Professional

I find it hard to believe I'm doing what I'm doing with my life.  Don't get me wrong. I want to do it.  It's just that even though I am a grad student who's two months away from 27, I still feel like a kid who doesn't know anything or have her act together.  This has been weighing on my mind heavily since Christmas. It's been exacerbated by the knowledge that I am supposed to write a publishable research paper this semester.  My prof used the "You are a professional now and need to start thinking and acting like one," line on us in class.  It's sort of like being told to grow up or act like an adult, but professionally.  I don't know. Sometimes growing up professionally is just as painful and difficult as growing up as a human being.  It's just as scary and exciting, and worse, because the becoming an adult part has happened to some degree already, I know it's going to be anything but a smooth process from the professional standpoint.  I'm certainly not going to get everything right, and much of what I do will be stupid or downright ugly.  This is certainly a less-than-exciting prospect.  So...on to that paper.