Carried away by a moonlight shadow
Well, that's it. The last hurrah. Graduation, that damned beast that's been looming over me like its big brother Death, has ensnared me in its claws. So many of my fellow classmates are going directly into jobs, or grad school, or medical school.
I have no such goals, immediate or eventual, pragmatic or fanciful. I don't care for engineering, nor do I care for research, nor do I care for wasting away for 40 years in a chemical plant.
With the balance on my credit card right now, the thought of *not* getting an engineering job is fundamentally absurd.
Question: Why the hell can't my family understand why this bothers me? Why the hell would someone who's never slaved for 4 f***ing years in a major he hates, realizing in the last semester how many opportunities he's missed, how many friends he's pushed aside one too many times, and how effectively he socially castrated himself in hopes doing so would improve his grades. It did, but it sure as hell wasn't worth it.
Why do my professors have such loyalty to this major, where any of my questions about possible careers besides chemical engineering are brushed aside? I'm not a goddamned child; if you have no concept of careers that aren't yours, don't waste my damn time. How sad can you be studying such a tiny branch of science and having almost feral responses to any suggestion that a reasonably intelligent person would not want to do that? Are these people threatened by the implied suggestion that their careers are thankless and boring?
Still, I haven't shunned academia yet. I still like math and chemistry, and perhaps even physics. Where do I go from here?
Option 1: Take Japanese classes, as I'm still very interested in the language, though a bit dissuaded by the time and cash investment for classes. Get a job doing translation for engineers. I think the mathematic nature of linguistics might satisfy me. Besides, I always wanted to learn another language, and Japanese is still the most interesting (while potentially useful) language I can think of.
Option 2: Management track. Go to USC's MBA program. Maybe combine with Option 1. This will make it much easier to break into business, though I'm not sure I care to do this. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.
Option 3: Patent attorney or environmental/corporate law. Mike makes fun of me for this, as he does for many things, but I don't want to throw away the idea of law school until I've read further into it.
Option 4: Grad school in chemistry. Train in instrumental analysis techniques, get a job as a forensic toxicologist or something similar. Run a lab, wear a lab coat, fulfill my childhood dreams.
Option 5: Grad school in physics or mathematics. This will almost assuredly force me into a professorship. Still, there are worse things. I just find it far more conducive to my own learning and interests to have instruction-based teaching rather than research-based self-study, which would make any engineering graduate program very unpleasant. I *hate* research.
Graduation in five hours. Not sure what I want more - attempt another hour of sleep or eat a bagel?
Christ, too many decisions.
Oh, incidentally, the plan now - not set in stone, but as permanent as things get with me - is to pack up this place on Saturday, grab a hotel in Simpsonville, hang with Mike and the gang, see people Sunday and Monday, leave for Boston sometime Tuesday (maybe quite late, depending on how badly Monday treats me) and arrive in Boston late Wednesday/early Thursday.
I will live with my parents for about a week or two, at which time I will either get a job paying well enough to support my own apartment, or shoot myself. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I might be able to grab an internship starting in the summer, which should get me enough money to live on my own for the rest of the year. I guess, no matter how I look at it, I'll need to take an engineering job eventually. If I'm lucky and can slog my way through a job for two years, I will *easily* save enough money to live unemployed for another year or three, giving me plenty of time to go to law school, or Japanese language school, or grad school, full time.
The longer I delay to get a job, the tougher things will be, but at least when I'm living with my parents for those horrible, horrible weeks, I won't have any immediate financial difficulties compounding the job search. The only problems, of course, are the high likelihood I will find this job boring as well as the annoyance factor of working a year or two just to amass the money and experience I need to do things I really want to do for a while. Though, it's a fair assumption (and confirmed by things I've heard) that I will find a chemical engineering job absurdly easy. If this is true, I might be able to get away with night classes if I can find a sufficiently challenging program for what I want to learn.
So, yeah: my life is an RPG, and I need to go to the desert for a while to level up so I can gain the money and experience to get the Japanese, mathematics, physics, or law scrolls.
Bagel time.
-J
I have no such goals, immediate or eventual, pragmatic or fanciful. I don't care for engineering, nor do I care for research, nor do I care for wasting away for 40 years in a chemical plant.
With the balance on my credit card right now, the thought of *not* getting an engineering job is fundamentally absurd.
Question: Why the hell can't my family understand why this bothers me? Why the hell would someone who's never slaved for 4 f***ing years in a major he hates, realizing in the last semester how many opportunities he's missed, how many friends he's pushed aside one too many times, and how effectively he socially castrated himself in hopes doing so would improve his grades. It did, but it sure as hell wasn't worth it.
Why do my professors have such loyalty to this major, where any of my questions about possible careers besides chemical engineering are brushed aside? I'm not a goddamned child; if you have no concept of careers that aren't yours, don't waste my damn time. How sad can you be studying such a tiny branch of science and having almost feral responses to any suggestion that a reasonably intelligent person would not want to do that? Are these people threatened by the implied suggestion that their careers are thankless and boring?
Still, I haven't shunned academia yet. I still like math and chemistry, and perhaps even physics. Where do I go from here?
Option 1: Take Japanese classes, as I'm still very interested in the language, though a bit dissuaded by the time and cash investment for classes. Get a job doing translation for engineers. I think the mathematic nature of linguistics might satisfy me. Besides, I always wanted to learn another language, and Japanese is still the most interesting (while potentially useful) language I can think of.
Option 2: Management track. Go to USC's MBA program. Maybe combine with Option 1. This will make it much easier to break into business, though I'm not sure I care to do this. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't.
Option 3: Patent attorney or environmental/corporate law. Mike makes fun of me for this, as he does for many things, but I don't want to throw away the idea of law school until I've read further into it.
Option 4: Grad school in chemistry. Train in instrumental analysis techniques, get a job as a forensic toxicologist or something similar. Run a lab, wear a lab coat, fulfill my childhood dreams.
Option 5: Grad school in physics or mathematics. This will almost assuredly force me into a professorship. Still, there are worse things. I just find it far more conducive to my own learning and interests to have instruction-based teaching rather than research-based self-study, which would make any engineering graduate program very unpleasant. I *hate* research.
Graduation in five hours. Not sure what I want more - attempt another hour of sleep or eat a bagel?
Christ, too many decisions.
Oh, incidentally, the plan now - not set in stone, but as permanent as things get with me - is to pack up this place on Saturday, grab a hotel in Simpsonville, hang with Mike and the gang, see people Sunday and Monday, leave for Boston sometime Tuesday (maybe quite late, depending on how badly Monday treats me) and arrive in Boston late Wednesday/early Thursday.
I will live with my parents for about a week or two, at which time I will either get a job paying well enough to support my own apartment, or shoot myself. I think this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
I might be able to grab an internship starting in the summer, which should get me enough money to live on my own for the rest of the year. I guess, no matter how I look at it, I'll need to take an engineering job eventually. If I'm lucky and can slog my way through a job for two years, I will *easily* save enough money to live unemployed for another year or three, giving me plenty of time to go to law school, or Japanese language school, or grad school, full time.
The longer I delay to get a job, the tougher things will be, but at least when I'm living with my parents for those horrible, horrible weeks, I won't have any immediate financial difficulties compounding the job search. The only problems, of course, are the high likelihood I will find this job boring as well as the annoyance factor of working a year or two just to amass the money and experience I need to do things I really want to do for a while. Though, it's a fair assumption (and confirmed by things I've heard) that I will find a chemical engineering job absurdly easy. If this is true, I might be able to get away with night classes if I can find a sufficiently challenging program for what I want to learn.
So, yeah: my life is an RPG, and I need to go to the desert for a while to level up so I can gain the money and experience to get the Japanese, mathematics, physics, or law scrolls.
Bagel time.
-J