Attempting to figure out what I can actually do, and what I do really terribly, seems to be the point of grad school.

I have this problem. First, I am curious and get excited and passionate about learning. Learning anything. And I somehow have this crazy belief that most of the things we do in life are intuitive.  Or if not, I just follow the recipe or directions. I can bake a cake, so I can put in a new electrical panel. I can make a fancy cake, so I can take intermediate epidemiology. Um, no.

Then life in grad school becomes a series of days I am just disappointing myself over and over until I am no longer sure why I am here or if I am good at anything at all.

And it feels very lonely. I came here because my life was turned upside down, because I was devastated, and I wanted a new life I was in charge of. Because I thought my heart was broken, but instead I found out my expectations were let down and my heart was free to live and love and be who I am.  Because I want to do global work. Because I love working on respect and compassion and with midwives.

But I’ve always felt like an outsider- and now I’m a 49yo woman going to college. So I list what I am good at:
Explaining things, being passionate, seeing connections between things, the larger concepts at the core of someone’s argument, and education. Oh yea, and catching babies 🙂

Will that be enough?