Stagnant and confused

Two of my best friends from college recently finished graduate school. I had always planned going back to school, and really thought I'd just take a year or two to decide what direction I wanted to take before committing to a program. I still can't commit.

I'm having trouble picking a program. It's not that I have a huge variety of interests. In fact, everything I want to study relates to my other interests in some way. But I have yet to find a school with a master's degree flexible enough to take all my interests into account.

I'll wake up on Monday with my love languages rising to the top of my list of likes, and I start leaning toward the study of linguistics. Maybe pure research. Maybe bilingualism and language acquisition. Maybe I could solve the problems of illiteracy.

Then on Tuesday, I'll wake up considering the plight of people in the underdeveloped world and I start to think about how I can help, beyond helping them all read. I think I'll study international relations so I can better understand how the world system, no matter what it is, continues to oppress the masses. Maybe I could figure out how to work toward peace and justice.

Then on Wednesday, it all feels overwhelming. I think maybe I should become a translator, and just live my life through the experiences of others, helping them to express themselves with the world out there--a world they for some god-awful reason want to get tangled up in--while I just sit at my computer and watch it all go by.

But then Thursday and Friday I end up thinking I should just leave my decision until after the weekend, when I'll have a clearer head. Yeah right, like that'll happen.

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