Daily Archives: 2/28/2005

I was thinking this morning: there’s something so funny about being in graduate school. Everyone assumes you are driven and have a goal and know exactly what you want to study, but depending on what school you attend and who your advisor is your project may be in or out of your control, maybe what you want to study, or may be something that you’re funded for and that you’ll work on anyway. It’s a wild system, really.

that said, there’s been a job offer to me that requires a move to northern new jersey. I am going to take it despite the move from my newly beloved Pittsburgh. The job is primarily environmental engineering and hazardous waste cleanup, like designing site cleanup stuff. Which is something I’ve never done before and which I would be interested to learn. But most attractive is the potential to possibly work on sustainability. I’ve done a pretty exhaustive survey of people with an understanding of what I want to do and of the engineering market, and it seems that there probably isn’t the kind of potential of possible work here. So I’ll do the truly bizarre and put my career first and move away from here, even though I’m not necessarily interested in leaving 1. Michelle and 2. Pittsburgh. Le sigh. being a grownup is truly hard, and it’s no fun to make a decision and to feel crappy about it. Especially when I know if I had this job offered to me and it didn’t require relocation I would totally jump at it, and be so happy and excited I had the opportunity.

(I know everything will work out smashingly. It’s just there’s a big bump called “moving” in the road that I have to get over first!)