Catching up

Me on the La Luz trail in the Sandias!


My very long, boring journey from Boulder to Albuquerque

I've failed at typing out the happenings of my life this past week and a half or so! Let's see if we can get caught up:

I took a little road trip to Albuquerque on the 19th to visit friends out there. Got to see Michael (how strange to discover that I would miss him after not seeing him all summer!) and a bunch of other awesome people from Sonlight!! The drive to and from was quite boring with the exception of getting to talk to Scott on the phone for a few minutes while I was in the midst of a detour off the interstate! Haha. But actually despite the boring scenery of southern CO and northern NM I enjoyed just having some time to myself to drive with good music playing, it's kind of relaxing in a weird way. Would have been a little more enjoyable though if the air conditioning in my car worked better! Oh well.

Things accomplished while in New Mexico:
-hiked La Luz trail in the Sandia mountains
-visited the very silly little town of Socorro and New Mexico Tech
-met a lot of NMT nerds!
-saw (500) Days of Summer and Inglorious Basterds
-had sushi with Michael and Lindsay and Michael's friends
-visited UNM and Nob Hill and ate at Frontier
-went to the Albuquerque zoo
-enjoyed the awesome New Mexico sunsets
-discovered that New Mexico is too hot and dry in August

So I drove home from Abq on the 23rd and then started school the next day! Woooo. So summer has come to an end and I have begun my very last semester of college! I am taking Abnormal Psychology, School and Society, and Primate Behavior plus an internship at Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice. In addition to all that I've got work and homework and trying to have a social life as well! So it will be a busy semester. I started my internship on Wednesday and I'm not sure how it's going to be yet. I have a hard time figuring out what it is they really do there at this point. They worked on shutting down Rocky Flatts back in the 1980s, and they have a lot of events and fundraisers now but it seems like the same people are coming to all their events so in a way it's a kind of "preaching to the choir" situation in which they bring up issues and discuss them but are not bringing in new people or tackling any new projects. The organization seems a little outdated but they've got their hearts in the right place as far as aiming for nonviolent social change, I just hope it's something I can apply to the classroom aspect of my internship because I need to write papers about issues relating to my internship and I'm not sure what those would bet yet. I am also worried that the whole internship and class experience for credit is going to be difficult to pull off because the goal seems to be to set me up for a career in a field relating to my internship or in sociology. It's not that I don't want to work for peace and justice or something relating to my degree in sociology after I graduate, but I'm not sure this internship is exactly something I want to use as a foot in the door for anything at this point in my life.

As you can see my future is taking over my thoughts lately. That's to be expected I suppose at the end of my college career but with the pressure of constantly being asked what I plan to do with my Sociology degree, and my continual uncertainty about the answer to that it's hard not to let it stress me out. I am pretty confident in who I am and knowing that I am not meant to hold an average, steady, well-paying job sitting in a cubicle or anything like that and I have many hopes and ambitions for my life but most of them include things like "maybe someday going to grad school" "living in a different country" "traveling" "taking photos" and "doing something to help people" and those are not things that you need an internship to be prepared for. I'd like to let life take me where it will and enjoy things in the meantime but it seems that everyone around me is choosing the more conventional path and it makes me worried that I won't be motivated enough to make things happen for me the way I want them to or that I won't be able to fund my vague ambitions of travel and such. I will also have a pile of student loans to pay off after I graduate so that will be another adventure to figure out. BUT at the same time, I'm pretty happy with my life at the moment and I try not to worry too much about what's going to happen in the future because whatever it is I'm sure it's going to be great!