"This planet has--or rather had--a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of them were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy."
So wrote Douglas Adams (may he rest in peace). I've been thinking about money a lot recently. Mostly because I don't have any. Being in college full time without a job will do that to you I've noticed.
Right now, my mother is supporting me, which means she feels she gets to run my life. This is not condusive to a low-stress environment. Neither is having to call her every month and ask for money, and then justify every penny of it.
So, partially as a consequence of this situation, I've started counting down. Counting down to Spring of 2005, which is (if all goes well between now and then) when I graduate from Portland State University with a Bachelors of Science in Physics.
So the new and improved $25,000 question is: "What is Katherine going to _DO_ with her life when she gets her degree?"
The answer is: Katherine has no idea what she wants to be when she grows up.
You see, physics fascinates me. With the sole exception of nuclear/quantum/particle physics, it all fascinates me. Optics, solid state, electronics, acoustics, astronomy, education, teaching, fluids, metalurgy, material science.... The list just gets longer and longer. I'm 18 months from graduation and I haven't yet narrowed down what I want to do when I graduate. Should I go to grad school? In what? Should I get a job in industry? For the government? Doing what? Where? Decisions like this, ideally, should already be MADE when you're this close to graduation, and inquiries going out about applications for graduate school and/or jobs.
And now there's another complication. My boyfriend is going to be coming back from his deployment, probably sometime this spring, and starting _his_ college career. While we don't have plans for anything permanent, I think we're both assuming we'll still be together for a while yet, which means spacial compatability becomes an issue. If I'm doing graduate school in Southern California or working for NASA in Washington D.C., and he's doing his undergraduate in Alaska, where does that leave "us"? Neither of us want to limit the other's opportunities, but we also don't want to be too far apart. And, without any formal committment (we're neither of us ready for one right now), making compromises is difficult.
We've made it this far. Five years since we met, we've lived together, been engaged, been apart, matured as individuals, gotten back together... I'm sure we'll get through this. Maybe we won't be together once all the cards are dealt. Maybe we will. But either way, we'll get through it all. And, in the end, that's what matters.
posted by Katherine at 3:20 AM
