Pickin up more shells….

*ahem* A little analogy ….

So either you were this kid or you’ve see one like him…

Parents are walking in front on a beach shore…

Kid is trailing behind picking up sea shells.

Mom and Dad look back and laugh. Mom says “Remember you can only take one back with you.”

Kid grows glum, realizing all the pretty shells will go to waste.

Kid doesn’t realize the beauty of the ocean or the sound of the waves or the wet sand squishing between his toes. He’s thinking about the shells. Mom and Dad are holding hands looking out over the ocean at the sunset, not talking, just enjoying the beauty.

Kid picks up a shell, puts it back. Picks up another, puts it back. Puts back two more, picks up three, constantly trying to figure out which one he wants to keep.

Sun is swallowed by the ocean. Stars slowly come into view. Mom and Dad are waiting by the car. Mom looks down at Kid and smiles. “Did you decide?”

To Be Continued… when I know the ending….

…. Yea I feel like that’s me. I’m picking up all these different shells, trying to decide which I want to take home with me.

Went to a premed/research info session the other day. It was mostly focused on research. Omg the professors were so helpful and encouraging! They talked about all these different research opportunities and things you can do with them if you show interest and the whole time I was like… that sounds amazing…… but it didn’t feel amazing.

I wasn’t excited about it at all. I saw how doing research on fish in argentina would be very interesting and awesome, but I was largely unmoved.

The whole time I kept thinking, my friend would love this (who wants to do this type of stuff). Then they started talking about for pre med majors it’s best if they intern in a hospital and closed up the discussion.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about going premed. Hell I don’t know what I’ve been thinking, but it’s been on my mind.

I just have no idea of what I want. Thankfully this little info session made me aware that I do NOT want to be a researcher. I don’t want to be a tool of science and I don’t want to add to the textbook of human knowledge. At least not about organisms.

Like… it would be cool to do that, but I don’t want to look back on my career and say I discovered x y and z about some species and because of me there is this chapter in a textbook. That would be cool, but I don’t want to devote my life to that.

What is life supposed to be about? Your accomplishments? Your feelings? What you add to humanity or how deeply you explore yourself? I’m more in favor of the latter. Maybe I’m one of those people who’s career doesn’t define them (but for a lot, that is what define them) and that I need to do stuff on the side like write to be happy. I want my career to be a definition or at least a partial definition of who I am. I don’t want to do something just to make money, but the more I explore the more I feel like that’s where I’m leaning…. It’s the old… your childhood dreams vs. capitalism and what some adult shave succumbed to.

It’s like… are you supposed to decide between the shells you have in your hand and be mildly content, or wait for the one shell that you might not have picked up that you will immediately know “i want to take this one and this one alone home with me.”

For now, gotta keep pickin up more shells I guess.
TK

Criminal Justice FBI, Metropolitan police department, and some other one that I forget

Well now… I haven’t seen you in a while.

First thing… I was getting at least one to two kernel panics a day. I saved all my files, re-installed regular leopard, then installed snow leopard, and guess what?????? ANOTHER KERNEL PANIC HAPPENED LAST NIGHT. This is infuriating. I am calling the apple people on monday. I am sure this is either a problem with the new operating system (snow leopard) or my hardware. Seeing as no one else seems to be having trouble with snow leopard, I’m willing to bet it’s my hardware. UGH!

Last week, we had three speakers come into our criminal justice class. One was an fbi intelligence analyst. One was a metropolitan police officer. One was a retired …cop on a boat? I’m not quite sure what he was. He basically made sure no one was dumping hazardous material into the water and drove around on a boat.

The discussion was VERY informative. I got a better sense of what I might want to do for a career and by the end had a better understanding of the process of finding a career. The FBI analyst majored in criminal justice and then got Master’s (or PhD? I forget) in criminal justice and worked as an intern for her city’s police department and then as an intelligence analyst for another police department and then as an intelligence analyst for her city’s police department. After a few years she applied to the FBI and was accepted. The cop was a gw alum who majored in criminal justice (oh she’s a girl btw) and during her time at gw interned with the secret service and the department of defense and some accounting business and realized that the difference between a good agent and a bad agent is in the field experience (which is why she decided to become a cop before applying to the FBI). The other guy… well… it was less interesting and I kind of forget.

When I think of cops, I think of a majority of unintelligent people who spend a lot of time sitting around, not dealing with action, and well, people who have dead-end jobs. Either that or the polar opposite… people getting shot at who are considered expendable.

That’s why I’ve always wanted to go into the FBI. True, it’s in the field work and there is inherent danger, but (whether this is true or not) I feel like special agents are not as expendable as cops and a lot of thought has gone into whatever operation they are undergoing. Also, there’s a large cerebral aspect of the job that I don’t really see in the cop setting.

The cop that came today was actually very interesting. She worked on prostitution stings and primarily functioned as an undercover cop. Recently, her husband was shot and one of them may now have to quit working.

I don’t know… listening to her talk about apprehending criminals and setting up sting operations was soo exciting! I’m really hesitant about the expendable issue though. I know a lot of people probably become cops who don’t have college degrees (not saying they are inferior) and I would be working alongside them. I’ve noticed a trend where the amount of qualification you have/education you have tends to make you less expendable. I’ll have to research it more. I definitely do not want to be sitting around though. My job has to be important to me and I want to make a difference.

The FBI analyst was interesting too. She basically analyzed crime scenes/data instead of field work. I think I could be happy doing that, but one reason why I like the fbi is because it is both investigative and action-based. Like… you investigate and then you take action. If I was an analyst, I would just sit at a desk using my brain and my body would go to waste.

The discussion definitely gave me a lot more to think about. It’s hard to make yourself understand that it takes time for you to establish a career you are truly happy with. I want it all now!!! And at the same time I don’t know what I want haha. I’m really glad I live in D.C. because I wouldn’t have been able to hear those speeches otherwise. I was thinking of emailing the professor to ask if she could put me in touch with the FBI analyst or the cop so I could ask them more questions, but I haven’t done that yet. We’ll see.

A thoughtful duck,
TK