Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Let's rewind...and then fast forward a little bit

But Tessa, why did you take a year and a half off from college? Why are you in LA? How long are you going to be there? What's happening for the rest of the year and a half off?

I'm sure nobody's wondering these things because I don't have any followers yet. But I'm going to write about it anyway because it's important.

I decided to take a year and half-long leave of absence from Emerson College because I loved it there. Now that sounds silly, but it's true. I really liked it and it was the hardest thing in the world to leave my friends and Boston and the prospect of some amazing (albeit difficult) classes. It all involved a lot of tears on my part. BUT -- I was starting to feel a little bit disillusioned by some things and it was affecting the way I felt about everything, even if it had nothing to do with the root of the problem, which really, was myself. I won't go into the nitty gritty details, but I just was having some emotional issues (for lack of a better phrase) to which the rational (and thankfully stronger) side of me said, "shut the fuck up. stop messing with this girl. NOW! RAWWRRR!!!!" (my rational side is super badass- I love it) There wasn't anything unfixable about my situation, so I took control! Before I started hating Emerson for reasons that Emerson couldn't do anything about (nor was it even responsible for any of it), I decided to take a break. That way, I'd still want to come back after all this time off.

SO the first thing I did was think. I needed something that would completely take me away from everything. I wanted to pack up and have a new life for a while. The first thing that I thought of was this "cruise" that my parents did about a year ago. I put "cruise" in quotes because the ship they were on was actually a ninety-foot, ex-fishing trawler-turned-cruise-ship called the Wanderbird. Mom and Dad spent a week on the 12-passenger boat off the coast of Puerto Rico and they had a blast. They became close with the two captains (a husband and wife) and in some conversation, they found out that they actually look for crew members who have little to no sailing experience so they can teach them how to do things. I didn't think anything of it when my parents first came back from their trip and told me about it, but when I decided to take time off and was looking for something completely new, it seemed perfect. So after a number of emails, a tour of the boat and an interview, I got a spot as a crew member on the WANDERBIRD!!! I honestly can't wait for it. Starting in April, I'll be training on the boat, living on it. I'll be learning all about sailing (right now I don't know anything about it) and charting and navigating and doing tons and tons of harder work than I've probably ever done in my life. Then we're going up to the North Atlantic (Greenland, Labrador, etc.) for 6 months and working for passengers, doing ecotourism things, and working and stuff! If I like it enough, I'll do another 6-month season down in the Caribbean. It's gonna be great.

So that being set in stone, I went searching for something else to do with the four months between the end of my semester and April. I originally wanted to stay on the East coast/in New England so I could be close to home and my family and friends since I'd be leaving them for another 6 months starting in April. But I ended up finding all of these internships in LA that I'm doing now, which is great. I'm happy for the warm weather especially (although I do miss everyone back home- it's weird to think about their lives going on the same without me).

So that's what happened, what's happening, and what's going to happen. Now that's over-with, let's keep on.

1 comment:

  1. Very nice. You should ask the Wanderbird if you can do a blog for them, more "officially." For instance, Alec kept a blog while he worked for a ski resort down in Chile, and they had a link to it from their website, so it was like advertising as well. You wouldn't use this one, but you could copy some of your "updates" via this one onto that one, etc. More writing practice, and maybe a more "professional" version that you could show someone as a writing piece.

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