Well, so much for getting better about blogging! Here it is, August, and I haven't posted anything since April. So much has changed since then, so here's the low down:
I graduated with my Master's in May. We had all 3 sets of parents in town, so juggling was the order of the week! It was a lot of fun, and I'm definitely glad to be done with homework, but I do miss the camaraderie of my classes.
In June, I started a job in Engineering at USC. I'm working in a small department that has minors and "specializations" (like minors, but smaller). I'm the only advisor, and I'm also responsible for marketing our classes and minors to students. So far, it's okay, but I'm not loving it the way that I thought I would. The people in the office are nice, but whoever was there before me didn't do a great job thinking things through, so there are a lot of half finished things, or things that I never would have started, that I'm now responsible for.
Also in June, we went to our first two weddings of the summer. One was up in Oregon, and the other was here in LA. Both turned out very well, and it was nice to get a chance to relax at a wedding, instead of having to think about planning mine!
July was pretty calm, which was nice. I was able to start getting caught up at work, and with friends, which was great. Not much else happened.
August has been getting progressively busier at work. Classes start in less than two weeks, and I'm just not sure how I'll get everything done before then! I'm supposed to be creating fliers to distribute for our classes, but I really don't have any experience making them, so I'm nervous about that. I'm also nervous about making sure that we get enough students in our classes. The way USC is set up, each department has to earn their own way through tuition. Engineering doesn't really have a hard time with that, so money is usually pretty easy to find, but I'm still nervous that our enrollment numbers won't go up, and it'll all be my fault. I know this is silly, because I didn't really have any control over these numbers (students had registered for most of their classes before I started working), but I really want to do well at my job, and I know this is one of the ways that success is judged.
While I'm very glad that I was able to get a job at USC, and get one so soon after graduation, I do wish that the job was more suited to my ideals than it currently is. I really want to be able to focus on students, and making their time at USC fantastic, and I don't currently feel like that's something I'll be doing in my job. I'll still be interacting with students, of course, but because I'm advising for a minor program, I won't see them every semester, and won't really be able to help them as much as a major program advisor would. For some reason this year, though, there weren't a lot of advising jobs that opened at USC, so I guess I should count myself lucky that I got one of the few that did. I haven't talked to anyone in the department about it, but I don't really see myself staying in this job for more than a year. Sure, the money is great, but I'm just not as happy as I thought I would be. I'm still keeping an eye on the jobs website, and if anything amazing comes up, I'll go for it, but I'm hoping that nothing will come up until April-June of next year.
I'm also wondering if I want to try out a position at USC Admissions. I got a call from them the day I accepted my current position, and since admissions is something that I've been interested in since my first assistantship, I really wish that I'd been able to consider the job. Either way, I figure that I can use this year to really make connections with other people, and start to make a name for myself at USC. I've already joined the advising council, and I'm planning on seeing if there are other committees that need members, so I can get out there and get involved.
As you'll probably notice from the timestamp....I'm up a little early (!), which is mostly because I woke up at some point, and couldn't get back to sleep with all the stuff racing around in my head. I'm hoping that writing some of it down will make things better, but we'll see.
I'm getting that heavy eyed feeling, so I'm off to see if I can get back asleep...here's hoping!
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