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June 27, 2005

On Vacation

I am on vacation.

The very idea sounds silly coming from a graduate student coming off a year's fellowship. It's all been a vacation, in a sense, since the day I left my "real" job and rode off east to become an academic-in-training at Syracuse University.

But it isn't a vacation, and this trip is proving that to me. This vacation, this very long drive across the country to the Oregon coast and back, is a solo, self-driven, self-orientated space of time in which I do what I decide at the monent within the context of a larger loose plan, and where I can change my mind and do something else without consulting anyone, and where I don't have to be anywhere specific until Wednesday. And while I am enjoying this, I am also realizing that I have changed in the three years since I made that eastbound trek, that the things I had in my mind to do as a result of that trip are not important to me now, and the things I want to do now were beyond imagining then.

So when I do get back home, to Syracuse, my focus will be different than when I left, because I see Syracuse as home now, because I see this academic vacation as a vocation now, because I whave work to do, and because a mind stretched to new awareness never regains its original shape.

Driving on.....

Posted by cageyer at June 27, 2005 03:11 PM

Comments

Posted by: tyra at June 27, 2005 03:20 PM

Posted by: senioritis at July 2, 2005 04:46 PM