Perpetually stuck in “a yellow wood.”

I’ve been avoiding writing this posting for several weeks now, allowing the stress to simply pile up within. I feebly held hopes that some magical fairy would arrive and provide the answers I sought, telling me the proper direction to go.

Clearly that isn’t happening, so here I am to spill my guts*.

In one month, I’m scheduled to start graduate school … and I’m still undecided as to whether or not I will attend. Sure, there was a point where I was confident in my decision to add two nearly-three-hour classes, plus homework, on top of my 55-60 hour work week. I knew it would be a struggle to maintain any semblance of a social life, but for two and a half years, I figured I could manage the course load just to attain my master’s degree. After all, if the company that owned my newspaper would be footing 50% of the bill, now was the time to act on the tiny, itty-bitty desire I had to continue my education.

Then May 25th arrived and with it the news that this media company — one that already hit us employees hard when implementing furloughs throughout 2009, increasing health insurance prices, decreasing mileage rates and removing the 401k-matching plan — was placing its tuition assistance program “on hold” indefinitely. My application for their financial contribution would not be processed and I was, more or less, shit out of luck.

My options? Severely stress out and pray an answer appears from thin air 1) Suck it up and pay the tuition on my own, with the obvious help of ginormous loans to pile onto my current $46K from Penn State; 2) Withdraw from grad school; 3) Defer the program for one year in the hopes that tuition assistance is reinstated … or I hit the Powerball; 4) Attend thanks to loans and find a new job that could pay them off quicker.

With #4 constantly in the back of my mind as a very viable choice, I waver — often — between #1 and #3. Classes begin Aug. 23 and this is crunch time, so I absolutely cannot rest on the possibility of finding alternate employment. And I don’t want to simply withdraw. Something about calling it quits when the defer-option is on the table seems slightly reckless. So do I attend and lean on the $18,900 in financial assistance — a $1,200 grant plus $16,700 in Stafford loans — I was awarded? Or defer enrollment for one year and cross my fingers that I’ll have a decision by August 2011?

This stress is eating me alive.

By nature, I’m indecisive. You ask me what pizza place I want food from or what I want to do with my Sunday afternoon, and my response will solely be a quick shoulder-shrug. Decision-making is, plain and simple, not my thing. And yet before me sits a ticking clock that won’t cease reminding me how little time I have left to choose.

The moment I feel myself leaning a particular direction, something occurs to force my uncertainty back to the middle. Today, for instance, I was nearly resolute that I would attend classes ’til an email arrived noting “required” orientation meetings that overlap my work schedule. Once I started questioning the financial repercussions of missing both a restaurant shift and a half-day at the newspaper, I swiftly realized how unsure I remained in my decision.

I have never been one to not accomplish a goal, which puts a ridiculous amount of added pressure onto these fragile shoulders. I continually ask myself, “If attending school on top of these two jobs becomes too much, will I have the nerve to give in and leave the graduate program?” Leaving one of my workplaces is, sadly, impossible, so if classwork pulls my life taut, I have to be okay with quitting … but in reality, I’m not too confident that sense of failure would sit well in my gut.

Each and every minute since May, I have flip-flopped between these choices, never settling on one option over the other for more than a few days at a time. With a mere four weeks before payment is due, this mind of mine has become restless as I search for answers only I can supply. The emails about syllabi and projects will soon arrive. The ones regarding campus organizations and grad-school clubs already have. And I’m without a direction.

Since eighth grade** I have adored Robert Frost. Despite being slightly cliche in this moment, ”The Road Not Taken” feels nonetheless poignant right now and regularly meanders its way into my thoughts as the weight of this decision becomes evident.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I repeat these words up and down, backward and forward, on an unending cycle, so it seems. Still, the question remains … which road will ultimately make “all the difference”? Sigh. I really wish I knew.

T-minus 32 days, 23 hours and 31 minutes…

——-

* This blog might get long, so take a quick bathroom break, grab a snack, put up your feet, then rejoin the festivities.
** Poetry has always been a major part of me and this was the year I latched onto the works of the amazing poets whose words I found inspiring. At the age of 13, I memorized “The Road Not Taken” and have been able to recite it since.

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