The Pre-Crunch

It's slowly dawning on me. I'm going to return to university in a few years. I feel a little panicked inside.  There are math classes I have to take when I get there but before that I have to prepare for those math courses. I have to refresh my math knowledge which has been idle since I graduated in mid-2000. I retained only a little. The classes I may take include statistics, pre-calculus, calculus and maybe physics. (I did not take any of those courses as a student). The prerequisite to statistics is intermediate algebra (a class I did take before). That is the class I need to refresh myself on. I registered as a student at the local community college and of course, because of budget cuts in California, there are less courses on offer and all those courses are now filled. I need to take the class in a physical space but that is no longer an option. Now I'm researching online courses. Also contemplating textbooks. Should I buy one from the school? Should I borrow an older version from the library? Of course, if I do this I will need to get super motivated to stick to the work. Even when I was in college, my mind would wander as I studied.

I don't know when I will go back for sure but my intention is by at least the 2014-15 academic year. Still more research left to do.

It's Been Awhile

Yet it's only been two weeks since my last post. Feels like a month. What have I been up to? Um...I've been active on other social media platforms. I have put Facebook aside for the most part. Strangely, I don't feel the need to check it throughout the day. I thought I would feel dependent on it. I go on maybe twice a week. I sign in, look around, maybe post something, and then sign off. Done for the day. It feels awesome to be free of Facebook.

I have a twitter account which I started to use for professional development purposes. I've only made a few posts since this was decided. Still not finished on my cover letter yet. Then I did an angel card reading last night (I've mentioned before on the blog, I read tarot/angel cards). One of the cards said "Now is the time to gather information, study, meditate, talk to experts in the field... Not a time to plant seeds for the future."  This card came up before not long ago. I have not done much research since that reading. Now though I need to continue with the research. Although I don't know when I will be going back to university, I haven't narrowed down my list of schools for the bachelors program to the top 3 yet. I also haven't done research on cost of living and bureaucratic formalities for living in the UK where I will be studying for both the bachelors and masters program. And possibly a certificate program in International Development. Yup, the other stuff that I have planned for social media will have to wait.

In the meantime, I have decided to volunteer with another nonprofit for a few weeks. I'm just doing this until my background check clears with the government agency that I'm going to volunteer with. Not sure how long I'm going to be there but at least it will keep me busy and I'll learn something new.

Friends + Facebook + The Future

I'm currently putting together a cover letter for an awesome internship in the field that I want to get into. Right now, it is day 4 (or more) of me trying to finish it. It takes more thinking when you are not currently a student and your previous work experience is unrelated. Though you have more freedom in the content and structure, that freedom also makes things a little bit more difficult.

When it comes to the future and what you want your life to be like, Facebook is an excellent tool. Of course, having friends who are doing well in their careers is a great motivator. Seeing what some of my friends are doing makes me want to already have my cover letter done. I, too, want to get going on my career. This internship will be the first step.

Random bits.

A few years ago I was reading Real Simple magazine. It's a home-related magazine about organizing and cleaning. Sometimes more. They always have cool tips in there. One that I remember was to freeze extra spaghetti sauce in ice cube trays so that you can keep it for longer. I thought that was one of the best ideas I've ever heard of. Today I made a soup using coconut milk. I haven't been cooking much and there's not a lot of recipes I know that use coconut milk. I know it will go bad after awhile if I just refrigerate it so I decided to put that idea to use. For space-saving purposes I then transferred them to a plastic container.

In the past couple of months, I have been going through some life changes. I'm still in transition from one phase to the next. As a result, it has also effected this blog. Which direction is this to go? Should I continue blogging? It's all questions I'm asking myself.