Living Out Loud: : Anxiety Attack

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like you're doing everything wrong, everyone knows it and you're a complete idiot? If you have, then I want to welcome you to the past six months of my life.

Some time back, I decided to get off my ass and go back to school and get a master's in a field that I have no training in — education. There is such a desperate need for teachers, the school systems will actually allow a person with a bachelor's degree to drop everything and go back to school to get a certificate to teach. Who knows if they are actually qualified, inspired or mentally stable? If you have the money or are willing to go into debt, the school system is for you.

I am now in the last few weeks of my first semester, and let me just say I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. You see, when I started this venture I had a passion. I hated my job and wanted to get out of it.

I was an insurance casualty adjuster — a demon of the all mighty dollar.

The sole focus of my job was to see how little money I could give a person who was completely lying about an injury, while at the same time pretending that chiropractors are legitimate doctors and injury lawyers were not bottom-feeder pigs whose soul purpose was to promote the ideas of the devil. I was literally losing my religion in that job, not to mention close to being fired. There is nothing worse than trying to fight for a job you hate, so I didn't.

My last day in hell was glorious. I went into my manager's office for my yearly review and was told that, although I was doing great on my performance plan, my job was still in jeopardy. Although he didn't want to fire me, he would have to if business didn't improve in about a month. I listened intently to him, all the while knowing that I already had another job lined up and was going to quit the next day.

After he was done with the review, he asked if I had any questions. I told him no. Although I'd been planning a grand exit that Friday, I decided to tell him then and there that he didn't have to be burdened with the pressures of firing my black ass anymore. I couldn't believe that it came as a surprise to him, since I'd actually packed my desk a month before.

I felt great, triumphant, fan-freaking-tastic; I walked out on a cloud, now realizing that I know I have to become the person I set myself up to be.

Fast forward six months or so, and I'm exhausted. Although I wouldn't go back into cooperate America for anything, I'm beginning to think that having another job and going to school to learn how to teach was a little too ambitious a concept for me to place into practice. But here I am, four months into school and scared to death of yet another failure in 30 short years of failures and very little success.

I mean by now I planned to be a famous Nikki Giovanni-fuck-offending-city-VIPs-and-city­councilmen-on-Fountain-Square-type writer, not a broke graduate student who doesn't have time to write a paper, let alone the passion to sit through classes filled with teenyboppers who every Wednesday make a habit of placing chap stick on so their mouths will be just moist enough to kiss the ass of the professor.

I want to scream to these post-pubescent little Paris Hilton wantabees that, if this professor knew half the shit you think she does, she would be running some foundation for low-income children, not teaching the concepts of autism to your simple ass.

But I don't scream. I just sit there and I try to listen to her and fight the exhaustion. Hey, at least I'm not in corporate hell anymore.