I am increasingly grateful for the existence of Post 84, the outdoor education program, at my high school; not only for the skills I learned as a participant and then later as staff of the program, but also for the investment I made in the clothing and equipment at the time.  I’m still using most of that today, and it really is invaluable during inclement weather of the sort that Washington, DC has been experiencing over the past week or so, with more on the way later this afternoon and into tomorrow evening.

K: “She writes little notes about everyone in her Contacts list — you should see what she wrote about you!”

Me: <nods> “Mmhm.  Maybe.”

I didn’t look.  I assume she trusted me not to when she let me use her computer.  Besides, if I don’t know what she actually wrote, I can pretend it says anything I want it to.

Since that day, I’ve believed that it says what I have to tell her will be well-received.

I’m headed up to Philadelphia for a family wedding tomorrow, and I’ll be back in DC Sunday evening.  One of my second cousins is getting married, and I’m the representative for my immediate family, since my parents are in Seattle and my sister is at school in Vermont.

It’s always intimidating to go to these family functions, because my extended family on my mom’s side is absolutely huge.  Apparently I have 59 cousins of some flavor, most are second cousins (my mom’s uncle’s children’s children — I think that’s second cousins, but I’m not sure how it translates into English).  I have, I think, only six first cousins on my mom’s side.  Only.  Anyway, Philadelphia in particular is intimidating because a large number of my cousins live there, and every time I’ve gone to visit, I’ve had to re-learn everyone’s names because I can’t keep them straight in my head, and they’re all about my age and therefore change as rapidly as I do in the years between visits.  So this weekend will be fun.

Additionally, I finally opened and used the iron and ironing board I bought when I first moved to DC, thinking that I’d need them because I’d likely be looking for work for quite some time.  Turns out I got the first job I interviewed for, and lab work being what it is — a hazardous environment for nice clothes — I haven’t needed to use an iron in a year.  Well, I take that back.  I’ve needed to use it; I just haven’t because I didn’t need to wear ironed clothes.  A wedding kind of changes that.

It's a cute little iron, but rather useless.

The last iron I owned was this tiny little Rowenta travel iron I bought for college, since my first-year dorm room was 96 sq. ft., along with a tiny tabletop ironing board.  I bought it not only because it was cheap and I had no money, but because I felt that I couldn’t justify a more expensive iron.  I could not have been more wrong.

I didn’t realize that the weight of an iron made that big of a difference in the amount of effort it would take to actually take the wrinkles out of a shirt.  That, and I had no idea when this thing was up to the right temperature.  All of these things made me severely dislike not only the iron, but the act of ironing itself, just because it took so much of my time just to look presentable.

Anyway, it took me only 15 minutes to iron the shirts I just did with my new iron.  These exact same shirts took nearly an hour with the dinky little thing I used to have.  The lesson: don’t cheap out on things that are supposed to help you do things faster and more efficiently.

I no longer want to go to graduate school or medical school, and while a large component of those decisions are rooted in my own personal feelings on the matter given the experiences that I’ve had. However, the graduate shool decision still has a giant “maybe” attached to it.

Med school has been ruled out in my mind largely because I haven’t been able to convince myself that it’s something that I want to do. I know what prerequisites I must fulfill or possess, and yet I have not been enthusiastic about completing them. However, the availability of time has always been an issue. That said, this fact invites at least two questions: first, I time as an still is an issue, and medical shool was an important goal, why did fulfilling the necessary requirements not take priority in my life? Second, clearly my life/work balance is already an issue I have demonstrated vey little skill in managing; what hope would I have in improving that skill should I become a doctor?

Graduate school is, in my mind, a better fit for me than medical school, and yet even there, I’m not sure it’s the right thing for me to do. Perhaps I’ve only had experience in a field of science that doesn’t captivate me the way I would need in order for me to really want to devote my lfe to its study. As far as I can tell, money will always be an issue as long as I am in science, and I think that it will only be with great luck that I could fix that problem within the spam of 10-15 years. In the meantime, it appears that I would be tied to research, unable to travel, build up personal wealth, or own property, though that last point would be possible only with great difficulty. To be honest, I haven’t totally excluded this path in life, but I am actively looking for other options.

If I do choose graduate shool, I am sure it would not be in the field of biology or any other field that would direct me into basic research. I enjoy science and I feel that I am never satisfied by the knowledge that I have and am constantly trying to expand upon it. My interest always has and continues to be te use of computers to solve a wide variety of problems. Every time I learn about some new way of using computers or interacting with them or using them to interact with the world, I get really excited and it instantly become my top priority to go out and find as much information as I can on the innovation and apply or expand upon it.

I suspect that computer science maybe the field I should consider most seriously, but I am concerned about barriers to entry, given that my undergraduate major was not in that field. I have been told that this shouldn’t matter, but it’s one thing for me to know and believe this. It’s another for a recruiter, someone in an HR department, or an admissions office to have the same opinion.

If I can figure out a way to transition from biology and engineering to computer science and engineering as design, even if all I can come up with is at best is a poor excuse for a life plan, I will be extremely excited and motivated to embark upon it.

As a side note I should also add that consulting is also a possibilty as far as future career plans go, but to be entirely honest, I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t been given any explanation as to what it is or what is invoved that leaves me satisfied. As such, I’m not entirely convinced that it’s a good fit for me.