Goals

I've been meaning to update the blog for some time (and I do have several things to write about) but in the meantime, I thought I'd finally publish this post I wrote back in September. I totally forgot that I had written it and I think it would help to see it on the blog (since I often re-read prior entries because this serves as a journal more than my real journal that I never write in) and to open it up for comment. I take so much encouragement from the comments that my friends (you guys) write. I wrote this two months ago and yet I still have hardly done anything to move forward with these plans. If it's out there for all the world to see, then maybe I'll actually have the courage to do something about it. I'm weird like that. :-)

I've been feeling rather low the last few weeks, a triple combination of cultural shock finally kicking in, homesickness, and lack of employment that rendered me a Very Unpleasant Person to be around. I had a good talk with David (unsurprisingly, he's the communicator in the family) and he helped me realize a few things. It seems rather pathetic to describe this as an epiphany (since it seems so ridiculously obvious now) but I finally realized that I needed to set some goals in my life.

For the last, oh, 20 years of my life, I've been completely focused on school and I always had some goal to achieve. Pass that test. Get into college. Finish the semester. Get an A on my research paper. Get a degree. Even when I took a year off after graduating from BYU, it was with the express purpose to study for the GRE, get some work experience, and apply for grad school. And then I went to grad school and had tons more goals to fulfill: be awesome (check), get an internship at the Smithsonian (check), see as much of D.C. as possible (check), and get a masters (check). Going to graduate school had been a long-term goal of mine since high school. So what happens once you've obtained your biggest goal?

Well, if you are me, you get married and move to a tropical island. This really wasn't the greatest career move on my part (seeing as how Hawaii had about 5 museums) but it was not the wrong life decision. But I still floundered for the first six months of our marriage, in part because I had lost my direction. My whole world had turned upside down and I didn't have anything to ground me to who I was. My goal was simply to find a job and when I couldn't even accomplish that, it felt like I'd just wasted a lot of time and money to get two degrees and I'd lost my whole identity (literally....I kept forgetting that my last name had changed too). Eventually, I found a groove for myself and set my sights on trying to be a better wife (still working on that one) and preparing for our big move to Korea. [In hindsight, I'm now very grateful for only finding part-time work in Hawaii. It allowed David and me to spend a lot of time together, which we had not enjoyed during our two year long-distance relationship and which we would not have enjoyed had I found full-time work.]

I arrived in Korea thinking everything would be different and that I'd easily find work. Three months later [now five], I find myself in the exact some position I was in Hawaii. And now, FINALLY, I've realized that just "finding a job" is not a good enough goal and thinking that I'd "like to do that someday" is not enough of a motivation to actually go DO something because, let's face it, I'm kinda lazy. But I love to do lists. I like checking things off when they've been accomplished. And to make new long(er)-term goals for myself, I need to write them down. And I feel like putting my goals down not just paper, but sharing it with all my friends, it will make this goals all the more real to me and force me to DO something about them.

So here's a list of some of the goals I've set for myself. I'd like to at least be on my way to accomplishing these goals before we leave Korea, but I recognize that living in Korea may be a detriment to their completion. Just go with it. (In no particular order.)

1. Find a job: There's a few jobs out there that I'd really love to have and I grow less inclined to take a job for the sole purpose of having a job. Ultimately, I'd love to find a job that either uses my education and skills or that allows me to become a better educator (either by teaching English or at the base schools). I mostly want a job so that I can save up enough money to pay off my student loans for the 2-3 years after David gets out of the military. He wants to go to graduate school and start his own business, and I don't want my student loans to be an added burden for him during that time.

2. Get a teaching certificate: Even though I just ranted about the public school system, I've been thinking more and more of getting a teaching certificate. It allows me an added option for work (should we need a second income). I've always wanted to be a teacher, I just thought it would be as a university professor after earning my Ph.D. I'm not dismissing that option either, but I think this is more realistic and I'd have a greater chance of truly impacting a student's life while they are in high school. The big problem, of course, is that certification varies by state and since I have no idea what state we'll live in after Korea, I have no idea where to go to earn this certification.

3. Take the Praxis exam: This pairs up with #2. The Praxis exam (there are multiple parts) are a series of test you take to test your general knowledge to become a teacher and you're subject specific knowledge to teach your chosen subject. I've taken a few practice exams and have yet to miss a question. It's not really rocket science.

4. Sign up for education classes: Until I can get a clearer sense of where to get this certification, I plan on signing up for some education classes through BYU's Independent Study courses online. These courses may or may not transfer to a certification program in the future, but either way, I'll be back in school (I miss school a lot) and will still be able to learn valuable things about educational theories and child development that will be helpful regardless of whether I'm teaching my own children or someone else's. I know I can receive money through the military spouse's tuition assistance program, I just have to figure out how to sign up for it.

5. Learn Korean: We're going to be here for 2 years and I'd feel like a hypocrite if I didn't at least learn to carry on a basic conversation in Korean since I dislike people who live in America for any extended period of time who don't try to learn English. I'd need to do a lot more study on my own but I also signed up for a free Korean class that is taught on base. The first opening was in December.

6. Know Seoul: After 2 years in D.C., I'd walked that entire city a million times over and I knew the subway system like the back of my hand. I love feeling like I've really discovered a place and seen what it has to offer. I still have regrets about not being more proactive and seeing more things in Utah, Monterey and Hawaii.

7. See Asia: I want to see as much of Korea and the rest of Asia as we possibly can in the next two years. We're planning our first trip for this January to go to Taiwan (David hasn't been back since his mission). From the way David talks, I think we'll spend most of our time there eating. Also on my list (in order of importance) are trips to China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia, Hong Kong, the Phillippines, Vietnam, and New Zealand (if we can swing it). Obviously, I don't think we'll be able to visit all these places, but if I can see at least China and Japan, I'll be somewhat mollified.

8. Culinary school: I don't really think I'll be able to do this here, but I'd love to take some cooking classes to hone my skills more. I don't really want to get a full-blown culinary degree, but I'd like to stop being just a decent cook and become an actual chef. (The distinctive being, in my mind, that a good cook can follow a recipe well while a chef can create her own recipes.) I'd really love to know the fundamental basics of cooking (beyond what I already know) and improve my knife skills and palate. I'm a little obsessed with food right now--not just eating it-- but learning all about nutrition, whole foods, healthy recipes, etc.

9. Become a parent: No, I'm not pregnant. No, I don't know when I will get pregnant. But there are two things that I've always known about myself: 1) that I need to be a teacher, in whatever capacity I can be and 2) that I need to be a mother. I certainly haven't taken the most direct route to get there, but the point is, I'm figuring out how to get there.