Life-related musings

[feuervogel]

As in, what the fuck am I doing with my life? And this icon is rather appropriate (and damn if the book it's from isn't appropriate, too).

Monday I'm going to the NC Association of Pharmacists annual meeting, in part to get CE (which carries over into next year), but mainly because I want to talk to the exhibitors and see if any of them are hiring. I can also find out more about the various committees, two of which sound interesting to me.

I joked to myself a few weeks ago that if I didn't get anywhere after the meeting, I'd consider going back to school.

I read a letter to the editor from one of the professors at UNC's department of city and regional planning in support of the transit referendum, so I looked at their website. It sounds really interesting, but what kind of jobs can I do with that? I don't know. (There's also a dual degree program with SPH in the health behaviors department, which is also relevant to my interests.) I love cities, I love public transit, I love smart growth; I'm not interested in relocating anywhere within the US to get a job doing that. (Which is kind of my main problem I guess.)

If I wanted to follow my interests, I'd go study history, but in order to get into the history graduate program, you have to have a background in history, which I don't. I'd want to study 20th century European (specifically German) history, though I don't know if I'd want to focus on WW1 or the Cold War. But to do that, I need (probably) to have studied modern European history. You have to write an analytical essay in your application :P

And there's no way in god's greenest hell I'm doing another bachelor's degree.

So, I'm 36 years old, highly educated, and I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Comments

[andelku.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is All about Me, but a friend of mine who works with Occupy Chapel Hill pissed me off badly because I asked her about the mass transit funding that the Obama administration had allocated mass transit funding for the entire Triangle and the Tea Party had blocked its implementation and I thought, I know a spokesperson for Occupy Chapel Hill she's gotta know all about it and she gave me this song and dance about how Occupy Doesn't Do Representative Government and Mass Transit Isn't Important and I was like, okay, fine Occupy is Lame.

She's working on the fracking issue and that's important and all. But the only way to fix the environment is to curb unnecessary demands for power. Imagine the impact of a decent bus network that links the entire Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro area! And the Tea Party doesn't want it to happen because Mass Transit is Communist and Encourages Urbanism which probably is code for Black People Without Cars Will Come to my Neighborhood or something.

[feuervogel]

Oh, ugh, don't even get me started on Smug Carrboro Assholes. They don't want there to be parking spaces, but they also don't want to get more public transit, because if you don't live within walking or biking distance of Weaver/Greensboro, FUCK YOU, basically. Which is a different problem than George Will saying Amtrak is communism, but it's still a problem.

It's like, ugh, you don't want people to drive in your precious Paris of the Piedmont, but you don't want there to be buses or trains or things that would ACTUALLY reduce the need for driving. GAH.

And Carrborans tout themselves as all Progressive and Perfect. NIMBY douches, the lot of them.

[andelku.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know.

It's really maddening.

I haven't owned a car since 1996. I walk and take transit everywhere. This is not because I'm Super Virtuous Low Carbon Girl. This is because Chicago has INFRASTRUCTURE. Much of it was built in the 19th century and acts like it, but it functions, and when you add the hassles of parking, weather, and general traffic and nuttiness, its not that worthwhile to own a car.

But when you say to the Carrboro Hippies that what they need is urban planning they're like, Ew, you mean like a CITY? As if cities were the sin qua non of misery and despair.

[andelku.livejournal.com]

When really that honor goes to the McMansioned Exerubs, some of which are going back to the prairie because of the housing crash and the high gas prices and etc.