Thomas Wolfe Was Full of Crap

So here I am, back in Minnesota again. Just as I did when I got back from Australia and every time I came home for a break from college I already feel like my amazing summer experiences are far behind me, almost a different life. I don't like that feeling but it happens every time and it's hard to fight.

I do like being home. I love my parents and my friends and my animals (Bravo, my dog, is currently sleeping on the floor next to my bed and I'm going to see my horse tomorrow and cannot wait). I love my room, even if it is still preposterously messy and filled with Stuff I Don't Need. I love the weather. It is cool (even the highs here are about the same as the temperature we got at 3am in the desert on the coldest days) and sometimes cloudy and everything is just so green. I do love fall, even when I am not at all used to it and have to wear three layers to Fest.

I went to the Renaissance Festival yesterday. I love it, even though most of the shows are the same year after year (Zilch said he was going to do a "newer" story and then proceeded to tell one that is on the CD we bought at least 5 years ago). I saw old friends (and missed some others, sadly). It's just...nice. I went to the doctor today, the same office I've been going to my entire life. How do you even go about finding a new doctor?

Here is another difficult predicament to be in facing an entirely unknown future: Where do I want to live? I love the Midwest, I really do, but I'm sick of the winters and I need a change. Over the summer working every day in the desert was absolutely beautiful but every weekend we visited somewhere with trees (especially Sequoia) and water I just felt so much more calm and happy. I think trees are a requirement for anywhere I live. Plus my body and the desert just aren't friends. I could not keep myself hydrated. Once, after I'd been in the desert for three months, I drank 6 liters (almost 2 gallons) of water in a day (granted, a day with a lot of hiking but it wasn't that strenuous) and STILL felt headachey and sick at the end of it. I also love mountains, and the ocean. When I visited friends in San Diego I was shocked that out of the 4 people I was staying with, who had been in the city for lengths of time varying from one month to almost three years, not a single one of them had been in the ocean yet. I, on the other hand, was in the city for two days and swam on each. I got teased a lot this summer for being the first one in and the last one out almost any time there was any body of water large enough to take a dip. I may not need to live near the ocean, but I at least need a lot of good lakes.

Then there's the whole city vs. country issue. In general I consider myself more of a country type of girl, which is good if I want to continue this whole wildlife biology type of thing. But when I visited San Diego with my friends walking through Balboa Park I realized how much I love museums and theatres and arboretums and events with people...the kinds of things that are generally more plentiful and done better in big cities. However, I could never live in a big city that didn't have an easy way to escape the cityness. The only city I have ever really and truly felt 100% comfortable in, the only city where I got that "Yeah. I could live here." kind of feeling, was Sydney. I think a lot of it had to do with the amount of ocean surrounding it, the sunshine, the cleanliness, the public transport, the friendliness of the people, and especially the absolutely enormous botanical gardens. They were huge and beautiful and teeming with life. The only problem with Sydney is that it is a million billion miles away from everyone I love.

The other great thing about cities, I just have to digress for a second, is the radio. God, how I missed Minnesota Public Radio! In Barstow it wasn't that they had a lack of stations, it was just that almost every single station fit into one of three categories: Jesus, Mexican Polka, or Pop Music. Needless to say, I spent a lot of the summer listening to pop and have consequently developed the theory that as long as a pop song is catchy (which they all are) the more times you hear it the more you will begin to like it, no matter how much you hated it to begin with. By the end of the summer I would not even change the station when even the songs that had made me want to gag earlier in the summer would come on. It was a little like being brainwashed.

But really, how do you pick a place to live? Generally speaking many people pick based on where their job takes them, but it has to be some kind of consideration. Currently I am choosing based on where the greatest number of my friends are and moving to Beloit. But where to after that? Should I find another field job, any that will take me, and just go there? Should I move to Madison to further maximize my friend-surroundedness? Should I go somewhere I've never been before but have always wanted to go? Or should I follow Miles' example and travel around for a while, searching for the perfect place, and only settle down when I decide the town I've found is the one that I want to be living in? How do you know where you really want to live unless you live there?

All I know is that I think 3 months should be my limit for actually living in Beloit. I know that everyone I've talked to has told me that it won't be weird and they want me around and everything, but I'm getting nervous about it. I think it's going to be weird for me even if it isn't for other people. Maybe it won't be and I'm overthinking it, and maybe it shouldn't be, but I think it might. But then again, I think living anywhere is going to be weird for a while. Barstow certainly was, living at home for an extended period would definitely become weird, any new city would take a while to get used to even if it were filled with friends. So, I should stop worrying and enjoy my three months of Figuring Stuff Out (followed by a lifetime of Figuring Stuff Out, just hopefully with slightly more solid footing and other things to do as well).

...Now What?

This is the predominant question in my life right now, and I honestly can't foresee a time where it will not be. It's big and scary and immovable. It was a question all last year, when I was a senior, it was a question all through this internship, and now that I am leaving and going back to Beloit, it is a very very urgent question. The problem is, I don't know, and I don't know how to know.

I am very good at being a student. Just ask my grades. I am goal-oriented and I work hard and I get things done. I have always worked hard to get to the next level, and I have always known what the next level was going to be. In middle school I worked hard to get to high school, in high school I worked hard to get to college, and in college I worked hard to get to graduation. And now...what?

For a student such as myself the logical next step is grad school, and there have been many days that I think this should be the next step. I am planning on taking the GREs in a few months, and starting to look at programs in the fall, but I'm just not sure. I do want to go to grad school at some point, and it would solve my whole planning problem beautifully for a few years: first get master's, then get PhD, that will certainly take up several years in which I will have clear goals and won't have to ask "Now what?". It will also, incidentally, be a great way to hide from this economy, unless in the time it takes me to get these degrees it gets worse instead of better, in which case I assume we will all be wearing leather and fighting over gasoline, or whatever post-apocalyptic scenario you wish to employ. More than that, I enjoy being a student. I love learning. I like being around like-minded people. I like living in and around colleges/universities. It's a good option.

But somedays grad school is the farthest thing from my mind. In which case, I have a slew of conflicting aspirations that fill the void: I want to travel. I want to visit my brother and Gaea, I want to go back to Australia (this is an option for grad school, as well), I really really want to see Europe, and so on and so on.

I want to stay near people I love. This internship has been great and I really like and care about the friends I've made here but I really really missed my friends. There is a huge colony in Madison, which is near Beloit where there are even more, and this is near(ish) my parents and my friends from home and of course Alexander plays an important and confusing role in all of this. I really do enjoy meeting new people and making new friends but at the end of four months all I want to do is go back to a place where I can feel entirely at home and be welcomed into a snuggle pile. This is the option I've chosen for the next couple of months, while I try to figure this all out, and I am afraid it is going to be too comforting. I don't want to stay in the Midwest, for one, which is where most people are (although as I discovered last weekend there is a fabulous Beloiter colony in San Diego which is also quite tempting). I think it is fine and reasonable for me to seek comfort for a few months, but at some point I want to chase other ambitions then "hang out with my friends".

Then of course, there's field work and various biology things. This internship was really great, even while it was sweltering and I was miserable. I learned a lot and made good friends and gained an appreciation for the desert and got to wrangle tortoises. I also got to see a lot of the Southwest, which makes me very happy. However, I didn't get that little bell in my head and a choir of angels singing as I realized "Field work! This is what I must do!" which I was both hoping for and dreading. It would have been great for that to be it, you know? But then there's the whole wanting to be around friends all the time which is not exactly easy if what you want to do is field work. I would definitely do more of it and I want experience with other animals but it's very hard to come by, especially if you want some sort of actual wage. Then there are the other sides of biology I want to experience: environmental education, husbandry, policy, farming, etc. Maybe not things I'd want to devote my life to, but definitely things I want to try. But that is, of course, also very hard if you want any sort of money because you need experience to be hired for any of these things, so you need to get experience some other way (ie by working as slave labor).

Then there's the urge to do something completely different. As I mentioned before, I work hard. I have spent my whole life working hard. Especially in college, especially in science classes, especially the last couple of years. College was a little like running a marathon for me and now I am tired. There is a part of me that thinks it would be really nice to just have an apartment and a job and live near friends for a while. Not a fancy job, not a "going somewhere" job, just a fun job. Maggie has been making being a barista sound very fun. Or bartender. Or...I don't know, something. I would probably volunteer on the side, and it would probably in actuality drive me crazy but it has a certain appeal just at this moment in time. But with this scenario there's the whole problem of future jobs and the big gap in time where I did nothing at all productive is definitely going to be a sticking point for trying to get back into biology.

Then you add student loans to any or all of these pictures.

Seriously, how do people do this?

I know I have time and I can manage to do many if not all of these things and I don't need to do them all at once and I know that plenty of people navigate their way through this and no one really knows what they're doing they just always know a little bit more than they did last year and blah blah blah everything will be okay, but knowing and believing are two different things.

So, now what? This is sort of my question with this blog, as well. I made it to help me as I start this endless life-long process of Figuring It Out, but as of yet I haven't decided how I want to use it. I promise it won't all be long rambling posts about the future and how terrified I am, but I wanted to start out with a baseline. I've probably talked to many of you about all this already, because this has been on my mind for quite a long time and I still don't have any answers. This is the state of mind in which I am entering my voyage into "Real Life". Also, if any of you have any wisdom to share that you haven't already, that would be wonderful.

And now I must try to quiet all these things from my mind and go to sleep, because I have stayed up much too late already and tomorrow is another full day of work and then our last trip together, one of the ones I was most excited for: Yosemite.

The First of Many (Probably)

This is something I've been thinking about doing for a while, now. Actually, ever since I got back from Australia. I really loved blogging while I was in Australia; it was a great way to organize my thoughts and share my adventures and observations with friends and family at home. In the near future my adventures will probably be somewhat less exciting than those in Australia, but I need to start thinking of what comes after being in college as a grand adventure/experience instead of THE END OF THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING AS I KNOW IT. It will make things a lot better for me and those around me in the coming months/years. So as if it were any other adventure, I am starting a blog. I probably should have done this at the beginning of the summer, when I really was going off on an adventure to the middle of the Mojave desert, but oh well. I will probably make a post about that soon, to get you all up to speed.

So, there you have it. The beginning of the chronicles of the next stage of my life. Read if you wish!