Lucy Looking Upward

Today, July 1st, Uranus will turn retrograde, which couldn’t be more fitting, because I realized today that FUCK JUNE IS GONE. That’s what Uranus transits do- everything is going along fine and smoothly, maybe even a little boring, and all of a sudden Uranus stations retrograde or direct, or hits a natal planet, and it’s like everything goes into crisis mode all at once, but not in the way that you imagined. So even if you think you’re ready for anything, at some point or another you’re still going to go into chicken-without-head hysteria over SOMETHING.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been having Uranus transit over my Sun and Mercury in my 10th House. Considering what a high-strung person I was already, with a Moon-conjunct-Ascendant in Gemini, I think I’ve been handling it pretty well. There’s certainly been no dearth of activity and anxiety around work, since that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing non-stop since college graduation, and it certainly accurately reflects how unpredictable my life has become as a result of the career choices I’ve made. In two years I’ve been to every section of the United States at least once, and I’ve been in situations where I’ve taken on two, three, four jobs at once and worked until I thought my head was going to explode. But I’ve been told things like, “Lucy, you are in a league of your own.” “You’re the hardest-working person I know.” “We NEED leaders like you.” So I figure it’s all in a (anywhere from 12- to 20-hour) day’s work.

But I realize I can’t do this for the rest of my life. It’s getting harder and harder to explain to people what it is that I actually do for a living. So in the past few months, I’ve pondered going back to school, but only for something that I know I can USE constructively, where all fifteen of my jobs can somehow intersect. I started to do a little bit of research into different graduate programs, and eventually I decided that I might like to try for a master’s or a PhD in clinical psychology. I thought it’d be perfect- I have first-hand experience observing families and tons of different socioeconomic milieus due to the television work, I have excellent research skills and would love doing field work, I’ve been reading Jung since I was two and my mother is a psychotherapist, I’ve been studying astrology and reading charts for God knows how long, and there’s a whole mess of different careers I could get with that degree that don’t include just seeing clients in private practice. Not to mention that the Jungian Institute, where I would seriously love to study, will not accept you unless you have at least a master’s degree. So after deliberating and narrowing down a few programs, I decided to just go right ahead and see what I would need to do in order to apply.

And now, cue the Uranus retrograde chicken-without-head hysteria. I was under the impression that a lot of people with regular old liberal arts degrees go to graduate school without too much hassle, even if their graduate degree is in a subject very different than their undergraduate focus. It turns out that in order to qualify for a graduate degree in clinical psych in most programs, one would need a minimum of 12-15 undergrad credits in psychology courses, including one in statistics and one in experimental psychology (that is, a lab course). Do I have those? OF COURSE NOT.

I looked at the websites of several different CUNY schools to see if there was any way I could take non-matriculated courses that would allow me to earn the necessary undergrad credits. It turns out I probably could- but since most normal schools (i.e. NOT where I went to college) use very small numbers for their credit breakdowns, I would probably have to take anywhere between four to six different classes in order to satisfy those requirements. Which means- I would have to stop working and go back to “undergrad” for an ENTIRE academic year. Only THEN could I apply to graduate school.

I wish I knew how to type what sound a chicken makes.

As you can imagine, the possibility of having to go back to school is very, very daunting. It would be one thing if I was going straight to grad school. But in this situation, I’d have to take courses to qualify for a program that I STILL might not even get into. I’ve gotten very used to working, and earning my own income, and being responsible for myself. If I were to go back to school, then yes, I’d be taking a certain amount of initiative, but on the other hand, I’d be losing a significant portion of my independence. And, um, call me crazy, but I thought Uranus transiting your Sun was supposed to give you NEW, INSPIRED independence. I talked to my mother about it a little bit today, and she suggested that I move back home to cut back on expenses, at which point I started screaming like Regan in The Exorcist. I love my family to death, but I mean… I have a Sun in the 10th House and a Moon on the Ascendant. I don’t think I would be able to give any serious work I had to do my full attention if I’m put in a situation where I have to sleep in my twin bed from childhood with most of my stuff in storage, and it becomes automatically assumed that I will always be present at dinner. You know what I mean. It just wouldn’t work out. Hell, it barely did when I officially lived at home.

The other hesitation is that ideally I wanted to apply to graduate school for the semester starting fall 2010. So if I were to take the non-matriculated courses I needed and still make that timeline, I would have to do it… fall 2009. Like less than two months from now. Yeah. And that’s only provided that the courses I need still have space, since the deadline for official application was… well, today. I’m not quite sure how I feel about suddenly dropping out of my work circle like that- like, for example, getting a really good job offer in August and having to be like, “DAMN, I’m sorry, I’m going back to school. Didn’t you know?!” And then suppose the school thing didn’t end up working out. Could I return to television with a year-long gap in my work history? Without feeling like an asshole about it, no less?

Now, as you can well imagine, I’m really, really anxious. I mean, I was anxious before too, but anxious in an “ominous music from Twin Peaks following me around” kind of way. Now I’m literally flipping my fucking cookie over this. The next job I have will eat up most of my July, and if I can’t make a decision now, then I’ll come back and have about one literal month to decide if I want to do this or not and make appropriate provisions. FUCK.

Part of me feels like a Uranus retrograde is actually an opportune time to go back to school and get those courses out of the way. For one thing, nobody would expect it. For another thing, it’s retroactively making up for something that I should have done in my actual undergrad. For a third thing, the haste involved certainly fits in with my own self-imposed deadlines for getting a graduate degree. I feel like if I’m going to do it, I have to do it before I turn thirty. I know everyone does things at different rates and different times, but I don’t want to be in school so late and for so long that I’m starting menopause when I’m finally able to use my graduate degrees in my career.

I still need to think it over, but hopefully won’t need too much time to do so. (If anyone else wants to weigh in, I beg of you you’re more than welcome.) And just think, I was feeling so status quo, which I should have remembered is incredibly overrated. In the meantime I suppose I will have to try to be serene, in the best way I know how.