"What I'm doing with my life"

Yesterday I was absolutely bored sick of being indoors, so I went to the park to work on my application essays. I love that park, mostly because I have a lot of fun memories associated with it. Once I scaled the chain-link fence surrounding the pool to take an evening swim with my brother and some of our friends. It didn't work out so well. Our parents showed up and nearly busted us, and then I got stuck on top of the chain-link fence--both my shorts and my underwear somehow got tangled up on one of the wires. I also went on an ill-fated date there (he didn't like me so much), and I took my Swedish friend there after we watching Seabiscuit. We liked the movie a little too much; we pretended to be jockeys on some of the playground equipment. A few small children rode by on their bicycles and laughed at us.

Come to think of it, I guess I've never specified my "future plans" or "long-range goals". My undergrad was psychology; I got out a bit early and had only a vague idea of what I was doing. Therefore, I decided to keep going to A&M and get a master's in Human Resources. It was an interesting experience, met a lot of great people, did a gazillion group projects, had some really cool professors, had some not so cool ones, pulled a few all-nighters for the first time (Multivariate Stat...), discovered how conservative business people truly were, went out drinking too often, didn't study often enough, etc. etc.

Anyway, somewhere along the way I decided that the material was interesting, but HR work in a corporation wasn't really for me. (Of course this is partially correlated to my internship. I had a bad habit of working too rapidly, leaving me with endless hours that I filled with drinking water, reading 6 Sigma literature, applying hand lotion, and sleeping. Should I be saying all of this? Probably not. Oh well.)

Given the fact that I liked the material but not the application as much, a professor suggested I think about a career in academia. I thought "sounds like fun". I had been in school for quite some time (especially if we're counting from my entrance into kindergarten), and I was starting to get good at being a student. Why not continue? So this is why I'm applying to Organizational Behavior programs, which is essentially psychological principles applied to the workplace. If I get accepted, and if I get out of school a millennium and a half later, I would like to be a professor. (Good job, good pay, good holidays, what's not to love?)

Anyway, I'd like to add a bit of a caveat about my prior statement about doctors. To be honest, I didn't think that anybody associated with the medical profession would read my blog. Therefore, I'd like to explain my previous statements of "doctor disdain" to those that may have been offended.

My sophomore year at college I was sexually harassed by a doctor then placed under duress to submit to an examination that I did not want. I refused adamantly...several times...and left the clinic hysterical and in tears. Secondly, the degree of treatment you receive is contingent upon the symptoms you describe (For example, I could have made a big deal out of my post-accident dizzy spells, but I chose not to.) Thirdly, doctors are human, and of course they make mistakes. Lastly, I have crap insurance and I don't want to pay an outrageous sum to a doctor, only to have him/her tell me something I already knew. (I tend to self-diagnose a lot.) So that's why I tend to be a bit prickly about physicians. Anyway, glad to have that cleared up. Hope nobody was too offended.

In other news, I <3 spinich enchiladas.