Well gang, relatively big moment over the last few days.
You're now reading the words of Austyn, Master of English.
So yeah, you could say I'm a pretty big deal now.
It's weird, a friend asked me if I feel any different now that I've graduated, and I obviously said no, which I guess may not have been the right answer. I've been thinking a lot about that over the last few days, so I figured it could be interesting to write about here.
About 6 weeks ago, while violently procrastinating writing the capstone/thesis I'd been researching and ruminating on for the better part of a year, I decided it'd be a good idea to build a split keyboard--I'd been typing nonstop for days, my wrists hurt as a result, and it only made sense to move toward a more ergonomic setup if writing and academia is the long-term goal (which it is).
Fast forward through a couple of days of research, deciding a pre-built is too expensive, and a week of parts shipping time. I had all the parts neatly organized on my table, my soldering iron was heating up, and I was breathing like Darth Vader in my filtered mask (to avoid lead poisoning from my lead-free solder, naturally) while reviewing the instruction video on my phone for the umpteenth time.
I was anxious, nervous, and more than anything excited to see if I could do this. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fairly handy guy, but save for some shitty wire-nut work on a miniature to make the LED's in Gandalf's staff and the Balrog's whip light up, I was basically flying blind.
The build process was a bit of a blur, and I definitely melted a plastic component or two, but by the end of the evening, I'd built my split keyboard. Sure there were some bridged contacts and enough leftover flux to render the things completely useless without a good fifteen minutes of work with a toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol (for future reference, while it works, the plumber's flux at the hardware store is a bit messier than the purpose-made stuff for electronics work), but after a day or so of cleaning and troubleshooting, I had my keyboard.
I felt a greater sense of accomplishment at that moment than I did when I walked across the stage to get my diploma.
I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's a symptom of this consumerist post-capitalist hellscape that we find ourselves in, the fact that my creation of an object and the fact that I saved like 40 dollars on a thing I barely knew existed two weeks prior; maybe it marked a new skill I could claim in my repertoire; maybe the dopamine hit was more concentrated since the project was faster. I don't know.
I don't know that I'm even as proud of myself for having gotten my MA as I am for having successfully soldered some switch sockets onto a PCB, and while I haven't hit the nail on the head yet as to why, I think it may have something to do with the feeling of finality, or lack thereof.
Academia may just be a weird beast. I'm supposed to start work on my PhD in the fall, which I'm absolutely looking forward to, and I wonder whether that has something to do with all of this. I almost feel like, while I've obviously hit a milestone with the MA and all that, this feels like a phase of life that has only just begun, like there's still so much to do.
It's not so much a sense of completion as much as it is a feeling of beginning, of initiation. It's almost like I've earned a new sense of purpose, and now I have so many more irons in the fire that I don't feel like I have the time to celebrate or feel a sense of accomplishment because there's so much more work to be done.
I expressed that to my friend, and she advised I try to learn how to relax, but I don't really want to.
I think I like this feeling of purpose, even if it is indicative of more work down the line.
I dig work, I dig projects.
I soldered a keyboard, so obviously I can do pretty much anything.
- Austyn
P.S. I wrote this on my split keyboard, and it's currently 1243. This post shouldn't have taken an hour to write. This fucking keyboard only has like 34 keys, and I still don't know how to type most of the special characters because apparently I never really learned to touch-type properly. Who knew that you're meant to hit both the 'G' and 'B' keys with your left index finger? I didn't.