Perhaps it is a result of never having an actual direction or purpose for this blog, but it seems I have let it slip to the wayside again - certainly not for a lack of time, but definitely a lack of motivation. I have a list of topics that once inspired me to blog about, but even when starting on some of those, I never completely finished it and just abandoned the post altogether. Keeping in mind that my last post was the first few days of October and this is coming at the tail end of December, I have managed to post about one blog a month and completely skipped November. I just do not want to write about the mundane, and I have not had any overarching concepts or issues that I was struggling with that I felt compelled to hammer out in writing.
By the end of last semester, a complete sense of apathy and lack of motivation had set over me. I slept a lot more, spent a hell of a lot less time in the library, slacked on my reading, and put some things to the wayside. And the backlash for it? I had already exempted my Management Final, and I knew I had a final paper due in the last week of class for Macromarketing. I crammed for one exam by reading all of the chapters the day before and staying up late studying with friends, and I ended up getting a 100% but had to take the final despite having 151/150 points because I had a missed an A by one question on my first exam. In my Promotional Strategy, I abandoned half the reading and got an even higher A than I had on the previous exams, exempting that final. Sports Law was never graded very harshly, although I enjoyed it greatly and always kept up with the case study readings. I kept my motivation up for that class regardless, and shined through class discussion. The take home final was relatively simple, and I just took it to campus on a Sunday and worked through the afternoon on Cooper's back porch on a lovely day and finished it up over Buffalo Chicken Wraps in Hendy. At the end of the semester, I had my second straight 4.0 on much less effort. Is this real life?
I have probably watched more Netflix and played more Playstation through the end of the semester than I had in my previous three years at college combined. Now at home, I am keeping up that mindset without the school work - sleeping in, dusting off the old Age of Empires II and III, getting my ESPN kick with cable, watching Bowl Games, family time, a solid Christmas. The attitude remains more or less the same. I know the run will come to an end: the train is derailing. I am only taking 12 credits in my last semester and have a very simple schedule, but my German Lit class is sure to take up a ton of time through reading, re-reading, paper writing, and all auf Deutsch. It's been a solid year since I have had an academic German class, and two years since that has involved heavy doses of literature. I am sure to be rusty.
Even if my last semester proves to be a similar workload as this previous semester, the change is going to come regardless. I will graduate in May, and the ride will be over. I have hashed out previously my future plans, and the only real update to that is that I had a moment of clarity to actually grind through the application process and try to meet that for this coming Summer, even though the Michigan State program would not be until January 2014. I feel like this will push me through the decision making process, because I am definitely terrible at making decisions. I have not worked out how I would make the transition from graduating from Clemson in May to moving stuff back to Michigan to turning around and starting up grad school in June in Georgia or Texas logistically or financially yet, but that would be worked out if it needed to be. Issues out of my hands and the possibility of having an extra nine months to work them out is crippling to my decisive actions, and I do not want to decide where I go to grad school because one school started later than the others. At this point I think it makes more sense to apply to all of them and not go into the process having a set 1-2-3 ranking. That way I can factor in things like turnaround time, finances, prestige, program specifics and faculty and just worry about the pros/cons of each instead of trying to pick out a top program.
So that is where I stand. Not going to attempt to sum up the months I have not been blogging, but I think this is an accurate portrayal of where I am in life right now. I am not sure where this coasting attitude has come from or what specifically has set it off, but I just get the feeling that if this train is not derailing now, it certainly will soon. Whether that apathy continues to spread to my blogging, well, I guess the future posts or lack thereof above this one will tell.
