I know that no one is making me go to school.  It is something I have chosen for myself and I am proud of my accomplishments.  I was the first in my family to get an advanced degree and will be the first with a PhD and chances are good that I’ll be the only one in my family to have one–until one of my kids decides that they to want to avoid those irritating student loan people.

The problem with being a student is that I am old.  I want a career–I am done with jobs.  Because that is all I have right now–jobs.  I don’t want to teach English at the community college level for the long term.  This summer could very well be my last semester doing that.  I enjoy supervising student teachers and that certainly is closer to what I want to be doing with the rest of my life.  But I am tired of explaining to everyone that I am a student.  It wouldn’t be bad if I had a full-time job that I did and when folks asked what I did, I could tell them.  I just feel that I am at the place in my life when I should have a career.  Let me rephrase that–where I WANT a career.  I want to be working full-time somewhere.  I want to be making money and not having to work 3 jobs to make ends meet with private school tuition and debt payments.

I want to feel like a grown-up and right now I don’t.  I spend much of my time with students and young students.  I have approached my boss about turning my assistantship into a full-time position.  It is something that desperately needs a full-time person doing it, but I am ready to be working towards something.  Now this is also not my dream job, but it is an administrative position that will certainly help me later on if I ever want to work in university administration–say being a Dean of something.  It is academic enough that I will have time to research and still publish and do some of the other things that are important to me–supervising student teachers, etc.

I plan on finishing my course work in the Fall of 2010 and then it is just comps and dissertation.  I look to graduate in December 2011 or May 2010. I know that is still a long way away, but it is so close to the end that I can taste it.  I am ready to be the teacher and cease being the student.  I am ready to move on with the next phase of my life that seems to be happening even though I am still stuck in this student phase.