Goodbye February... Hello Month of My Birth

Well, its been an interesting week to say the least. I finished my essay for class and turned that in, feel pretty good about it, Im shooting for a high B, maybe low A. I got my exam back and got a 93.5%, one of only 3 A's, so that was definitely a good start to the class. My next assignment isn't due until March 18th, so I have a nice break and hopefully won't feel so burned out by the time that rolls around. Still waiting to hear back from: UCLA, UCR, Oxford, and Harvard for whatever thats worth.

Went out to Palm Springs on Monday and spent the night with my uncle Brendan, which was good fun. We played apples to apples a really fun board game, which I proceeded to win because my board game skills are off the charts haha. Then, a bunch of us played ping pong for a few hours which was a lot of fun. I was pretty rusty at first but warmed up quickly. The next day (tuesday), I visited Jennie's (Uncles gf) new salon she opened up. Its got a good location and is pretty good sized for what she needs. Got my haircut, which is always a plus.

I finished Mass Effect 2, which was a great game and I am definitely looking forward to Mass Effect 3 in 2011 ugh. Started a second play through on Dragon Age, been playing halo a lot with garrett again which is fun, and I am about halfway through Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded. HFC is a really good book so far, but pretty dense on environmental terms so its not for everyone. Jennie also gave me 4 books to read, so I definitely have a big pile of them just waiting for me.

Overall, everything is good no complaints, I just have been dealing with boredom a lot lately. I think I am so used to having so much school stuff going on from the past 6 months that not really having anything to do has been a weird transitions. Im trying to do other stuff more, Im planning on either running or playing tennis tonight but it rained yesterday so I will have to check conditions. Im flying up to Sacramento in 11 days on March 11 to go see Stacy so I am definitely looking forward to that. Take care everyone.

Restless Restless

Ever have one of those days that you just feel slightly irritated? Just sitting at work bugs me, the fact that I have school work bugs me, the fact that John won't email me back to play tennis bugs me haha. I don't know what my problem is.. just like this ever-present impatience.

Well after 1 stressful day (Thursday) and 1 somewhat stressful day (Friday), I got all the necessary forms signed/filled out and turned them into the office of graduate studies with my thesis on friday. I definitely felt a huge sense of relief after that. I also got an email from Berkeley... didn't get in. Thats 6 responses so far.. hopefully I will here from the rest soon so I can put that behind me. I'm currently working on a 7-10 econ paper due next thursday on budget deficits and the national debt. Pretty easy stuff, just a bit boring and I literally have zero motivation since I finished my thesis. I'm pretty sure I am experiencing burn out. I am so close to finishing this degree that I just want it to be over with now. Especially since I had to pay my school 700$ out of pocket to pay for my thesis class since I added it past the financial aid deadline or some shit. That was another reason my thursday was stressful besides finishing my thesis stuff. It takes a lot for me to get stressed but man having those 3-4 things in one day sure did it to me.

Anyways, got about a page done of this econ essay and im dragging my feet. I was going to work on it yesterday but decided to read a book instead. I read and finished the Art of Racing in the Rain, one of the book's nasty sent me. It was really good and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a dog or loves dogs. It will definitely give you a new perspective on your furry friend; had some sad parts, drama, really well-written I thought and an easy read. Then, I went for a run (2 miles) and just played video games.. pretty boring day but much needed.

Hope this feeling goes away, I hate this, I'm usually so content lol I don't want to feel uncontent. Anyways, talk to you all later.

In a thoughtful, but peaceful mood

Hey everyone,

I was just thinking about how important it is to be humble in life. I mean, by all means have confidence in what you do, but just remember how lucky we can be in life. Especially here in America, we have some extraordinary luxuries that we expect and are provided daily (such as food and shelter) that are completely unknown in other parts of the world. I feel very blessed and fortunate most of the time.

I got my thesis back from my committee chair with his edits yesterday, he was very thorough which is good. He also said he thought it was interesting, enjoyed it, and it definitely offerred something for people looking to expand their knowledge on politics in Africa. In other words, it was better than I feared. The other member of my committee was unable to return an edited version to me because he had  the birth of his son! Congratulations to him, I told him not to worry as my chair was thorough. He said he would read through it and contact me if there was anything glaring that needed to be fixed. I guess this is a little of a blessing in disguise for me as I am already short on time, the thesis needs to be confirmed and signed off by my committee and turned into the university for the first formal review by friday. Also, my chair had never read a thesis before as a chair so its kind of been a lemming-like experience with none of the 3 of us exactly sure what to do or if we are doing to right. Clearly, I am the one idiot in the history of the program to choose to write a thesis haha, and its increasingly going to be a waste since the chances of me pursuing a PhD shrink by the day. Nonetheless, it has/is been a good experience and I will always be able to say I wrote a thesis. Plus, it literally means that besides this and my last class I am done with the program, so its nice that I won't have to take comprehensive exams at the end. I started working on his edits last night and have worked on them literally on and off all day. I'm about halfway through I would say, so making fairly good progress.

I had my first assignment in my economics class last night, it was an essay exam worth 25% of my final grade. It went fairly well, I'm guessing I will get a high B or low A. Pretty long exam, but not too difficult. The first paper is due on February 25, a week from tomorrow, that I haven't even thought of. It only has to be 7-10 pages though so I'm not worried I can write that pretty quickly now.

Speaking of the PhD thing, I have heard back from a few other places. So far I have received 5 responses: 4 no's from Cambridge, Stanford, UC San Diego, and Yale and a request from Leeds uni for a more detailed research proposal. Leeds was kind of a shot in the dark school because I met some cool guys in Barcelona that lived there and at the time was considering England, but I am not going there. Its just not meant to be. I still am waiting to hear back from Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, UC Riverside, and UC Berkeley. Like I've said, not expecting to get into anywhere and not sure if I would go even if I did but we will see how it goes.

Played Mass Effect 2 a lot last week. In about 4 days time, I logged over 20 hours of gameplay. Great game, nice distraction too. I hadn't played video games in nearly 2 months so it has been fun to get back into one.

And most importantly, I got to spend Friday night-Tuesday morning with the girlfriend, which was awesome. We had a lot of fun, got to do some cool stuff like hiking, playing tennis, seeing movies, going out to dinner, and just enjoy each others company. Already looking forward to my next trip up north.

Anyways, hope all is well out there. Im doing good, getting close to finishing this master's thing so just trying to push through before I have to figure out my job/living situation haha. Take care.

Happy February 8th!

Hello all,

I'm trying to do a better job of posting more often, seems like I'm doing a good job, plus I have been on my computer non-stop lately. First, today is my dad's 51st birthday. I got him a book and took him out to dinner so that was nice. Next... I submitted my thesis to my committee for review . This is by no means the end of the process, but to have a near completed draft is a huge deal. Ill find out in about a week what I need to fix (and how bad it is). As long as it doesn't completely suck.. I should graduate by the end of March, thank god. So needless to say, its like part of a weight has been lifted off my shoulder, not completely off, but there is definitely a little less pressure on them. This also means that yes tonight, I will finally start playing Mass Effect 2 after 2-3 weeks of it just sitting in my room.

And most importantly... only 4 days until I am extremely happy. Have a good night everyone.

Quick Update

Hey hey,

Its raining and I'm at work, which suits me fine. Getting pretty close to having the first draft of this thesis wrapped up. Im sending it off to my committee on Monday, I just need to finish the body and conclusion, the introduction is virtually done. I went down to USC last night and hung out with a few buddies for a couple hours. It was nice to get out of the Inland Empire (basically anywhere east of Los Angeles) for a little bit, change things up.

In PhD related news, I got my first acceptance  rejection letter back... Stanford U. No big surprised there, that was by far the school that I had the least chance of getting into seeing their average minimum GRE scores was 1400 and mine is only at 1240. As I have posted, I'm fully prepared to get 10 letters that follow this vein, so it really doesn't bug me in the slightest.

6 days until the girl comes down, can't wait. Take care all.

PhD? Maybe going the way of the white buffalo...

So I have been laboring at the actual thought of entering a PhD program and the implications it would have for my future. I was first warned against this by Dr. Chambers, my ancient greek history professor at sac state. Then, more recently, by Dr. Janiskee who is the chair of the political science department at san bernardino. Both professors pointed out to me the ultra-competitive job market for people seeking university teaching jobs in the humanities. That the long hours of graduate school combined with the reality of going $40,000-$50,000 dollars worth of debt is not worth it. That you are extremely over-qualified and extremely under-paid for the work you do. At the time, my thought process was such that I acknowledged these problems but brushed them aside and continued to blindly pursue this idea I have of being a PhD holder. Thats one of the main things I have been worrying about lately. I have an IDEA of what I imagine it to be like in a PhD program and how the job market would just open up to me afterwards.

So I have been scouring the web researching this topic. I have read the blogs of the now-departed Invisible Adjunct. I also follow a few other blogs of professors who write explicitly about this. The outlook is extremely grim. Across the board, the number of tenure-track university positions has declined dramatically over the past 20 years. Adjunct professors who work part-time with no benefits are becoming the norm at universities, with many of these professors teaching at 2-3 different colleges a week to make ends meet. A predicted expansion of PhD jobs that encouraged an explosion of students to get their PhD's never came to fruition; which produced a saturation of PhD holders in the job market. In other words, there are X number of PhD academia jobs and X+1,000,000 job applicants. While competition alone isn't enough to scare me away, there are other mitigating factors.

1. Without funding, I would go deep in debt (roughly $50,000 dollars) and as an adjunct would make $30,000 dollars a year? No thanks.
2. A PhD program would take a minimum of 4-5 years, putting me at 29 years of age before I even enter the job market.. thats a lot of lost time and opportunity. Not to mention, I could easily spend another 4-5 years and countless moves trying to find a tenure-track position and NOT find one!
3. While the thought of being a PhD student has a certain amount of prestige and romanticism to it, the reality is that I will spend long hours in isolation: researching and writing, helping professors with their research, and rubbing shoulders with a certain type of person which I'm not entirely sure I care to spend a lot of time around.
4. I don't have a financial net to fall into; my family is not available to help me financially. So, if I was unable to get a job, you could see me in the streets living in a cardboard box.
5. There are a few others I was thinking of last night, but can't seem to come across them at the moment.

Now I have other options: High school and community college most notably. Also, If I don't enter a PhD program I have the flexibility of choosing where I want to go and what I want to do. A program would lock me into a location for 4-5 years and prevent me from pursuing other goals. Not to mention, what if I went halfway through a program and decided at that point I no longer wanted to do it? What a waste of time. I have spent many hours and nearly $1,000 dollars completing my 10 applications for programs, but that defintely will not be a deterrent to me if I decide I do not want this. I have never been afraid to walk away from something, and this is no different.

Now just in case someone is reading this and getting depressed because their life goal has always been to get a PhD (it has never been one of mine, which makes this realization probably easier to bear), There are exceptions. My older sister Shannon is getting her PhD in Clinical Psychology because it is necessary to have this qualification in order to have job options. People in Engineering, Math, Medical, and the Sciences will have no trouble finding jobs with a PhD. If you are in the humanities: it really comes down to teaching or if you are in Political Science like me working for the government, or a Non-Governmental Organization. I don't really have the desire to work for the government, and NGO work can be difficult to break into without having the right connections.

Basically, these are the thoughts I am having while waiting for my acceptance rejection letters to arrive. This could all be moot point, because to be honest I am not expecting to get into more than 1 or 2 programs if I'm lucky. Its all really a crapshoot: getting accepted, making it through the program, and finding a job afterwards. And then there is this, I am not sure that the thought of constantly reading academic work, researching, and trying to get paper, articles, and books published is something that exactly thrills me. While I have been fortunate to have a few publishments now and its very exciting, they were papers written for classes, not because I was trying to get published. I like reading academic and intellectual stuff when I want to learn it and its exciting, and I like learning in general when it comes to that. But its the idea of teaching, instructing, and interacting with students and other intellectuals that really draws me to teaching. I am a pretty social person, and I don't want to have to lock myself away from my family because I have some deadline I need to hit on some paper or something. Plus, I really want to be able to coach football again (something I love dearly) and the thought of never doing that again is something I am not really comfortable with.

Just on my mind, felt like I needed to write it out after thinking about it for a few days. I can see a scenario where even if I get accepted to some places, I just turn them all down and walk away from it. I need to start looking back into finishing up another bachelors (so I can teach at a community college) and finishing up my high school teaching credential. If anyone has any thoughts, feel free to post.