The Pursuit Begins

It’s official. You’re reading the blog of a graduate school graduate. It’s intimidating to think that the last summer you didn’t have school to look forward to in the fall was the summer of 1985 (in the summer of 86, you had kindergarten to look forward to in the fall). A quick search on Wikipedia showed me a long list of things that happened that year (including the Royals winning the World Series and the Internet creating domain names), and the stark realization that I’m getting old is setting in. That kinda sucks.

There’s only two things that I can think of at the moment that sucks more than this realization. One is trying to find something to do for the rest of your life. Word of advice to the younger viewers: make sure your education and your experience are in the same identical thing, otherwise you and your potential employers will be really confused. At which point, the only thing you apparently qualified to do is teach. And I’ve come to the stark realization that there’s nothing wrong with that. The old saying that “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” isn’t necessarily true. It’s more like “those who manage their skills and education properly and know the right people, do; those who don’t, teach” may be more applicable--least, in my current line of thinking it is--unless, of course, your skills, education and people are in education. But those are a special breed of people.

The second is trying to find that person you’re suppose to spend the rest of your life with. Unless you model your marriage after Lucy and Ricky, you’ll have to wake up in the same bed with this person for the rest of your life. Somebody smarter than me talked about that matchmaking thing a while back. I don’t know I’m necessarily sold on leaving a decision this big up to “experts.” The way I look at it, I’m better off by myself than I am relying on a scientifically researched conclusion on who I should be with. I’ve done my own scientific research. Girls suck. They suck almost as much as realizing 76% of your life has been spent in the classroom [so for those of you keeping track, the official Top Things that Suck List goes as follows: 1) finding somebody, 2) finding something to do, 3) getting old, 4) girls, and just to make it even, 5) any race car driver named Busch or Gordon].

The only consolation is that the years apparently do get shorter as you get older. If you think about it, the first year you’re alive, you’ve lived 1/1th of your life. The year you turn two, you’ve lived ½ of your life, the third year 1/3rd and so on and so forth. It doesn’t really help, though, because even though work, apparently, will go by quicker than the years of watching Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street, this hypothesis means that the years of retirement will go by quicker than the years of work. Maybe my professor wasn’t kidding when he referred to his 40s and 50s as “pre death.”

Ode to stress

I’m a little teapot short and stout
Here is my handle, here is my spot

When life gets really, really hectic because you put off a bunch of stuff that should have done months ago but were too busy working on other things that were equally important to your well being and now you’re about ready to explode because life kinda sucks you can hear me shout

“Forget this junk, I’m going to bed.”