Grad school vs Real Job

For the first time in my life, I'm 98.5% almost working a real job (except it's an unpaid internship [great life decisions]).  I feel like what am I doing is close enough to a real job that I can accurately deconstruct and reconstitute (newly learned word) a comparison between Grad School and a Real Job.


First, the pros and cons of each:

Grad School Pros:

• Learn things that not everyone knows
• Learn to be have a good argument, or at least make others think it's a good argument
• Meet people with similar interests (in my case, all Girls)
• Spend 20+ hours/week with these people
• Almost never be judged when doing research/homework on your laptop..in a bar possibly at the bar (FREE WIFI)
• Free access to research databases 
• student discounts
• Pajamas allowed
• Summer vacation (sort of)
• Financial aid checks

Grad School Cons:

• Learn things that you will never use
• Be around people who make better arguments than you
• Realize that you don't necessarily like all people with your same interests
• Spend 20+ hours/week with some people you may not like very much
• Realize that you probably should give up alcohol for Lent, just to make sure you're not an alcoholic.
• GRE to get in
• PRAXIS to get out
• Unpaid internships
• Unpaid internships for 40 hours/week and homework for 6 credits
• Undergrads
• Living with Undergrads
• Living with Undergrads at a party school
• Student Loans

Real Job Pros:

• Theoretically, you get paid (I don't currently, but let's overlook that)
• People actually think you know what you're talking about (surprisingly, sometimes you do too)
• No homework
• Meet people with similar interests
• Employee Discounts
• Paid vacation

Real Job Cons:

• work 40 hours/week EVERY week
• no summer vacation
• working with the same people everyday (some of who you may not like)
• Waking up at god-awful hours in order to look nice

I'm sure there's more.  I'm sure I have friends in Grad School and Real Jobs who could add to the list.

I suppose I didn't reconstitute them.

The end is near!....then what?

I graduate with a Master's degree in approximately 8 months.  I feel like that in itself is a great accomplishment. But being the never stopping person that I am, I am already looking at what I'm going to do next.  So many options.  Some practical and some not quite so practical.

Option #1: Find a Job.  This option is, of course, the most practical one.  But even within this option are many suboptions: Where do I find a job? Do I want to work with children or adults? Do I want to work in a hospital, a school, a nursing home, home health, private practice, an underwater cave?!?!  Do I want to move to a big city, or a little town? Do I want to live in the mountains or by the water?  So many suboptions.


Option #2: Go to Wisconsin and work with the grand poobah of phonology, Dr. Shieberg.  This option is just one of those things that I would love to do, and would be WAY more excited about it if it were in almost any other location.  But Wisconsin? Seriously?

Option #3: Go back to school.  Zachary probably hates me for even considering this option.  He always asks me when I'm going to start real life. "You've been in college for as long as I've known you", he always tells me.  That's only been 7 years-ish. But I really enjoy research and I feel like that side of the field will be closer to my linguistic roots. I've honestly started thinking about just pursuing a Doctorate in strictly linguistics and simply applying it to Speech-Language Pathology.


Option #4: Work part-time and open a tiny little dance studio. Whaaa? that's a blast from the past. 

Anyway, my discovery has been that I have no idea what I want and I'm not even 50% sure about where to go next. Maybe build some bookshelves.

I DID IT!

BAM! Made my bookcase prototype.  Discovered that it would also look awesome hanging horizontally on the wall.  I painted this one black because it was made of plywood. But once I get better at it, I'm planning on making some out of pine and oak and staining them. 

Also drew out a new square design.  Pretty excited about it.  When I get money enough to build another one, you can see it.

Hobbies

Recently, I have discovered that I am in need of a hobby.  Really I feel that everyone is need of a good hobby.  Something to do that realigns my chi or whatever, even something just to pass the free time that I'm probably not going to have. I have been moving toward this discovery ever so slowly over the past few months.

My first baby step on the road to this discovery happened when I went into my parents garage to watch my father sand his hand-crafted wooden kayak.  He has been building this kayak for over a year and a half and it is nearly finished.   He says that every youth pastor should take a year off and build houses so that at the end of the day they can look at something that they have built and see that they have made a difference in the world. Pastoring youth is not the most rewarding job sometimes, I suppose. He loves his kayak. He is very proud of his kayak.  And he has every right to feel so.

I feel like Speech-Language Therapy is similar to youth pastoring. Results take a whole lot more time to see than I would like. The victories are much more celebrated but they are few and far between. I need a hobby.

Another step toward this discovery is that when I'm not working or studying, I really don't know what to do with my time. I find myself playing Burnout: Paradise City and facebook stalking my friends. I feel like I should be more productive.  I did start reading for pleasure, which has been good, but most of the people in my books have a hobby.  I think I'd like to get one.

The final step was telling my boyfriend that he needs a hobby besides video games.  At 27, I feel that it is no longer acceptable for your ONLY "hobby" to be starcraft 2/MW2/Red Dead Redemption (all the men argue that that is 3 hobbies).  We are about to become a long distance relationship, so I won't be around anymore to remind that he should probably go outside and breathe fresh air at least once a day (he probably wants me to tell you that that is an exaggeration and to stop making him look bad, but it's kinda funny).

So I've started throwing around ideas in my head (and looking for things to do on the interwebs).

Sewing clothes. I feel like that is a good idea, but I'd enjoy it more if I had children to make clothes for, or was somewhat skilled at using a sewing machine (I used one once I think) (I made Lauren enter a contest to win a serger).

Recycling.  People are so into recycling these days.  My best friend Samantha is in California right now educating people on some proposition that would green all of California and probably save the world.  I see cool things like people making coffee tables out of VHS tapes and think: I could do that.  But I don't think I'm passionate enough about it, and green people are so very passionate.  It's intimidating.

Wood Carving.  I only looked into this because I recently watched The Runaways and Cherie Currie (played by Dakota Fanning in the movie) is a wood carving artist now.  I never really thought about hot blondes being into wood carving, but I can get down with that.

Drawing.  I can draw surprisingly.  It surprising even to me sometimes. I rarely do it. I think because I can really only draw things from real life and in order to get everything the way I want it, I end up taking a really long time and get bored with the subject.  So I often forget I can draw. My family does too. I showed them a drawing I recently did (to see if it should be my hobby) and they were like "you drew that, you can draw, hmm?"  Thanks for the confidence boost, dad.

But yesterday i found something that I actually could probably get excited.  I've decided that my new hobby is probably going to be building things.  Out of plywood mostly.  Bookshelves are at the top of my list.  Bookshelves, I feel, are a safe place to start when working with plywood (I say plywood because I know that if I just put wood all my college frat boy friends will giggle every time they read it, plus plywood is cheap).  Anyway, I'm very excited to dabble in my new found hobby.  We'll see how long it lasts.

If ever I'm famous (questionable), it all started right here.

(so many parentheses) 

Soda-Tab Belt

BOOM! Next project!
SODA TAB BELT

Middle Schoolers

Today, I discovered Middle Schoolers.  I've known many middle schoolers throughout my life. Most of them I knew when I, myself, was in middle school.  And then at some point I'm pretty sure my siblings were in middle school. So I've known middle schoolers, but I had never really seen (as an outsider) a mighty band of middle schoolers before today.

Today, was the second day of school apparently.  And the Speech-Language Pathologist's (SLP=what I am, I guess) job during the first few weeks of school to provide hearing screenings for all of the new students and all of the kindergarten, 4th, and 7th graders.  Today, I was at a local middle school doing these hearing screenings with my good friend and fellow student SLP thing (we aren't technically SLPs for another 9 months), Laura.

Let me start at the beginning.  Public schools are creepy now.  When you sign in as a visitor they take your picture and print it out on your name tag.  But they don't TELL you they are going to take your picture.  So I looked like a legit creeper walking around with a what's-going-on face in my picture posted right next to my name.  Let's just say that several people asked me what I was doing there as I walked down the hall.

So here I am in a public school (which always weirds homeschoolers out), I don't understand how the cafeteria works, I look like a little lost 5th grader trying to find the bathroom and have to ask for help, and then the sinks are practically at my knees, I tried to buy my lunch with a credit card and was reminded that I was in a middle school ("we only take cash").  Oh right. Duh (such a middle school word).

And there are tons of little people!  Middle schoolers are so much littler (yes, that is the word I want to use) than I pictured in my mind.  When I see freshman in college, in my head they are equivalent to middle schoolers. No longer.   And they are very strange little people.  Somewhere between cute kindergartner and screwed up adolescent high school senior but with hint "my mom still dresses me and I hate it". 

So we're bringing these kids in about 10 at a time and giving instructions:
SLP: "ok, you're going to sit in these chairs in front us and we're going to put some head phones on you.  You are going to hear a series of beeps.  When you hear the beeps raise your hand-"
Random middle schooler (every time): "do we all raise our hands?"
SLP: "no, only the people with the head phones on.  ok, you all need to be very quiet so that everyone can hear because these beeps are really quiet and you have to listen hard."

First kids steps up, puts on the head phones.  I start pushing buttons making little beeps happen.  no hand raising. 
SLP: "do you hear anything?"
Middle Schooler: "yeah, it's like beep beep beep."
SLP: "right, I need to raise your hand, otherwise I'm going to put down that you are deaf." (I just gave you instructions)

This happens over and over again for several hours. Bring kids in, give instructions, they ask weird questions, put on head phones, don't raise hands, give instructions again, they pass/fail, sent 'em out, bring on the next load!

At one point, later in the day.  Laura and I are in a total groove. We go through 12 kids in less than 5 minutes.  This one group comes in, all boys (Ah, middle school boys).  Instead of asking the typical "do we all raise our hands" question.  This one kid raises and his hand and asks my tall, Norwegian friend, Laura, a question.  He asks: "Do you have any Indian in you?"  She stands there for a moment, and you can see that she is actually wondering if he is talking to her.  If there had been more of us standing at the front of the room she probably would've looked behind her for the person he was obviously asking this question to.  It was strange. I no longer felt like the creeper.

Anyway, I discovered middle schoolers today.  It was very weird.

Demolition Derby

Last night, I experienced my first county fair.  The fair itself was alright.  It was your typical batch of scam-like games that want you to spend $5 on a chance to maybe win a stuffed banana or an inflatable hammer. The rides are scary in the simple fact that they are rides at a county fair.  I said that hundreds of people had ridden on them because we were there on the second to last night; Ashley said, "yeah, hundreds of people have loosened the screws."  So I didn't ride the Ferris wheel.  But one day I will ride a Ferris wheel.

The real reason i went to the Fair..well there were two, but I missed the pig races.  The real reason i went to the fair was to see the Demolition Derby.  Now I had heard of the derby before and the word demolition gave me a pretty good idea about how it would go, but seriously!  Watching a bunch of old cars that run perfectly enough to buy them for your 16-year-old smack into each other over and over and over again. It was something else.

above are Actual Pictures from last night

Going to the derby taught me two things (I think, maybe more): 1) Cars are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for; 2) if we wore helmets while driving, we would be a lot less likely to get hurt in car crashes.

It was the ultimate bumper cars.  By the end of it most of them looked like accordions.  One was only on three wheels and was still strong enough to bash the front of the last car standing over and over again to gain the win!  Cars were flipped.  There was fire. At one point the front ends of two cars became welded together and they had to move around the track together.  Entire back ends were folded up at a 90 degree angle so that the driver couldn't see out the back window.

Now my father, whether he reads this or not, is probably wondering how I handled going to a demo derby.  He is wondering this, because I have some post-traumatic stress from all of my car accidents and freak out (with screaming and cowering in the corner) when other people are driving me around usually.  For one, I was not in any of the cars.  For two, I would totally drive in a demo derby because the car has been modified for the purposed of wrecking. For three, there were about 40 grown men (and 1 woman) having the time of their lives out there on the track.  Giggling like a bunch of fools.

So that was my demolition derby experience. $10 for 2 hours of smashing entertainment. Well worth it.