Holy carp! I haven’t written anything since February. LAME. In my defense, grad school is the worst. Seriously kids, don’t throw your life away on college (that’s what I’m going to tell my hypothetical children someday).
Mercifully, I only have ONE class left! And it’s an online class. And it’s not hard because I already took all the hard ones. Actually, I did that with my undergrad too – my last undergraduate class (I am not kidding here) was Intro to Computers, an 1100, freshman class, no one ever wanted to take that was basically ‘how to use Microsoft and make a Power Point’. I’m not sure how I pushed that to my very last semester, but I did.
As long as we’re confessing to things, I may as well throw in that I failed PE (a requirement at my school) 3 times. 4th time was the charm though.
This year I got to teach an undergraduate class, just to try it out and see if a PhD is worth it, and I have to be honest – it is not. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to have a PhD, but getting one is a) ridiculously expensive, b) cost-prohibitive, and c) did I mention I don’t have the money? I’ve looked into scholarships, but there are not a lot of graduate scholarships out there, and I don’t really want to teach at a university. I’m not even sure it’s worth the time, let alone the money. Don’t get me wrong, I think education is important, but I think it’s going in a very different direction. MOOCs are getting more recognized, and huge amounts of research using citizen scientists are becoming more popular too. I think the day when you can teach and conduct real research outside of a university is just around the corner. So maybe universities should drop their prices is all I’m saying.
So in conclusion, my personal update is this: I’m almost done with grad school, I’m in a very ‘we don’t need no education’ mood, and I have no idea what I’m doing.
I’m pretty sure that’s how everyone feels after college. Right?
p.s. Oh yeah – the good news! I got made president of a small astronomy outreach NPO. That made my whole year.
The Nerd Next Door 