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Apr. 24th, 2006 07:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ruOkay, until I get through some of it, I'm not allowed to add any new books to my reading list. No more. It's gotten to be astronomical in size, and I think adding any more would be simply dangerous.
On Friday one of the library groups held their annual book sale. I love book sales like this, seeing as you can get nifty books really cheaply. I came out of it having spent $6 on 6 books. Considering I wanted to limit myself to $5, this isn't too bad. I picked up a drawing book, two Terry Pratchett books, a book of warped fairy tales, and Dante's "The Inferno". Not too shabby. I was feeling rather proud of myself for having found them there.
Today I come back to the area where the sale was held and discover that the tent is still up. Interesting. I come closer and realize that not only is the book sale going on still, but that it's been turned into a book giveaway. All the books are free. SCORE. Well, not score so much, because all I ended up doing was accquiring more books and adding to my list. It was pretty picked over (I found it interesting that the majority of the fiction books still left were mysteries), but I still managed to snag some interesting finds, among them being a couple sci-fi books, a book on landscaping vocabulary, a book on the nature of serendipity, a satire that I peeked in and featured the Buddha being annoyed at Michael, which intrigued me, and a horror-type book that initially drew me to it due to the fact that the title of the book was "MEG" in big huge letters. Yes, I am enough of a dork that mention of a certain grumpy electrician fizzy is enough to make me take a closer look at a book. I went ahead and picked it up, because from the looks of it, it essentially involves people being terrorized by a megalodon. So it's like Jurassic Park, but in the water. Sweet.
So now, not counting the drawing book and the landscaping book, I have ten books added onto my reading list. At this rate, I'll never see the light of day, reading-wise. Oh well. At least I'll have plenty of time to dive into my book list in about a week and a half.
I've noticed that I'm now seeing the beginnings of the lasts. Sunday was the last time my dad drives me back to my dorm here at school. Friday was the last time I got to go grocery shopping for dinner goodness with my mom after picking me up from school (since I'm staying put this Friday to go about packing for my move out on Saturday). This week will be my last week of classes. Wednesday will be the last time a good friend of mine and I meet at the dining hall to have dinner and discuss our weeks.
I'm finding this week to be really sad and worrying. I mean, yes, I'll be really really happy to no longer have the albatross known as 'schoolwork' sitting on my shoulder and screaming in my ear, but, well, I've spent four years of my life here. That's going to be hard to move past, harder than high school, I think. There are things I've grown accustomed to doing every week that I *like* doing every week, like going to the anime club and spending the time afterwards with Eien-chan. And I guess even though it's been extremely tough, I'm somehow going to miss it.
There's also a certain amount of uncertainty involved with this whole 'graduation' thing. I've got a basic plan now: Take a break from school, find a botany-related job (I'm thinking governmental work at the moment, since they seem to focus more on conservation, surveying, things like that, which I'm interested in), save some money and get some experience, and then eventually come back and do grad school. I'm not going to do grad school right away because I really need a break from school and school itself has been so consuming that I haven't had the time to do any grad school preparations. Task 1 of my plan will be easy. It's task 2 that will require some work. I've already started looking, so it's not like I'm completely slacking off in that regard, but I still worry about finding a job that'll at least be tolerable and won't be completely over my head.
Sometimes, I wonder if I should have majored in horticulture instead of botany. When I decided to change majors, I was having a hard time deciding between the two. After going to the career center and looking at things, and realizing that horticulture would require at least an extra semester of work, I decided to go forth with botany. I like the major and all, and I still work with plants, but I wonder if I would have been happier in horticulture. The impression I get from horticulture is that it's a lot more hands-on, with focus on the whole plant instead of the chemical functions, which is kinda the direction I would want to go in. The advantage with horticulture, also, is that at least with it, I'd have an easier time finding a place to work (it's certainly a lot more commercial in nature), and I sometimes wonder if I would have liked the resulting work better. I dunno. It's really hard to say. I can't predicte what my life would be like in either one, though, and I'm at the point where the botany degree is imminent, so I'm going to stick with it. Maybe that'll be what I major in when I do grad school. I'd be in a bit of a backlog, since I'd have to take some extra undergrad classes, but maybe I'd be better off because of it. I don't know. I guess maybe I could work in a nursery with a botany degree, still, but I suspect they'd be looking for a horticulture major instead. Who knows. Maybe if I really worked on learning how to care for various types of plants, it wouldn't matter either way. I guess I won't really know until I really get deep into the whole job search thing.
And so, I still need to work with trying to get some sort of job figured out. I guess if worse came to absolute worse and I couldn't find *anything*, I guess I could try to get a job elsewhere, like in a book store or something. That would at least provide me with some income. And it would provide me with access to books with potentially an employee discount, which would give me even more reason to work through my reading list. ^_^;
On Friday one of the library groups held their annual book sale. I love book sales like this, seeing as you can get nifty books really cheaply. I came out of it having spent $6 on 6 books. Considering I wanted to limit myself to $5, this isn't too bad. I picked up a drawing book, two Terry Pratchett books, a book of warped fairy tales, and Dante's "The Inferno". Not too shabby. I was feeling rather proud of myself for having found them there.
Today I come back to the area where the sale was held and discover that the tent is still up. Interesting. I come closer and realize that not only is the book sale going on still, but that it's been turned into a book giveaway. All the books are free. SCORE. Well, not score so much, because all I ended up doing was accquiring more books and adding to my list. It was pretty picked over (I found it interesting that the majority of the fiction books still left were mysteries), but I still managed to snag some interesting finds, among them being a couple sci-fi books, a book on landscaping vocabulary, a book on the nature of serendipity, a satire that I peeked in and featured the Buddha being annoyed at Michael, which intrigued me, and a horror-type book that initially drew me to it due to the fact that the title of the book was "MEG" in big huge letters. Yes, I am enough of a dork that mention of a certain grumpy electrician fizzy is enough to make me take a closer look at a book. I went ahead and picked it up, because from the looks of it, it essentially involves people being terrorized by a megalodon. So it's like Jurassic Park, but in the water. Sweet.
So now, not counting the drawing book and the landscaping book, I have ten books added onto my reading list. At this rate, I'll never see the light of day, reading-wise. Oh well. At least I'll have plenty of time to dive into my book list in about a week and a half.
I've noticed that I'm now seeing the beginnings of the lasts. Sunday was the last time my dad drives me back to my dorm here at school. Friday was the last time I got to go grocery shopping for dinner goodness with my mom after picking me up from school (since I'm staying put this Friday to go about packing for my move out on Saturday). This week will be my last week of classes. Wednesday will be the last time a good friend of mine and I meet at the dining hall to have dinner and discuss our weeks.
I'm finding this week to be really sad and worrying. I mean, yes, I'll be really really happy to no longer have the albatross known as 'schoolwork' sitting on my shoulder and screaming in my ear, but, well, I've spent four years of my life here. That's going to be hard to move past, harder than high school, I think. There are things I've grown accustomed to doing every week that I *like* doing every week, like going to the anime club and spending the time afterwards with Eien-chan. And I guess even though it's been extremely tough, I'm somehow going to miss it.
There's also a certain amount of uncertainty involved with this whole 'graduation' thing. I've got a basic plan now: Take a break from school, find a botany-related job (I'm thinking governmental work at the moment, since they seem to focus more on conservation, surveying, things like that, which I'm interested in), save some money and get some experience, and then eventually come back and do grad school. I'm not going to do grad school right away because I really need a break from school and school itself has been so consuming that I haven't had the time to do any grad school preparations. Task 1 of my plan will be easy. It's task 2 that will require some work. I've already started looking, so it's not like I'm completely slacking off in that regard, but I still worry about finding a job that'll at least be tolerable and won't be completely over my head.
Sometimes, I wonder if I should have majored in horticulture instead of botany. When I decided to change majors, I was having a hard time deciding between the two. After going to the career center and looking at things, and realizing that horticulture would require at least an extra semester of work, I decided to go forth with botany. I like the major and all, and I still work with plants, but I wonder if I would have been happier in horticulture. The impression I get from horticulture is that it's a lot more hands-on, with focus on the whole plant instead of the chemical functions, which is kinda the direction I would want to go in. The advantage with horticulture, also, is that at least with it, I'd have an easier time finding a place to work (it's certainly a lot more commercial in nature), and I sometimes wonder if I would have liked the resulting work better. I dunno. It's really hard to say. I can't predicte what my life would be like in either one, though, and I'm at the point where the botany degree is imminent, so I'm going to stick with it. Maybe that'll be what I major in when I do grad school. I'd be in a bit of a backlog, since I'd have to take some extra undergrad classes, but maybe I'd be better off because of it. I don't know. I guess maybe I could work in a nursery with a botany degree, still, but I suspect they'd be looking for a horticulture major instead. Who knows. Maybe if I really worked on learning how to care for various types of plants, it wouldn't matter either way. I guess I won't really know until I really get deep into the whole job search thing.
And so, I still need to work with trying to get some sort of job figured out. I guess if worse came to absolute worse and I couldn't find *anything*, I guess I could try to get a job elsewhere, like in a book store or something. That would at least provide me with some income. And it would provide me with access to books with potentially an employee discount, which would give me even more reason to work through my reading list. ^_^;