I Want a Toad Hole

The other day hubby and I were walking the pooch one evening when it was actually a little cooler and we didn't see many toads; hubby commented that "toading season" may be nearly over and the toads may be settling in their toad holes for the winter. I thought that sounded lovely—a nice cozy toad hole to curl up in. I want one!

Life has been ridiculously busy since I started working and I've barely had time to breathe (or sleep), let alone cook, clean, watch TV, or any of the other things people do in their daily lives. On days I have class I go straight to class from work so that makes for 12-hour days for me; over the past two weeks I had other things going on that made for several other 12-hour days in addition to just class days. (Class days are only two days a week.) I guess a lot of people live this way all the time but I'm not one of them, and I don't think I want to be long-term.

I've decided for the rest of my time at this job (it's only for a few weeks) I'm going to work M-Th and take Friday off completely, rather than work shorter hours all week. I'm not working full-time so dedicating M-Th to work gets the hours in, then I can have a three-day weekend to catch up on other things I need to do, like keep up with my one-and-only-class this semester. (This particular class is on the heavy side and feels like a full-time load itself sometimes.) On the bright side, the extra activities that overloaded my schedule for the past two weeks should be subsiding now; hopefully things will quiet down to a dull roar so I'll have a few hours each week to feel like a normal person again. "Normal" being a relative term, of course.

Something To Say

I haven't been writing here much lately because: 1) I don't have time, and, 2) I haven't felt like I've had much to say recently, or at least nothing that I want to talk about on the Internet. But now I've got something to say:

I'm going back to work tomorrow.

Sort of. I mean, it's a job, but it's not the elusive (as a friend calls it) permanent position, I'm still working on that. Someone I know who owns a technical writing consulting company (yes, there are such things, quite a few of them, actually) wrote to me last week and asked if I might be available to help with some proofreading and editing. Apparently she's got a lot of files that need to be proofread and she's overwhelmed. She has several regular employees and is hiring me as a contractor for 4-6 weeks to work on this project. It's flexible hours, I probably won't work full-time (my choice), and she knows I'm looking for permanent work so I won't need to make up stories if/when other interviews come up. So it should work out well and give me something else to do for a few weeks, which will be nice.

Of course this will mean a whole new routine for me and remembering how to do things I haven't done in a while—things like having to be somewhere every morning, deal with a commute, and eat lunch in an office. I worked from home for several years before I went back to school so it's been a LONG time since I've had to make myself a lunch to take to work; I make hubby a lunch (or dinner, depending on his schedule) to take to work everyday but he's not a picky eater and I kind of am. (Okay, no "kind of" about it, I just am.) I went grocery shopping this week and got some things that should get me through this week, and I know there are a lot of websites out there with good recipes for lunches to take to work so I'm sure I can get creative if I want to take the time to do so. The good news is I may not need to be in the office everyday after the first week so that will help with the lunches and the commute. (At the moment I'm not sure how long the commute will be—especially if I try to do it during normal rush hour times—so I'll definitely try to avoid that. Hopefully it won't be more than 30-35 minutes if I can avoid traffic. Hour-long commutes are not my thing.)

To get ready for work—and because it desperately needed it—yesterday I took advantage of the nicer weather we've FINALLY been having the past couple of days and gave my car its semi-annual cleaning. (I'd like to say I'm exaggerating on the semi-annual part but, um, no.) It'll be nice to be able to see out of the windows again. And we gave doggy a bath; we wash her more than semi-annually but she definitely needed it. We usually give her a pedicure (as in cut her toenails) whenever we give her a bath so she's clicking less when she walks now, too. She'd never admit it, but I'm sure she feels better when she's all clean and fluffy again. It's just the process of getting that way that isn't so great.

I hope you all are having a wonderful Labor Day. I'm working on homework and trying to catch up on some other computer things, like finally updating this blog—that's one thing I can cross off my list!

The Next Step

Last Friday I finished my summer class (an independent study). With my grade posted today I am officially three credits closer to my master's degree. In just a year-and-a-half I've completed 30 of the 33 credits required; no wonder I'm so tired.

My next (and last!) class doesn't start until August so that means for the first time in a long time I have some free time—no homework or due dates to stress over. So yesterday I made a blueberry pie:

I figured it was necessary.

Of course having free time doesn't mean I don't have anything to do; it just means when I don't want to clean the house now I don't have nearly as good an excuse for putting it off. And there's that ironing I haven't done in, uh, ages... And last but not least there's that job thing. Oh yeah, that.

As I've always said, I didn't go back to school for my health—I did it to catch up with the field of technical communication so I could get a job. And not just any job—a good job that I would enjoy and be challenging and utilize the skills I have. That's always been my goal as I labored away on reading and projects and everything else being a full-time graduate student entails. And now I'm done. Yes, I still have that last class left, but I'm done being a full-time student with no time to think about anything else. So, after I've taken a little time to relax without feeling guilty (well, try to do that, at least), and catch up with things around the house, I'm planning on starting my job search in earnest. As they say, searching for a job is a full-time job; now I'll finally have the time to do it. Wish me luck.

End of the Tunnel

My regular readers have probably noticed I haven't been posting quite as frequently lately. As you can probably imagine, things have just been too busy trying to keep up with graduate school without having a serious nervous breakdown in the process. (And I've had plenty of minor breakdowns along the way.) Going back to school full-time has definitely brought several "What was I thinking?!??!" moments, but I know in the end I'll be glad to have done the program this way.

The good news is I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. After this semester (which isn't over yet, I have to keep reminding myself) I'll have two classes left, and I was originally planning on taking both of them next fall. (One is a required course I have to take in the fall, the other is an elective.) Then I thought it'd be nice to take the elective over the summer if I could, get that out of the way and only have the one required course in the fall. The problem is there aren't a lot of classes offered during the summer sessions and the type of elective I need to take isn't available. In the meantime, though, there is a class I really wanted to take this semester but couldn't due to my schedule and workload, so I'd talked to the professor about doing the work for the class on my own over the summer on a casual basis, just so I could learn the material and not totally miss out. To make a long story short (or shorter, at least), my advisor is letting me do the work for the class I couldn't take as an independent study course over the summer, so I'll not only get credit for work I was already planning to do, but he's allowing me to do this in lieu of taking the other type of elective. This is allowing me to make the most of my program, molding it to my goals and what I want to get out of it rather than molding myself to fit it.

For the independent study I'll be compressing a 16-week course into a 5-week summer session, but I've already put together the schedule I'll follow and it's doable. I took a summer course last summer so I'm familiar with the 5-week concept, which helps. What this all means is that on June 25th—the day my independent study will officially end—I'll have only one course left in my graduate studies. I probably won't have much time to breathe between now and June 25th to get it all done, but being able to see the end of the tunnel there definitely helps motivate me now.

Last but not least, finishing the program this way means I'll be able to start my job search several months earlier than I'd originally planned. Living on one income and our savings has been so much fun, of course (or not), but I'm ready to start earning money again sooner rather than later. More importantly, I'm more than ready to put what I've been learning into practice, which has been the goal all along here. If I was taking two classes in the fall I wouldn't want to work full-time while I did that (many people do, I know, but I wouldn't want to), but having just one evening class will allow me to go back to work full-time if the opportunity arises. I definitely hope it will arise and I'll be working toward that. Just last night I got a possible job lead that would be the right timing and could possibly turn into something, so I'm already keeping my eyes and ears open for that perfect job.

If you don't see me much over the next couple of months now you know why. (Well, more specifically that you probably guessed already, anyway.) As part of my independent study I'm also going to be putting together a new blog, which I plan to host on my own Web site. (A Web site I don't have yet, but will.) My goal for that blog is to focus on topics in the field of technical communication; I'm not exactly sure what topics yet, but something where I can contribute to the technical communication community. I'll probably still maintain this blog as a purely personal blog; after all, I need a place to post pictures of the pooch!

Lazy dog.

Headed Toward Employment

Even though I'm still a little while away from graduating I've started thinking more about getting a job. My focus this year is to have a job next year, and you have to sow your seeds before you can harvest them, right? For me, that means working on networking and establishing relationships now, while I'm not looking for a job, in order to have those contacts available when I am job searching later on.

One thing I've found is that people in industry are generally very receptive to students, or at least people in my field are. My theory is that students are less threatening; especially in today's economy, people who have jobs are used to being asked for help by people who don't have jobs. Students in the middle of their program generally aren't asking for jobs, so there isn't as much pressure involved in talking to them. I've taken advantage of this numerous times already, talking to people in my field about various projects I'm doing. It's made my projects more relevant and contributed toward that all-important networking, getting my name out there as someone who takes initiative and has the drive to succeed.

Recently I've had another reason to think about employment more closely. Last week I was notified that the Society for Technical Communication selected me for their Sigma Tau Chi Award, which honors students with the potential to distinguish themselves in the technical communication profession. I'm told only a few students are selected each year. Besides being a great boost for my resume, receiving the award (or being inducted into the honor society, as it's also put) helps affirm the direction I ultimately want to take into leadership roles when I return to the working world.

Happy New Year!

I always miss California the most on January 1st. I grew up watching the Rose Parade on TV, and when I lived closer to Pasadena I sometimes heard the Stealth Bomber fly over my house on its way back to base. I still watch the parade on TV, but it's just not the same as being in California (even though I never had any desire to actually go to the parade myself). Now I just look at the mountains in the background—"my mountains," as I call them (otherwise known as the San Gabriel Mountains)— and enjoy the scenery from afar.

I've never been much of one for New Year's resolutions. I've always figured if there's something I want (or don't want) to do I should just resolve to do it, with or without a change in the calendar. Sometimes it seems like making New Year's resolutions is a recipe for failure from the beginning: There's so much hype and pressure around the very concept it's hard to live up to expectations. I don't know what the average for keeping New Year's resolutions is (two weeks? three?), but I know I never managed to keep them for very long. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to eat better and exercise more as much as the next person, but I just don't feel the need to resolve to do so on New Year's Day.

There is one resolution, however, that I will say today, and it's something I'll probably start talking a lot more about next summer. I'm currently on track to graduate with my M.S. in Technical Communication in December, 2010. My 2010 New Year's resolution is I'd like to have a job lined up by New Year's 2011. Not quite a resolution that I have complete control over, but definitely something I'll be working toward during the second half of the year.

Is It Worth It?

Soon it will be one year since I went back to school to get my M.S. in Technical Communication. While I'm enjoying the academic environment and definitely learning a lot, I wonder everyday if it's worth it. Of course my answer is, "I sure hope so!"

I went back to school because the opportunity presented itself and it's something I'd been thinking about for a while. Quite a while, actually: I remember in 2003 after the Columbia space shuttle tragedy being struck with the thought that those people died doing what they loved. At the time I didn't love what I was doing (far from it, actually) and I wished I could figure out what I wanted to do and pursue it. The realities of modern life made staying in my comfort zone more appealing, though, so I stayed in my job and did what I could with it until circumstances gave me the chance to change.

I can't say that becoming a technical communicator is my lifelong dream, as becoming an astronaut was for some of the Columbia flight crew. I was a technical writer early in my career and I enjoyed it, and I think I'll enjoy it even more now as the ways documentation is created and presented have progressed in the digital age. Do I need a master's degree to excel in the field? No. I don't know the statistics but I'd guess less than half of the people who call themselves technical communicators have a master's degree in technical communication. However, times and the economy have changed since I was a technical writer so I'm hoping the degree in addition to my experience will give me that "edge" with employers, bringing my resume to the top of the stack and putting me on that short list for an interview. Since I'll be graduating in December, 2010, I'll probably be looking for that perfect job at this time next year. Hopefully I'll find out then that it was all worth it.