My Higher Education, part 3 (final)

            This is continued from part 2 which was yesterday, and that was a continuation of part1 from Friday.

Internship

            At this point I was half way thru year 6 of my degree program.  Fail to finish an internship for the Planning degree or one level three foreign language for the International Affairs degree and it would all be for nothing.  Since I had no more courses to do otherwise I could no longer justify staying in Tallahassee to finish that foreign language class while looking for an internship.  I headed home.

            Again, I must point out that my parents had been lending me a lot of support thru this.  I was twisting in the wind too often and now I was heading home with 27/10ths of a degree, but only one of them actually being whole.

            For 6 months, I was throwing out applications to every planning and “this could pass for planning, I guess” position I could find in the state.  I ended up with 3 interviews for 50 applications and no takers.  I know that my professor advisor was furrowing her brow at all this because I was a nervous wreck, ticking clocks are not fun to listen to when they are in your own head.

            I ultimately only got noticed because my father works for the government of my hometown, and he told me who’s trees to shake to get me noticed.  I got an unpaid (and previously nonexistent) position with the city’s neighborhood development department.

            I think they made out alright in the exchange.  While I did not have the practical knowledge of someone with years’ experience, they were really in need of staff (they continue to be 1-3 people short of the sort of staffing they would prefer).  I was a graduate level writer and researcher and was able to tear thru several things while over there that otherwise might have been pushed off to another year or just dropped as being beyond what they could furnish.

            My biggest accomplishment was helping to compile and write an Economic Development chapter to the city’s comprehensive plan.  It was apparently so well written that it was dubbed a “shadow government” by the building/planning council.  Being a literal expert in politics and planning, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can say conclusively they did not know what that term means.

Last Class

            Internship completed, I now only needed one class.  ONE CLASS.  An Undergraduate class at that.  But I wasn’t moving back to FSU to take that.  I could not possibly justify the expense of living in Tallahassee for one class and even if I could justify that I wouldn’t be able to afford it, as taking only one class did not qualify as a full-time student and thus no loans.

            I decided I would take the classes as a transfer student at the relatively nearby Florida Gulf Coast University, my undergraduate alma mater.  An hour long ride out to school and an hour back twice a week to take a foreign language course.  I hammered away at Duolingo and Rosetta Stone software to prep myself, not the most formal of educations but I think it did a lot to gear me back up.

            TWIST, turns out spending a year looking for and then doing an internship does not count as being in class so I had to reapply to my programs at Florida State.  I then had to get approval from my department to take the class as a transient student, I then had to get approval from FGCU to take the class, and I needed the professor to approve of such a thing.

            Ultimately, I did manage to jump all those hoops in time to make the class (though they did charge me a penalty for being a late register).  What is funny is one of those steps involved a placement exam.  Even though I had been taking enough French in school to qualify for the class.

            I had at this point taken French 1 twice (once having failed to pass), then taking and passing French 2, and was trying to get into French 3 after having already failed to pass it.  All of that and I had been studying my old notes, and my old text book, and Duo Lingo, and Rosetta Stone.  I suck at foreign languages if you haven’t guessed.  I wish I had more affinity for mathematics which apparently, that is all I have a true knack for.

            At that time, I could read a newspaper article in French, I know I could because I did in order to study.  I took a placement exam and performed SO POORLY that I would have done better marking all answers “C”.  I did so bad that it said I was unqualified to be in French 1.  Luckily, the Professor understood this was my only class and knew that I was on the hook for a Master’s program and would be working hard on it.  She let me file, kind of out of pity.

            This is also where I started entering a “Twilight Zone” of sorts.  Going back to classes with people who were more than 10 years younger than me was surreal.  Even though I look younger than I am (so long as I shave), I don’t sound like a 20-year-old.  And while I got along with everyone in the class, I did not connect.  I was distant the whole time in spite of my efforts to talk to people about FSU and grad school should they consider it in the future.

            Ultimately, I passed the class.  Though I was so stressed by the end that the Professor was legit concerned and assuring me that I was doing fine.

Getting back in Shape

            I had during this time been slowly getting back down to the weight I wanted.  After ballooning up to 270 at the height of being a stressed out blob I had started walking more, and hitting the gym, but could make any real progress, getting down to 260 but staying there for 6 months.  The autumn before I went back to French I recommitted to change that.

            I bought a Fitbit that was on sale for Black Friday (or Black Thanksgiving Evening now as people could not wait for that sweet rush of buying things to fill the hole in them caused by the hollow core that is Neo-Liberal-Capitalism) and began walking daily thousands of steps and tracking my diet in order to lose weight.

            I lost 10 pounds in 50 days and another 10 pounds in the 2 months following that.  Since then I have only lost another 2-5, but I am back in the 235-240 area and have been going to the gym in addition to walking.

            I know this is not all that much to do with school and all but it is a big shift.  Learning to get in shape and stay in shape is something I never really mastered.  I worked in bursts my whole life, spurred on by random instances.  This last 10 months of maintaining so much regular activity is a major change to who I was.

Looking for Work

            During French and after I continued to look for work.  This time looking for permanent positions rather than having to advertise my need to finish out degrees.  I applied to 40 or so, and got 3 interviews.  Though much stronger interviews than in the past.  Needless to say, my perspective had changed, I was losing weight instead of gaining, I had my degrees instead of getting them, and I didn’t have to limit myself to certain types of work, I could apply to any government position that fit my skill sets and pivot from those positions as my needs and skills developed.  My ability to sell my skills had been augmented by having documented skills to sell.

            It should serve as a semi-poetic chapter to this blog that last Friday, the day that was 10 years after taking the GRE, I got my first job since finishing Graduate school.  There is of course the background check (makes sense) and the physical (something I find perplexing for an employer to ask for) and then I will slide in.  Finally having a wall to hang my freshly framed degrees on.

            My city is about to start its largest transformation ever, more development is expected in the next two years than during any period than the housing bubble which led to the great recession (this time it will be sustainable development and not a catastrophe the world over… Fingers crossed).  I will get to do what I was training for in some of the most intense conditions available for it.

            Good thing too.  I have a lot of student debt to pay off.  Just like everyone else my age.

Epilogue

            This should go without saying but this little outline of my last decade is shallow.  4,000 words does not include all the details, good and bad of my life over the last 10 years and there are some sections in these blogs that could be books unto themselves (the Police section and my Political Internship for my first Masters spring to mind immediately).

            Maybe one of these days I will write it all out for a book no one will buy called something like, “A Millennial’s Perspective”.  I will have to do it about 10 years after my generation becomes the one in charge, all of us wondering why all the younger generations keep killing off arcane social conventions and businesses.

            We’ll have lost touch with the protracted war that caused so many of our classmates to come back drained, the natural disasters that kept sinking cities, or the economic implosion that nobody got in trouble for and no one learned anything from.

            Maybe the next ten years will be better.

            Maybe I’ll be better.

My Higher Education, part 2

Continued from Yesterday.

No Longer a Cop

            After law enforcement, I went back to working at the bookstore part time while studying for the LSAT.  All that time hoping that my experience as a cop would translate well to law school (it didn’t) and ultimately, I did take the test.

            I say this with no hyperbole, the hardest part of the LSAT test was writing the honor code out by hand in cursive, which is required.  I had not written anything in cursive in my adult life.  In fact, my hand writing is all capital letters in block type so that it can be read with ease by anyone.  Cursive is one of my personal bugbears and I see it as a blight on education, a tremendous waste of time that has zero value.  My hand cramped, I couldn’t actually finish writing the damn thing with any legibility, and I was the last person to finish the task, holding up the room.

            I took the LSAT, and did fine, well enough to later be accepted to Law School.  This is a fun little turn of fate because it is another test I barely studied for.  I bought a test booklet with 400 questions, I did 40 in total, spending about 3 hours overall pondering the questions and looking over the answers.  The rest of the time I played Sudoku and read science fiction novels.

            I later dropped out of Law School after spending a year there.  It was an expensive way to figure out that I was not destined to spend my life filling out paperwork with really tight and precise use of commas and quoting other people’s arguments.  I am getting ahead of myself.

Grad School

            Rather than apply to Law School first I wanted to pursue a regular Master’s degree.  Ultimately, my goal was to go abroad with some kind of charity or NGO.  I looked into the International Affairs programs around the state, first at Florida International and then at Florida State.  What was the tipping point for the one I focused on and eventually attended?  The application process for FSU was easier.

            When I entered the program, I did a poor job of managing my time, I was still working part time at a bookstore, a decision I look back on as a waste of time, and I did not prioritize getting the most difficult aspect of the degree done (for me that is the foreign language portion, that might not be an issue for you, but it is for me).

            I got the opportunity to study abroad in Turkey (which used up all of my savings from being a cop), and was sold on doing Urban and Regional Planning as a joint program.  The Planning tie-in provided what I was really looking for with International Affairs via a Peace Corp program which would have taken me abroad to work on development projects.  Again, I did not manage my time and priorities well as I did not commit to the idea completely and just dipped my toe in.

            My second year of Graduate school, after returning from studying in Turkey I was miserable.  I felt like I was going in a dozen directions, I was anxious, and I was obnoxious.  I almost immediately wanted to bail out on Planning and again tried to go on a new more focused direction, I applied to Law School and jumped in.

Law School

            Law School was paradoxically one of the more rewarding parts of my life in that I met a lot of good friends, so much so that I feel their association with me elevates my reputation while they are taking a bit of a ding to theirs.  But, aside from those friends I was awful at Law School.  This might be my own personal philosophy getting in the way but I often disagreed with the logical founding of many Supreme Court cases, and I often became rankled by the focus on cases rather than focusing on the laws themselves.

            To me, logic is an absolute, case law seems to take to its core that you have to back up your own logic with the opinions of other more important and credible people otherwise your logical founding is not right.  I see this as a logical fallacy called, “argument from authority”.  This is more than likely a distortion of what Case Law is.  Obviously, I did not grasp the concept.  I left Law School after year one, once more taking on an entirely new direction.

MAAPP

            I entered the Political Science Department. Couple floors up from Planning, couple more from International Affairs and entered into the first program that I could get my head around completely and managed to commit to.  Master’s in Applied American Politics and Policy.  Research political opponents, research how to message to constituents, research people you want to ask for money, and then build a message.

            It is a cynical, practical, and functional use of political science.  It is one that I managed to get a hold one.  It is the first Master’s Degree I completed and I was done after 15 months of taking every class I could fit and going to an internship which showed me several levels of field work in a campaign.  The internship by itself could fill several blogs with interesting material and I would go so far as to say it would make an interesting TV show.

            Completing this degree was my first real accomplishment as an adult.  An adulthood that was previously rudderless and full of fail.  This kind of turned things.

Returning to Planning and International Affairs

            I was able to go back to Planning and International Affairs.  I did so initially to pad my schedule while finishing my MAAPP degree but then came to realize how little course work I needed to do to actually complete the degrees.  Fun fact, you have seven years to finish a program, at this point I was half way thru year 5 and was 90% done with one degree and 80% done with the other.

            I took aim at the Peace Corp program again but as luck would have it ISIS was in full swing and many programs in Morocco and the Philippines and anywhere that had a Muslim population became dicey.  I was aiming for Albania, but with the number of positions shrinking, there were more qualified applicants than there were open positions and I was not chosen.  I do see this as a missed opportunity in my life, I know that having multiple years of practical experience tied into my graduation would have been immensely useful, but things happen.

            I decided to keep hammering here at home.  I committed to foreign language courses; took the lab/studio/final project that would have been replaced by the Peace Corp but now was back on the table; took all the required classes that would have been replaced by the Peace Corp; and gained 40 pounds in 5 months, turning into a slug of a human being from stress.

            I actually did not pass a foreign language class and had that hanging over my head for too long as it became the LAST CLASS needed for me to get all my degrees.  But before that I needed an internship (another thing that would have been replaced by the Peace Corp) so I started to apply.

Continued again in a third part tomorrow.

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My Higher Education, part 1

Pursuing Higher Education

Today is a sort of personal holiday for me.  This is the 10-year anniversary of my taking the GRE in hopes of one day going to graduate school.

I graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University in Spring of 2007 with a degree in Political Science, having been inspired to go into politics as a profession by the TV show “The West Wing”.  In hindsight, I should have gone into writing and television production, as it turns out what I really enjoy is well made TV shows.

Regardless of such personal insight having been gained I did not know what I wanted to do with my life.  I had a general plan of course, work as a social studies teacher while pursuing a Master’s degree from the University of South Florida, look for a job as a paper pusher in the state or county government and get a well-rounded work experience before trying to run for office myself somewhere down the line.  But there was of course a hiccup with all of that.

2007 was already starting to feel the rumblings of what would become the Great Recession.  I lived in Florida where the popping Housing Bubble and drop in tourism dollars was going to be felt more deeply still.  I had planned to get a starting position teaching or working in a government office, while at that same moment the state was working to cut positions and I was now competing with people who had been laid off with 10+ years of experience.

As is fitting for the quintessential millennial, I ended up living with my parents and working at a bookstore/coffee shop.

Pursuit of Education

The GRE was my way of continuing to move forward, my father has been and is big on education.  He succeeded at drilling an affection for the concept into me while I was growing up.  I signed up to take GRE without really knowing what it was.

I thought the test was more of a Myers-Briggs type personality test combined with general understanding of topics, I did not know it was essentially “SAT: Part 2”.  I had signed up to take it the Saturday of the same week and didn’t even know I could study for it.  The night before I got into an argument with my parents about how flippant I was being because I wanted to drive down to my undergrad school and play video games with friends who were still on campus.  I stayed home and was up late angrily playing video games by myself.

That morning I was up and off with far too little sleep and got to a testing center a 40-minute drive from my home and settled down to answer questions I had not prepared for.  Honestly, if anything can be said to be a “skill” for me, it must be standardized tests.  I banged out all the multiple choice question, and for the essay I wrote a fluffy couple of paragraphs on the value of public art with jokes and uncited references so topical I am sure whoever graded it had no idea what I was on about.

The single oddest thing was when it came to the end and asked me if I wanted to see the results, they give you a back out option.  They let you give in to your insecurities if you want.  I have no idea if they offer a refund if you decide not to look but it did cause me to pause.  I heard in my head my parents talking about how I wasn’t taking it seriously.  I worried that I had rushed to get this done and in so doing I was going to have bombed something I could have prepared for.  I worried that I will have shut the door of graduate school before ever really getting it open.

Then I woke up and realized it had been piss easy and hit “Show Scores”.

I had gotten a 1320 total score (same as my SAT’s), 730 Math and 590 Reading (This one is strange because I had not taken a Math class in 3+ years at this point and my math performance here was up from my 690 on the SAT and my reading was down).  Want to know how unprepared I was for the test?  I didn’t know that was a good score until later when I talked to my parents about it.

You might think that I would be right in my way to grad school that same year, but there was an issue with that.  The lesser issue was a lack of life experience, but the real barrier to my progress was money.

Work First

            My parents are lovely people with wanting to help support me in my educational endeavors but they did not want me to get caught up in student loan debt the way so many people do and as such supported the idea of getting and keeping a job for a time to help pay for all of this.  I decided to be a cop.

            I was miserable as a cop.  I did not enjoy the academy, I did not enjoy the job hunt, I did not enjoy the sleep deprived misery march that was my short career.  I understand that it is a difficult profession but it seems like the things I had the most trouble with (the sleep schedule and learning the radio) are perhaps not the things that should have broken me.

            It also did not help that the job market was still crowded and competitive on a level that made it clear to me (and everyone who was looking for work) that there was no slack time, adjustment period, or gentle slope on the learning curve.  My inability to adjust snowballed on me quickly and they had enough of an applicant pool that they could cut me loose.

            Ironically, these days there is such a demand for officers in Florida if I were trying to be a cop I probably wouldn’t get fired unless I did something deliberately criminal.  But, also ironic, if I had stayed on and still were a police officer these days, with years of experience under my belt, I probably would have jumped ship to seek higher education and a different job with the economic upturn as many officers have done.

            Being a cop was difficult.  Is difficult for all of those people who do it.  It is a draining, boring, dangerous, stressful job and I have a lot of respect for those who can do it.  I never want to be a police officer again, patrol was miserable.

Continued in Tomorrow's entry.

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