Part of why I’m still awake is that I’ve spent a good five to seven hours reviewing my resume and writing cover letters for internships in the last few days instead of doing my Design individual project. More on that in a second.

I put in at Sabre Airline Solutions, which handles ticketing, frequent flyer miles, and the like for American Airlines and a whole host of other carriers. The other company is part of the pharmaceutical conglomerate AmeriSource Bergen, and they provide private-practice oncologists with software for their practices. These are both full-time summer internships, and if I play my cards right, I could get a a job with either company after graduation. The oncology company is also interested in hiring part-time during the school year, so maybe I wouldn’t have to teach. On one hand, I really enjoy it, and on the other, I don’t. There are definite benefits to teaching, but if I didn’t, I’d probably only have to be on campus one night a week (more on that in a sec.) 

I’m gonna be taking online summer classes; it’s my first time for either of those. To complicate things, I’m taking those classes in medical informatics. I’m not exactly sure what we’ll cover, since some medical informatics programs (like this one and TWU) focus on medical libraries and databases, while others have a more technology-oriented focus (almost merging into IT.) I only have to have nine hours in a related field for my tech comm degree, so after this summer, I’d have one more (online) course in that and a required course in tech comm presentations. That’s great—I could minimize my time on campus, but at the same time, I need to take 9 hours to make full-time, so I’m scrambling to find anything related. Everything either has a prerequisite, is bullshit, or is at the same time as my Presentations class.

So yeah, internship and two courses over the summer; one required course and one cognate course in the fall; that’s it. I’m done. I’m out of here. To where? I’m not sure. I was told I should look into PhD programs, and I think Texas Tech would be great, but it’s in Lubbock. I’m wondering if I could pretty easily parlay the medical informatics angle to work at Texas Medical Center in Houston. Houston might be nice. Almost went there for my English MA, wound up going to TCU, and then bailing on that, which was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I feel better about my courses, my future, and my profession than I ever did in that English lit program.

The one class that’s been a major drag this semester has been my Document Design class. I just can’t quantify or qualify how much I’ve learned, and that’s really frustrating. I know I have learned things, I just can’t put my finger on it; I suspect all it did was give me practice doing design, rather than teaching me anything new per se. I’m avoiding this 150 page book design project just because I don’t want to do it. I realize grad classes are supposed to kick your ass, but this class has been too much. It was actually supposed to be 250 pages of text, but she fucked up and gave us the wrong assignment description, so she lowered the requirements.

I’m tentatively scheduled to teach this summer, but I should get one of the two internships, removing that. If I don’t get a summer one, I’ll have to get one for the fall, meaning I’d be taking twelve graduate hours; the required internship counts for six, Presentations, and the medical informatics course. That just seems like a lot, although I’m sure it’s completely do-able.

One nice thing about my teaching this semester is that several of the students and I have developed a trust. One kid actually told me that he trusted me when I gave him advice about a project. Although it’s a lot of work to look over all those papers, I feel pretty good when they send me drafts or bring them to me in class. I much prefer having my own tech comm class to being a TA in an English lit class.

That’s about it. I need to finish indexing this bitch. Fingers crossed for getting one or both of those internships; a choice would be nice, and I think I’d have to choose the oncology one. We’ll see.