+stop this runaway car, if we're not that gone, and we're not that far, if I left you there then I left it all behind

The other day in class one of our professors described the spring semester as having a 'snowball effect' - she said when you start out a semester, there's a great view from the top, you slowly start rolling and everything is manageable and tame. Then, you start building some momentum and accumulating more and more things to do until you reach a point that it's too much to control, and everything just keeps getting faster - and you can try to ride it out, you can get left behind, or you can get flattened by the weight of it all. I appreciate this analogy.

I refuse to complain on this blog about time (lack of). I signed up for graduate school, I was lucky enough to land an assistantship, I'm a perfectionist enough to care that things get done and get done right, and I'm stubborn enough to want to maintain friendships and build new ones, to explore new things and to keep reading. So, since I willingly sign up for these things, I cannot be mad. But. (There's always a "but"). I am teetering on the edge of exhaustion.

But my way of making it manageable? Day by day. One step at a time. Supportive friends/family. Devon Neisen. And 6AM trips to coffee shops to get 3 hours of paper-writing in before I go into work. And this is just a master's degree. How very much respect I have for doctoral candidates / degree recipients, in any field (and oh, how lucky I would be to become one... maybe...one day)!