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The semester–and my first year of grad school in the Journalism MA program–are officially over.

I learned so much about journalism and the city of Chicago. I would say I learned about time management, but I already knew about that, let’s be honest. Somewhat ironically, I learned the importance of caring less.

That sounds really bad. But in grad school and in this field, you have to learn how to be flexible. You can’t control every little thing. As a control freak, I still wrestle with that. Every day I had to make a conscious decision to let go of certain things. That is, of course, after working hard and doing my best at whatever the endeavor was.

Otherwise, you end up driving yourself crazy (like I did first semester).

Now, I have to remember that going into summer where I’ll be continuing my internship at WBEZ and reporting part-time for AustinTalks.

I have also settled on a reading list that looks a lot like what I would be required to read during the school year: Good Prose, Letters to a Young Journalist, Fighting for Common Ground and In the Garden of Beasts. We’ll see how many I actually make it through.