What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up?

[unforth]

Well, first off, I made an offer on Apartment 3N this morning, and it was accepted. Now I've got to do...everything else. Freaking out. Both good and bad.

Anyway, on with the post...

What do I want to be when I grow up? As a kid, the idea that I'd find ANYTHING that I could spend a life time doing was always completely beyond my comprehension. My pattern for interests is pretty fixed: I get into something, do it like crazy, then get distracted, and move on. Now that I'm older, I've seen that some of these interests cycle (I'll sew like a madwoman for 6 months then not do it at all for a year; every three years or so I feel utterly compelled to watch all of Star Trek DS9 again; I'm now more into the Civil War than at any point since I was about 14, to name a few that I know have come back.)

When I was 4 years old, I walked into Kindergarten, and on the day when we all talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up, stated confidently that I wanted to be a paleontologist, to which (as my memory goes - who knows the reality?) my teacher replied by asking what that was. We used to go the American Museum of Natural History, and I would run back and forth pointing at the dinosaurs and identifying them. This lasted until I was about 8, at which point I went through a few other sciences, skirting around ecology and marine biology before, finally, at around 11 or 12, becoming completely obsessed with astronomy. It seemed a foregone conclusion that I would be an astrophysicist, but a few events intervened:

1. Mr. Lapolla. Mr. Lapolla ranks with Mr. Lugo (who I wrote a very long post about when he passed away last year) as pretty much the most influential teachers of my academic career. He was my bio teacher all of freshman year (which was very, very lucky due to how scheduling was done at my school) and I also took an elective with him as a junior (when I took the picture, on Halloween...) He was a wonderful teacher; he left my senior year to pursue a higher paying job in the suburbs, and I hope like hell they appreciate him cause he was amazing. I've never forgotten many of the things he taught me - and that was 12 years ago! I'd never really had any interest in bio (despite the history given above) but thanks to him I grew to love it.

2. Not an Internship. I was going to a Westinghouse/Intel project summer after junior year, with some physicists at NYU. For an idea of the scope of this, I was recommended to this position by Neil de Grasse Tyson, the head of the planetarium at AMNH. I was on my way to bigger and better things...except that it was unmitigated disaster. I was girl in a lab of guys, and they set me to engineering - which I knew NOTHING about. In retrospect, this wasn't that unreasonable, but I was just a kid, I had no idea what actual astronomy might be like, and trying to build lenses was definitely not what I signed up for. I did worse than quit: I just stopped showing up. It really, really crushed my spirit all the way around.

3. Not a Westinghouse. I had been signed up for a course to help with the writing of an Intel project. Without that to do, I had a big hole in my course schedule. ultimabaka convinced me to take Japanese with Lugo sensei...and the rest of that story is already history.

4. Calculus. I hated calculus, and I was terrible at it. Except that I wasn't: my grades were consistently high. I could DO it, no problem, but I didn't understand it at all. In retrospect, the problem wasn't cal at all - it was pre-cal. Pre-cal was a tough year of my life, horrible involved problems that took 45 minutes to solve, and one careless mistake (which I've always been prone to) would ruin it all. Then, ya get to cal, and suddenly, it's "remember that really, really hard thing? here's how to do it in 3 minutes!" It made me CRAZY. Even having Mrs. Rubin (who I ended up having three semesters, one sophomore year and both terms of cal) - another of my best teachers - couldn't counterbalance the extent to which I felt like I just epic failed cal, even if I didn't know that phrasing yet.

5. Andrew Jackson. One weekend, I think it was in October, I was doing my history homework, and reading about Jackson and van Bueren, and I remember distinctly there was a moment when I clearly saw that things that happened were directly related to what had come before and close to inevitable, and I could explain why, and sure enough, everything ended up happening the way I thought it would. I don't remember the details any more, but it was really obvious to me that this was something I had a lot of talent for...not like astronomy and my disastrous internship, and astrophysicists have to be able to do calculus, and I sucked at cal, right?

Meltdown 1: I had a total break down that day and spent most of it sobbing, but I came out of it resolved to a new, harsh reality: I'd never be an astronomer, I just wasn't smart enough, I should do something I had some fricken aptitude for.

...and there wasn't really any going back. Not that there weren't other factors, but that traces the most direct line. I was totally burned out. I took the last possible SAT I could, applied to only four colleges (all SUNY schools, which is to say I submitted one college application) - got in to all four, went to the best one that offered multiple years of Japanese and had a large population which would help ensure that I'd meet geeks like me (those are literally the only factors that influenced my decision of where to go to college - sad, huh...).

Of course, despite resolutions, loves don't just go away. Indeed, I had another resolution: I refused to take any course I wasn't interested in. Even for the gen ed requirements, I would find away to take things that I actually wanted to take - so I took a weird array of classes, everything from the Japanese and history that would form my majors to computer science, art, a class where we read Clockwork Orange, which was awesome, philosophy, and almost every 100 level science course offered (bio 101 and 102, geology 101, chem 101 and 102, and astronomy 101...physics was not omitted by accident).

Clearly, the science wasn't gone: my sophomore year, I declared a major in biology.

Organic Chemistry is a weeding course at every university I've heard about. At Binghamton, it's 3 days a week at 8:30 in the morning. I took it the first semester of my junior year, after having crammed a year of chemistry into 9 weeks over the summer - and pulled it off. I never went to class. I studied my ass off. I ended up flunking 2 out of 5 tests (only top 4 counted...). Home for the holidays, I sat in front of the computer, refreshing the screen where my grades would show up, and finally, they were there, and I cheered.

"Oh, did you do well?" asks my mom...

"Yeah, I got a C+!" I exulted. (it might have been a C-, I don't even remember any more)

"..." says mom.

I really couldn't believe I'd passed Orgo 1. I mean, I flunked the final. Still, I geared up: Orgo 2 would be worse in the spring.

Meltdown 2: It's about a month into the spring semester. I show up in a history class I was taking. It's Tuesday afternoon, and everyone pulls out their papers. Except me. Cause I thought the paper was due on Thursday. And I totally lost it. Because I also thought I had an Orgo test on Wednesday. If the paper was due on Tues, then the test must have been on Monday, and I'd missed it. I just completely broke down. Even when I checked my syllabus and discovered that the test was actually on Wednesday, and my teacher would be fine with my turning in the paper on Thursday (I was so tear streaked he must have thought someone had died)...but it was too late. Everyone I've talked to about college has that one semester where they just failed, and that was mine; I ended up dropping out and earning 1 F and 2 incompletes...which reverted to Fs, cause I couldn't get it together. Now, ultimately, I retook two of those classes (and earned an A and a B+) but that's beside the point; I dropped the bio major. I couldn't do it. I'd failed at science. Again.

And that was kind of that. It was a hobby, and nothing more. I earned two BAs - history and East Asian studies - was satisfied that I pulled off a 3.2 GPA despite the three 0s averaged in, and moved on. I finished in four and a half years (graduated fall of 2004)

Meanwhile, somewhere around the summer after junior year, talking with mom about the question that is the crux of it all - what do I want to do with my life - she suggested library science. And I thought that sounded dandy. I like books! I like organizing! ...and so I applied to schools (put some actual thought and work into it this time), went to IU, finished in the normal amount of time with a high GPA (I think it's around a 3.8 or a 3.9; it'd have been higher but I got a couple A-s, one of which was entirely due to my break up, which was about 2 weeks before the end of a semester, terrible timing on my part...) and a specialty in rare books...

...and ended up deciding that, having worked part time and full time for mom's company since 2002, I might as well keep doing it, cause I'm pretty good at it, I like it, it gives me lots of freedom, and it pays well.

But for the past two years, I've known that something was going to come after this. I like this, but it doesn't give me the sense of fulfillment that I would really want - which means a second career in my future; pretty normal these days. But that leaves the key: what should that career be?

I mean, we don't just keep getting tries to get it right. One of these years, I'm going to reach the point where there's no longer enough time to go back and try it all. I've already crossed a major one: it took me until I was a decent way into my 20s before I discovered that I actually really enjoy physical activity. If I'd realized that when I was 10, who knows how different life might have been? I'm not a great athlete but I've got pretty good coordination, I might at least have never gotten overweight in that "can't seem to drop the pounds" way, which would have affected my self-image, and who knows what else? I'll never know...

...but the fact that I'm reaching the point where paths will start to get cut off is making the choice much, much harder, and higher stakes...which I think is why I haven't really gotten anywhere.

Right around when I graduated from college, I made yet another of those silly resolutions, except that this one has a lot of value in my opinion: I will do everything in my power to live my life without regrets. I don't want to be a person who, when older, looks back and only can see what might have been, and wishes that they'd taken more chances. As a guiding philosophy, this has done me a world of good, and has helped me to leap feet first in to scary stuff more than once - it took me to Japan, for example. I've also made some efforts to rectify some of my past regrets; giving up astronomy ranks as one of the greatest regrets of my life. However, ultimately, not making a choice will induce regret. I need to figure out something.

I need to make a choice - or at least accept that I've reached the point where not making a choice has become a choice. Because some of the options will require me to earn another bachelors degree, and that means that if I'm going to be ready to start whatever this new option is by the time I stop this career (in 5 to 7 years, remember) then I'm getting about to the point that I need to start earning that bachelors degree - put in applications in the fall/winter, start school next year, or at the 4 to 6 year point, and work as a non-matric to finish in that time frame (I'm thinking basically 2 courses a semester, that'll enable me to easily continue working as I do now, which is utterly necessary). Of course, not all of the choices I've considered require that I go back to school - but many of them do.

Before I list the options, there's one special case that needs to be talked about separately. Those who know me well and read this will notice a very notable absence from the below list: writer. There's a very simple reason for this: I'm going to write no matter what I do, but I don't consider it reasonable as a career, because I don't anticipate ever joining the ranks of the very few who can actually make a full living that way. In fact, I rather specifically DON'T want to make writing that high-stakes for me. I love writing, and I intend to continue doing it, and I hope to earn some money doing so ultimately, but either way it's something I do for me, and thus is not a career option.

These fall into two basic categories, plus an "other" category: scientific/scholarly pursuits and hands-on activities. Some (like those with field work) are kind of both. The "other" category only really has one entrant, but I feel silly labeling a category with only one option with such a specific title...and yes, I know that's equally silly of me.

These are in basically no order.

1. Paleontology. I'll admit, I hadn't seriously considered my original love until I was in Japan reading Gould's "Punctuated Equilibrium." It's a funny but sad truth, that in the months before I left Bloomington, I was really in the mood to do some science reading, but I couldn't find ANY Gould at any bookstore in the entire town; whereas I walked into Kinokuniya in Shinjuku and they had three. Punctuated Equilibrium might have cost me an arm and a leg but it was worth it - what an awesome (excerpt from a longer) book it was...I've been slowly reading through everything Gould wrote since then - not slow in terms of pace, because I tend to read them within days, but slow because I know he's dead and I love reading them so much that I've forced myself to ONLY buy them when I visit AMNH, and I don't go that often. I'm reading The Panda's Thumb right now (ozziel and I went to AMNH on Monday) - which will be my...er...fourth or fifth (five: "Punctuated Equilibrium;" "Ever Since Darwin;" "The Panda's Thumb;" "Bully for Brontosaurs" (I accidently read that one out of order, not that it matters); and "Wonderful Life") - I've done good at spacing them out. I think I'll read "Ontogeny and Phylogeny" next - he keeps talking about it in this anthology, and it sounds really interesting. All of which is to say, I feel kind of a bond here. It turns out Gould got his love of dinosaurs exactly the same way I did, as a kid wandering the halls of the AMNH. I still love it there. I'd never considered paleontology with the point of view of an adult until I read "Wonderful Life." I can't recommend that book highly enough, it makes finding rocks with bizarre little creatures in them sound like just about the most awesome career option ever, without even trying. Or maybe that's just me. It was wonderful. And really got me thinking...that this was something I could do. This was amplified later. See, I was in Washington in October last year, and I went to the Smithsonian and took a zillion pictures (I think the flickr set has over 600)...and then later in the fall I read "Wonderful Life," which is about the Burgess Shale and Cambrian life, and it mentions in passing that most of the specimens are at the Smithsonian. How did I miss this, I wondered. I must not have! So I went and looked at my pictures...and nope, I really had missed it. So next time I was in Washington (for a conference in December) I stole out for a couple of hours and went to try and find these rocks that must have seemed so ordinary that I didn't even notice them the first time, but now that I KNEW about them were something I had to see. And when I found them? (in an incredibly obvious place, no less) I felt like a kid in the candy store. "OMG," I thought to myself, "that's Marella, like really Marella! And there's wiwaxia!! And Anomalocaris!!" Man, I was in some bizarre, previously unknown (at least to me) form of heaven.

Interestingly, after I wrote this, I read some of the user reviews of Wonderful Life on Amazon. I'm definitely not anything other than a rank amateur (with, perhaps, some interest in becoming much more) but I'm a little surprised by some of what I read. Sure, I can totally grant that Gould might not be that popular with professionals (popular writers never are) and I can equally grant that some of his science is certainly considered wrong now, and may have been wrong when written, too. That's how this works. I'll admit, I'm very surprised to read comments like this: "Gould thought that he had a new breakthough to challenge Dawrin. He called his theory "punctuated equilibrium" and he thought that it would challenge Darwin's theory. It has turned out that it did not. Gould's idea is just a variation of Darwin or a small element of the larger theory." I just don't see this: Gould NEVER claims that he's attempting to supplant Darwin, and repeatedly emphasizes that he's talking about one mode - and while granted I've only read the most biased of sources (Gould himself...) my amateur understanding of things is that very few species ACTUALLY show constant, gradual change - which would be the Darwinian model - and that most phenotypic (and thus preserved in the fossil record) change does happen in sudden, geologically brief periods. Furthermore, the only professional I've ever spoken to about this suggests that this is far from being settled, and that in fact there's still a wide field of disagreement: he referred to the staff at AMNH as a bunch of gradualists in an unflattering tone of voice. This was only two years ago! I wonder what wiki says about this? While I'll grant that wiki is far from an authoritative source, I trust it to state pretty definitively if something has been thoroughly disproven - and it doesn't. Which makes me think that (despite whatever other problems there may be!) that at least some of the reviews were written by folks with an axe to grind.

This is science, after all - there will always be some of those. While at AMNH with ozziel, there was a family reading one of the boards, and when they reached a part about evolution, one parent said, "now kids, this part isn't true!" and the other parent said, "they should post somewhere that it's only a theory!" I'm not trying to equate the above with this (until I know of the actual science, I'm ill prepared to refute or compare anything) but I will say that even if the science is flawed I think there is a lot of value in Gould's writing; he's really got a way with words, and I enjoy reading his work. :) (though I suppose I'll be sad if it turns out a lot of it is bunk...)

Okay, to push this far past the point where anyone other than me would care, one of the things mentioned in those reviews referred to a heated (scientifically) exchange between one of the scientists that Gould cites and Gould himself. It's actually available online...and having read it? I don't know...I favor Gould. I feel like the attempted rebuttal just really misinterprets some of the things that Gould sets forth....but I need to stop digressing. This does make me feel a bit better, though (my incipient hero on a pedestal almost got shoved off and had mud kicked all over him! oh noes!!) (note that I wrote this BEFORE I read Gould's rebuttal...so I wasn't reconvinced...) :)

Anyway...Paleontology!

Additional education required: BS, PhD.

2. Geology. I list this next cause it's closely related. I've been interested in geology for a while now; my dad's always thought it was cool, which is a very easy way to figure out the basic outline of my interests. This amplified when I visited the Finger Lakes region while I was in college, and I started trying to learn more. I ended up getting distracted by other stuff, but in truth I find it really, really interesting. Like, while I was on my road trip, I spent an hour of my drive hypothesizing what might have formed the strange steep lines of mountains around Chattanooga, TN.

Additional education required: BS, PhD.

3. Astronomy. I'm not going to explain this. For all that I tried to give it up, and I now find it surprisingly difficult to read materials related to it (they depress me, and I tend to get distracted and stop as a result) it never left my heart.

Additional education required: BS, PhD.

None of the three of these is, as it turns out, at all surprising. I didn't understand this, though, until I read Gould. It was in "Wonderful Life," in fact, that he wrote something that impacted me so dramatically that I quoted it in LJ that very day (Nov. 1st, 2008, it turns out):

I wrote then: "In one sentence, Stephen Jay Gould just explained what the four scholarly loves of my life have in common: 'Many large domains of nature - cosmology, geology, and evolution among them - must be studied with the tools of history.' (Wonderful Life, p. 277)

"I don't know if any quote I've ever read in my life has spoken to me so clearly as speaking directly to my own experience, or clarified something so well that had seemed so complicated. I've been deeply contemplative of a central question of late - what do I want to do with myself? I love history, but I despite my BA I don't have much interest in pursuing it as a career. Since I was a child, I've loved science, particularly astronomy, genetics, and earth science. Or, put another way without shedding much meaning, cosmology, geology and evolution."

That post. Note how even in that post I'm talking about how I've been reflecting on what to do.

4. History. I guess this is a change - from the above, where I said I don't want to do history. It makes sense, I guess - my interest in the Civil War wasn't re-kindled until December (though it had been sparked the previous April, when, while driving through TN, I passed a sign on the highway saying that Shiloh was at that exit - it was, after about two more hours, so I didn't detour - but I was shocked by how very much I wanted to go). But it's been a house-afire since then. Almost all of my leisure reading has been science or Civil War (and all the rest has been manga). This would be tough - I wanted to study the Civil War when I first declared a history major, but it turned out that Binghamton had a terrible curriculum for that, so I switched, but I would love to go and do...something...with the Civil War. The what is kinda the problem, though.

It's worth noting at this point that while I enjoy reading about the history of science, I don't really have any interest in pursuing it myself, though I've considered it more than once. I find that the idea of reading through old documents about this leave me feeling really "eh." This is opposed to the idea of researching primary documents on the Civil War, which feels like an adventure.

Additional education: while not strictly necessary, in order to make it something real I'd certainly need at least an MA.

5. Photography. I never thought I'd like taking pictures so much. Not much else to say there - this brings me joy.

Additional education: hard to say; at least more than my current amateur level of understanding of many important issues - which probably means some kind of classes.

6. Art conservation. In many ways, art conservation is the logical meeting point of pretty much all my interests - history, science, art, and more. Oddly, despite that, I don't find it that appealing, but it's one of the only fields I've ever found that seems to take everything I love, mash it together at high speeds, and spit out one job.

Additional education: BFA, MFA.

7. Rare Books - either librarianship or conservation. Well, this is what I actually went to school for. Sure, I'm a couple years out of practice, but with some luck and a bit of studying I'd be ready to jump in again. I wouldn't have spent two years doing it if I didn't really like it. There's something magical about old books, and I love the hands-on aspect of the conservation. And I was pretty good at it. Probably doing this would draw me back towards considering artists bindings, which is what I'd be doing now had things gone differently before I left Indiana (though the chances were never in my favor. ;) )

Additional education: likely to be none.

8. Teaching. I never thought I'd sketch out a career list that seriously considered teaching, but now that I've been working more and more with teachers, I reneg on something I've always said: I do think I could do it, and with the right kids, I think I'd love it. I'm interested in 1st to 3rd grade or so. I find this very compelling, which shocks me. The only reason I don't think this is a leading choice is that this does not fall into the danger I described above: namely, this is not a road that I'm in danger of passing for ever; if other stuff doesn't work out, this option will still remain.

Additional education: MS of Ed.

Well, I believe those are all of the options, though I won't post this til tomorrow, and that'll give me some time to make sure I haven't missed any. I expect it's obvious, having read those, where my current preferences lie, but I'd mention that right now I'm reading Gould, which always makes me want to start go digging up interesting rocks and start doing...something...with them. Cracking them open for fossils? Trying to figure out where they came from and how they got where I found them? I have no idea what I want to do, but I'd like to try to figure it out...at least while I'm reading Gould. ;)

9. Japanese. This morning, I realized that I'd missed a big one - doing something with Japanese. But I feel like the fact that I missed it kind of sums up my attitude towards it - I just am not sure how I feel about attempting to figure out some way to make a career out of this.

Additional education: Whatever would get me fluency.

I'm really not ready to make this decision yet, but if I had to make it tomorrow? I'd pick Earth Science - which enables me to pursue either geology or paleontology. In fact, I spent part of my afternoon researching programs in my local area where I could do this. (the situation is a little grim, but that's for another time...)
Anyway, I think it's about time to try to see if the insomnia has passed yet. I think I'm pretty freaked about this housing thing. But I also bet that if I get in to bed and close my eyes, I'll sleep. I'll make this post public tomorrow when I've made sure I haven't missed anything. ;)

So, I did think of another angle to approach this, and it needs a conclusion, so I'm continuing!

As a completely different way of looking at this, I have spent some of my time considering by starting with what I like to do and figuring out what fields utilize those interests.

1. Working with my hands. I enjoy doing hand crafts of various sorts, playing video games, typing, and various other skills that relate directly to manual dexterity, and I'm generally pretty good at them.

2. Art and art appreciation. I love art, and I love looking at art; when I practice I'm a decent artist - not exceptional by any means, but serviceable. I'll toss photography in this one - I like taking pictures, too, both casual ones and attempts at artistic ones.

3. Learning. I like to learn. Left to my own devices of late, I've been primarily reading science (especially Gould) and books about the Civil War.

4. Explaining things I know. Or, to put it another way, teaching. However, I also find this very frustrating - if I explain something in what I consider to be an effective way, and the person still doesn't get it, I tend to get inappropriately pissy.

5.Traveling. I love to go to new places.

6. I have, as should be obvious, always been interested in history and in science - especially the sciences that involve analyzing a range of incomplete data available in the present and attempting to draw inferences about the past. Oddly, this has never encompassed either anthropology or archaeology, and I don't know why, but I know that they don't grab me the same way.

Those are the main ones I can think of...hmm...

I've been thinking about this for a long time now, and I have the options I have preferences before - probably obvious from my above descriptions. Ultimately, when I sit and really think seriously about which of them I want to do, I'd say the one that fires my imagination the most is science - either paleo or geo. They frighten me, too, though - the idea of being a 26 year old undergrad (who might have to take general education requirements again, ugh!) and a 32 year old brand new PhD candidate scares the hell out of me. What if I get distracted and don't love it?

Still, I'm glad that I've been taking so much time to gather my thoughts, because the more I talk with people about this and think about it the last 6 months or so, the more I find that I think I want to try for science. And that means going back to school.

Yesterday afternoon, I spent some time researching just that - schools with geology programs in NYC - and the pickings are slim, but the fact that I did that research and still feel good about it...feels like it's a sign of something.
Anyway, I'm waiting for no less than 3 important people to call me back, so for now I'm gonna play around some more with the internet, and go from there...

Comments

[galiyah.livejournal.com]

Wow, that really was fast! Congrats! I really don't have any advice re:careers but it seems like you're thinking things through very well.

[moonartemis76.livejournal.com]

I have 3 things to say to all this:

1) I had the same thought in Chattanooga

2) Having been a 25 year old college freshman I assure you it is only terrifying until you are through with your first semester and the rest is amazing. I am 33 and looking at psychology doctoral programs so I hear you. We should commiserate and encourage one another.

3) It's never too late for anything. No, really. This decision could be seen as choosing the order you'd like to do things in not which ones you will exclude. We are never too old to learn. We are never to old to impact this world. We are never too old for choices. Decisions become more complicated but the decisions are always ours. We are never too old for our will to have a way.

Good luck! and call me if you'd like to chat...

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

There's a very simple reason for this: I'm going to write no matter what I do, but I don't consider it reasonable as a career, because I don't anticipate ever joining the ranks of the very few who can actually make a full living that way. In fact, I rather specifically DON'T want to make writing that high-stakes for me. I love writing, and I intend to continue doing it, and I hope to earn some money doing so ultimately, but either way it's something I do for me, and thus is not a career option.

This is generally a good plan. I'm wholeheartedly in favor of you pursuing this far enough to try making money from it, but I kind of think "full-time writer" is the sort of career one should happen upon by accident, not plan for. If you find yourself with that option, you can decide whether to take it or not; in the meantime, arranging for another way to pay the bills and keep your brain entertained is an excellent idea.