A Mouthful of Tire

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine wrote this amazing blog post. I always love reading her blog because they are super insightful and she is a great writer, which helps. When I read her post I thought, "That is exactly how I am feeling right now, but didn’t know how to describe it."  She talked about how she felt like she was a dog, who finally caught the car she has been chasing after. Now that she has a mouthful of tire she isn’t sure what to do. Her situation was being accepted to a couple of MFA programs. She never thought she would be accepted but here she is with not one but two offers. I never doubted she would be accepted, but sometimes we don’t understand how others see us. Anyways, she is amazing. Have I said that already? If you want to read her thoughts go here. Otherwise, I will tell you why I feel like I have a mouth full of tire myself.

When I applied for the Fulbright, I like Jennifer didn’t ever think I would get accepted. I thought ahead just far enough to say: “If by some miracle they pick me, then I will say yes. But, where that isn’t going to happen, and I will have to figure something else out. Maybe, I will go back to doing hair, pay off some debts and work on some material to start applying to MFA programs.” So I waited and when April came around I was excited and anxious to see if I was chosen. That’s when the impossible happened. I came home from a wonderful weekend in Munich to find an email. A very happy email. I was accepted. For the next few days I was on a bit of a high. I double checked my dates, and made sure my graduating so close to my appointment wasn’t going to be an issue, etc. Everything worked out very smoothly. I sent in my acceptance, and then things started to sink in.

I am moving to Austria. I am going to be completely alone. I am going to have to teach children how to speak English properly, when I don’t even always do so. I am going to have to pass my classes. I got the ok to live a dream, but I am freaked out of my mind!

Right about this time I took a practice test for Studienkollege. I failed. I mean failed. A 48%! I have never gotten a score so low before in my life.  I knew right then and there that I was going to fail and have to turn down the position, because I couldn’t make it through my last semester of college. It was supposed to be really easy, just show up and you graduate, and here I am failing.

I know now that this is a little bit of an overreaction, but that is exactly how I felt. I was given a once in a lifetime opportunity, and because I don’t feel like I deserve it, I find reasons why it must be too good to be true. It’s kind of like with my first boyfriend, oh so many years ago. Things were great. We dated for about 6 months, never fought or argued, enjoyed the same things, and overall just got along really well. It had to have been too good to be true. I mean real couples fight, they argue, they have differences, and the only thing that keeps them together is that they love each other too much not to be together. That’s at least what I thought. So I started to find flaws. Enough to think someone else was better. He wasn’t. The point here is that I had something good, and because I didn’t have to struggle to make it good every day I didn’t think it was honest.

Now I have almost the opposite, and I am just now seeing it. I have something good, and although right now at this moment I am not struggling every day to keep it there. It isn’t going anywhere unless I tell it to. But I have struggled to get it. I worked hard for years to get the grades I did. Sure, I didn’t work as hard as I could have. I didn’t turn in my best work all the time. But I did put my whole heart into the one thing I think above everything else I did to get this scholarship, the Writing Center.  And maybe that is what I need to learn from all this.  Sometimes it may not seem like we deserve something right now, because we are not working hard to obtain it at the moment, but we can’t forget all the work that we have done before. And maybe, even if things aren’t perfect, if you put your heart into it that’s all that matters.