Moving On...

It will only have been a year, and yet once again, at the end of August, I will be packing my things and moving on. Where to? Back to Washington, DC where I'll be returning to Georgetown to get my MA in "Art & Museum Studies". The decision to go back to grad school wasn't easy for me as I really love my life here in Chicago, but within my field, grad school is essentially mandatory so it wasn't as much a question of 'if' but simply 'when'. And while it was very tempting for me to put things off for another year and stay in Chicago, I know it would only be that much harder for me to leave. So I figure go, get my MA, get some more life and work experience under my belt, and then at the end of it I'll have a better idea of where I want to end up. Where i want to settle.

Because I guess I can't really keep going like this, jumping around from place to place, the impermanency of it all. Eventually I'll have to decide, ok, this is the job I want, this is the place I want to be, this is where I'm going to invest myself. Weird. I mean, I've essentially been living out of my suitcase ever since I was 12: moving back and forth between home and boarding school, then home and college, now home and Chicago. Not to mention that even the notion of home has evolved from one place to wherever my family is. I guess really it's about finding my own home.

But for now, I'll be moving back to DC, and then on to London for the second half of my program. The degree is a full year, and part of the program is an exchange with Sotheby's, the auction house, for which I'll move to London to study for a semester with them. I picked the program because I felt it was a good match for my interests and for what I think I eventually want to do career-wise. It's the best of both worlds with exposure to the museum world and the commercial art world. Plus, I've always wanted to study in the UK so it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

I will say though, it's going to be really hard to leave Chicago and the Art Institute. I've had such an incredible time here and have such dear friends, that I'm really trying not to think about the inevitable departure. I keep telling myself, I can always come back....