It's Fall Again
I guess it is time for my monthly update. There has been a lot on my mind lately, but since I am feeling lazy, I'm going to compartmentalize:
THE FUTURE
I'm graduating in about a year. Now, "about a year" is still a considerable amount of time, but this is the first time in my very long college career that I have had a clear and realistic vision of actually graduating. I'm incredibly excited. I feel pretty done with undergrad, and I'm ready to move on and actually be around people who are my own age. I also am buying a new car when I graduate, and will get to work full time for a while. My plans are as follows: Plan A: Get my masters in sociology from Mizzou (or, if not Mizzou, some other school), work at the KD and Clovers while doing so, and when I graduate look into a career teaching at a community college (average salary: $55,000), after paying back some student loans and settling down a bit, go back for PhD. Plan B: if I suck and can't get into a grad school for sociology, consider getting an MA or other certification in Education, possibily to teach sociology or some other social science to high schoolers (average salary: $50,000). Plan C: If all else fails, I at least will have a Bachelors, so I guess I'll just try to find some job that will pay me some amount of money that I can make a living off of. I do really want my PhD, but I also want to buy a house, raise a family, get married, do all those traditional life-y things, and the more I think about it, the more I think I'd really ENJOY teaching sociology to community college students. It would feel more like activism than preaching to the choir. So, the PhD can wait, even until retirement (if retirement still exists by the time I'm 60+).
MATERIALISM
I love buying shit, probably too much. It's like this uncontrollable destructive urge inside me. Luckily, I've learned how to the tame the beast by only allowing myself to buy one gratutious item a month and only at the end of the month. That said, my one gratutious item is usually not a ten dollar t-shirt but a $318 pair of shoes or $155 pair of jeans or some other nonsense. I don't know when or how it happened, but I've become addicted to expensive clothing. I guess my philosophy has become that it is better to buy high-quality classic items that I will love forever and find numerous uses for throughout the years than to buy $318 worth of cheap shit that I hate within a year and/or will be falling apart in a year. Ever since I have decided to go for quality over quantity I have loved my closet a lot more, and honestly, the $318 shoes were an anomoaly. But fuck, I love them. I just like to look at them, and hey, they were at least made in Italy and not China. I try to balance frivolity with practicality and buy items I know will serve me well, but in the end, fashion is 95% frivolity. I'm ok with that. Greg, on the other hand, must be lied to about the prices of the itmes I purchase. Eventually I will have to cut myself off, but for now it is ok. I work hard, and I make ok money. My bank account is never below $1000.
FINANCES
Speaking of spending, here are some things I'd like to do:
Anyway, it's about time for a nap.
THE FUTURE
I'm graduating in about a year. Now, "about a year" is still a considerable amount of time, but this is the first time in my very long college career that I have had a clear and realistic vision of actually graduating. I'm incredibly excited. I feel pretty done with undergrad, and I'm ready to move on and actually be around people who are my own age. I also am buying a new car when I graduate, and will get to work full time for a while. My plans are as follows: Plan A: Get my masters in sociology from Mizzou (or, if not Mizzou, some other school), work at the KD and Clovers while doing so, and when I graduate look into a career teaching at a community college (average salary: $55,000), after paying back some student loans and settling down a bit, go back for PhD. Plan B: if I suck and can't get into a grad school for sociology, consider getting an MA or other certification in Education, possibily to teach sociology or some other social science to high schoolers (average salary: $50,000). Plan C: If all else fails, I at least will have a Bachelors, so I guess I'll just try to find some job that will pay me some amount of money that I can make a living off of. I do really want my PhD, but I also want to buy a house, raise a family, get married, do all those traditional life-y things, and the more I think about it, the more I think I'd really ENJOY teaching sociology to community college students. It would feel more like activism than preaching to the choir. So, the PhD can wait, even until retirement (if retirement still exists by the time I'm 60+).
MATERIALISM
I love buying shit, probably too much. It's like this uncontrollable destructive urge inside me. Luckily, I've learned how to the tame the beast by only allowing myself to buy one gratutious item a month and only at the end of the month. That said, my one gratutious item is usually not a ten dollar t-shirt but a $318 pair of shoes or $155 pair of jeans or some other nonsense. I don't know when or how it happened, but I've become addicted to expensive clothing. I guess my philosophy has become that it is better to buy high-quality classic items that I will love forever and find numerous uses for throughout the years than to buy $318 worth of cheap shit that I hate within a year and/or will be falling apart in a year. Ever since I have decided to go for quality over quantity I have loved my closet a lot more, and honestly, the $318 shoes were an anomoaly. But fuck, I love them. I just like to look at them, and hey, they were at least made in Italy and not China. I try to balance frivolity with practicality and buy items I know will serve me well, but in the end, fashion is 95% frivolity. I'm ok with that. Greg, on the other hand, must be lied to about the prices of the itmes I purchase. Eventually I will have to cut myself off, but for now it is ok. I work hard, and I make ok money. My bank account is never below $1000.
FINANCES
Speaking of spending, here are some things I'd like to do:
- Going out to eat--shit's pricey--I'd like to reduce this down to a ONCE a MONTH (instead of ONCE a WEEK) habit
- Stop spending money on little food items during the week when we have groceries at home!!
- At the end of every month, go through my banking spreadsheet and take note of how much I actually saved. See where I spent money and shouldn't have.
Anyway, it's about time for a nap.