Thoughtful Update
Has it really been twelve weeks since I updated this thing? I've been meaning to update my journal dozens of times, but it feels like in the past few months everything and nothing has been going on. So here's a quick summary:
We now have a cat!
Jeremy and I were talking about having a cat for a long time, and about two months ago we went to Toronto Humane Society and found a five-year-old white and gray tabby. Her previous owners had called her "Selene," which we thought was gay, so we changed it to "Milly." I'm having some trouble adjusting to the influx of cat hair in my previously spic-and-span world, but it's nice having something cute and unpredictable around. Especially now that...
Jeremy is gonna be a law-talkin guy!
Jeremy started law school in September, and it's been really stressful, admittedly. We had a hard time adjusting our lives to the fact that he has to spend every waking and breathing moment doing law because as one of his professors noted, lawyers have more impact on people's lives than doctors do. He spends most of his time in the law library now, which has been hard, but I think ultimately I think it will be good for us. Jeremy and I have been essentially joined at the hip since we started dating (we celebrated our second anniversary this June), and as wonderful as it's been, a lot of our independence has been lost in the process. I myself kind of let my life slip into the compliant happiness of relationship-land, and I would like to get back some of the steely-eyed ambition of my single years. It's hard to convince Jeremy that I'm fine with doing the bulk of the cooking and cleaning now--it's just like being single except I get to sleep with a dude next to me every night! And speaking of ambition...
I'm applying for the PhD program yet again!
It's been almost two years since I started working at my current job, and it's been pretty good. The pay is ok, and the co-workers are friendly. I like working for a university, and there's a lot of room to grow in the institution. I've even been pushing for a reclassification and it looks like I'm going to be upgraded to a Communications Assistant (with an accompanying raise). So why would I be applying for a PhD? I'm still trying to work that out. I don't deny that PhD work is isolating, stressful, and all-absorbing, and that there's no guarantee of work at the end (tenure-track jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate in academia). I would essentially be putting myself through five years of poverty to guarantee that I could never get hired to do anything else.
But I can feel my life slipping away at my job. It's just--I'm not ready to give up on my dreams yet of doing something that inspires passion. I sometimes feel like such a spoiled brat, especially when I compare myself to other people my age who would give their right eye to have a job as promising as mine, but I have this daydream where I'm lecturing in front of hundreds of first-year students, who have never truly been inspired by literature before, and just MAKING THEM SEE THAT THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO LIFE THAN MONEY! There's nobility; there's change; there's truths that you should consider before you go off to business school. That's what university should be about, and as pragmatic as I am I want to fight against the machine that would turn us all into philistines. I want to look back at my life at 80 and know that I touched people's souls, not that I just provided the best marketing campaign for the department of physiology.
Or do I? Last year all I wanted to do was be an architect, and I applied and was accepted into a master's program in architecture. With funding. And I turned it down. Once I got what I wanted, it's like I didn't want it anymore. So who knows? Any maybe it will be the case that I'll stay in my current job and find my bliss outside of it (e.g. writing part-time, volunteering, drawing). I'm not going to know until I find out whether I've been accepted or rejected.
Milly's demanding my attention now--she wants to play with string!
We now have a cat!
Jeremy and I were talking about having a cat for a long time, and about two months ago we went to Toronto Humane Society and found a five-year-old white and gray tabby. Her previous owners had called her "Selene," which we thought was gay, so we changed it to "Milly." I'm having some trouble adjusting to the influx of cat hair in my previously spic-and-span world, but it's nice having something cute and unpredictable around. Especially now that...
Jeremy is gonna be a law-talkin guy!
Jeremy started law school in September, and it's been really stressful, admittedly. We had a hard time adjusting our lives to the fact that he has to spend every waking and breathing moment doing law because as one of his professors noted, lawyers have more impact on people's lives than doctors do. He spends most of his time in the law library now, which has been hard, but I think ultimately I think it will be good for us. Jeremy and I have been essentially joined at the hip since we started dating (we celebrated our second anniversary this June), and as wonderful as it's been, a lot of our independence has been lost in the process. I myself kind of let my life slip into the compliant happiness of relationship-land, and I would like to get back some of the steely-eyed ambition of my single years. It's hard to convince Jeremy that I'm fine with doing the bulk of the cooking and cleaning now--it's just like being single except I get to sleep with a dude next to me every night! And speaking of ambition...
I'm applying for the PhD program yet again!
It's been almost two years since I started working at my current job, and it's been pretty good. The pay is ok, and the co-workers are friendly. I like working for a university, and there's a lot of room to grow in the institution. I've even been pushing for a reclassification and it looks like I'm going to be upgraded to a Communications Assistant (with an accompanying raise). So why would I be applying for a PhD? I'm still trying to work that out. I don't deny that PhD work is isolating, stressful, and all-absorbing, and that there's no guarantee of work at the end (tenure-track jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate in academia). I would essentially be putting myself through five years of poverty to guarantee that I could never get hired to do anything else.
But I can feel my life slipping away at my job. It's just--I'm not ready to give up on my dreams yet of doing something that inspires passion. I sometimes feel like such a spoiled brat, especially when I compare myself to other people my age who would give their right eye to have a job as promising as mine, but I have this daydream where I'm lecturing in front of hundreds of first-year students, who have never truly been inspired by literature before, and just MAKING THEM SEE THAT THERE'S SO MUCH MORE TO LIFE THAN MONEY! There's nobility; there's change; there's truths that you should consider before you go off to business school. That's what university should be about, and as pragmatic as I am I want to fight against the machine that would turn us all into philistines. I want to look back at my life at 80 and know that I touched people's souls, not that I just provided the best marketing campaign for the department of physiology.
Or do I? Last year all I wanted to do was be an architect, and I applied and was accepted into a master's program in architecture. With funding. And I turned it down. Once I got what I wanted, it's like I didn't want it anymore. So who knows? Any maybe it will be the case that I'll stay in my current job and find my bliss outside of it (e.g. writing part-time, volunteering, drawing). I'm not going to know until I find out whether I've been accepted or rejected.
Milly's demanding my attention now--she wants to play with string!