Findings While in the Office: News Article

I was taking a break at work this afternoon, and I stumbled across this gem: Grad School Not Worth It on yahoo's featured news. It's really enlightening as to the hows and whys of why graduate degrees don't always help you out. I know, I know, not much of an update here. Sorry.  It's been busy with work, wedding planning, and breaking a toe.

Again...friends suck

So once again...my nasty friend decided to rear her ugly head. Out of nowhere, she texted me the other day asking if I could export her to the UK. She's obsessed with London, so it didn't really seem too wild of a thing for her to say. I told her I would if I could, but I only work with imports...seeing as...you know...to do my job, I really only can work with imports, else I'd have to be in another country, and then technically I'd still be doing imports. Then she told me I should switch jobs so I should work with exports. Still, not terrible. Pissing me off a little because I don't even work for the company that does the exports, but, okay. I'm still being sociable.

Then she goes on to say I need to get a wedding website up 'cause she wants to know all the details of it. I've been trying to avoid talking about my wedding with her because...she believes she's the maid of honor and in actuality she's not even invited. It doesn't seem polite to discuss it with her because of that. I said it's been busy with work and hard to put stuff together because my fiance and I live in two different states. Thanks military! But it's still working out fine, we have more than enough time after he finishes his enlistment, as well as the few times he'll be on leave. I'm just a paranoid person. Anyway, then she goes on to give me a lecture that since I *knew* he was going to be away, I was stupid for getting engaged and setting a date for when I did. 

How am I supposed to deal with people like this? It doesn't make any sort of sense. I've never been rude to her, treated her like family. I've stopped talking to her in the past few years because of the way she's begun treating my fiance as well, and I just can't take it anymore. Somehow she doesn't realize that I'm ignoring her. What do I do?

Bats and Vampires

So as I was driving to work this morning, I had my ipod playing on the radio in the car like I do every day. However, today a song I hadn't heard in a while came on. It's called the Batty Rap...which makes me sound like a major nerd, but whatever...it's from a movie called Fern Gully. Definitely still one of my absolute favorite animated movies. Anyway, long story short, it's about a machine cutting down trees that's being controlled by an evil ooze like guy named Hexxus to destroy a place in the rainforest called Fern Gully where the fairies live. There's a character in the movie, voiced by Robin Williams, named Batty (hence...Batty Rap...). He's been a laboratory test animal, so he's quite a bit messed up in the head. I was listening to the song, and it's the full version that's not in the movie (it gets a little bit too dark for kids after where the movie cuts it off), and I heard this gem, "I don't care what you think, you're a graduate student, just do it!" Apparently the graduate world hasn't changed all that much since the movie came out...in 1992.

If you'd like to hear the song for yourself, here's a link to it: The Batty Rap  The part I'm specifically talking about is at about 1:28.

And as a random side note....Happy 165th birthday to Bram Stoker! I read Dracula when I was about eight years old and we definitely need a revival in real vampires...not this cheesy Twilight-crap that's still freaking going on.

Really Done with Graduate Institution

So I sort of lied when I said I was completely done with everything related to my graduate institution. Only sort of. I was done with all of my ties to the school.  I'd paid them back, withdrawn, etc etc. And today, I paid off the last of my rent from August and September. So now I am definitely officially rid of the whole ordeal. No credit card loans, nothing owed. Nada.

Brighter side of life: went this weekend to do a drive-by of a wedding venue for the first time. It looks really awesome from the outside...now just have to wait till fiance comes home so we can go see the inside.

On Graduate School Indoctrination

I know I've mentioned it a few times, as well as have read on other blogs the comparison between graduate school and cults. While playing around on the internet this morning, I stumbled across this link which is about LDS Mormon indoctrination, and lists with explanations steps of indoctrination into dangerous cults.  I was intrigued by how fitting most of those steps could be applied to becoming a graduate student.  So I felt like going through and detailing how it might fit with the graduate student experience. Again, I didn't come up with these stages/steps myself (the link to them and how they apply to Mormon indoctrination is above), but the explanations in relationship to grad school came from my brain.

1) The goal: Yes, while there can be a tangible goal coming from being a graduate student (like a masters or a PhD...), much of the time you end up just searching for answers.  And in most cases, it's really just theory on top of theory. With sciences like geology, physics, chemistry...you can test and test and test your hypotheses to your heart's content, and even if the data supports your hypothesis, it's still just a theory. While you can be 99% sure that your theory is definitely the absolutely correct one, you'll always have that minute bit of uncertainty, there's no way to actually prove that it's true. For example, geologist are completely confident in their theory of how the Earth is laid out (crust, mantle, core...physical states of them, etc), but even the professor of geology 101 at my graduate institution liked to remind everybody that even though they're sure that's right, there's no physical proof. It's not an awesome math theorem where you can lay everything out in a proof and say "Yes, this is absolutely 100% true" (sorry....undergraduate degree in pure mathematics...).

2) A charismatic leader: Your advisor. Obviously. Else no one would cough up monstrous amounts of money to haul their lives across the country/world to work with them.

3) A sacred doctrine: This one's a little bit sketchy...but for most academic disciplines there's a book the professor/advisor/other grad student always suggests, says you absolutely have to buy, not rent, etc etc. At grad school it was my advisor's book on trace fossils. In undergrad, it was my number theory book.

Weirdness

Well it's been an odd week. For starters, I've only been at my job for three and a half weeks now, and on Monday, they fired the other person who does my job and trained me. Needless to say, I was more than a little freaked out. First I felt like I stole her job...like they'd hired me to fire her. Which I've never experienced before cause well...they don't bring in new students to replace you in academia.  And that felt super wrong. I'm still not quite sure of the reason why they fired her, they gave a bunch of excuses saying it was their failure, she wasn't doing the work correctly, etc etc. So I'm just trying to deal with it and get over it for now. 

Second...navy issues haha. I don't really know if I can talk about it, so we'll just stick with once again, the Navy is trying to give me a heart attack. 

Finally, while I know that New York/New Jersey got hit really bad, mine and the fiance's apartment in Virginia also got hit by Sandy. From what I've seen picture wise, it doesn't look too bad near our apartment. Granted we live across the street from Chesapeake Bay...so there's a fair amount of water sitting on the streets (at least in pictures...I'm not there to be seeing it first hand). And because of the heart-attack-enducing-Navy-issue...he's not there either. So hopefully he'll hear from our landlord and the apartment's all good. Sigh.

Entering the Working World...

Well, long time no write. Sorry about that. I’ve gotten wrapped up in the real working world and just haven’t found the time until now. Now being at 1 o’clock in the afternoon at my desk where I have absolutely no work to do.

I got a full-time office job within two weeks of escaping my graduate institution by the way.  I file paperwork to clear cargo through customs. It’s not too bad, my kind of job in the sense that I don’t have to talk to anybody. It’s quite nice. Also, eventually my one boss here in this city (have another one in another state as well…) keeps telling me once we get a new computer program, there’s less work involved, and he wants me to do cost analysis for him. Yay calculus!

Anywho…today has been so boring. Nothing’s happening. I had one file that I didn’t get to last night (which took 15 minutes), and one sitting on my desk in front of me that’s almost completely done, but I’m waiting on a question I asked my supervisor (she’s out of town for two days). Basically…I just need to know which number to use, because the paper is contradictory. So once she tells me that, it’ll take another 10 minutes and I’ll be done with this one is well.

Becoming a Productive Member of the Workforce

Well I have now finished my second day at my full-time job. It's been...interesting to say the least. Yesterday I didn't really get to do all that much. I mostly just sat around for my first six hours of the day. It was more because the remote connection to my actual desktop that is across the country wasn't set up yet, and I didn't have an email address.

Well, today they got my remote connection up and running and my email address set up. I worked with the other person who does the same job for most of the day, and I think I'm pretty much almost completely trained now. 

I got my first two assignments today just before I left work. I'm almost completely on my own with them, I just need to get them double checked before I submit them. It's kinda boring and tedious, but it's definitely better than a minimum wage customer service job (nothing against customer service jobs, I'm just not a people person lol).

Officially Employed

So as of 1 o'clock this afternoon, I am officially employed. Full-time. I'm super duper excited. Everybody told me I was being ridiculous with my impatience, and I was being unrealistic expecting jobs to call me back so quickly. Well guess what.

I applied for this job on Tuesday. That's right, just 48 hours ago. The president of the company called me that night and set up an interview for yesterday, just 18 hours after I applied. And this morning, 24 hours after interviewing, the manager at the company called and gave me the job offer. So there everybody who told me to shut up and wait.

I'm very excited, especially because I'll be using a lot of math; the manager specifically told me that I'd need calculus, which I'm definitely comfortable with since you know, I TAUGHT calculus at the university level. Plus, eventually down the road they want me to take an exam to get a license (I'm talking years), and they're willing to pay for all the prep materials and the exam itself. So happy.

I feel like I definitely deserved this after all I've been through with that graduate university. I think it's the universe paying me back for handling it as well as I could.

First Nibble

So as luck would have it, tomorrow I have my first job interview since leaving academia. I'm excited, and I feel really relieved that things are finally starting to get set in motion. Although I've only actually been looking for a job for about a week, so I guess most people would thing things are moving rather quickly, but I've always been a really impatient person. 

Anyway it's for a paraeducator job at a special needs school (I guess I didn't get ridiculously far from the academic world...lol). I volunteered there a few times when I was much younger, so hopefully that gives me a little more edge. We'll see what happens I guess. 

Other than that, the only thing that's been going on recently is a whole lot of attempted cleaning to get myself a room that I can sleep in, and my mom sister, my friend, and my sister's friend drove over to another high school last night for a marching band competition. Definitely a good time.

Job Hunting

Well I've been back in my hometown for about five days now. Job hunting, of course, has so far been one of my main priorities. Well, that and attempting to clean the basement so I can sleep in a bed again instead of sleeping on a couch.

The job market is looking a little better than when I first graduated last year. By better I mean that there are actually job postings I've found that say undergraduate degree in mathematics. I was convinced that they didn't exist last year. No real bites yet on the job line, but it's only been a few days. Fingers crossed that something shows up soon. I've got a wedding to save for.

Besides that, I got to hang out with my best friend yesterday. She didn't get into medical school this year and doesn't really want to get a job, so she worries me. She's babysitting 4 days a week now and calling it full-time, while supposedly applying to masters programs to supposedly help her get into med school later. I'm skeptic, but whatever.

Back at my Parent's House

Well I'm finally out of that god awful state where my graduate university was located. My dad got there at 6am on Friday morning, and we left that afternoon. We drove for half the night, but it was nice just to be far away from there.

Weird thing that happened though: some chick called, texted, and emailed me repeatedly. I only answered the call because I recognized the area code as where my fiance's stationed and maybe had a mini panic attack that something might be wrong and he was calling me from someone else's phone. But it wasn't, it was her. I guess her husband's stationed at the same naval base and she was all "Let's be friends! I know how hard it is being a graduate student and a military spouse! I understand your situation better than anybody!"...well...while the friend support thing would've been nice I suppose, but she seems to clearly be missing the boat (no pun intended...) that the whole debacle with the university had absolutely nothing to do with my fiance being stationed elsewhere. Do I miss him? Of course. Did I drop out of graduate school because he was in a different state? No. He just spent three years overseas, the next year at the most wasn't ideal or fun being apart, but we would've made it work.

Anyway moving on from crazy broads...

Done. Completely Done.

I can finally take a deep breath and relax.  Why you may ask?

Well, the university posted my bill (well...how much I owe. The bill will be posted tomorrow and there I'll get the address to send a check) and they have the correct amount of money due. Only the refunded money that I was given to live on.

Thank goodness.

I was really worried about that. I was supposed to be given email confirmation about both of the petitions I filed and I haven't heard about either one. But clearly since the amount is right, at least one of them was approved. I just wish I knew which one. Mostly because I'd like to know what/if I have a transcript at the university now (one of the petitions was to wipe it clean so I wouldn't have W's and therefore wouldn't need to send it out if I ever decided to do this goofy thing again), but I'm sure not going to order a transcript to find out. Cheapest transcript is an etranscript and it's $10, plus a $3 notary fee.

Why are transcripts a rip off everywhere except the undergraduate institution I graduated from? They were completely free there, whether is was an etranscript or a hard copy...

Small World...

It is indeed a small, small world. You make one post on facebook and find out the most interesting things.

Namely, one of my really good friends from my undergraduate institution only made it a week at my graduate institution back when she was a freshman in college. For similar reasons.

Go figure.

Signed Over

Well, the nightmare's almost over. The new tenant of my apartment came and signed a new lease today. My dad rented the Uhaul trailer and will be here on Friday morning. This whole graduate school thing is almost a distant memory.

Let's just home nothing goes funky when they finally charge me for my refund from my scholarship. I know exactly how much it should be for, and if it's more than that, this could get ugly again.

Going Back to Chicago!!!

So this morning I finally got the text I've been waiting for! The person who toured my apartment on Friday want to take it and is coming tomorrow evening to sign the paperwork.

My father will be coming on down here on Thursday with a uhaul trailer, we'll pack it on Friday, and Saturday morning I'll be out of this horrid state.

Well, as long as everything goes according to plan. But I'm hopeful!

Also, Saturday is the fiance's birthday. Super super sad I can't actually be with him, but I'm gonna get cupcakes and a candle, and we'll do a birthday party via Skype on Saturday night :D

More Waiting

So the person who was coming to view the apartment yesterday did end up coming. It was a very stressful experience for me, especially because she came super super late. She was supposed to come sometime in the afternoon but ended up coming around 8pm. I kept freaking out big time that she would just not show up, but she did. She said she really liked the place and was super friendly, and said she'd get back to me soon. Obviously I had been hoping (probably naively) that she would come earlier, love it, and sign a new lease right then and there...but since she came so late that wasn't an option even if she had wanted to do it.

Sooo...now I'm back to waiting. I've still got my fingers crossed she takes it (I mean...she doesn't have to pay ANYTHING to move in...and living here is a pretty awesome deal), but I'm still looking around.

Also...random side note: if anybody out there loves Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld series, Subterranean Press is having a sale on ebooks for the month, including three of hers (Angelic, Counterfeit Magic, and Hidden).  Each is $2.99, which is a steal (I know, I bought a hardcopy of Counterfeit Magic for the fiance for Christmas two years ago for like $25, and you can't get a used copy of Angelic anywhere for under $190...). Link to the ebooks! Anyway, there's links to all three books there, and you can get them in either Kindle, Nook, or Kobo (never heard of that one) books. I'm of course partial to the Nook books (seeing as I have a Nook Simple Touch...) but hey. It works. If you don't have an ereader, Amazon has free apps for computers, tablets (yay iPad lol), and smartphones, so you could always go that route.

Hopeful

So it's been a crazy day around here. The internet still been kinda spotty (especially in the mornings and during the day), but it's been alright. I got free breakfast today...but it definitely wasn't good. The complex was making free hot breakfast for residents today, but they didn't have half the things that they had promised to be serving. I was very sad. But they did have good biscuits. Find the silver lining somewhere.

Besides that, I found out my sister dropped her biology class and lab, as well as switched her major at her undergraduate university. Which my mom isn't too happy about. She told my sister it was fine, but yelled at me for about an hour yesterday, implying that it was my fault that she dropped the classes and switched majors. Like, my withdrawal from the university told my sister it was okay to do these things. Sigh.

Anyway, besides that, my sister also found out today her student loans were never dispersed. She asked if I understood what the hold on her account said, and I told her it sounded like she never signed her master promissory note. She of course didn't know what I was talking about because she let our father take care of all of her financial aid things. Big mistake. She definitely needs to be able to get into her student loan account and she has no idea what her pin could be.

Edit: Dad thankfully knew her pin.

And moving on to my other sister...

Coping With Academic Guilt

I know I only spent three weeks immersed in the world of a graduate student. However, in those short three weeks, I know I was slowly being indoctrinated into the graduate-student-life cult.  I was working those ridiculous, unhealthy hours, and feeling terrible if I did anything for myself. I even felt guilty one day that I took twenty minutes off to bake a loaf of banana bread.

I'm still dueling with that guilt even now that I've left the university. I've been managing battling it fairly well by crocheting, knitting, talking to my fiance, and packing up my apartment. Crocheting and packing keep me moving and busy, while leaving me something tangible for my efforts.  And talking to my fiance is always the best part of my day, no matter what. He's the love of my life, and I have no idea what I'd do without him.

There are some occasions that have arisen recently that have derailed my coping mechanisms greatly though...

Updates on Post-Academic Life

First and foremost, I must say thank god for T-mobile's 4g network. My internet at the apartment complex has  been on and off during the day for the past week, and the staff says it's because they're "updating" it to be faster. Well clearly that updating is working wonders because today the wireless is non-existent. Today they claim equipment broke, and internet access won't be up for at least 24 hours. Awesome.

In other news, my father drafted a 30-days notice to send to the apartment complex (didn't think I needed one, but I guess it can't hurt). Going to send it on Monday. Sod it's looking llike unless I f÷ind a subleaser earlier, I will be moving out of this horrible place the weekend of October 13th. I am more than happy to have a set date, but I hope to find someone before then. 'Cause if I don't, I have to keep paying the rent until a subleaser is found, even if I don't live here. Leases definitely suck.