The deadline is 11:59 pm Sunday... all life decisions must be turned in by then

Tomorrow I am faced with writing a paper about "what I want to be when I grow up", the steps of how I am going to get there, and what motivates me to be there. I have no clue what to write.

I am being a bit facetious...but not entirely. The paper is for a class I am taking this semester called Designing Professional Futures, I know, I know it sounds like a fluff class... (this is when you check your notes on what my masters degree will be in and shake your head). But really, this class is pretty amazing. It is based on the premise that there are eight extremely important qualities for people who are going to be successful today and especially tomorrow in the work place. The class is all about developing those qualities through intensive dialogue with classmates and outlining a program for yourself in finding jobs that are top notch, really fulfilling, and that continue to nurture the eight qualities. I have a feeling I will look back on it and think it was one of my most applicable classes in grad school and I have had amazing classes.

So, it is not that I don't know what I want to do with my life, I just don't know how to describe it or where exactly to find it. When I first began my job at the Center I thought it would bring more clarity to my search for meaningful community engagement or educational work with youth. As with anything that is really good for you, the Center has only widened my vision, only provided me with more that I didn't know existed, and with more ideas of what I would like or be good at. How to narrow it down? How to decide? I think in the end, it will be the job, not the "career" that I go after. But still, what do I write in that paper?

To complicate the issue this week I was:

• formally offered a position on the board of an educational non-profit, focused around experiential environmental education in local schools.

• asked to team-teach an undergraduate class in the spring with a professor in the leadership minor program (it was proposed as such- "could we buy some of your time from the center? You come highly recommended". This would increase my time to full time... When to take classes?)

• asked to run a pilot program of citizen organizing and oral history gathering for the Center connected to our current major initiative. (essentially increasing me to full time- again, full-time student?)
  

• prompted to add to one of my research papers I wrote last year in order to publish it in conjunction with the Center (it is directly related to some of our ideas about our youth work).

• And, oh yeah, the grad school wants to know what I am taking for my last semester of classes and what my focus of my thesis will be.
  

These are all amazing opportunities and great challenges, but offer me tough decisions about where to invest my time, which path to take, and how much to think about the future and how much to think about now. How to figure it all out? What opportunities to jump on and which ones do I hope to find another time?

But enough of all the big picture stuff and the pondering of a "path"-this is grad school- the paper is due electronically by 11:59 pm Sunday.