getting it together

I have now talked to probably a half-dozen professors (most of whom I'd never met before) about my history thesis. Even when I feel like I've somehow trapped myself and that they're going to figure out I have no idea what I'm talking about, I feel like every time I sort of work through it, in particular every time I talk through it, it takes its shape better. Even when one meeting's good idea gets shot down the next time through, there's something about going over a question, a big and amorphous question, again and again and again that somehow gets everything to align right. It's like picking a lock (or so I would assume without ever having actually picked one but while knowing how they work), or maybe the motion of the question between conscious and subconscious (where it sits the other 97% of the time) is like grass shifting between a cow's stomachs to get completely digested. The thesis isn't figured out yet; in fact, it's really pretty far from it. But that doesn't mean I don't like it, that I'm not somehow deeply invested already in this thing I didn't know I would be doing a month ago and that still has a long long way to go before I can begin to begin it. There's something really powerful in this thing; it's a send-off to this institution, but also to this part of my life, and given my relative certainty around not going into academia, it's a send-off to this type of work.

Approaching this week (friday, to be specific) is the deadline for another pivotal piece of writing: a proposal for a Watson Fellowship. That's the one where they give you $25000 for a year abroad, and you're basically not allowed to return to the US while you travel and learn. I have an idea for it, an idea I can get excited about at times, but it also scares me a lot. As in I'm not sure if I could do it even if they gave me the money. I know that a little fear is healthy, but this is kind of ridiculous, especially since this particular grant is widely seen as a great way to put off a job/grad school for a year while enjoying yourself. Some of it, I think, has to do with not having thought everything through, talked everything through enough. That I somehow feel certain that as soon as you stick me in front of a committee to interview about it, I'll break down, admit I have no idea what I'm doing, etc. Part of it, though, is that this is the first deadline I've encountered for stuff that affects life after college. While I'd like to think I'm ok with the next year or two (no pressure, right? a break from school and stuff, at least), at least some of that confidence rings hollow.

The funny thing is, this reminds me of a conversation I had just last week with an underclassman about how surprisingly easy it's been to get really cool stuff done. I cited that summer in DC with Carter and Dinkel, studying abroad, incl. the trips to Stockholm and Moscow, and going with Steph to the NCAA men's basketball tournament freshman year as examples of how things just sort of come out OK. Like I came into college scared to do most of the really cool things I have done, that it's all doable, learnable, in the next couple years. I said, specifically, that it's OK to feel like your friends are more together, better planned, and going more places than you, because it all works out in the end and deep down everyone feels that way about a lot of things, so really nobody's that much further along than anyone else. But when I try to apply that same advice looking forward instead of backward, the future looms just as scary as it ever has been. I may have 'solved' college (i.e. become more active in organizations I care about, spending less time on classes without suffring for it, making good money with work study, found people whose company I really enjoy), but it's like I can't see how it applies to the next part of life.

Maybe I just need to talk it through with someone else. After all, analagously, I think I came to terms with myself, identity-wise, very recently, and that took a lot of talking about stuff. My conscious and subconscious may just have a communication problem, but I think I can something away from this: it's OK to be wrong about a lot of things today as long as you think it over again by tomorrow.