It snowed today. Again. So they shut down the entire state. Again. After spending nearly the entire week locked up in my house with the kids I've about had it with the hilarity of Texas closing schools and garbage pick up and anything else they can think of for a little snow. Yes I understand there are no plows, no salt trucks and consequently there can be a very dangerous inch thick layer of ice on the roads. This then makes the already horrible at navigating in any kind of snowy condition drivers spin out of control and kill themselves and anyone else unfortunate enough to be on the road with them. But still. We were supposed to get a HUGE storm today. Snow from 7pm-7pm. Maybe even 8 inches!!!! It kind of sleeted for maybe two hours. You can still see the grass poking up from the snow. Yes it is very cold. I think the wind chill factor is like 1 right now. But I'm pretty sure I could still make it the two blocks down the road to get my daughter to school. Or even the seven miles to the gym for my much needed time away at yoga class. But no. Someone could get hurt. Better to close everything and go to school all through the summer to make up for all the snow days. Bah.
In other news I have been seriously considering going back to school. My plan being to try and take only 1-2 classes a semester starting this fall, with as many of them online as I can. My original plan was to go back and get a second bachelor's in Art History. Followed by a Master's with the possibility of a PhD in the same subject. The reason for this being that I have always wanted to work with objects in a museum. I thought an Anthropology degree was the way to go for this. Halfway through my master's I realized I was wrong. Or at least as far as an "Applied Anthropology" degree went I was wrong. Apparently I should have gone into Art History. I found several cool sounding courses at SMU (Southern Methodist University) in Dallas that sounded like just what I wanted. One even says you leave with a basic understanding of Maya hieroglyphs. Awesome. But to get into those courses you have to have at least 18 undergraduate credit hours in Art History. So I thought I'd go back for just those hours. Then I thought, hey it's going to take forever anyway with my million babies, so why not just get a second bachelor's? I'm pretty sure (though I could be wrong) that my first bachelor's would cover all of the University requirements so I would only have to take the major courses. That way I'd have a broader base to start from at the graduate level and wouldn't feel like I was missing out on stuff 'cuz I had only taken the bare minimum to get in. I figured if I planned on six babies and taking a semester off with the birth of each, taking two courses a semester I could earn my bachelor's in four years, and possibly graduate with my PhD when I was 46. 46 isn't that old. Then I could finally know a bunch of cool stuff, work at a museum or a university where people come to me to answer their vague yet interesting questions about ancient times/items/etc... You know like Nicholas Cage's mom on National Treasure 2? She was the only one (yeah right, I know) that could decipher what that cool old pre-columbian glyph meant. I always wanted to be that person. So I thought that would be cool. Isabelle would be 21 that year, James, 19, Henry 17, #4 15, #5 13, and #6 11. So they would all be either gone or in school and I would be free to get a cool job. So I sent in my fee and application to start this fall semester.
Then I had a moment of complete and utter panic when I was in a mood and decided to see if I could find a job..you know, if I needed to (I do this every now and then), to my dismay I found that I am completely unemployable. I have no skills and no real job experience. My only real job in my whole life was as a secretary (and that for only a little over a year). A secretary whose sole responsibilities were to redirect calls and deliver the mail. So I wouldn't really count that as secretarial experience. I then started frantically looking at different options available to me to get training for a "real" job. I started looking at stuff I never wanted to do but felt I needed some sort of qualification for so I could get a job. I looked at nursing programs and getting my teaching certificate, which is when I saw the Library Science program at TWU is "100% online." I could get my degree in that and not have to worry about babysitters and such for classes during the day. I could finish in three years with my two classes a semester plan and then be utterly employable. I'm sure there are way more jobs for librarians then for Art Historians. I mean really, where could I work with the art degree? A museum? Maybe, and granted there are a lot more museums in the area then in many towns so I may have a chance of that. A university or college? Sure. There are also several schools in the area that may or may not hire me. But if I were a librarian...there is a public library in nearly every town, libraries in the museums (some of them anyway) and multiple libraries within each University/college in the area. If I wanted to be an "academic librarian" (ie at a univeristy...I think) then my second masters in Anthropology would actually be a good credential for me to have. I thought. I like books, I like libraries...maybe that would be good? Upon further investigation I found the UNT also has a mostly online program that has a much better reputation...plus they already have all of my transcripts and such so I wouldn't have to pay/submit those. They have a few more requirements like proof of technical proficiency on a computer and 6 months or 120 hours of fieldwork, which kind of suck, but it could be good right? I like looking up stuff when I'm curious...they called some free lance librarians "information brokers" which sounded kind of cool or the stewards of information or something like that. What I don't like is all of the computer crap. I have to learn about search engines and some programing type sounding stuff and cataloguing stuff which all sounds really boring, but some of the classes sounded interesting. Like Youth Literature or The Art of Storytelling and stuff like that. Plus I'd be done in three years instead of 16...so I'd still be young enough to be a "sexy librarian."
Bah. I don't know. I think it might be cool...I took a Preservation class from the library people at UNT while working on my Anth degree and found that I had way more in common with all of them then I did with my anthropology cohort. We were almost all married (I think one other older anth guy was), many with kids, we all watched the same shows, read the same books, got the same jokes...I felt like; "hey! These are my people!" I looked into the Library Science program at that time but again all of the classes sounded boring and technical. I don't know that I really care about microfiche or the dewey decibal system....but these people I had so much in common with did so maybe there was something I was missing? I think it would be fun to work with special collections maybe or in the adult fiction section (though I get the impression you kind of have to do everything, even if you do specialize). Plus it would be a real job...if something were to happen to Patrick and I suddenly had to support everyone I could probably find something. With a masters in Anthropology and/or Art History I'm not so sure. If I want to do this I need to write a letter of intent and get three letters of recommendation and send in my app. It didn't sound like they have a close deadline unless you're applying for the PhD program, which I wouldn't be. I don't know. What do you think? I kind of wish I could do both but I'm not free 24 hours a day and we're not independently wealthy so I don't see that happening. But if you had to choose one or the other; starting all over again for a BA at 30 with four kids and probably not finishing for 15 years (think of the school loans on that) only to find yourself old, overeducated and still not very employable...or...starting at the graduate level again, taking maybe only three years (so I'm not too old) and being able to find a job that is still respectable with the possibility of all but matching Patrick's salary (should I choose to get a full time job, which I doubt I would while there were still kids at home). Which would you choose?
Of course the kids at home thing brings up another problem. One of the reasons I was okay with the art degree taking so long was because I wouldn't be expected to go pursue anything in the field until I was finished which would definitely be after we were done having kids and they were all in school full time. That way even though I was technically home with the kids I could still feel like I was doing something with my life. Maybe this is my "oh crap I'm turning 30 next month" crisis. You're supposed to be a grown up at 30 right? Whatever your doing with your life then, that is your life, that is what you do. This is not what I want my life to be. I don't want to look back and regret not trying for the degree/job/experiences I wanted. Not that there is anything wrong with being a stay at home mom, but that was not all I wanted to do. Of course, my gym teachers think I should go get certified to teach TurboKick and then I would be totally employable as well. The manager of the gym even asked if I would like to teach some classes. That was flattering, but I don't think teaching kick boxing while pregnant would work out very well so I said something vague about maybe after the baby. Bah.
