Officially official

Last week I learned I was accepted as a full-time student at the University of Turku School of Economics. I will be getting my master's degree in Futures Studies with a minor in Entrepreneurship. I plan to focus on environmental justice and sustainability. When I say this has been a rollercoaster ride that hasn't ended, I mean it! It's been filled with many trials, most still ongoing, and with three months until I leave, it'll continue to be a bumpy road. To take you back to the beginning of all this, it started a year a half ago thanks to some crazy men in my life pushing me out of my comfort zone.

It was the the end of 2014, and I was working a job that I really hated and I had been in touch with one of my favorite college professors via social media. He would always ask what I was doing and I would pretty much ignore the question because it really was a whole lot of nothing. In the middle of 2011, I had been laid off from my job as a journalist and in those three years, I had been applying like crazy, getting no response and going from one terrible job to the next. In my current position, I worked for a major telecommunications company. The money was good. The job was soul draining. A year in, I had resigned myself to making a career here. I'd use my funds for things I loved away from work: Running, I had enough money and off time for more destination races. Homebrewing: something I had written about extensively and I loved the home brewing community in my city and state.

I felt that was a shitty compromise, but I took it. I felt quite broken at the time. Until then, I had had a job since I was 15, either part-time or full-time. Even though other people were also laid off, I was sure I had fallen short somewhere and could have saved MY job. All these years later, some evil voice in the back of my head tries to creep in with those thoughts, but I've done better at quickly declaring that the devil is a lie!! I've come too far to believe such foolishness. I do still occasionally think it and have to check myself to stop the falsehoods. Hey, I never said I wasn't human. I try not to be though. I usually fail.

Back to the story. I had thrown myself into training for a triathlon only to run into my professor at the gym with his kids. As per his usual self, he declared we'd be talking soon. A few days later, an hour long call revealed all of the nothing that was going on with me. I was "thinking" about getting an MBA. I actually had been thinking about it in the run up to and actualization of the layoff. He mentioned a former classmate who was living overseas and doing quite well. I didn't necessarily have to move overseas, but I needed to "get the hell out of here." I remembered Classmate, who I considered a friend at the time, but I wasn't sure if he remembered me and asked professor to send a group email. He remembered me and the classes we took together. I was surprised.

We caught up and I learned about his awesome wife and baby daughter, then he got down to business. If I was looking for something business related that would translate well to the real world, I did need to consider coming to Finland for school. By "consider," he meant, "I'm going to bombard you with emails about different schools in Finland." And when I say "bombard," I mean seven to twenty emails a day. The first couple of weeks, I just clicked through most of his emails or responded to humor him. Classmate was always a bit of an odd duck anyway. Also, Finland??? Who and why? I barely knew the where. Thank you History degree. At least, I know where it is on the map. But of course,  I was already a year into a job I hated, still trying to accept the choice I made to settle. It couldn't hurt to read a few program descriptions right?