Entry 5--AKA: "Paying for College and Other Forms of Heartburn."

How does anyone do it? This stress, paying for college, waiting and waiting and waiting to find out if you're going to get some free ride from some sucker who's willing to shell out some cash? Or if you're going to have to take out a loan as large as some taken out for houses? Or maybe you should consider selling some bodily organs that you don't use as often as you should? After all, don't we all have kidneys? Or maybe I can donate an eye? These days the glass ones are so well done, no one would notice, or would they?

At any rate, I find out--at least I should find out--my financial aid package on May 1. I can't believe that it's so close! I have found myself, all of a sudden, wishing that this semester would take just a few more weeks, and perhaps I shouldn't have wished it to go so fast. Panic--sheer panic--is setting in and tonight, on some sort of obsessive binge, I applied for probably a dozen scholarships through fastweb.com and scholarship.com. Once I started I just could not stop! It was this intense desire to search out money, any money, and plead my case as to why I was the one they should give it to. Think of it as some high-profile, semi-anonymous, e-begging: here, let me hold out my electronic cup, please put some of your money in it! Except in this case you can't even see the disgusted look on the people's faces as they walk by reading your cardboard sign, shriveling their nose in disapproval. You just have to sit... and wait.
Next time I go to Berkeley I'm going to take $20 in ones with me just to give to the bums--I think it will lessen this feeling of Karmic retribution.

On to better topics. That hiring committee I was on went really well. I have two offers for letters of recommendation which makes me feel pretty good since I so rarely have an opportunity to do things where I can earn letters of recommendations. I've also given some serious thought to teaching--again--but I still cannot make up my mind. Law or Education--Law or Education. I think I have strong traits that would suit well for both, and either way I think I would be "giving something back." I just keep asking myself "Jo, what do you want to wake up to in the morning, everyday for the rest of your life?" Somehow the answer always seems to be "happiness." Thanks brain, no wonder you like philosophy so much you abstract sumbitch.

There's only four weeks left in the semester and I think I have my classes picked out for the summer. PSYC 370 and Yoga. I've decided against PHIL 350--I think--I just can't bring myself to be at school for that long, I'll be exhausted. That, and I have to train some people at work in preparation for my decreased hours and wacky schedule that I anticipate having come September.

Don't tell anyone but I have been secretly dreaming of new job opportunities. I really, really want to be an IA lately, I don't know why. I just feel ready to do the job, and most of the stuff I do is already most of that job anyway, so yeah. I am no going anywhere, but I'm secretly hoping that a position will open up sometime in the next few months so I can at least interview for it. I don't want to leave RAD (which is where I work now) so I know that there's really no hope of anything opening up. But I hope, and I know that hope is never a bad thing.
After all, without hope, I would not be where I am today.

Thanks for reading.