Twists and turns

It's so crazy how life takes you in certain directions, ones that you never saw coming. When I was a freshman at University of Maine, I started in the Civil Engineering department. Took calculus, got a D, took a materials class, couldn't stay awake...pretty much hated every minute of it. Didn't help that I was on my own for the first time in my life and the basketball team liked to party. So guess what I spent a lot of time doing. oh, yeah, party girl!! Ha, so we get new coaches, I think about coaching eventually, then one of the assistant coaches tell me I should look into teaching, since it would lead to coaching. Eh, okay, since I have no clue what I really want to do. I transfer, continue in the education curriculum, am bored outta my ever lovin' mind, but continue since I want to coach. At least I think I do. Then I get my first job, ugh, awful. But the coaching is awesome. Then I get my second job, better but not great, but the coaching is awesome. Then I get my third job, eh, not awful, but not what I really want to do, but the coaching is awesome. Then I decide to get my Master's degree, the first one. I get it in Ecology. I love the environment and I think this degree is going to help me get a job working in that area. it doesn't. It just gets me in debt with school loans. But eh, can't say I didn't try. So then I look to go back to teaching, gotta pay the bills. But as luck would have it, I get a coaching job. It was not all I thought it was going to be. I loved the players and the on court coaching, but when you don't have a good head coach, life is very difficult. And I met Sean when I was looking to leave and Division 1 coaching is NOT family friendly. It can be done but I wasn't willing to make that sacrifice, especially since I couldn't leave Pittsburgh. So I looked into teaching again. Can't say I didn't try to make it work. We moved to Virginia. Oh man, it was awesome. Living in Virginia, that is, not the teaching. It was the usual. I'm good at it, the administration love me, but oh man, I dreaded every day of it. I loved the coaching, but hated the day to day drudgery. My hat is off to all my teacher friends that love their job. It's definitely not for me. So while we were in Va, it finally clicked what I wanted to do. And wouldn't you know it, back to Civil Engineering. The crappy part was, I got my degree and couldn't find a job doing what I really wanted, which is working with storm water runoff, wetlands, stream restoration....any or all of the above. So I've been working at a job that does not take advantage of my brain and I'm bored. So now, I am going to be working on my PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Which I can now tailor to research what I want. So now I'm working with storm water runoff and looking at ways to fix the huge problem we have created because we pave over everything. It's funny how things come back around.