[Izulde]

Presentation of my capstone course paper tomorrow.

It's nothing genius, I admit, and it's only a 2 credit course, so it won't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

But it's kickstarted one hell of a manic cycle anyway, along with the accompanying insomnia. (In 6 hours, I'll have been up 24 hours and I'm probably going to hit that fairly easily.)

I was panicking about half an hour ago, freaking out that I'm so close to my undergrad degree and that I'll end up failing just short of it... ruining everything I've spent the last five years building back up.

Especially since I still have the final stuff to do this semester and all of fall semester to go yet.

So I talked myself down from that paranoia by pointing out a bunch of things. But I realized that I really need to get into graduate school and get this MFA. I love writing and I want to teach collegiately. I wouldn't be happy with a 9 to 5, two weeks off a year typical job. My personality just isn't suited to that and I've been in school too long by this point to like that schedule anyway.

But by the same token, I don't want to go through master's and doctoral programs to teach literature or history courses. It's something I just have no interest in. Teaching high school English courses wouldn't be a bad gig at all either, so if I don't get into an MFA program, that's probably the route I'll go... getting my teaching certification at a school in California (since I plan on living in San Diego when I'm done).

Or maybe this is all just the insomnia and mania talking. I'll know more when I wake up after going to sleep whenever that happens.

The one short story I'm most concentrating on right now is coming along very nicely. It's something that, unlike this capstone paper, I'm actually pretty proud of.