Everything's Coming Up Roses

Yesterday, one of my graduate school deans described our program with the perfect metaphor: it's like having a fire hose pointed at you on full blast, water gushing towards you for nine months, until suddenly, the water is shut off, and you're still standing there soaking wet, expecting more water to keep blasting at your body.

The water has been shut off. I'm standing at the receiving end of a fire hose drenched in confusion and shock. I'm not really sure what just happened. I think I went to graduate school at Columbia. I don't really know how I ended up there.

Growing up and after college, the hypothetical graduate school plan spanned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama, or an M.B.A. from Harvard or Stanford focusing in social entrepreneurship and enterprise, or something - anything - from University of California, Berkeley. A journalism degree from Columbia was merely a spur of the moment idea while reading a friend's short story in the bathtub a month and a half before applications were due two years ago.

And then it all just happened really quickly. Hose, soak, drip and all. It feels like culture shock - to have this new experience under my belt and slowly re-acclimate myself to everything around me. It's as if I'm wandering around, searching for sunlight to dry my sopping wet clothes and hair, and I'm somewhere in the shade, no access to sunlight, patiently awaiting familiarity.

When I was younger, I had a lot of dreams. I had a lot of ideas about both the person I thought I was supposed to be and the person I wanted to be. It took many years to figure out the difference between the two images in my head - I'm still not sure I've sorted through the intersection, maybe I never will - the former being some expected replica of my cultural background as described by my father, the latter being some amalgamation of romantic comedies, novels, and daydreaming in my backyard.

For years, my life fell in line with the images in my head. Even when I went off course - so it seemed - I always managed to meander back to all the dreams. But meandering is mind-boggling if it happens in a way that was never part of the initial fantasy. I've always wanted to be a writer - my entire life, from the depths of my soul - but I never imagined I'd go to journalism school.

And so here I sit. Three days from receiving a master's degree, and I still haven't quite adjusted to the thought of even applying to the program. It all happened so quickly.

I suspect I will just have to dry off - let the water evaporate into amorphous clouds as if it never spouted from a fire hose in the first place - and eventually, the memory of the water will soak me enough, just enough, so that I settle into the dream.