I got a Job! and other Events

I got a job!  I start work as an Environmental Scientist in about 2 weeks!  Hooray!  The job search is finally over for the time being.  In the past few weeks, I've also graduated from college and moved back home.  Graduation day was beautiful.  Just a bittersweet leaving.  At home, life has been pretty calm.  School for my sister finished last week - she finished middle school!  So she and Mom are now home during the week as well.  I also started a part-time retail job on Saturday, but that will only last a couple of weeks.  Now I just need to figure out when to get out to Philly to visit friends...

Home Stretch

I find myself in senior week, awaiting Sunday, when I will officially graduate from college.  It still doesn't really feel real. I can think about that fact that this is my last week living here with my awesome friends, but I don't think I'll actually grasp that until I'm at home.  Not that I'm not looking forward to going home, but I'm really going to miss the people here and the proximity to the great friends that I have.  These last few days of college will go by extremely fast in the larger picture, and I am going to make sure that I enjoy these moments.

Apathy?

Disclaimer: This is purely my opinion generated from my limited experience.
This post is sparked by the April Fool's Edition of The Muhlenberg Weekly.  However, this post is not a joke, I honestly am concerned about the lack of involvement that the younger class years have on campus. I've considered the subject of apathy among the younger classes before, and the more experience I have, the more convinced I become.  The classes directly younger than me are more apathetic than I have seen.  The Weekly is one example.  CASE is another.  APO even has this problem, even with the relatively large number of brothers.  There is just very few people outside of the senior class that are heavily invested in some organizations that I am more familiar with on campus.  For CASE, we have nobody, outside of the 6 house residents, who regularly comes to meetings; and 4 of the residents are graduating in May.  The future of the club is looking grim: not enough interest in a house for next year and very few attendees other than seniors at the couple events that we have had this semester.  I feel bad for the couple of people who remain interested in keeping CASE going, because this lack of interest has placed additional stress on them and makes the responsibility of it too much to handle.  We don't even have a treasurer for CASE, meaning the president has to take care of it.
Note that not everyone in the younger classes falls under the "doesn't care about anything" category.  I know many younger students who remain involve and are passionate about the organizations on campus.  As whole however, it seems like the younger students are not as involved as the classes that have recently graduated have been.
If this applied only to CASE, I would understand that it could be just an isolated lack of interest in a substance-free organization.  But the problem appears to be widespread, which leads me to think otherwise.  Which is unfortunate, because organizations like CASE, APO and The Weekly cannot operate and be successful without students who are willing to take on some responsibility.

Sick of It

So this week has been interesting, but I've officially decided that I'm tired of being a student.  After 16+ years of education, I have had enough of everything involved with classes and school.  I realize that I have a little under two months left until graduation, and I don't mean to imply that I will be entirely happy to graduate from college, but I will be more than happy to be done with classes after finals week.  After 4 years of trying to figure out exactly how much effort I should put into assignments and how I should try to overcome procrastination, I've decided that the quality of my work doesn't depend on the amount of effort I put into it.
This feeling mostly stems from a specific class that I have this semester, but in general, I think I'm more than ready to move on into the next stage of my life.  Beginning my career will be difficult, as I've found with trying to find a job for post-graduation that is both interesting and truly entry-level.  It is amazing how many job postings claim to be entry-level and then require anywhere from 1 to 6 years of experience.  For the field I want to go into, I have maximum of 3 months experience, in addition to the bachelors degree that I will get in May.  I know that there are jobs that I could do, the trick is finding the companies looking for recent graduates or other people with little to no job experience.  And I'd really love to have a job that I enjoy, but that may have to wait until the job market improves... who knows?

Wake-Up Call

I have experienced senioritis.  The general feeling of not really caring about classes, lacking motivation to do anything ahead of time.  At this time last night, I realized that my apathy came dangerously close to actually affecting my schoolwork.  With an hour before class, I realized that I had not written a (short) paper and had not revised my other essay.  Cue mini-panic attack.  Instant change in dinner plans and a crazy 40 minutes of making up something to write about and throwing it into a word document.  I got two pages, which is close to what I have gotten in normal circumstances.  A very disorganized essay though, definitely not the best, but it could've been worse.  At least I'll find out in a week or so.
Following class, I decided to actually sit down and redo syllabus week - meaning take my class syllabi and copy assignments into my agenda-book so that will not happen again.  Getting more organized  - check. Now I just have to make sure to keep up with my agenda.
On another note, I decided that giving up Facebook for Lent would be the best challenge to reasonably attempt.  Considered chocolate, but the conversation in class definitely made me want to try facebook.  And I have plenty of other internet things to keep me distracted from my work.  And I can continue my pleasure-reading.  So we'll see how that goes starting tomorrow.

4/1/12 Update: That paper was better than I expected - 88%.  And no Facebook for Lent is going well also!