Sunny Days

Last week classes began. I've returned to college to finish my master's degree in GIS. It's an online program. I wrote a blog entry about my "first day," but it was such an angry, negative post I decided not to publish it. I even surprised myself with my overreaction, my incredibly negative knee-jerk outburst. I'm still trying to make sense of it. But I want to go ahead and post an only slightly modified version because my blog is going to serve as my notebook when I start seriously working on my book. It'll be a good record of where I've been, what I've done, and my thoughts on things. I wrote this just days before my experience with the farrier.

Here is the (nearly) original post, which I called Dark Days:

I just logged in for the first time, read over the syllabus and introductions, and I already hate it. I hate it so much that I want to either run screaming from the room or collapse in a drooling heap and stare blankly into the void.

WTF?

Of my two courses, the class I hate the most is GIS Project Management. Even that combination of words puts me on the defensive. "Hate," in fact, is too soft a word but trying to find something to type that would appropriately convey the gravity of my emotion is futile. I had previously started my master's in Texas but it was interrupted (to my great relief) when I moved to Colorado for my current job. It's now painfully apparent that my interests have moved hopelessly beyond anything that further education in my current career field can offer.

Students have already started engaging in the forums. One chipper little overachiever has already posted all his plans for his big GIS management project, complete with acronyms, goals, scope, end users and data sources all glued together with an overabundance of words like "utilize" and "proactive" that makes me cringe like hearing nails on a chalkboard. I f'ing hate those two words. As Elizabeth would call them, "corporate tripe."

But I wrote my introduction just like everyone else did. The prof wanted the usual stuff: career background, future goals, and some personal hobby stuff for good measure. I had three sentences that summed up my career history and GIS aspirations, and then wrote a meaty paragraph about mountains, horses, food and a cabin in the woods.

It was all I could do to stay awake reading through the syllabus. I had to fight the sick, twisted feeling in my stomach as I started thinking about trying to force out a 20 plus page paper on the gloriously un-fascinating subject of the "interdependencies of the steps required for GIS implementation planning" in the form of the most despised (by me) of all writing, the technical report. I mean we're not just planning here, were dissecting the plan for the plan. Seriously, I start trembling thinking about late nights trying desperately to BS my way through something I absolutely could not care one iota less about. It's a black hole on my passion scale.

So what am I doing?

The other day I was at work and I read through a scientific report which I co-authored. I'm a co-author because I did all of the GIS work upon which the paper is based, but didn't actually write any of the material. It took me 4 hours to read 20 pages (which INCLUDED maps that I myself had made!) because I couldn't keep my eyes open. I wasn't even tired! I finished it, even found and marked numerous typos, and yet I can barely tell you what the paper was about. Something about solar resource and consumer buying habits and a bunch of really, really dusty statistics and technical banter that immediately sent my brain packing. The GIS part of this particular project was mildly interesting at the time I was doing it, but once my part was over I pretty
much dumped it from my memory.

Again I ask, what am I doing?

On top of this I feel guilt. I feel guilty because the great majority of the people I work with are much more "into" their jobs than I am. I'm glad they are, too. We need people like that working on the nation's energy crisis. I can do the work, and I do it five days a week (sometimes more) just like I'm supposed to. I've even gotten a lot of praise for the quality of my work. But no matter how hard I try, I'm not ever going to get the least bit excited about regression analysis, databases or the programming of anything. If anything, I'm getting less excited about them with each passing day. I can't even sit through meetings without getting glassy eyed. Hell I'm mentally checked-out before the meeting organizer even gets warmed up. I feel guilty because my heart's not in it. I'm just not interested. It makes me feel like I'm cheating my more enthusiastic co-workers and even the nation to some degree. I feel like a monkey in a zoo, staring through the bars and longing for the world beyond. I keep doing my tricks for peanuts but I'm not really there.

So, I'll ask again, WTF am I doing?

I think this GIS master's idea is kinda like a gay man going out with a woman hoping the experience will somehow make him straight. It makes no sense to anyone but the poor deluded soul who, out of desperation, is just trying to do what he has to in order to feel useful and accepted in society.

And that was as far as I got before I decided to sleep on it instead of doing anything rash like dropping out of the program on the first day. The next morning I felt better. I thought things over and logged back in, and calmly read through all the documentation for each class. They're totally doable if only I can put myself in the right frame of mind. But that's hard sometimes. For example, I was just reading through the lecture notes for my cartography class. Check this out:

Dent describes the cartographic process, the process by which you go from unmapped to map form, in three general steps:

1. Cartographic Thinking - visualization of data looking for patterns or relationships
2. Cartographic Generalization - selection, classification, simplification and symbolization of data
3. Cartographic Communication - making the maps including map design and structured symbolism

Only information that is potentially meaningful to the context should be included in the map. Realize the power of cartography.

Seriously? I paid $2,000 for this class? This is one of the things I really dislike about academia. They can make the painfully obvious seem like they're revealing the deepest secrets of the universe - in step form. I'd rather sit down and start making a map and learn by trial and error, or have an experienced cartographer show me the ropes, hands on, rather than read about the process step by step. I do this stuff every single day of my life, and I read almost a book a week, and yet I can't read a few pages on cartographic basics in a graduate level college course without drifting away.

Still, I'm much less hostile toward my classes today. I think the experience with the farrier and bucking hay has helped. They gave me hope that there could be something better out there, that even if I complete the master's in GIS I won't be, as they say, "educating myself into a corner." I desperately need the outlet of ranch work and the glimmer of hope from a tradesman to keep me sane. And if farriery or the greater plan of my self-sufficient homestead never comes to fruition, then I'll always have a solid formal education to fall back on. That's what I keep telling myself.