never is enough (yeah never is enough)

~barenaked ladies

I think I’m feeling a little disenchanted today. Today I volunteered at this awesome thing called Expanding Your Horizons, and I spent a lot of my morning talking to this really cool lady named Sharon. She’s got her PhD in industrial engineering. And though I really enjoyed our convo it got me thinking…

eh. Why’s it gotta be so hard? Sometimes I find myself wondering—isn’t an ABET-accredited bachelors in chemical engineering enough?!? Didn’t I get (what is considered by most to be) the hardest, most grueling, most difficult undergraduate degree there is?

And yet, I work for four years and I want to go to law school. Because it isn't enough. I want to flee from science research, despite my four years of o-chem research and my two awesome internships. Because being an engineer is sucking hard. It is not fun, and I do not like it, Sam I Am. There’s no challenge, there’s no drive, there’s not even good deadlines to get all hyped up about. There’s just the drone mentality and a constant reminder that my BS is puny and insufficient in my field. Pisses me off…

I mean, I'm not asking for the world here. I think maybe I want to know when it's okay to stop? Or if I should keep going?

Maybe I need to go another route. maybe maybe maybe. I could sooooo be a patent lawyer, and it has all of these things on my wants-in-a-job-for-carrie checklist, but I don’t know if my heart is in it. I’m really excited at the prospect, but I’m not sure if it appeals to my heart or to my logic. Perhaps I should figure that out. But then again, does it matter? and in the job-world, shouldn’t logic win? Should I just try for another (potentially annoying) job? Questions beget questions. In the meantime I think I’ll go through the motions to keep my options open. (which means taking the GRE and applying)

I think what made me the saddest was seeing this little eighth grader who is all into physics. Albert Einstein and Issac Newton are her heroes. And she even did her 7^th grade science fair project on the theory of freaking relativity. I told her to follow her dreams, but immediately wondered whether or not she’d ever be able to do “enough.” And if she’d ever get to be a real physicist. And it made me think of--

You get your Ph.D
How happy you will be
When you get a job at Wendy's
And are honored with employee of the month

right. soooo moving on. depress-o-dwelling isn’t fun for anybody! and, um, excuse my ramblings. I think I'm just in a weird mood--I mean, after volunteering for this trying to give back, since it was this kind of a thing that made me want to be all science-ee in the first place, it wasn't peachy with a side of keen to leave realizing I'm doing what I thought I wanted to do and not liking it.

Mmmm so. good things good things good things. Ooh, I know!

~I have a fun weekend coming up. In two days!
~It is sooo close to being Friday!
~I've taken two baths this week. Yay!
~I landed that photography gig for the car, which makes me extra pleased. I might be taking the pics this weekend!
~Mary Alise is gonna come to Oklahoma with me in June!
~I have a legitimate excuse to buy pink tennis balls! (I have to work on the strength of my left hand, my guitar teacher is baffled by how hard of a time I'm having....)
~And I started counting—I may knock as many as five (or even seven if we drive to the four corners) states off my list between now and the end of the year!!! Maybe even more, who knows what will come my way?!?

ah, there. I feel better now.