Dreaming of the Future

I have a dream...
Or I had a dream that we visited Florida and it was a complete and utter bust. I dreamed it was a remedial school and that was why they accepted me. Then, in the dream, I said, "Well no wonder I got accepted." This made a student angry and she started shooting at us. Luckily we all survived, but we did have to come back to Logan and tell everyone we were no longer moving to Florida. Then I had another dream that taking a gym class was required for graduating with a BA. Unknown to me, my adviser signed me up for the required class and so I failed it and couldn't graduate. This, once again, led to me calling Florida Tech and telling them I was unable to attend, leaving us to live in Logan with no immediate graduate studies.

Thankfully, these were both dreams, or nightmares, rather. I love to say that dreams are without meaning; however, I must say that they do reveal a pervasive stress I have been feeling about moving on in life. We are moving across the country for my studies and if I don't succeed with flying colors I will have wasted a lot of our time and money.

At least some of the time, I do manage to remember why I am going to graduate school. I finally get to study what I love and apply my knowledge to help advance the field of behavior analysis and benefit others. I am going to graduate school because I am excited to have more responsibility and pressure to succeed. I am excited about the upcoming changes all of the time and think it's beneficial to have the confident feelings only sometimes. I must keep the anxiety at bay so that it pushes me to succeed but doesn't leave me staring into the future that could have been.

The Psychology department has given me a reason to feel adequate in my pursuits by granting me the "Undergraduate Applied Psychological Service" award. I am thrilled and surprised. I actually read the email twice, then called my dad to tell him why I don't deserve it. Pretty cool.