feuervogel | (Reply)

I used to know what I wanted to do with my life; then I realized I didn't really want that. (So I'm stuck in a huge house in suburbia, when I want to live in a city. At least I don't have kids, because I figured out early enough that kids are optional and something I don't want.)

One of my main problems is that I'm interested in EVERYTHING. I think X is cool so I read some books on it, then go on to new shiny Y and on and on. I keep coming back to two things: recent German history and infectious disease epidemiology, which there's not really a way to combine into a single thing. So because of my background training, the latter is more viable as a career path, while the former remains something I check stacks of books about from the library.

But I love cities and public transit and smart growth and urban infill. Jobs doing that pay way less than I'd make as a pharmacist, and, having grown up working poor, taking a lower wage job makes me squirmy. That's why I studied chemistry rather than straight up German (which was my double major) (also I don't like high school students, and the prospect of academia didn't thrill me).

So now I'm going, ooh, I could see about applying to a German PhD program. Shoot me.