For a little while there, I was thinking about dropping out.
It was a symptom, and now I've finally figured out the root cause.
It came on suddenly. Namely, when I woke up last week and realized that I had a ton of friends going into the social games business.
And I think it's a sign that we really will have an economic recovery (at least a small one, for now) when everybody who is employed yells "My company is hiring!" on Facebook.
That scared me. I have 8 months to go until graduation. I discovered at GDC Austin that the companies I'm interested in aren't themselves interested in talking to someone that far in advance. The games business moves fast, and the social games business moves even faster. "Five months is forever," said an industry veteran who just made the transition from core to social gaming. Another one (from a major publisher) said to my face, "We need product managers right now, and we're starting them at $75,000. You'd be a great match." That *awesome* job that's open now? Won't be next June, nor may any of the jobs like it.
I took this concern to several of my professors. Without missing a beat, they pushed right back. "Take leave," they said.
I'm not dumb: this is tantamount to dropping out. Who abandons their dream job to overpay for the privilege to walk the stage? I could walk away from the extra $15,000 in debt right now and start working my way through the gaming world I so clearly belong in. And this whole get a job / get your foot in the door thing is why you enter a professional grad school. So why do the last third of school if the Prime Directive has already been satisfied?
There are plenty of reasons not to go this route. Mainly, job security in the games business is nonexistent, so I could easily end up unemployed, degree-less and in debt in a matter of months. What's more, life in San Diego is really rather good. Why the rush to run away from here?
The symptom manifested itself as the temptation to drop out and get going. What actually happened is that I figured out what I want to do.
I didn't have the answer to that basic question after high school, or college, or my time in Japan. Now I have that answer, and for a while, finishing grad school became just an expensive obstacle on the way to that objective. I didn't give grad school its due credit for helping me get the skills and internship time I needed to figure that out.
I also forgot the biggest lesson my mom taught me: why be excited about work? We'll all be doing a hell of a lot of it in the future.
So in the end, I've calmed back down, stayed enrolled for the winter quarter, and made sure to attend my last surfing class this weekend. In the meantime, it's nice to know who I am, and it won't be long before I'm always introducing myself like this:
"Hi. I'm Blake, and I make video games."