Where have I been?

I really am sorry I haven’t updated in what seems like forever. I don’t know where September went, I feel like I blinked and all of the sudden it was over.

I ran into an old classmate of mine from NDA, and she mentioned how crazy it was that it has been 9 years. In a split second the following thoughts ran through my head: “9 years? What’s been 9 years? We graduated 8 years ago, I saw her last year, what is she talking about? Oh my god, 9 years? They have been dead 9 years? Are you kidding me? I missed it? How did I miss that? How does that day go by without me even noticing? Does that make me a bad person?”. Had I been working on 09/22 I would have remembered, because I can’t look at that date without knowing. Just like you can’t look at 9/11, your birthday, Christmas, etc without knowing what that day is. For the past 9 years September 22 has been a sad day. I can’t figure out if that’s a good thing, that I don’t focus on the past, or if that’s a bad thing, that I let the anniversary of friends’ deaths pass by. I always remember the anniversary of Kate’s death because she died on my 18th birthday. Next year I have to make an effort to remember. And I can’t believe it’s been 9 years. God, I was a child when that all happened. It’s amazing how resilient we were, as a class. How do 120 emotional 17 and 18 year old girls move on? How do they deal with two separate car accidents that signaled the beginning and end of the senior year of high school? How do you bounce back from 4 classmates dying like that? I have no idea, and I experienced it. I still don’t know how we did it, and all came out of the ordeal still relatively grounded. Maybe our youth actually helped us. Maybe a lack of life experience under out belts helped us deal with the loss. Who knows… I certainly don’t.

Switching topics, last Saturday I went to my first BC game of the year. They played Army and of course Army lost. But Matt and Laney came down to see the game, they had tickets that were originally given to Matt’s parents. They had really great seats, in the second row. Andrew and I sat with them during the second half. I liked seeing the game from those seats, maybe I would pay attention to the game more often if I always sat in the second row. I sit in like the 25th row or something crazy like that. And after the game, Andrew and I went back up to Manchester and the 4 of us went to North Garden for some scorpion bowls, and watched karaoke. I’m not sure if there is anything better than scorpion bowls and karaoke at North Garden! Andrew is in the middle of a “I want to live in New Hampshire” kick. I told him if he can find a job that will pay enough for me to stay home, then I am more than willing to move. Seeing as salaries are lower in Manch than in Boston, I’m pretty sure the For Sale sign won’t be going up in my front yard any time soon.

Speaking of staying home, someone recently asked me why I am in grad school if I plan on having children. I’m not really even sure what that means. Both of my parents have graduate degrees and they have children… my brother has a graduate degree, AND he holds a CFA designation and he will be a father come January. I have friends who have graduate degrees and children. I wasn’t aware that it was one or the other. I thought about it later and I think the person was asking why I am going to school if I could possibly stop working for awhile when I have kids. I think this is what they mean, I really can’t figure out any other logical meaning to the questions. Unfortunately, having kids doesn’t necessarily mean staying home in this day and age. Although we both want me to be able to stay home when the day comes, we both are prepared for the very likely scenario where I will be working. The bills must be paid, and sometimes the creditors have to come first. Our best case scenario is me staying home full time. Our most likely scenario is me working full time. I would like to strive for me working part time. But… I don’t know what the future holds for me, and I fail to see how having an MBA will interrupt me having children. Whether or not I stay home remains up in the air, whether or not I have children remains up in the air, however the MBA is a certainty. At least it is right now, I haven’t failed out of the program yet!

This is a long post, and kind of rambling, and I didn’t even cover all the topics I meant to cover. Consider this post to be two posts to make up for the dry spell my blog has had recently.