And I find myself not nearly as excited as at the beginning of last semester. This is neither a huge surprise nor a sign that I’m becoming disappointed with grad school. I think it has more to do with the fact that at the beginning of grad school last semester I was starving for some intellectual conversation (while Lynn and I talk a lot, and often about pretty interesting stuff, last summer I was working full time for Got Junk – not exactly a bastion of in-depth discourse). I also had very little idea of what grad school was going to be like and what would be required of me. Now I have a pretty strong idea of what I’m going back to and what I want to get out of it, and my mind is actually getting some daily exercise at work, not just at home.
There are also a couple of sticky situations related to school that I’m not entirely sure how to deal with – not that I should complain, as they’re definitely of the to-much-of-a-good-thing variety. My internship with MCWD is great, but it has evolved from inspecting construction sites to creating and upgrading a database in Access (with which I have a love/hate relationship). This worries me on two fronts. First, I’m not entirely sure that HHH will consider that kind of work to be appropriate for an Urban Planning internship, no matter how important it is for the district. Second, I’m pretty sure that I want to focus on rural planning, and there is a Center for Rural Design at UMN that, if I could land an internship there, would be the perfect compliment to that track. The problem is that maintaining this database for MCWD is a pretty significant, long-term commitment, because no-one there has any clue how to fix it if something goes wrong. I don’t have the time to be more or less on call for MCWD, working at an internship, and going to grad school full time.
Honestly, though, I shouldn’t bitch. The other first-year MURP students are beginning to make envious comments about the internship I already have while they’re looking around for theirs. It is possible that my new position as DB admin (heh. Now if only I knew a damned thing about SQL/db theory/programming/etc…) will come with a pay raise, which would be pretty nice right now. Finally, the CRD doesn’t even have open positions at the moment, so it isn’t as if I could just start up an internship there tomorrow if I so decided. I’m thinking the best plan is to keep in touch with them, let them know I’m definitely interested, and see if something develops. I should probably just avoid worrying about the situation until there actually is a decision to make.