I Can Smell the Roses From Here

Relief

So here we are. It’s the last day of the workweek, when this is published, and as I write I’m officially over the hump of the week of 11 credits. Currently, I feel relieved, as though the wind has finally quit howling and there are no longer leaves blowing into my face and eyes at every moment. Like outside my parents’ house, it’s still raining in my summer and the sun hasn’t come out yet but it appears as though the worst has passed. When I tell people my plans for this summer, the number of credits I’m taking and that I’m doing this to graduate early, I’ll admit that I deeply enjoy the shocked or at least startled expressions. However, many don’t understand my ‘hurry.’ My cop out answer is that I’m doing this to save money, which is true. That is one of my motivations. Another one is ‘Why not?’

Why Not?      

Now to many that one seems like the cop out answer, but in my opinion it is just as legitimate. Why not graduate a semester early so that I can ideally find a job quicker and or easier? Why not get ahead, if I can keep my sanity in the midst of it, which I have been successful at so far?  Clearly, I understand the adage, “To stop and smell the roses,” but I prefer to notice them on my way. Some people stop to smell the roses and never continue on, which is fine if that was the original destination or they changed their mind. But I’m thinking (more often than we might assume) people who stop to smell the roses forget where they were headed in the first place.

           

Danger of Roses

In the Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum writes of when Dorothy stopped to smell the flowers, whose “fragrance is so strong and so powerful, that anyone who breathes it in instantly begins to fall asleep, and if the sleeper is not carried away from the deadly scent of the blossoms, they sleep on and on forever and ever until their dying day.” Rest is good, breaks are helpful, but I would rather just pause and smell the flowers, rather than completely stop, because I will press play again. Plenty of advice I receive is useful and instructive. At the same time, there is a tendency among some people to romanticize high school and college as worry-free days, with no responsibility. While I am not going to argue that college or high school students have more work than those in the general workforce, I would say the workload isn’t easier and is instead equal. 

Relative

            Now, I will explain what I mean by that, hopefully before many can argue with that statement. If it is assumed that someone in the workforce has graduated high school, then they could say that the work of a high school student is easier and be just as correct as a third grader scoffing at how easy first grade work is. The same applies to someone who has graduated college and a student in college. At the same time, what job requires you to have new supervisors (instructors) every four months? How many jobs require work all day, only to have hours more work waiting when you get home? Now teachers and professors have this, but then they have off in the summer.* During “busy season,” my dad works from home after working all day, but that’s every day of the school year for high school students and college students.

The Point

            My point here again is not that students work more than workers, but that there is a reason why you can list “student” as an occupation. Also that tangent serves to legitimize this next statement, I look forward to when I have a “9-5 job.”* So why not graduate early? Why not move closer to the day when I will be a high school English teacher? Why not accelerate towards when I will, hopefully, be a professional writer? Sounds like a good plan to me, hence the 11 credits.

Notes:

*But at the same time they’re preparing for next school year, making lesson plans, attending teacher trainings, professional development etc. So not completely “off”

**Again see the * note, and yes I know teachers have to wake up early, grade papers, have professional training, work much longer days than just actual school days and don’t really get the entire summer “off”. I’m becoming a teacher; I looked into this to know what I was signing up for (plus my mom was a teacher, and my aunt is a teacher).

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Image Credit: "Owen Memorial Rose Garden" by Rick Obst