must'a been an awful storm...

I know, I know. I have been gone for so long!
Well I've been here the whole time, just focusing on other personal things than my career.

I have started working more with my interest in photography and I had a two week long trip to New Mexico. I had hoped to visit the campus during my time, but unfortunately didn't get the chance to.

I feel that things are kind of settling down, getting into a schedule, and now I can focus more on my career aspirations. I have been working on my application to apply for grad school (yay!) and I have been thinking a lot about what I would like to accomplish in the next year.

Currently with my downtime, I think I'd like to perhaps find a virtual internship? I can't seem to find much work in Waxahachie, but I'd like to find more things to work on to occupy my time. I'd also like to find an internship right now or in the spring time because I think I'd like to actually work next summer to start saving some money up.

I think that's about it for me right now :)

I hope to update at least once a week, more often if I find anything of interest.

xoxo e

Where do I begin?

I spent time today looking into schools across the nation to try to come up with some idea of where I would like to go after I get my master's degree (I know I am jumping ahead of the gun seeing as I haven't even applied, much less got accepted, to graduate school)... but I digress.

My current thoughts are that I would like to stay away from Texas and Oklahoma so that I may experience something different. I am also avoiding the general tornado alley area considering I think I've been plagued enough with them my past four years, and I'm not too keen on California because of earthquakes. Random, I know, but I don't particularly want to live in natural disaster-prone areas.

Other than that, I am not sure what I want! What should I even be looking for in a school I am considering working at? For anybody who teaches in the university atmosphere, what brought you to the school you are working at? I really love the University of Oklahoma, but I just don't know that is in the cards for me to stay put. If it is though, I'll be much obliged. Back to what I was saying, I am just not sure what to look for - at this point I don't know that I'm entirely sure even what I want to do in the realm of higher education. I really think I would enjoy anything where my job primarily involved dealing with new students because I love their enthusiasm. Even more so I love students who aren't enthusiastic because getting them to that point just feels that much better. I am heavily weighing out my GA options in hopes that they may help me discover what I love the most. I'd love to work with student life, but am also highly interested in the leadership and volunteer graduate assistantship. I also think it would be fun to work with housing again because I don't truthfully know if I can ever give up my attachment to residence life!

As far as universities go, I think I would like to work at another state university since it's what I am most used to, but am also interested in working with the Art Institutes. A lot of research needs to happen in the days to come though. I'm hoping to find universities I might like so that I can pursue an internship with them between my years of graduate school and build a rapport with them.

As for what else is to come in the year.. a JOB! I am searching for a job as we speak and have found two that I need to fill out the applications for this week and hopefully I will get one of them, or at some point soon another job. The two I am looking at are in the education field (one at the local high school and the other at the university in town).

Guess I'll go work on those applications now, but I will blog again soon :) !