Oh Shit, How did this happen?

So, I’ve decided that my favorite pastime in life has to be getting myself in over my head. It has to be it, because I do it so damn often. All in all, things tend to work out in my favor and I forget that I was in over my head in the first place, but there are constantly those moments when I think…"oh shit, how did this happen?” For example, halfway through my first cross country race in high school, lungs screaming for air with no end in sight and looking up a 400 meter hill, I was in over my head. When the first cold front of winter happened in Pennsylvania my freshman year of college, I had already busted out my heaviest jacket, was still colder than I had ever been in my life, and I was told to expect it to drop another fifteen by the end of winter at least. Way over my head, and in need of a heavier jacket. Just this past semester when I took four upper level politics classes and a symbolic logic class (something I still for the life of my cannot explain), I was sitting there with forty-six pages of writing to get done, in not enough time, WAY over my head. Those are just the big ones that jump to mind. Oh…wait…of couse, the fact that I’m about to leave for the Czech Republic for a semester, and I don’t speak Czech, and I don’t know anything about the country (except for the 14 pages of writing I did last semester about its revolution away from communism, so I know its not communist anymore) and I don’t know if I will have anyone to run with, and I don’t know what the classes will be like, and I don’t know anything really, and most of the student website is in Czech, which once again, I don’t know. So. As I’m about to embark on this ridiculous adventure, I’m thinking, yet again, “oh shit, how did this happen?” I’m so in over my head, in a different language this time. However then I think about it, and I finished the race, and six years later am still running competitively. I survived the winter, with the help of a heavier jacket, and now exist fairly comfortably in the winter months, I can even walk on ice (debatably), and with a few sleepless nights, and more caffeine than I care to think about I finished the semester without too much damage to my GPA. I like to think at the end of the day, that these things also made me a better person, and I wouldn’t change those parts of my life for the world. Shmo said it best, any big decision, the person you are now might not want to do it but the person you’ll be two years from now will thank you for it. So I’m probably going to keep getting myself in way over my head, and keep being completely and totally thankful for it. So, while I may be wondering what the hell I’m going to do with myself in the Czech Republic, talk to me in two years, or even two days after I get back, I’ll be singing a totally different tune. But for now, this blog will serve to chronicle the many ways I will be getting myself in over my head over my semester in the Czech, or at the very least, keep everyone updated on my life while I'm gone. Speaking of that I head out on the 13th of February.