TAKING A CLOSER LOOK Trying to Remember What I Did During My First Year It's amazing what can happen when one is forced to take a moment and reflect upon what ones's present circumstances really are. For example, I have been feeling a strange mixture of relief, anxiety, and depression at the thought that I have finished half of my MBA program at Darden. My initial reaction to this discovery was that I have simply too much to do still to be done. It can't be! I shouldn't be! I must do something to stop the forward progress towards next year!
Alas, it is not to be.
Today I finished up the last real "First Year" activity - filling out a bunch of forms and applications pertaining to financial aid for next year. Once this was done and I hit sent, all kinds of feelings came rushing in as it dawned on me that my first year was gone and was never coming back.
My mother-in-law called me somewhere in the middle of all of this and began to ask different questions and point certain things out (all quite good by the way) but in the end I realized that in my moping around I had forgotten some of the very obviously cool things I had done. I was forced to write an essay in answer to the question: "What have you done during the last year to contribute to Darden, the broader University, and the community?"
I read my essay to my mother-in-law and it seemed very good for my soul so, in case anyone else out there is wondering what good my MBA has done for me... I will include my essay in a separate post shortly.
In the meantime, please be aware that I love you all (readers of my site) very much and wish I could be more attentive and fully present than I have been over these past 9 months in grad school. My time here has been good, but it has also been very busy (almost a cliché by now) and I can't let the year officially end without saying that I do miss many of you a great deal and look forward to talking more on the phone and sending more emails over the summer.
Take a look around this site at some of the things I've accomplished here in Charlottesville, and/or simply look at the pictures. The one above is of my father (Doyle) and wife (Megan) inspecting Thomas Jefferson's house Monticello. May you be blessed by taking time to reflect and not neglect the truly important things in life - the few things we take with us into the grave - memories and love.
