So, I don't have much to do here for the next 10 days because the kids are on holiday. This hasn't been a problem for me because I've been taking it easy, maybe too easy. I take a lot of time getting ready for the day and getting ready for bed. I take nice walks around the neighborhood taking pictures of people and trying out new foods, cautiously of course. I'm also at the internet cafe for a good chunk of time but doing productive things like . . . blogging . . . and researching grad schools and filling in applications and writing essays. Well, I knew all this alone time would catch up to me and I'm actually starting to feel the tiniest bit lonely. I'm also starting to wonder how I possibly graduated from BYU so much earlier than a lot of my friends. I guess I've just been pondering what I did at BYU and what I'm supposed to do for grad school.
For some reason, I feel guilty about not doing some things in my undergrad:
- I never took a political science class because I don't like politics and I don't particularly like defending my opinion
- I wish I had taken more Italian classes since, after all, I'm technically a "linguist."
- I should have tried out more elective courses like a film class. Astronomy? Wilderness survival?
- Why didn't I do more internships?
Ok, so I'm feeling down. The rainy day doesn't help, either.
Last night, I had this discussion with myself asking if I had taken the easy way out. I switched from Communication Disorders to Linguistics my sophomore year. Basically, I didn't like my classes nor my classmates very much in CommD, so I attended a linguistics course and decided it was more dynamic and a better learning environment for me. It really was, but I wanted to be a speech pathologist every since high school. Did I quit speech path just because it was getting hard and a little bit unbearable? I really did enjoy every linguistics class though, and I made good friends and had good study partners. Also, my teachers were crazy. In one class, our final was to present a poster on the term paper we had written, but I really didn't feel like making a poster so I made a cake instead and still got an A because my teachers valued "interpretation of language." The point is, despite the fun I've had in linguistics, I can't do anything with a bachelor's in it, not even a master's.
Luckily, I did an editing minor, which I can do a lot with. My current plan is to go to grad school for journalism in the magazine editing and designing field. I suppose grad school is to make up for our guilt (there's probably a better word for it than guilt) of undergrad. A lot of courses in the grad program are designed around ethics and politics, so political science--check. I'll just use my mum's Rosetta Stone for Italian, Italian--check. And I'll interview astronomers and wilderness survival kids for beats and stories, electives--check. And I'll have to do an internship before I can get accepted, most likely, internship--check.
I still might change my mind, though.
