Let me start off by apologizing for being so impeccably absent over the past few months or so. This past semester, along with all kinds of drama at work, and perhaps the occasional nervous breakdown, have caused me to use my precious little free time to curl up in bed, turn on hulu/netflix, and veg. I do feel bad, though, and I promise to make up for the lack of posts and other forms of online communication this summer.
In other news, I graduated! Well, walked anyway. I'm officially done with my BA July 14th, 2010, and then life can re-commence, or at least the wedding planning aspect of it. Graduation was exciting, though. One thousand times better than graduating high school, for a few reasons. One was that I'm not so much of a loner this time around, and have wonderful classmates whom I'm sure will be long-time friends, at least on Facebook. Second, I'm not in a neckbrace and braces this time. Third, I had a strong cheering section made up of my family, co-workers, and Darryl, of course. Fourth: better hair. And lastly, in high school I missed graduating with honors by about .05 grade points, and this time I made it to the gold cord status. Not that that will ever matter again in the future, but for that one night it counts for something. It's crazy that I'm actually done with this stage of my academic experience. Also odd that although Darryl and I graduated from the same school, a year apart, we didn't actually meet there. In fact, I wouldn't have even chosen Vanguard as my transfer school if it weren't for Darryl's sales pitch for them two years ago. And if it weren't for that, I'm almost positive I wouldn't be anywhere near done yet. So thank you, love, you were right. :)
So the inevitable question following graduation is, now what? What are you going to do with your bright, shiny, expensive degree? Funny you might ask. I've changed my mind over the past year more than ever before as to what career would best suit me, besides Domestic Goddess and (future) mommy. And yes, I could stay a dental assistant, but the thought of having to work overtime with my school-age patients during the same vacation months that Darryl will be off of work as a teacher kind of depresses me. Among other reasons, of course. One of them being radiation exposure. So what I've learned about myself as I have gone through my psychology program is that I love the field of psychology and learning about disorders, assessment, etc., and I still love working with kids/teenagers, but I'm not big on your typical marriage/family therapy-type counseling. I admire those who can do it, but it's just not really me. So the best combination of my strengths seems to be school psychology and teaching. The plan is: get married, get a teaching credential, (hopefully) get a teaching position, go back for a masters in educational psychology with a PPS credential, complete an internship, and then land my dream job. Then work just long enough to afford to quit and have babies, haha! Luckily, despite the school budget crisis, there are still jobs out there for school psychologists, which was surprising. So, that's the plan, we'll see how it goes. It's not written in stone by any means, but it's a direction to move in. We've had plans before which haven't worked out quite the way we expected, but the good news is that in many ways they seem to improve with time. Cheers to the end of one era, and on to the next!
