End of Line

And so I find myself looking down the barrel of a trip home, having snuck up rather a bit quicker than I was expecting (of course). Things around the house are fairly chaotic. We've got rapid-fire guests coming through and a farewell party to plan before we bust out the mops and clean up this business. Everywhere is stuff that needs to be packed sooner or later. Lexi and Kate are wrapping up their last-ditch interviews to squeeze that last drop of research out of the country. I'm still looking for jobs and, lazily, applying for them. A lot of craigslist time. A lot of jobs that just suck. Right now my best options are all in writing/editing or sales/bizdev. Tragicly, I haven't done much else! Such is life.

I'm starting to look at higher education again, for a year or two down the line. Its kind of a Venn Diagram, where 1 circle is "Things I Am Interested In" and the other is "Things I Would Be Good At Maybe". It seems that, in spite of my wishes, the intersection between those two groups is, shall we say, wee.

The trick, it appears, is coming up with a question. If one wishes to pursue a brief spurt in academia, you need to think of a REALLY GOOD question that nobody's asked before, but there's enough research AROUND the topic that you can find out the answer. Or, you could just truck out and start doing interviews (which means MORE good questions). Let us describe this track as Track A.

Track B is the practical approach. While Track A is a kind of "I am interested in XYZ thing, I'm gonna get a MA in it and then after that someone will hire me", track B operates in the reverse logic. I want to be an X so i will study Y. Doctor - Med School. Lawyer - Law School. Clown - Clown College. ETC.

This is, of course, a gross simplification. One must burn the candle at both ends. So, there's like a million factors (or, 3) that you have to keep in mind. It needs to be something interesting, that I'd be good at, that ends in an employment I'd like. Economics is interesting and I think i'd like to be an Economist but I doubt i'd be very good at it. I think I'd be a good Lawyer, and it certainly pays the bills, but Ye Gods: Law School! And then there's that infernal question! The question i'm supposed to dedicate my life to answering, then write a book about it. The hope being that I can find a job in some way related to all this, and get started on my long and illustrious career doing whatever.

meh. We'll see what comes of it.