doctor, doctor, are you the cure?

this week i have done a lot of bouncing back and forth about what i’m going to do after graduation, which i have somewhat whimsically narrowed down to:

  1. stay at IU for the phD program
  2. work at Google
  3. travel until i run out of money

i say this is a whimsical list because it does not include any fallback options, which many find foolish.
the conversation goes like this:

them: so you want a {phD, job} eh, Kynthia?
me: umm…maybe.
them: Well, you’d better apply to as many places as you can!
me: that Does seem the reasonable approach…
them: [pause]
me: cookies and cream is a really good ice cream flavor, isn’t it?

see, the answer seems to be that i Don’t want a {phD, job}. i either want to stay at IU because i have found an exciting community of people here who are pushing me to do good work and i feel like i’m finally figuring out what i need to do to get my game on, or i want to go work for google, because if i take them seriously when they say that they’re out “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”, then we have a lot in common, and if i’m trying to learn what’s really being done out there and what i can do to help, then there are probably few better ways than going to work with a bunch of really smart people who are currently in the center ring of the cultural circus that is shaping our technological reality.
or at least that’s one perspective.
the other is that i would get sucked up by california and yuppie culture and free food at work and swimming pool treadmills and all that would allow me to become so entranced by the work of helping gmail conversations become what they really are longing to be that i’d forget about what makes that whole “universally accessible and useful” business really resonate with me – the fact that there are a hella lot of people out there who are poised to be excluded from the work and play of gathering and sharing our collective human knowledge, and i want to do what i can to make sure that doesn’t happen, because i don’t believe we’ve the right to call it our “collective human knowledge” otherwise, and i don’t see why we would want to aim for anything less.

so i’m of a split opinion on the matter

this week i’ve been bouncing back and forth (is that how this post started?), and the things i tell myself at either extreme are:
phD – “you’re in a place you love, working with people you respect and you feel momentum toward defining and realizing your goals. your whole life you have been thinking that you will find answers somewhere else, sometime later, when you’re more ready, and so why the hell would you leave a place where you feel like you’re cultivating the skills you need to feel comfortable in the here and now to go work for a place that gives a lava lamp to every employee?! are you high?!”
google – “you’re at a point where you can recognize what you think you want to do, and these people might be doing it. your whole life you have been thinking that you will be more ready for things if you just wait and learn a bit more, prepare a bit more, so how can you give yourself that same speech now and think that it is anything other than the same old fears of success with trickier psychological clothing? the only way you will get sucked in and end up somewhere you don’t want to be is if you stop caring about what brought you there and stop looking yourself in the mirror. Why don’t you give yourself some credit?!”

sigh

all of this, of course, supposes that both of these options are really options, and they’re probably not. when i graduate in may, i will be just about qualified to be what google calls a usability analyst. But that’s not really my ideal job there, and it’s wicked competitive, and my speeches to myself about wanting to build skills are really rather relevant – remember that four years ago i was a political science major, and before that i was learning to make movies. i don’t regret those experiences in the slightest, but i’m in super-learning mode right now when it comes to the computers, and school seems like a reasonable place to be learning…
(but i would have to get into the phD program, too, ya know, so it’s not like anything’s a given, and since, as mark twain has told me since highschool – “i never let my schooling interfere with my education”, it’s good to remember that it’s sure as hell not like i wouldn’t learn about the computers if i friggin worked at google…)

so yeesh! nothing is resolved here!

the practical money’s on the phD, i suppose, but the moral of the story is that i’m applying for both so that all of the voices of my conscience will be satisfied

i’ll just do a bunch more bouncing in the meanwhiles, and if i call you in may asking if i can crash at your house on my way across the country or around the world because neither panned out, just don’t say i didn’t warn ya…

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