You are in a hedgehog's burrow.

Feeling very uprooted and unstable (ha ha, not that way...) recently. Lost my job earlier this month when the grant funding the position terminated. Not unexpected. I've had a couple interviews since then, and have a couple more scheduled.

Meanwhile, I am packing up to move. This was scheduled waaaay back in April.

So, a lot of things are going on. I think I'm keeping a handle on it okay so far. Anyway, that's why I've been absent or seemingly uninvolved lately.

Back to tidying and packing, then. Oh, and sweating. Stupid Boston summer weather.

Soooo.

About this time last year I was just starting my current job as a lab tech. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I loved learning about biology, but the lab courses had felt flat, for lack of a better term, and this didn't seem to bode well for a life at the bench. My final year, I had stretched myself and started taking courses in humanities and writing, sort of groping towards things that looked cool. My vague reasoning was that if I wasn't sure about my path, I should look for the things that were fascinating and made me feel passionate, and do them more, experiment to see if it was just an interest or if it was more.

I also became very enthralled with two fields: writing and mental health work. The first because I like reading and like to write and can be good at it if I apply myself. I also had an amazing amount of fun in my writing courses, and learned some truly valuable things. The second because (and this will sound ever so corny) I have incredible admiration for the people who have helped me, and I want to help others the way I have been helped. The fact that I enormously enjoyed the one psychology course I ever took also helps.

My plan a year ago was this: graduate and find a job in biology. Do it for a year or so, but explore other options on the side. Then decide on a path. I spent the past year growing more and more dissatisfied with molecular biology. I love the theory, I love reading about it and discussing it, but I just can't see myself spending my life at this, much less eventually spending half my time not even doing this, but writing grants for doing this. As the year wore on, and I thought about where I wanted to be in a decade, I found my thoughts ever returning to a therapist's office, and thinking how much I would like to be the person helping out someone like I was then. Helping someone pull things together and become stronger, better, more whole.

This is the scary part now. The year is basically up and yes, I have come to some decisions. It's a big thing to say, and a bigger thing to own, and an even bigger thing to start acting on, but here goes: I am looking at pursuing a career as a mental health professional or social worker. I'm still very much in the research phase, and I suppose it's possible that I might find something that turns me off it completely, but so far the only sentiment standing in my way is an internal whine. Something like: "Aw maaaaan. Yet more school. Yeesh," and that doesn't seem like a very mature or reasoned objection.

The reason I'm talking about it here is because it makes it more real if I tell a community what I'm thinking and planning. It's scary making a decision like this, and I really want to write in a bunch of caveats just in case I change my mind. But I've been thinking about this for about a year and a half, two years now. Especially since I learned that one of the two therapists in the group I went to at MIT used to be an MIT student herself... and since one of my old (but now sadly out-of-touch) friends who used to go to MIT also made herself a career in this field. And yes, it's cross-posted to a couple other places, just to make this clear to myself and my friends.

So here I am, nervous as hell and yet also kind of relieved. I'm looking into finding a new job, one that won't make me feel quite so unused and sad. I'm also tentatively poking around on the net, trying to find out where I should apply and what for and how the hell one comes up with the money for a master's, and if one can do that while also living off campus in an apartment. I know a couple people around here are in these professions: I would highly appreciate your stories about how you made this choice and what it took to get there. Please. I need input on the thinking and the planning.

After this... there just remains the doing.

I have a theory that when you perceive ramen as a meal, you are a college student in mind and heart. Presence or absence of diplomas is irrelevant.

Before college, I regarded ramen as an after-school snack, and an inferior one at that (Mm, Chef Boyardee... I must have eaten five thousand of those raviolis).

During college, ramen was a meal.

Now, ramen is a meal as long as I add frozen vegetables to the broth and serve an egg on top, or perhaps some slices of chicken.

I predict that at some point I will once more regard ramen as a snack, and on that day I will no longer be a college student.

So I came back from a larp on the 16th with a cold or something. It got better. Then this past weekend I got another cold. It showed up Sunday, worse on Monday, somewhat better today, should be gone by the end of the week.

My boss has told me to go to the walk-in ER for antibiotics.

Okay, three reasons this annoys me:
1. Don't we already have a problem with over-prescribing antibiotics? I'm getting better. I don't want to take the drugs. Even if I did go in and got a prescription filled,  I'd look at the bottle with loathing and take the pills, get better in a couple days, which is what'll happen without the drugs anyway.
2. I have Stuff to DO tonight! Gonna go play TOA at UC and see Z and stuff.
3. My boss has degrees in biology and suchlike. He is not an MD. He was going on about the cold giving me scar tissue on my lungs and possibly killing me if it's staph (which, considering it's manifested as a sinus infection, it is probaly not). I don't know why my boss's telling me what do do with myself medically bugs me so much.

So yeah. Arrgh and stuff. So. Should I go to the ER tonight and blow off TOA? Or what?

Many, many things have been happening. As is my (regrettable) habit when I have a lot of important, complicated, and personal stuff going on, I go silent on LJ. I've had this thing for how many yeas, have had an online presence for how long, and I still feel wary of speaking about truly personal topics on the internet?

Sigh.

Anyway. Good things, reasons I am happy:

I have my own place. All my own.
I am slowly building savings and getting out of debt.
I am losing weight, not by design, but just apparently because.
I have made new friends recently.
I have been offered a position of responsibility, which speaks well of me.
I have been making things work in lab. 
This article about a Catholic priest who believes women should be ordained. Some excerpts of note:

"Women in our Church are telling us that God is calling them to the priesthood. Who are we, as men, to say to women, “Our call is valid, but yours is not.” Who are we to tamper with God’s call?
Sexism, like racism, is a sin. And no matter how hard or how long we may try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is always immoral. "

"Silence is the voice of complicity. Therefore, I call on all Catholics, fellow priests, bishops, Pope Benedict XVI and all Church leaders at the Vatican, to speak loudly on this grave injustice of excluding women from the priesthood."

He also points out the fact that thousands of clergy connected with the child abuse scandals were not excommunicated, yet he is being threatened with such for supporting womens' ordination.

Moving on. Bad things:

Oven was not heating properly. Informed landlord. Next day a repairman came and fixed it. Nice service! But now it is not working again.
I cannot visit my family for Thnaksgiving or Christmas, because airfare to Phoenix from Boston at those times is ridiculously high.
Single, and I think in the past month or so I no longer want to be single.
My pants are all falling off my butt because I lost some inches.
I do not know if I want to become the person I see in the doctors and professors around me.

A little test and some rambling about how my brain works.

( Onward! )

So, very long and rambly. Huh. Well, that's enough navel gazing for about a week right there.

...a gold llame shirt and purple discoball earrings. They're from when we dressed Lep up for the glam rock study break. Oh, and three graphing calculators (two TI-83's and one TI-89).

You see, I am cleaning out my stuff in preparation for my move. Yes, I am moving to Jamaica Plain on September 1st! An apartment of my own, yay!

Anyway, all these strange things and more will be donated to Goodwill, posted to craigslist, or blogged about here in case anyone I know on LJ would want them.

Recently I have been looking at apartment listings. Being a good little child of the internet age, this means mainly craigslist and rent.com. The results have been... spotty. I'm going to see a place in Forest Hills tomorrow for the second time. Lovely location, not so lovely apartment. it's small and in the basement, and it might be hard to get furniture down there.

I was feeling agitated about the whole thing until I figured out that the nervousness was from not knowing what I was doing, really. I think once I see a few more apartments in my established price range, I will have a better idea of what I should expect, and therefore what is bad and what is good.

In the meantime, getting around to all these places with no car is superfun. Oh yeah! Well, it would be a lot worse if I was working and could only do this on the weekends, I suppose.

Anyway. That's about it. I'm just hanging out here, trying to remind myself that I don't have to take the first thing offered, and am allowed to keep looking until I am happy.

See title.

I'm trying to write a post about my recent events. It's confusing, though, so I have not been sure what to say. However, these are the Big Things:

Been writing stories again.
Potential job offer.
Moving to a new apartment soon.
Having to revise my... I dunno. Internal script of who I am.
Having to edit/update my ideas of what I want my life to be.
I have a diploma!

So that's about it. Oh, and here is a picture of me getting the diploma!

( Pic behind the cut )

Took my final today. It's over! Well, assuming I passed, but I am fairly confident that I did.

So I want to celebrate. I'm thinking I would like to get together with my friends and do Fun Stuff. Maybe sometime this weekend or next week. Most definitely.