computer-chair psychologists, this one's all yours

I took that GRE, all right. I kicked it right in the teeth.

I'm actually pretty happy with my score. It wouldn't get me into an ivy league grad program, by any means, but it'll be quite sufficient for any of the graduate plans I've had in mind.

So now it's time for the obligatory grad school waffle. Am I going to go through with it? Am I just going after it because I feel I have a moral obligation to fulfill my mental potential? Is there any part of this plan that involves me doing this just for ME? Or is that even the point?

I can hear a cadre of thirty- and forty-somethings screaming after me, "DO IT NOW! GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY, DO IT NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN!" as they shake a can of Lemon Pledge and prepare to dust the baseboards while their 2.5 children are away at school.

I'm having a hard enough time finding a job for when my fellowship's over as it is. It seems kind of self-flagellatory to jump into a new job and part-time graduate school in the same year, doesn't it?

Maybe I should wait until I'm more established in a routine before adding school. I wish I could just do this program full-time, but financially it's just not an option.

All this from an overdeveloped sense of self-improvement.

I don't think it'd be too much of a stretch to call it a self-improvement complex, even.

Or just straight-up, dirty ol' perfectionism.