Plans

[annwfyn]

It's another illicit LJ entry. Shoulder is feeling a lot better today, so I'm taking a risk and brain dumping.

I've been pondering plans this morning. Mostly what I want, where I go next. I'm finishing off my thesis next term, after getting an extension. Theoretically it isn't due in until March, but I think I'd like to get it as polished and close to complete as possible by Christmas.

I've also got a job offer from Person 2 Person - the company that pierot works for. Well, when I say 'job offer', I mean Ian (jez's area manager) saying 'christ, we're short staffed. Sally, did you say you were looking for a job? You know the drill here, don't you?', followed up with a text message to jez saying 'could you find out when your better half could start?' The main appeal of Person 2 Person is that I can potentially work as little as 3 days per week, which gives me a bit of flexibility, and I can get week days off in exchange for working Saturdays. All of the above make a lot of sense while I'm still a part time student. It means if I need to be in a meeting with my supervisor, I can. It means if I need to spend a day in the library, I can. I think my current plan is to work for them until around Christmas, and start seriously job hunting then.

And after my thesis...what do I want to do with my life?

I think that's always been one of my problems. I have a lot of ideas, a lot of opportunities, but I've never managed to commit to one. I've never felt able to go for one thing, and as a result my CV looks horribly patchy to me. I've been an archivist, a fundraiser, a researcher, a video editor, a Minion-Of-All-Occasions for a slightly bedraggled goth with aspirations for world domination*. I'm still pottering, pondering, working out what I want to do next.

What are my options?

• Archivist.
  
  I've found myself thinking very seriously about going back to this. I did find archive work slow and frustrating at times when I was 23. On the other hand, I'm older now, and in a lot of ways I've realised that there was a lot about archive work which I didn't appreciate enough. It was a very polite profession, and I think that does mean a lot to me. No one yelled, no one hassled. There was no expectation to work late, and parts of the work was very interesting. That, and it really suited me when I was writing a lot. It could be a good base to actually do other things from.
  
  I think I've already got the experience to apply for the masters in archive administration, and after I'd done that, the odds are I would get a job somewhere.



• Conservator.
  
  This is another thing I've been thinking about for ages. I did a short training course with the National Archives of Scotland conservation department while I was working there, and found it incredibly interesting, especially picture conservation. The Victoria and Albert Royal College of Art have pretty much said that I should be able to get accepted on to the course they run, and it would be interesting work. I'd need a bit more of a grounding in chemistry, but I think I could get that together.



• Museum work.
  
  I've had interviews for junior curatorial positions. In some ways it seems like a natural continuation of an archaeology masters. On the other hand, I wonder if what it will be is a long slog of many interviews, which will all be heavily applied for and which will all be badly paid. I don't know. I may keep looking and just see if anything does come up.



• Teaching.
  
  I've done it before in my GAP year. I would get money from the government to train again. I'd get long holidays for travelling. On the other hand I've heard some fairly depressing things about teaching these days - about there being little creativity in it, and mostly consisting of administering government set tests and pushing paperwork. I've also been told that the workload does spill over into the holidays, and so the epic amounts of free time in the summer which has always been cited as a reason to go into teaching doesn't really hold true anymore.



• My PhD.
  
  At last count, my supervisor is fairly sure I could get accepted on to a PhD course. Whether I'd get funding, however...
  
  The other thing that keeps running through my head is that I'm not sure I'm really focussed enough to do a PhD. It strikes me that to keep studying like that requires it to be the thing you want to do more than anything else. Is that true with me? Am I really clever enough? I really don't know.

Beyond all that, I think I'd like to keep learning. Even if I don't go on to do another masters, I think I would quite like to keep thinking. I've looked at the OU, at Birkbeck College. I've looked at the sciences. I didn't bother with science when I was in school because it wasn't easy for me. I only bothered with stuff that I got As in fairly effortlessly. I was dumb. I want to learn more. I'd like to learn more about forensic archaeology, and I'm not quite sure how. I just know that I find skeletons deeply cool, and would really like to know more. Either that or something DNA related. I've been using DNA a LOT lately (what with population models, migration theory etc) and I'd like to know more, but I'm not quite sure where to start looking.

So. Those are my plans. It's a bit of a brain dump.

Opinions?



*It isn't phrased quite that way on my CV, but I think it should be.