At a Point between the Past and the Future

One would like to give detailed and interesting answers to everyone, tell them cool stories, but there often is neither time nor space for that. Moreover, after answering the same question for a certain number of times over and over, even the best of us will unfortunately slip into the routine of a rehearsed vaguely positive answer, the “It was great, thanks for asking!”

The change of pace and scenery, however, mainly needs to be processed on the personal level. The return to the hyper-hectic quarter system, and specifically to a quarter in which I am taking three 300-level economics courses at the same time, is not easy and sometimes it’s hard not to think back to the recently abandoned tropical chill, the cultural and geographical exploration etc.

Overall, though, I would say the move back to campus is working out very well for me. I moved out of university housing, off-campus, for the first time, and after two months of living in a rented house just outside of campus grounds with fun people, it has become clear to me that I should have done this way sooner.

Above all, it is difficult to escape the feeling that this is all the “final stretch”. Most conversations now revolve around either the past (Bolivia) or the future (“What’s your plan after graduation?”) – we have covered the difficulties in answering the former, but the latter is also not the easiest thing to really answer in a satisfactory way.

I am looking around for positions here in the States that would offer me a work visa sponsorship, I am also looking around Europe, hoping that Britain won’t leave the EU and thus shut the door for me from the multitude of cool opportunities in London, and, last but not least, I am certainly not against working back in the motherland, in Prague. However, ideally I would like to gather a few years of foreign working experience before taking my career back home.

But, among all this thinking about the past and the future, it’s important not to lose sight of the present. I keep crossing things off the bucket list of my American adventure, I am picking courses for my last quarter here in the spring so that I have the most amount of time left to finally explore Chicago before I leave, etc.

One exciting time ended recently, times of exciting changes are certainly ahead of me, but the here and now is definitely not lacking either. Carpe diem!