Grad School = Big Pain in the Ass

i already hate grad school, and i haven't even started classes.

as stated before, i have no head for financial figuring-out, using fax machines, scheduling through various departments, calling different agencies and waiting for 3 to 5 business days for answers to simple questions, etc. etc. - all important aspects of the applying-to-graduate-school process. it should come to no surprise, therefore, that i've been having one hell of a time with the whole ordeal. this is absolute hell, folks. and is turning out to be even more of a pain in the ass than the peace corps application i had to undergo. not very much fun.

as it stands - and again, this is from what kris and i can gather (she's been doing her best to help me out with this, as i'm clinically retarded with this crap) - it looks like all i have to do in order to obtain my professional certification (the five-year renewable teaching certificate that allows me to keep my job) is complete my second year of teaching and take the graduate courses outlined in my masters program. that's it. i was convinced that i'd have to take a crap-load of undergraduate courses, thereby stalling my graduate classes and blowing handfuls of loot just in order to keep my job. that would've sucked big time.

then again, when you owe over $26,000 in student loans, what's another $20,000? i've already come to the realization that these loans are never going away, that i'll have to pass them on through subsequent generations as family heirlooms. i'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren will appreciate this.

...though by that time i'm sure we'll all be ruled by space gorillas and robots, so it won't really matter. (see picture)

fortunately, that's not the case. i get to start right away with the mega-hard classes... which i'm not looking forward to in the slightest. like i said before, folks - i hated college (classes). i'm not good at studying, i'm easily-distracted, i can't stay on top of due dates, and i'm arguably the world's worst procrastinator. so, more or less, i'm screwed with this whole grad school nonsense.

so why am i putting myself through this gauntlet of hell? because the houghs are on a timetable, that's why. when kris and i moved down here to florida in january of '07, we expected to live in florida for four to five years - long enough to obtain teaching jobs, finish grad school, and find work elsewhere. i think i've spelled this out before. ideally, i'd like to find a teaching job in illinois or indiana - somewhere in the midwest, close to michigan (there's practically a zero percent chance i'm going to find any work in michigan any time soon). it'd be nice to be able to make the drive from our place to home in less than 10 - 12 hours. now it takes about 22... and that was driving straight through, without a kid. that drive would be absolutely hell now.

sure, you can fly. but around the holidays, you get screwed with ticket costs and all those crap-fees. $700 - $900 to fly home for christmas for four or five days? not worth it, as far as we're concerned.

and so, with grad school out of the way - hopefully by the fall of 2010 - i'll be in prime positioning to start scouting out job prospects in the great white north.

...at least that's the plan so far.

- brian

The Week in Review: Fevers and a Shuttle Launch

if its one thing i'm sure all of us can appreciate, its a three-day work week.

that's what i had this week. three days of teenagers and textbooks, two days of pajamas and DVDs. tuesday, as we all know, was veteran's day; and yours truly, being the humble public servant that he is, obviously got the day off of work. cowabunga. i ran a few errands with the kid, got some stuff done around the house - the usual boring stuff boring adults like me do on their days off. this particular day off, however, soon spoiled when the cannonball - who had received a DTAP vaccination the previous friday - began showing a temperature. and sure enough, at 2:30am wednesday morning, she woke up with a 102 - 103 degree fever.

kris had to stay home with her all day on wednesday, and alayna seemed to be doing better there for awhile, but then, sure enough, late wednesday night her temperature spiked again. and so, once again, yours truly got to take yet another day off of work. what i should point out here is that, as a teacher, i'm given ten paid-days off a year - after that, i can still take days off, but i'm no longer paid for them.

as of right now, i've officially taken off six of those days. and its only november.

how awesome is that?

anyway, we finally decided on friday that the kid was well enough to hang out at daycare. we both went to work, the kid went to daycare, and all normalcy resumed in realm of the houghs. i should add, by the way, that its pretty cool paying a full week of daycare when your kid only shows up for a one Goddamn day. i think that's just swell. i really do.

in closing, dear readers, kris and i finally got to see a shuttle launch. finally. being in central florida, with cape canaveral and NASA's shuttle launch facility only a quick drive away, its possible to see shuttle launch's relatively up close and personal. now, we've been down here in florida for nigh on two years, and we've never seen one in person. not once. and its not as if there haven't been shuttle launches to be had, either - they practically have them every few months. instead, rather, we just consistently forget about them, and miss out on them every single time. but last night, at 7:55pm, the shuttle endeavor blasted off from florida and into space with its very important cargo (the toilet they were carrying to install in the international space station).

...and we got to watch it from our veranda. which was cool.

happy pre-holidays,

- brian