I know I've already told a lot of faces this to their people, but I know that a lot of people get their danwho news here and I realized that I never officially announced on this stage that I'm not going back to JMU in the fall.

Today seemed like the right time to make the news electronically public, as today was the day that it officially became official.

I had been academically suspended at the conclusion of the spring semester, but that isn't any different from my previous two years. Both of which had found me on suspension and I had taken summer classes to raise my GPA to squeak-by status, and readmitted for the following fall. JMU stipulates that after 3 suspensions, you are banished for one academic year with no chance for appeal, but I still could have taken summer classes once again to attempt a reprise. But F that. Draw a line in the sand, across which you do not...

Anwyay, while my back was against the wall, technically it was still my decision not to return. As the semesters have progressed but my credits, geneds, and prerequisites have not, this decision was in the works for quite some time now. And as today marked the add deadline for June Session classes, and I'm not registered for any of them, it's official that I won't be back.

I could have tried one last time, taken a summer class and maybe gone back, but then what? I go back and have to scramble to find a place to live, and due to my mistakes and the reworked prereqs for the once CIS now IT major, I would still have, at the least, 5 semesters to go. Sure that last semester I would only be one class, and it might be available in the summer '07, but this has already gotten ridiculous, there's no reason to make it ludicrous.

So what's the next step? For the time being I'm back in the IT department of the same company I've been working for on breaks, making a good living in the field I was majoring in, and it's close to home. Once the fall comes and things get quiet in town again, and depending on my employment situation I might look into completing my degree somewhere else...and I'm sure I eventually will. But for now, I'm happy just to try to pay off some debt instead of accumulating more, and take a break from building so much for the future.

I'm tired of looking forward, because plans have a higher letdown rate than organized chaos. I'm tired of building and being discouraged from just living in the present...get good grades in grade school to get good class placements in highschool...to get good grades and build for a good college...get good grades in a good major...get a good job in a field that might be related to your major...Can't I just Be? you know, get by for a while.

Why do all that work building to what? 40 years of monotony you can barely stomach? Or What if I died at 25? I spent my entire life building for the future that isn't guaranteed to even exist. I'm not saying education is terrible, I'm just saying that I'd like a break. And some might say that the past 3 years of skipping class were a pretty good break. But when you fail that much, as much as you pretend not to care, it gets kind of stressful. Hence stretches of insomnia/mild depression/declining health/drug use/and the downward spiral of more missed classes.

In conclusion, I'm probably happier and hopefully mentally healthier, and there's still so much out there that I don't know anything about, so my perspective's for shit and the future is wide open. Who knows, tomorrow I might jump a steamship for China and get a job tilling a rice patty for a year...and if that happens I'll bring a journal and some stamps, and mail in-frequent updates back for the site.

danwho kissed you on the nose on 06.17.05 @ 12:12 AM [link]