Confusion

 I probably shouldn't have left it this long to write again - I know, it's only been a week, but honestly! The things that can happen/change! I feel like I've been busy. I started out last week with the best intentions to work, and for the first few days it was going well... but definitely by Thursday I lost motivation again, and didn't do much of anything at all over the weekend. Spanish is driving me up the wall. Ethnicity & Nationalism has barely even gotten started. I don't know what to do with the stuff we cover in Theoretical. And I'm just plain stuck on my Special Project. I would be fine just to get on with it, if my supervisor didn't keep reminding me that I need a more "definite idea" - what does that mean? I know what I want to look at. Yeah it's not in question-form so much, but I'm an undergrad, I'm not supposed to do original research, right? It's gotten me very confused.

4 weeks in. Pitiful.

Instead, what I've been doing recently is thinking about postgrad again. I went to the Career's Advisory for a quick drop-in session, and told them how, for a career, I thought I'd quite like to work in HR. She told me that had gotten competetive, but that by no means should hold me back, however there are more and more adverts asking for applicants who have degrees in that field. It's put me right off. So I then told her that I'd always wanted to do an MA in the States, in Anthropology with a minor in Native American Studies, but the cost put me off. She pointed me towards a webite (fulbright.co.uk) that is full of advice for UK students wanting to go there, and US students wanting to come here, and all the ways of getting funding. That sounded much more do-able. Hence I started researching again. What I learned was that, although you can get loans from external sources, most of the funding is likely to come form the universities themselves. However, those institutions that are more research-focused have the most money, and they tend to give more of it to doctorate students (a lot of the courses I looked at were aimed at doctorate's anyway, the MA was just a 'stopping' point, almost). Could I do a PhD? I really didn't think so - or, well, I didn't particularly want to. But I'm not dead-set against it. It would be a challenge intellectually, but I believe I could do it. The next problem is that, because they would basically paying for me to get the qualification, I'm more of an investment, and I'd have to state how I would plan to use the degree afterwards to see the full benefits.

I have no idea.

I can't really do anything with those specialisations if I'm not going to be living in the States, which isn't so easy a feat. And then I can't assume to be able to do anything with it even then, since I believe that anything I could do to help Native Americans, they would like to do for themselves (given the opportunity).

I think I really have to go to there before-hand, and get a better idea of how things work. It's hard speculating when I'm practically a world away.

My CV's pretty weak anyway. I'm once again looking at ways to improve it, i.e. volunteering. I finally got in touch with the DDVG who visit immigrants detained at the border (at Dover), either just being socialble or helping with legal things and the like. It's something I'd really like to do, it's just the travelling that's made me hesitate, but contact is a start. I also ran for course rep. Apparently I won... but then so did my only competitor. I personally think there's been a cock-up, and if they realise this so that the role goes to just one of us, it won't go in my favour. I should have thought about my manifesto more (at least I wrote something!). It would be nice to have that role though, not just for my CV, but I think it's something I could be really involved with - self-confessed anthropology geek!

I may have made it sound like even if I'm not working, my time is spent productively. Not necessarily. I was out for most of Saturday with Myra; we passed an oriental food store, so I thought I'd see if they had any anko (sweet red bean paste). They only had some that was expired, but he gave it me for free! So Myra and I spent the evening making home-made dorayaki, which I have missed from Japan. It wasn't the same - we basically just made small pancakes and sandwiched the an in between - but they were good.