Biochemistry. Just saying those words gives me chills. And yes, I have started grinning when talking about going back to school. It’s beginning to feel like another adventure: my 2010 collision course with life.

Which is much preferable to the near head-on collision earlier this week with a UPS truck. I was parked and he was going “90 billion miles per hour” per Regina, volunteer for the day.

Things are going well, real well. I have 63 cameras out in the field, 17 new sites and three resamples for the month of January; 28 private landowners and seven public land sites spread out in six counties.

I’m fully moved in and settled. For the first time in my life, I have a giant queen-sized bed all to myself. And a dresser … my clothes are actually unpacked … and a desk! Well the dresser and desk came with the room, so did the bed actually. And I borrowed the chair, the lamp, the cooler a.k.a. bedside table. I’m paying rent and tuition in addition to monthly car payments. I’m feeling both like a grownup and a college kid again.

I’m been voted the woman of the house by my roommates, who guessed I was older and thought I was 25. Yeah, that didn’t make me feel old at all. But the woman of the house has her young ones recycling and drinking dry red wines. I’m still working on washing dirty dishes within 48 hours of use, and why a diet of ramen and hot dogs is vile.

Hopefully they were only joking when they suggested an “Ask Shantini” box outside my room, where they can ask me questions and advice. They might find out my secret that I’m still very much trying to get this life thing straight and have much to figure out myself.

Root-bound: Musings for a New Year

For eight months now, I’ve had three keys on my keychain: my car keys and two keys to my storage locker in the Bronx. Last week, I added a P.O. Box key and as of this very morning, I have a key to my apartment. “My” is a slight exaggeration. I have my own room, but I’m sharing the flat with two others, one of whom goes by the nickname “da saluki cutie.” Have I mentioned I feel old?

I’m ever so slightly unnerved at having a semi-permanent address again. And I don’t think it’s just because that base is in Illinois. Actually that reminds me of a game I played over the summer, called “states that would be worse to live in than Kansas.” It was my lame attempt at making my Cambridge, MA-raised friend feel better about moving to podunk Kansas for grad school.

Illinois really isn’t half bad. And I can live almost anyway for a field season (even Kansas!), but Illinois for maybe 18 months, even with a summer break?

A friend recently said in passing that my anxiety about staying in one place for very long reflected perhaps a fear of commitment. Now that’s something I’ve heard often enough, though never leveled at me. And I have to admit, I’m more than a little bothered that it might be true.

There is a certain … danger? opportunity? … in finding yourself growing attached enough to a place and its people that you might start searching out reasons to stay just a little longer. And if that were to happen, does that mean I am losing focus on my goals and what I hope to achieve in the crucial couple of years coming up?

Of course, all it takes is a black panther conversation to remind myself that yep, this is most definitely temporary. Even if the temporal aspect of life in one place stretches and constricts in unexpected, rarely anticipated and efficiently chaotic ways.

For the time being, I’ll nurse my fleetingly adopted root-bound potted plant, and play it by ear.