Tonight I am starting my second to last class that I need for my master's degree, and I must say that I am looking forward to it. While it is going to be a rush--a three credit hour class condensed into three weeks--it is with one of my favorite professors at Akron. She is intelligent and a difficult grader; her classes are fun and the information and the ideas are relevant. The class is in Digital Humanities, which is a growing field, and I am sure the people who are studying it are just scratching the surface at the nearly endless ways that technology can shape the way we digest and communicate information.
I am hoping the class will help me in my own pursuits as I am attempting to make my own digital footprint. If not, it is certainly a topic that interests me, which will help me get through it. It was the only 600-level course offered over the summer, so if I wanted to graduate in August, I had no choice but to take it. Thankfully, if the department is only going to offer one 600-level class, it is one that will be fun and interesting.
All mixed in with my finishing up school and my publishing pursuits is my search for a job. I am honing my resume and hoping that I can get the type of job that I want--a writing/editing job in advertising, PR, or marketing--and not have to settle for whatever is available. I feel my skill set and my experience, although not exactly that, makes me a good fit for such a position--I am hoping--as long as I can find something entry level. While it sucks to have to start out at the bottom, I feel that I learn quickly and can quickly grow into a valuable employee. In my experience, while writing as a skill is teachable, it is not something that is easily taught to everyone and I have a knack for it and have always excelled at it, as my schooling will at least show.
I don't think it's too much to ask for a position in the field I have studied, even though, I know, it probably is asking too much, given the current state of the job market and politics. Maybe I am just disenfranchised, but I do know people at my education level and above who have had an extremely difficult time finding work in their fields--even though they did well in school, had good internships, and are generally smart and capable. I would like to think it is a person's intrinsic skill set and those unteachable qualities, the drive and motivation to succeed at a task, that help one get a job--unfortunately, I know better. While we are in the 21st century and things have come along way, there are still segments--small, albeit powerful segments--of society that legally discriminate against everyone else, because they can.
Maybe things aren't all that bad, I don't know. Maybe I am angry and disenfranchised from having spent my entire adult life working hard and barely getting further than where I started. Maybe it is my fault, but maybe not. While the United States doesn't technically have a caste system, it seems more like upward mobility is a pipe dream, and the only hope you have is to get swallowed up by the current and pumped out into some forgotten part of the ocean where you get eaten by some giant mutant man-eating carp.
Things are definitely different now than when my parent's generation was coming up, and many of those differences are for the better. However, there are still many that aren't. And as much education as you can get, while it might make you a well-rounded person, it won't necessarily help you be the productive member of society that you are striving to be because you can only be the type of productive member of society that somebody who doesn't even know you decides that you are going to be because you aren't in their "class" or whatever. This is different.
Maybe people, myself included, are delusional--although I have done well academically, and I have always been in the highest percentiles on writing tests--but maybe the system is set up against people to move forward, because it doesn't benefit the people who are at the top, since all they want is more money and more power for themselves, and they have made caring about the community and society as a whole into a bad thing, and people who do are made into outcasts and weirdos.
I guess I will stick with the idea that I am delusional--because, after all, if no one else buys my narrative about myself, then who I am trying to fool? Then again, if I buy it, and I have some level of credibility, isn't that the first step? Isn't that...*gasps* confidence?
I guess that's why I try to immerse myself in the delusions that make me the happiest and not worrying about everything else--even though that is impossible. Maybe it's like meditating. Just pushing all of the bullshit out that doesn't matter, and just focusing on being... Maybe I should try meditating. Maybe if I push out all my anxieties and the giant fucking disappointing material world, even for just a little while, it won't all seem so impossible, and I will be able to swim with the current, and go where life takes me, and make the best of it. Maybe that's all one can really do in life.
I don't know, but, there is one thing that I am sure of right now, that this is not where I thought this was going to go when I first started writing this post.
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