Happy 2010 Everybody!
Happy New Year! I had a great time bringing in the New Year with Ricardo, we watched the celebrations on tv and had a midnight steak dinner. I made sure we had black-eyed peas (last ones in the store!) and we had a great time. I was glad we avoided going downtown for the big celebrations – it had rained all day and it was freezing cold overnight – plus I’m not big on being in crowds that are packed in the way they were in downtown Dallas!
After the New Year we watched tv for a while and listened to some of the crazies outside. We heard fireworks or something outside several times, but fortunately no gunshots – though though something sounded like a nail gun to me. (Go figure.) I hope you all had a good celebration and a safe New Year, and I wish you the best for 2010!
School starts for me January 11th and I’m looking forward to my last semester of college. Now I need to really figure out what I want to do! I would love to write for a living, but I know that isn’t going to pay the bills right away even if I do manage it later on, so I’m looking into everything I can think of. A lot of people have suggested I just go straight for my Masters degree, but I really think the life experience would serve me better at this point so my plan on that is to wait five years and then, after that time, if I still want it I’ll go for it. There are a lot of opportunities out there for A&H majors, no matter how many disparaging remarks I’ve heard, and I’m looking to explore as many things as possible since, for me to be happy, I’d have to have a career that is interesting, challenging, and involve some change as time goes on – which is a little harder to find than a stable, and somewhat repetitive, job. I doubt I’ll find a career – vs a job – right away…and hey, I’ve got to get my degree first…so encouragement and suggestions are welcome. I’m looking outside of teaching right now because I’d have to spend more money and time on getting certification, and I’m tired of being a student at the moment. However, everything else is fair game.
Hopefully, by the time I’m ringing in 2011 I’ll be making good progress on all of that. Wish me luck!
Happy 2010 to you and Ricardo. David was off New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day (SQUEEEE!) so yesterday he helped me take down Christmas stuff at school and get some bulletin boards up. I will have to go back Sunday afternoon to do some last-minute rearranging of desks and getting things ready for school to start back January 4. We watched “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” and had blackeyed peas and rice with some most excellent steaks (coincidence???). Anyway today was get groceries and clean out Robert’s old room, which became a makeshift sort of storeroom for school materials that I moved from my old classroom and do not have room for in the new one. I finally decided to part with a great deal of copies (which had been left by my predecessors) and I still have Christmas decoration boxes out etc. etc. I did make a sizeable dent in the mess, so I feel I did achieve what I started out to do. I am probably going to be so sore tomorrow that I won’t want to move! Liz and the Kirk Krewe
HAPPY NEW YEAR to you too!
I fled the usual festivities my friends are into here in Alicante, 3 years in a row is enough for me! So I headed north to Barcelona and joined up with two ex-roommates (from when I lived in Belgium) for a friendly girls’ night dinner and games!
(none of us felt like going out and dealing with the crowds either)
What’s the deal with the black-eyed peas? A new year’s tradition?
The big MUST-DO Spanish tradition is eating 12 grapes on the 12 strokes of midnight to ensure good fortune for the next year. And when the person in charge of the grapes got big ones and didn’t think to choose seedless… it ain’t easy!
Best of luck choosing the next path for life/career etc. I’ve been a mental mess for a while now because I can’t seem to figure out what to do next (or how to do some of my more interesting options) and I can’t bring myself to wrap up the present phase (my damn thesis).
As someone who went into graduate school to quickly, I’d definitely advise you to get out of Academia and live a little before diving back in! Helps you get perspective, to know yourself better, to get a better feel for what you really want to do and then be able to make better choices when it comes to graduate school.
good luck!