Finally, a post. It's Saturday and I am totally bored. The day was beautiful, I felt like going out and doing stuff but instead I sat in bed and read and watched three hours of the Gilmore Girls. I love that show, the early years were absolutely brilliant. I usually watch the show with my sister, but my sister has been hanging out with some new friends of hers. Which is great, but it leaves me stuck at home alone on a Saturday night.

My moods have been all over the map lately. I'm kind of happy, kind of sad. If the semester just ended next week, I think that would be fine with me. I have less than four weeks, four stressful weeks, but that's about it. I'm going to have to work during May, too, to catch up on grading and stuff, but I still have a whole unplanned summer to think about. I'm thinking about taking a course in technical writing. I might also be working on my thesis project. I want to get a job, but I don't know what kind of job. The ideal situation is if I could find something local, then keep that job next fall and after. But I'm not holding my breath for that.

The truth is, I can see myself starting all over after I graduate. Or even before then. When I was 18 years old and picking a major, I thought, hey, I'll pick CS, then I'll never have to worry about finding a job. I thought jobs would just fall into my lap, and it would be so easy, that companies would actually be fighting over me so that I would work for them. That's how I perceived the job market in the year 2000 when I was deciding all this. Since I'm not a competitive person, and I hate job interviews and uncertainty, the thought of a guaranteed job drew me into this course of study. There were some other factors, too, of course, but that was the big factor in my decision making.

Fast forward five years. Here I am taking a master's degree in CS, wondering what the hell I'm going to do. I've realized a few things in the past few years: 1) I am definitely not guaranteed a job, even in the supposedly hot field of IT. It's still a pretty competitive market, and while I may have an easier time looking for a job than a philosophy major, I definitely don't have jobs dropped into my lap. 2) Even if I did have jobs falling from the sky, that's still a stupid reason to do anything. If you don't enjoy what you do, if you don't have excitement and motivation in your work, then you don't have anything. 3) Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. I know I'm not very talented at math and theory and stuff like that, and that I'm better at verbal things like writing. What's more, I'm more interested in things like history than in how parallel processors work. I pretty much ignored all my natural aptitudes and interests, in favor of a career where I thought I would make more money and where I would have an easier time finding a job. I'm not saying it was a mistake to go this route, but what I am saying is that I should have taken more time to decide, to take stock of what I really wanted and what I was good at, than to just pick something because it was supposedly practical.

So that's why I say I can see myself starting over. Starting over into what, I really don't know. Something I enjoy, something that I know I can be good at. I'm glad I at least offer myself the option now, where before my attitude was that I'm stuck forever with a degree I shouldn't have taken, in a career I don't really like, and I'm going to have a miserable life.