The Starting Line

Yesterday, I finished my Master's Degree. Though it was a little anti-climactic, culminating in a one-page journal entry about how my whole professional life relates to two tragically repetitive books we read this semester, for me, it was momentous. No more weeknights trying to ignore the TV while interpreting my public budgeting texts. No more early morning alarm clocks signalling the time to get back to my computer screen. No more weekend guilt for the hours spent on anything other than school work.

And yet, beyond superficial relief for the restoration of my brainpower, there has been a larger thought on my mind for the last few weeks and months. What's next? I have never felt content to reach a finish line. The finish line, if you think about it, is really just the starting line for your next adventure.

After three years of mornings, nights, and weekends spent staring bleary-eyed at my books and papers, hashing out an advanced degree, it feels right that this finish line become the starting line for a more active lifestyle. My roommates for the past few years can vouch that my strained relationship with running can be credited to the guilt I felt for abandoning my books for long enough to hit the gym. I often agonized for so long about whether or not to exercise that I would waste at least as long as it would take me to run a mile just figuring out if I should put my sneakers on or not.

Anyone who knows me knows that I care deeply about my job and my students. I work for an organization called Bottom Line, which provides free, one-on-one counseling to low-income, first-generation students. We help them get into college, and then we stick with them to ensure their success. I strongly believe that Bottom Line is a one-of-a-kind organization because our leaders also refuse to believe in finish lines. They developed an exemplary program for urban high school students that ensured the vast majority would be accepted to a four-year college. But they weren't satisfied until they had built one of the nation's first College Success programs, and now boast a 73 percent graduation rate. "The Bottom Line," as Dave would say, "is a college degree." This year, however, Bottom Line will employ its very first team of career counselors, now that we have realized even college graduation is yet another starting line. The bottom line, it turns out, is a job.

So, nearly graduated, fully rested, and itching to run, I'm announcing my intention to get to a new starting line: Hopkinton, MA, the starting line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. I will be running to raise money for Bottom Line, to support the organization's continued growth and to inspire a new class of students to push toward the next starting line. Am I terrified? Yes. But isn't that the point?