Undeclared

Last Summer, the plan was to figure out the rest of my life. Or at least life after the Peace Corps. After all the discernment and deep thinking, the brilliant plan was to table the decision until after at least one standardized test was taken (either the GRE or the LSAT), and then to most likely take the other standardized test, and then to reexamine my options. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

I met with Chargé d’Affaires Robin at the U.S. embassy this afternoon to do a sort of informal informational interview to discuss what it's like working for the State Department. Robin is clearly passionate about the Foreign Service, and nearly as soon as I sat down she dove into the nuts and bolts. It was fascinating, and I enjoyed our meeting and the Foreign Service sounds great. But I still don’t know if I’m ready to declare my major.

I did relatively well on the LSAT—not as great as I would have liked, but we won’t get into that. In any case, Smadge’s whole idea behind me taking the LSAT was, since I’m not interested in being an attorney, I should only go to law school if I could get into a top-tier school where I could get my law degree and do something un-lawyerly with it. Like politics… or McDonald’s.

So now I’m thinking maybe I’ll just apply to some “reach” schools, and if I get into any of them, I’ll go. Or at least I’ll consider going.

Near the end of our chat today, I asked Robin what sort of graduate program I should attend. I believe my exact words were, “So what should I go back to school for?” She gave me a pity consolation laugh and then threw out some suggestions. It depends on what sort of role I’d like to play in the Foreign Service and how different degrees apply to different jobs.

Depending on what I was interested in, I should look into politics or international affairs or journalism or psychology or public diplomacy.

In short, the interview was fascinating and inspiring and pretty darn unhelpful in narrowing my plans for graduate school. At one point during the interview, speaking more along the lines of the constant re-locating inherent in a career with the Foreign Service, she joked the State Department was a great place for people uncomfortable with commitment. I’m undeclared.

In any case, I’ve been putting off studying for the GRE, but the plan is to start ramping up tomorrow. Whichever graduate program I decide on will almost surely require the test, so it’s just as well, right?

Or maybe I’ll go to law school.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Cleaning the school yesterday morning. Clearing the chain-link fence.

Cutting the grass.

Looking bad-ass while holding esi (papayas).

Taking a break to eat the esi.

Time to Study

Today we had the first computer studies markers meeting where teachers from the Congrega- tionalist school system came together to grade the year 12 and 13 end-of-year exams. The marking needs to be done quickly so students can use the exam to gauge where they need the most work for the upcoming Samoan School Certificate exam (for year 12) and the Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate exam (for year 13). And in the middle of all this marking, all I can think about is the LSAT, which I’m taking in December.

After some back and forth with the Law School Admission Council as to whether I could or could not take the test in Samoa—there’s no official testing site in country—they found me a spot to take the test in American Samoa. So in 7 weeks, just days after Prize-giving (which we’d refer to as graduation or commencement in The States), I’ll be crossing the channel to fill in bubbles with two other poor souls who live within a 100-mile radius of Pago Pago.

On one hand, I’m pumped about this. Liam and I used to smirk about the strange satisfaction inherent in taking a standardized test. I like to pretend it’s a less flashy version of Jeopardy!, in which questions are hurled at me rapid-fire. I admit I come at it from the angle of showing off, which breeds pomposity, but also builds confidence.

On the other hand, math has always been my inexplicable strong suit. The LSAT has no math, and this is troubling. The closest thing it has is “Logic Games,” which Smadge assures me are not mathematical in nature, but I feel require problem-solving skills analogous to those required for math problems. PCV Max assures me “Logic Games” will be the most difficult part of the test. I’ve got my money on Logical Reasoning and/or Reading Comprehension, Max, but I guess we’ll see how things shake down after 7 weeks.

Hopefully I can harness this strange combination of stupid confidence and sustained apprehension into 7 weeks of productive study time. I’ve got my Princeton Review “Cracking the LSAT” guide, and Max gave me a slew of past LSAT exams in PDF format.

Additionally, I’m planning on giving my classes a crash course in test-taking skills before the year 9s, 10s, and 11s take their common exams and the year 12s and 13s. After all, they say the best way to learn something is to teach it.

I feel like I’ve climbed into the same boat with my students, and we’ve all got to make it across the river together. And yes, my curriculum will consist of more than simply imparting “stupid confidence.”

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.















Blakey, Briony, and I had an 80s Power Dinner at Italiano Pizza tonight.















Briony.

What Do You Do with a B.A. in Poli Sci?

I declared my political science major very late in my college career after many other people had completed their major requirements, so it was crazy lining up for graduation and running into all of the people I knew and hadn’t realized were also poli sci majors. Jessica went on to do Teach For America and then went to UC Berkeley for law school. Damaris went straight to Harvard law. Evan works for the Democratic Party doing community organizing for Latino populations in Los Angeles. Katie was a year behind me, but also majored in Poli Sci, and she also went to Bolt at Berkeley.

Law school seems like a well-travelled path, and that makes sense; a law degree is super versatile. But I don’t know if it’s right for me. I hated Business Law when I took that in college, although that may have been the Business’s fault more than Law’s. The idea of being an attorney strikes me as loathsome, but I suppose there are lots of law-related positions that aren’t terrible. But is “not terrible” really what I’m striving toward?

Maybe.

I watched “Frost/Nixon” last night, and I liked Sam Rockwell’s character, a politically oriented academic. There was a brief phase during or just after college when I fantasized about getting my PhD, landing a professorship in Hawai’i, and coasting from there. This still works for me, except the number of people with PhD’s who go on to be professors is enormously small, and the thing that really makes me hesitant to get more into academia is the constant need to publish. Who wants that?

Maybe I do.

I’ve always loved movies, and I would love to make movies. It would probably top my list of things I’d like to do. But I lived in LA for 5 years, and I know how dreadful an industry Hollywood is. Hell, USC has the best film school in the country. I took one class and wanted to smack everybody in the face. It seems like getting a good gig in Hollywood depends a lot on luck, and the odds I spend 20 years waiting tables at Jerry’s Famous Deli are high. And do I really want to risk 20 years of my life to do something I’d find meaningful?

Maybe.

I’ve been counting on the Peace Corps to help me figure out what’s next, and the part of my job here that makes me most passionate (at this point, at least) is figuring out how to automate the school’s grading system. I’m getting ready to study macros because I think that’s what’s necessary for this project. It’s rare that I am excited about studying anything, but I’m pretty confident that I can get this thing to work. Perhaps I would like to get more into database management, learn SQL, be a database guru in Silicon Valley. But would that life really be fulfilling?

Maybe.

I hope you're being decisive. Pictures below.
















Fipe holding crying baby, sticking out tongue.
















This game evolved out of nowhere. I would throw a stick, and Akanese would do cartwheels to the stick and then bring it back to me via more cartwheels. I call it "Cartwheel Fetch".





















Until last week, I thought this was a bunch of graves lined up end to end, but Phil informed me it's a Cricket pitch. This makes much more sense. Olsen from the river fales was there during the conversation and when he heard I thought it was graves he said, "Yeah. We used to be really really tall!" Funny.





















Akanese drumming.
















I like how skeptical each of our faces are here. Certainly not planned.

Purpose

PCV Max is taking the LSAT tomorrow afternoon. He will be the sole test-taker. The exam will be proctored by our APCD, Fata. According to Max, this will be the first time the LSAT has been administered in Samoa. Usually volunteers go to American Samoa or to New Zealand to take standardized tests like the LSAT or the GMAT. I believe Fata has proctored GREs in the past. Jordan is studying for the GMAT; one of his GMAT study books was prominently displayed the first time I went to his house. I have an LSAT book on my cinderblock shelf, but I haven’t opened it.

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I never did. It was one of those questions that I never could answer, and adults would always tell me, “It’s all right. You’ve still got a while.” Well, a while has come and gone, and I still have no answer. It was the same with choosing a major in college. I was still officially undeclared until halfway through my junior year of college. I fell into political science, in part out of convenience.

My problem is that I am mildly interested in everything and very interested in nothing. I like watching Jeopardy! where there’s 6 categories per round. Jeopardy! would suck if there was only one category and it was the same every day. I have an LSAT book. Before I came to Samoa, I attended an info session for UC Berkeley’s pre-med/post-bacc program. In the past I’ve looked into graduate programs for international studies and piano (Yeah. Piano. Really.). And Liam and I used to talk about how we’re really just engineers that got lost somewhere along the way.

While I was hating life at eCivis, I consulted the USC Career Center for guidance. They made me take a Myers-Briggs test and gave me some literature based on my score. My CNET severance package included some sessions with a career counselor, but they were more focused on re-writing my resume and improving my interview skills. It was certainly helpful, but my problem is a little broader than that.

I’ve read Who Moved My Cheese? and I just finished The Alchemist, but I’ve always found stuff like that to be a little too perfect and a little too vague. There are a lot of layers in my convoluted brain, and I realize that I’m supposed to see through all that and listen to my heart, but my heart seems ambivalent. During training it surfaced that Koa and I are big time reactivists; we’re loathe to make decisions, we’d rather just flow with the tao.

It was freshman year of high school when I knew that I wanted to join the Peace Corps. When I didn’t go in 2004, there was still something inside me that wanted to come. It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to having a calling. And I always figured that once I was here, I would know what to do next, or at least I would have time to figure it out.

So with that in mind (and being that grad school would theoretically begin in Fall 2011, which means applying in Fall 2010, which means taking standardized test(s) in Spring 2010, which means studying for standardized test(s) in Fall 2009), I’m giving myself this next school term, term 2, to put together a tentative plan for what’s after the Peace Corps. I’m not sure what the process will entail; I guess I’ll figure it out as I go along.

I hope you’re watching Jeopardy!. Pictures below.
















Erin's birthday party was last night.
















Phil and Berkeley MPH candidate Sheila showing off Peace Corps gang signs.
















Erin taking a picture of me taking a picture of her. Also left to right: Dan, AJ, Chris (obstructed), Joey.
















Erin doing a taupo dance. Random stranger is the manaia.