Limbo, Fear, and Moving on.

I'm graduating college in a week. I'm married and my wife's more than half-way through pregnancy with our first child (a boy). I'm feeling more and more like an adult lately, which I guess shouldn't surprise me. I was once referred to as the twelve-year-old who acts like he's forty-two. Despite this and my "distinguished" look, I've always felt like I was five watching how the big kids did life. Speaking of life, I recently played the iconic game and managed to use all the promissory notes and a few fire insurances.

I can't help but think that the game reflects many of the financial hardships that this slump, recession, or whatever has caused. This is the economic whirlpool that graduation is dumping me into. Officially I can't work at Independent Study past the 28th. I think I've mentioned that before. What's different today is that I won't be working at Independent Study by sometime this Monday. It may not seem like a big deal, but it is for me. There's nothing left for me there. I've been itching to leave for some months, but I didn't know until today that I should. I've felt like I was stuck in limbo knowing that no matter what I did I was going to be let go, and I was just stuck to wait for the inevitable. But I'm done. I don't know how often I've kept reading a book or watching a movie thinking that it would get better when it didn't The Curious Case of Benjamin Button comes to mind. Well I'm cutting this short and moving on.

I'm Striving for Adequacy; Forget Excellence

Spring term is two weeks from over in Happy Valley and I'm ready to be done. I was about to explain the details of how and why I'm behind but let's leave it at unrealistic expectations, sickness, and malaise. All I have left after these classes is a tennis class that I'm taking from Independent Study; I don't get a discount. I trained the design assistant that rewrote large portions of the course and I don't get a discount.

This brings up BYU Independent Study, the company that will not be hiring me on full time. I understand this is because of a company-wide hiring freeze, but it still sucks.(begin rant) I've worked there longer than sixty percent of the full time employees. I helped create a new process for more rapidly and effectively updating old courses. I trained some fifteen new students and two new designers in the process and wrote ninety percent of a thirty page manual on that process. I revised and created hundreds of questions for a myriad of courses. I also worked on loads of problem projects (end rant).

I'm a little bitter that I don't have a job when I graduate. My supervisor told me a year ago that I'd have a job there for sure. I counted on that and hadn't even thought about it until a few months ago. I was told that it was unclear if I'd have a job. A few weeks ago, they nailed the lid on the coffin of my hopes and dreams.

I enjoy my work. I want work and get paid for it. This whole being out of a job thing interferes with my plan. I also have no idea what I'll be expected to do at a new job. Will I be able to ignore misplaced commas and unnecessary colons or will I have to hunt them down? I'm bored even talking about copy editing.

I'm in my publishing class and I'm horrified. The teacher is droning on about the history of printing and all the steps between cave paintings and Adobe InDesign. We're not even going to be tested on anything. I don't know why he thinks this is applicable.

Graduating and how I'd like to do that soon

I'm about to go into my first class of spring semester. It's a two hour long copy editing class so I can't say I'm terribly excited about it. Copy editing is not at all my favorite. I'm far more interested in substantive editing.

I just got into my class and their are two middle age women in my class. It's weird, mostly because my mom just graduated so it's a little like taking classes with my mom. Although I'm saying this before the class even starts so maybe it won't be like that at all.

Gah, it's starting.