The typical end-of-the-semester ruminations

As another semester winds down and the craziness of life gets turned up a notch, I'm finding myself in yet another internal battle between getting it all done and sitting down with a nice cup of çay while imagining all the other things I could be doing with my life.  For some reason this seems to happen each semester around this time - in the end everything gets done and turns out fine, but those introspective moments plant various seeds of discontent in my psyche that are not so easily transplanted when my slate is wiped clean.

This semester is a little different because I have a massive motivating force propelling me forward to finish my work and not rest on my laurels - a month long trip to Turkey.  More on that in a bit...

Yet the topic of work-life balance and carving a path through life are hot topics in my face-to-face conversations and online-conversations, such as the one I've been following over at the blog Slowly-by-Slowly.  E. at Slowly-by-Slowly has been blogging daily on topics related to work this month and I'm riveted following each post.  You see, E. is a tenured-professor in an American university and also living in a Turkish-American marriage.  Although I have never met her, it seems that we have many things in common and I hope one day to be on a similar career path.  Yet, I question my career choices on a nearly daily basis.

This weekend, as I was spending all Saturday evening working on a take-home exam, the good ol' doubts flared up again.  

"What is all this for?"  I questioned.  "Why am I spending my weekends studying and doing homework when I could just work for a company or a government agency and double (if not triple) my current salary?"  

Back and forth my mind threw me - "You aren't interested in money." I told myself.  

"Then why not work for a non-profit" I retorted.  

"If you can find a job in that sector - the economy is in shams, or have you forgotten what sent you back to grad school in the first place?"

True, true.  I did return to graduate school with the hopes of getting an engineering MS to boost my much-too-interdisciplinary undergraduate degree, and then return to the job market.  It wasn't even a week into the application process that I got willingly sucked into the PhD pathway with the promise of interesting fellowships and research that sent my nerdy wheels spinning with excitement!

In fact, it is my love for knowledge and the desire to constantly improve myself that makes me feel that academia is a good fit.  It is also my hope to make a difference in the environmental field, while helping cement the 'natural-social science environmental knowledge nexus' that drives me to keep plugging along.

For now, all I can conclude is that the future is unclear and that it's best I succumb to the forces of life and let my path unfold before me, rather than tearing down the bumpy (yet solid) stone path I have built up until this point.

My Metaphorical Stone Path
(From http://www.liveinart.org/)

If I look at the bright side of my current situation, while I may have to give up a lot of my weekends and free nights to work, at least I can take off for a month to Turkey with few questions asked.  I don't think I would have the same flexibility to travel if I worked for "the man" (i.e. government) or "the bigger man" (i.e. big business).  

So here is to long nights working and long vacations relaxing.  Without one, the other wouldn't be quite as sweet.