First, on the job front. I talked to the soon-to-be PI (principal investigator) of our lab about possibilities for after I graduate. The answer wasn't good. She told me that there were no job openings for me or my fellow student Ashley. I smiled and politely asked her to let me know if anything opens up, and she smiled and agreed. I didn't realize how much I was relying on that possibility until I lost it. Now I feel like I'm in big trouble. I'm 9 weeks away from graduating college with no job. Okay, saying it like that makes me sound crazy. I do realize I have 9 whole weeks to find a job. But I went from having a back-up job and one interview to nothing! And the worst part is that my current job is one giant question mark. The whole lab is moving by June 30. At CU, where the lab is moving to, there are no job openings. So my question is, can I keep my current job? My very-low-paid-but-still-interesting-and-enjoyable-hourly-with-no- benefits job? Or is that going to disappear in June as well? Here's my other question: if a job does open up, am I going to be competing with Ashley for that job? I love Ashley, we get along great, but I don't want to compete with her for a job. I've been working in that lab for 15 months and she's been there less than 6 months. She's content with an hourly job, but I need something with salary and benefits! It's all so confusing. And scary. Here's another question: if I can keep my hourly job, do I want to? Would it be better to work as a teller at Wells Fargo for $25k with benefits or better to work in my field for much less?
On to graduate school. In the past month or so, I've felt very pessimistic about my realistic chances of getting accepted to my first choice school. That's CU, about 15 minutes from our house (also where the lab is moving to). The average GPA of an accepted student last year was 3.76. Mine right now: 3.41. Not even close. Midwestern, the school in Glendale that I visited, has an average of 3.5. Much more attainable. And I really liked that school. The only problem is they place an emphasis on direct patient care experience, and so far I have NONE. I'm working on it, but it's surprisingly difficult. Or maybe not, if you're the patient that I want to gain experience on ;-) So I spent tonight looking at some other options. Here's what I came up with. A.T. Still University (or Arizona School of Health Sciences) in Mesa seems much easier to get into. Their average accepted student had a GPA of 3.3. The problem with that one is that I'm missing one prerequisite class, but I'm pretty sure I could take that next spring if I needed to. Also, it doesn't have nearly as good a reputation as the other schools I've looked at. And it's in Mesa. My fourth option is University of Utah. Once again, my GPA is more in line with their average accepted (3.4). But they place an extreme emphasis on patient care. The average student had 5,000 hours (1,000 hours = 1 year). And they prefer paid experience over volunteer. They did have 13 accepted students (out of 40) with less than 3000 hours. So I guess I have a little bit of hope. Oh, one BIG problem with that school: tuition. For in-state it's a whopping $53,000 a year. That's over $20,000 than CU is for all three years. And per year, it's over $20,000 more than every other school I'm looking at. But, that's for Utah residents. I am not a Utah resident. Which means my tuition would be.... $78,000 a year! Does anybody actually pay that?! Unbelievable. There's a small chance I could end up paying in-state tuition through WICHE (a program that gives residents of all western states in-state status), but I would have to apply and it's this whole government bureaucracy. I'm not exactly sure what the requirements are.
So, right now I am seriously stressed out about all this. Worst case scenario: I graduate college with no job and don't get into any graduate school. Best case scenario: I get an awesome job making $30K + benefits and get accepted into CU for June 2012. Right now the worst-case scenario feels so much more likely. I am going to try really hard to think positive thoughts and get the best grades I can this quarter to boost my GPA. And study the GRE really hard because that can't hurt either!
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