More Education Planning

Alright so I've officially given up on grad school. At least as far as agricultural economics goes. In fact I've kind of given up on agriculture all together. My new plan is to become a chiropractor. I could write a whole essay about why I want to become a chiropractor and I will have to do that for some admissions (or interviews), but for right now I'm just going to focus on getting all of the pre reqs out of the way. Starting with Psychology. I'll be starting a course called Psychology as a Natural Science by distance ed in November. if that goes well I'll take another course and then if that goes well maybe I'll look at summer courses.

Although it all depends what happens with work. I'm also hoping to be well enough to go back to work and then hopefully move to a different department or perhaps a new company altogether. We'll see what happens.

I'd rather not know

I've discovered something about myself recently. This story is going to sound totally pathetic and it kind of is but at the same time totally revealing about some things in my life.

On Thursday night I was supposed to meet someone for dinner. I don't want to exactly call her a friend. We used to be friendly but then we both got busy and sort of fell apart. This was supposed to be our second meeting since the Facebook reconnect. I hadn't been feeling well all week and came close to cancelling a few times but didn't. Anyway I showed up to the Olive Garden where we were supposed to meet and an hour and two drinks and two bowls of soup later she still hadn't.

So what's one to make of this situation? My first thought was "well she must have got stuck in traffic". That lasted for about 15 minutes. After half an hour I figured I must have gotten the day wrong, but I was almost certain I hadn't because I double checked before I left. After an hour I figured she must have had some kind of emergency and there would be a call or an e-mail waiting for me when I got home. It's 4 days later and still no call or e-mail. So I sent her a Facebook message and tried really hard not to sound too pissed off.

Here's the thing though, at this point I'd rather not know what happened. At least if I don't know there is a chance that it was an emergency and she didn't just forget about me. I'll feel pretty bad if it was that she just didn't remember that we had plans and went ahead and did her own thing.

I also realized that there are other things that I don't want to know. For example ,I still harbor my office crush. Even though I haven't been at work for nearly a year and therefore haven't seen him I have attached certain events to him. So when I think about those things I think of him. Anyway I've decided that I'd rather not know if he likes me, than find out that he doesn't. Or if I would get accepted to my choice of graduate schools, right now I have the hope that I would, if I apply and don't get in I'd be upset.

Is there anything you'd rather not know for certain?

To Write a Thesis or not to Write

So in all of my thoughts about grad school and where I should go I some how blocked out the thought that I'm going to have to write a thesis.

This hit me hard as I was looking at different school and the profs at those schools. It's not that I had totally forgot about it but just that I hadn't really given a lot of thought to it, what with the writing entrance exams and figuring out application deadlines and having to get references.

So how does one psych themselves up to write a thesis? Well my method is to go through papers that I wrote for my undergrad. And not to toot my own horn but, I wrote some pretty kick ass papers, some of which I totally forgot about.

I still don't know what I would do my thesis on but it had better be something that I love because it's going to be with me for 2 years.

The First Hurdle to Cross

The last time I talked about getting serious about going to grad school I was looking at writing the GRE. Since I've been studying for the GRE for a while I realized that I don't seem to be doing very well. I'm doing practice questions now and well I kind of suck.

So now I'm thinking maybe instead of killing myself to do well on the GRE so that I can get into my dream schools, maybe I ought to be looking for schools that don't require the GRE. None of the Canadian school that I would apply to require the GRE and some other schools like Oklahoma State and North Dakota State don't require the GRE. So maybe I should just take the easy way out. Then again I might kick myself for not at least trying to write the GRE.

Alright that's 7 mentions of the GRE in one post. Far more than enough.

Slight Delay on the Dream Train

Alright so now that I've decided that I'm going to apply for my Master's degree I'm starting to get into a little bit of research. If I intend to apply for next fall I need to be able to pay for it. As of right now the only place I will be able to afford is right here at home. In order to afford anywhere else a year from now I'm going to have to live off Kraft Dinner for a year.

So now I'm thinking I should be looking forward to the fall of 2011 so that I don't have to be completely miserable for a year in order to afford the next two years. That takes a lot of the pressure off since now I'm giving myself another year the prepare for the GRE. It also means I'll be 29 before I'm finished grad school.

That's a scary thought

You know how I was talking about my job here and some of the crap that happened while I was away? Well I had a little chat with my boss and they've already filled the position that I was in and he said that the person that they hired is over qualified for the job and probably won't stay long which got me thinking.

If people in my industry are applying for jobs for which they are over qualified doesn't that mean that there aren't many jobs out there. And perhaps rather than complaining about my job all the time I need to realize that at least I have a job. It also puts into rather sharp focus the importance of going to get my Master's degree before it's too late and I do actually have to compete for jobs with the over qualified.

What was I worried about

I've finally gotten around to studying for the math section of the GRE and let me just say I wish I had taken this test right after grade 9. But then again I've also taken Stats and Calculus at the university level since grade 9 so this just seems easy.

Has anyone noticed that they always put the verbal section first in these GRE study books. Of course that's probably because the verbal section is first but I feel much more confident having completed one math chapter than I did after the whole verbal section.

Sometimes you just need the right motivation

So I have many times mentioned the passing thought that perhaps I should apply for grad school. Well yesterday I made the decision to get really serious about it. I know I've said that before but I'm pretty sure it will stick this time.

See work has once again screwed me over with their HR policies and so I'm being demoted because I got sick. But the thing is I deserved that promotion. I put a lot of work into it and now it's all gone by the way side.

And so my renewed commitment to higher education.

It's time to get down to work

I've been talking about it for a while now and well I think it's finally time to get to work on writing that GRE. I've pretty much had it with work and now that I've got enough money for my trip I can start to focus on saving my money for grad school.

Last night I had a dream that I just blew up one day at work and quit. You know I'm not very far from it right now. I'm not actually feeling as bad as I have in the past when I get home from work but I am having some trouble containing my anger. I'm terrible for bottling up my emotions and then letting them bubble up and get the better of me.

And so it's time to go. I just don't know where. But this is the first step.

I'm boring

So I had set up some goals for the month of February . Let's see how far I got.

Finish reading Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon. I'm currently on page 135 of 1070. I'm probably about half way through now. I actually lost my book for a while so I couldn't read it and I also read another book in between. Haven't really been in a reading mood lately to tell you the truth.

Finish watching Season 4 of Weeds. Done and Done. I finished this, caught up on The Tudors and have started watching Big Love. Yeah I'm weird and clearly have a lot of time on my hands.

Research and determine 3 grad schools to apply for. This one amuses me since I'm almost ready to give up on grad school. Taking the monetary hit, plus the whole fear of not finding a job when I'm done. But we'll see what happens. It depends how the next couple of weeks go I guess.

Set a tentative date for the GRE. This one goes right along with the last one.

Watch some college hoops. Done. I watched the Duke-UNC game a couple of weeks ago, the Texas-Oklahoma game and one other Duke game this past weekend. Other than that I've spent a lot of time watching curling.

Finish sewing the dress I started last year. I've thought about this a couple of times but I never did pull it out to finish it.

Buy and elliptical machine or a bike. I'm now waiting until I move to do this one. No point in buying something just to move it 2 weeks later.

So that's how I did for February. I'm planning to go back to the regular goal of the week, for March. So we'll see how that goes.

My emotional baggage

I haven't written anything lately because I don't even know where to begin. Not to mention that I'm totally unfocused these days and can't concentrate at all. So let's do a quick run down of things in my life.

Work - I suppose it pays the bills. Actually it's going fairly well. Except for the sabotage. Seriously my paranoia is getting so bad that I actually thought that someone purposely took the papers off my desk yesterday just to get me in trouble. Turns out someone just accidentally took them off my desk but still.

Home - Home is pretty good. I'm still having trouble with the neighbours and I'm not renewing my lease for this coming year so I'm going to have to find somewhere else to live. That's not going so well. I've probably made about 30 phone calls and have gotten about 5 replies. Only one of them would work and they don't have any openings right now.

School - School is on pause for now. I'm seriously considering quitting my job and going back to do my pre-reqs for lab. It's tough to give up the money but it's probably worth it in the end. Well maybe. I'm thinking though that I would probably do part of a Master's degree by distance ed at the same time. I don't know sometimes I think I think about this stuff too much.

Friends - I don't see a whole lot of them these days. Well if you don't count work friends anyway. it was spring break last week and exams and papers are coming due this week. It's hard having a lot of friends in school when you're not.

And there I am. Oh also I've been watching a lot of curling lately mostly because it's on.

It's been a really weird week

Today was my last day of work for the week and thank god for that. I'm really tempted to give notice. It seems like there is nothing settled in my life right now and since I'm not really a big fan of change this is really difficult for me. 

The whole job situation is really messed up right now. I feel like everyone is conspiring against me. I'm probably just being a little more paranoid than normal but it's hard not to feel that way when there is lots of gossip surrounding my job that I don't even know about. I get that there are things that can't be said until they are finalized and who knows if a lot of what we're hearing is crap but if it does turn out to be turn then I'm not in a very good place work-wise. 

As for my living arrangements well my lease is up in a couple of months which means I either have to commit to staying put or try to find somewhere else to go. On that front I'm going to see the bank about mortgages tomorrow. Just to see what they'd offer me so that I can decide to buy if I find something I want. Otherwise my brother and I will probably be moving across town. 

Which brings me to my next point, grad school. I'm almost at move it or lose it time on this one. I graduated from University almost 2 years ago so it would be hard to get back into the whole school thing. It also brings more uncertainty with the having to move and where do I want to go and where might I get accepted. Right now I'm think about doing a distance ed program. It's not exactly what I want but it's a Master's degree and it doesn't require me to make any real hard choices. But first I want to make sure that by doing this I'm not closing any doors for doing a full research/thesis Master's at some later point, you know just in case. 

Just 4 Days left

There are only 4 days left in this month which means only 4 days left of the NaBloPoMo. Thank god. Also 4 days (well 3 actually), until my nearly faithful reader KEG is off on vacation. Am I jealous? Hells yes. 

Today I'm going to focus on all of the things I want to do over the next month: 

1. Finish reading Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon. I'm currently on page 135 of 1070. 
2. Finish watching Season 4 of Weeds. Is it weird that I'm 2 and a half seasons in and I still haven't decided if I even like the show? 
3. Research and determine 3 grad schools to apply for. 
4. Set a tentative date for the GRE
5. Watch some college hoops. It's almost March and I need to get myself caught up. 
6. Finish sewing the dress I started last year 
7. Buy and elliptical machine or a bike. I'm more likely to use the bike but have you seen the thighs on cyclists?

Yeah that's enough for 2 goals each week which is far more than I'm likely to complete anyway. 

A couple of changes

I can't say that I'm going to miss NaBloPoMo. It's annoying to have to write everyday instead of just writing when you really have something to say. But at the same time it does force you to think of something to say each day even if it's just "I've got nothing to say today". 

So as I was trying to come up with something to say for last night I tweaked some of the features of my blog. First you'll notice the new background. Every once in a while I like to see if there are any new templates out there that catch my eye. I kind of like this one, at least for now. Secondly you'll notice the new GRE word of the day. I'm in full GRE study mode now as I intend to apply to grad school in the fall for the following year. And really it never hurts to expand your vocabulary. Also you might notice that I got rid of the labels along the side. They'll probably return at some point but for right now I've decided to go it without them. Oh and the Archive drop down menu. Instead of it being an expanding menu I'm going with the drop down just to make things a little neater. 

Goal of the Week

I usually save this for a Friday post but I thought I'd give myself a little extra time. Not much mind you given that I'm going to be going to bed in about 1/2 an hour.

This week's goal is to read lesson 4 for my Cattle Nutrition course. It's the last lesson and then I have to do the assignment and then I'll be done the course which means I can apply for December graduation. Yay more graduation.

Once I'm done the course I'll have to decide on my next course of education. Do I take Psych courses by distance ed? You can do almost an entire psych degree through DE so I wouldn't have to quit my job or anything. Do I wait until summer and take my Lab pre-reques? This would in fact, require me to quit my job and I wouldn't be eligible to start the lab program until fall 2010 anyway. Or do I study my but off to write the GRE so that I can apply for Grad school? Which would happen either Fall 2009 or 2010. So many choices. The only things I've decided is that I plan to do something more. I love learning.

What's a girl to do

I'm so confused. I went from excited to scared to worried in a matter of about 15 minutes.

Every couple of weeks I get the idea that perhaps it's time to take myself out of the corporate world and wander back into academia. I've now been out of school for about a year and a half and I've saved up a little actually a very little bit of money but enough to pay for one semester of my Master's degree anyway. After that I'm sure I can get funding for the rest of it. Anyway, I had convinced myself that it was too late to apply for next September as one my top choice has a December deadline for fall admission, but then I found out that some of the other schools I'm considering have deadlines as late as June.

So my first issue is to school or not to school. There's the whole "what would a Master's degree do for me?" thing. Sure it's something that I want to do but do the benefits of doing it now outweigh the costs of quitting my job and leaving all the friends I've made at work. At the same time perhaps this isn't a big deal. Not that it wouldn't make me sad but in reality I'm probably going to have to move on from here anyway.

So the second issue then is am I just looking for an escape from my current position. I think the answer to this one is a resounding yes. Last week I was ready to quit and seek training for a medical profession. This week I'm looking at continuing on my current career path that I also give up on every other week.

Oddly enough, even though I'm not looking to do anything for almost a year I really have to move fast to get stuff done. There is the testing, and the gathering of references and the transcript ordering. It's a mess.

I just don't know if it's the right time yet.

Did I just eat birthday cake for dinner and other random thoughts

The answer the the birthday cake query is YES! It's left over from the family thing and it's been sitting in my fridge for 2 days already. I was trying to hold out until my actual birthday tomorrow but it was calling to me.

Moving right along, I've downgraded (or upgraded perhaps) my most recent office crush to office hotness. You see old office hotness left us a couple of weeks ago for some other job and I hadn't replaced him. Also I think I've found a way to define office crush vs. office hotness. I think that an office crush would be someone who I could actually picture dating, whereas office hotness is someone who is incredibly attractive but I don't think I could actually talk to without turning to mush. Except to apologize for almost running into them coming around a corner, which actually happened.

I had a meeting with someone from the HR department at work. Sounds like there may be some things opening up so we'll see. I've also been doing further grad school research. I've settled on U of M (Minnesota) or U of M (Manitoba) with one other target school yet to be decided.

I think I need a t-shirt

Today is my one year anniversary at my job. I expect it to come and go without much fanfare. The truth of the matter is that this is a major accomplishment for me. Back in September I didn't think I'd be able to make it until Christmas. Of course this was before the department switch and all that. Now with my term ending it looks like I'll be back to my old job. Either that or I venture off to some other company. Or potentially to grad school. Or some other sort of education.

Yeah there are a lot of options but I'm just not a decision maker. The best recent example of this was last week when I was in Safeway. I walked past the bacon, turned around look at the bacon, picked up the package of bacon and then discovered that turkey bacon was on sale. In the end I bought both.

The other thing that stopping me from packing up is that I want to go traveling next summer which will require large sums of money which will likely prevent me from going back to school but a different job is not out of the question if the current one becomes unbearable.

Oh blog, I'm sorry I forgot you

I only remembered that I even had a blog last night when I was thinking about College Basketball brackets and how I blogged the match-ups last year during the tournament. Today I noticed that I haven't even posted this year so I guess this is as good a time as any.

First of all I love my new job. This is mostly because the people are fantastic and as long as I get my daily reports sent out on time no one bothers me much. Leaving me plenty of time to do things like watch Degrassi: The Next Generation, while filing.

I'm also finding that I enjoy doing other things much more now that I'm out of the constant stress of my old position. I don't just look at my coffee breaks as time away from my desk, now I'm able to fully enjoy them.

The frustrating thing about term positions though is that eventually your term ends. For me that means going back to my soul-sucking old position. There have been alot of changes in that department recently though so I guess things could be better. But not bloody likely. So I'm looking for alternatives. First and foremost this involves Grad School, as it has always been my intention to go back some day. The problem is finding a good one. More on that another time.

Panic

Okay so today I had an absolutely terrible day at work and have now Fast-tracked my going back to school by a whole year. I realized today that there is not a single thing at my work place that I actually enjoy doing. Well the getting paid part is pretty nice but that's not really something that I do as it is a reward for the things I do-do. I also enjoy ogling the men but that is also an aside to the actual work that I do.

Someday I just feel absolutely wiped after a day at work, this has been happening more an more lately. I think it goes back to that weekend where all I did was sleep. Seriously when you sleep more than 20 hours in a 30 hour period there is defiantly something wrong with you.