Reflections

I like science. I like writing. I like talking about things - with various levels of seriousness - and I don't like thinking about how I'm going to apply all these things I talk about later in life. I knew all that even before I started doing this blog. I just got more of a chance to talk about it, and process some things about what I like about each.

• While I am interested in science and engineering, I'm still in the process of narrowing down exactly what I want to do in those fields.Which is what school is for, really - take classes, see what fits you. Not that the work you do in class necessarily is like the work you'll have to do on the job; I don't particularly like math, for example, but I am good at it, and in the right environment it might make an okay job.
• I love writing, and reading, and stories in general, but I don't even know where I'd start with a career that has something to do with that. I mean, it wouldn't even have to be directly related to that, not quite - my post on spoilers was in part musing on a career in, say, movie promotion. 
• Then again, I've heard it said that "your dream career might not exist yet". Maybe one day they'll be a need in society for something that applies/involves science, in a fun problem-solving way I wouldn't mind doing all day, with stories and writing involved too. Maybe it even exists already - I just haven't found it yet. Maybe it's just a matter of whose project you're working for. Or maybe there isn't, and I'll just find something close enough.

why not?...oh.

I kind of want to just choose some completely unexpected career. Like opening a bakery. I mean, I can't really bake (unless you count Betty Crocker, or recipies from the first page of Google search) but I could learn, right? Learn a bunch of recipes, maybe figure out how they work - what tastes good in what, what does what to the texture, why the hell red velvet cake has vinegar in it, etc. Besides, I can just hire some bakers to bake for me, and myself just manage the business. I don't know if I'd be good at managing a business. I'd probably be too scared to make any real bold business moves, and end up losing a lot of money. I think I might be pretty good at creating the concept for the bakery, though. It could be one of those theme bakeries. Kind of like Psycho Donuts without the donuts. Or the psycho. Well, I'd probably still have donuts in there somewhere, but instead of psychos I'd have something different. Like rollercoasters. Yup, I could have a rollercoaster themed bakery. And different stuff could be different rides, and the staff could scream when they had your order - no, they shouldn't. I wonder if a themed bakery like that would count as a creative and daring business move.

The moral here is I should never run a bakery.

I don't even know anymore

You know what would be a great job? A critic. Like a book critic or a movie critic or a TV show critic, just sit around and be surrounded by fiction all day and then look in-depth and talk about it. And then get paid for it.

That would be a great job for me - I mean, seeing as that's what I do with pretty much everything I read or watch anyway. It's kind of a problem , actually. I can't just like or dislike something, I need to figure out WHY, what parts, what I'd rather be different. Even if I love a book or movie, I usually find flaws. I really am interested in writing , and understanding how stories work, so I do know about what makes something good, how to analyze it. (And I'd love to learn more.) I know that writing isn't really practical except on the side, but this kind of job would let me involve elements of it in slightly different ways: over-analyze it all and then talk about it. Then people would actually listen to me for it, and use my judgement to use their own, and that would be really cool.

Continuing Speculations

I chose to do my career project on Software Engineering, based on my last blog post. I'm still not a hundred percent sure about it, but it does seem like an attractive option so far. The salary is good, various articles make it sound like there's a fairly good job market and it's only increasing, and all those logistic things don't seem to be much of an issue.

There's a couple more things I've been thinking about so far, though. A few people have mentioned that software engineering would be too much of a "cubicle job", since you just sit a computer and code all day. Now, I don't really have a problem with the actual coding part - as I discussed previously, I'm good at it and it's a fun sort of puzzle - but I don't know how long I'd be satisfied with not doing anything else, just sitting there. I don't know if I'd feel like I'd be living life to the fullest, as cliche as that sounds.

I've also been considering various other types of engineering, ones that might involve similar problem-solving strategies. A friend of mine is considering chemical engineering, and aerospace sounds pretty cool too. These would all be a lot more...active careers than software engineering, but they're still not quite the same. I don't think I'd enjoy being a mechanical engineer, though. The possibilities are a bit too infinite, if that makes any sense.

Another Option

A possible career choice I've been thinking of lately would be software engineering, or programming. I'm currently taking a CompSci class here at school and I'm doing pretty well in the class, and the work is...well, not exactly fun, but it makes you think and challenges you without giving you a headache. It's like its own kind of puzzle, figuring out how to do things and putting various techniques together until they work. I'd compare it to math, which I'm also pretty good at (but it does give me a headache, so I'd really rather not do it all day). Even though I know the stuff I'd be doing on the job would be a lot more complex than the basic stuff we're doing as we learn in class, I don't think it would be too bad. Programming's a useful skill to have, too. You can use the programs you design yourself if you want to - I still use a quadratic roots program we wrote a while ago on my other homework, and more complex programs would be useful in a lot of other situations if the needs of the client happen to match something you could need yourself. Furthermore, it would be a much more stable career than the other "ideal" careers I've mentioned on here before (writing, scientific research, etc). I'd like to balance stability and a fairly solid income with an actual task I don't hate too much, and I'd be okay with this career choice. (I also want to find out more about other career areas that require a similar form of thinking, see if maybe one of those fits me better.)

It would still have downsides, though. Debugging is really annoying, for one thing, because it's hard to find mistakes in your solutions without "running" the code in your head (which definitely isn't fun, because that's what the computer is for). It's easier to come up with an answer than to find out what's wrong with an answer. And when problems get harder it's easier to make mistakes. Another downside would be getting tired of coding eventually at some point in the day, just because your mind's been working in the same way for so long, but that's a risk any kind of job comes with.

Overall, that's definitely a career I'll keep in mind. As I gain experience coding in class, I might realize I actually hate it and never want to do it again. You never know.

Spoilers!

(*cough* character impressions don't work well in text form.)

Most people would agree they prefer to watch movies, read books, etc. without getting spoiled beforehand. Certain people, in fact, clap their hands over their ears and run away the second they hear people discussing something they haven't seen yet. I would say I agree - the suspense is much more entertaining when you don't know what exactly is going to happen. Emotional moments have much greater impact when you haven't seen the scene out of the proper context before. Problems are more interesting to watch the characters solve when you don't know the answer going in. And of course, plot twists are nowhere near as fun when you've been awaiting the twist the entire movie. So for this blog entry, I decided to look at some reasons I've heard or thought of why spoilers might not be a bad thing - at least in some cases. Because why not.

• "It's fun to see the little clues leading up to the big revelation!" I kind of agree with this one. A lot of authors leave subtle foreshadowing hints that you might not catch (or see in the same way) if you don't know about them beforehand. And if you really like that aspect of fiction, go for it! Spoil yourself rotten. I personally prefer to leave this part to the re-read or re-watch, so I get to experience the same work twice two ways.
• "It gets you excited about the show!" Okay, I might not argue here. The plot twists can make the story more intriguing, before you start. And you need some information about the show to get anyone interested in the first place, and some of that information might have been more fun if it was completely unexpected. If you go in completely blind, you'll just be skeptical the entire time because you have no reason to believe you'd like it. But still, if I can get interested in something with minimum spoilers, I'd prefer that.
• "Oh, come on, everybody knows that!" DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER. Yeah, there's not really much to be lost if one solitary person doesn't inform you - a bunch more probably will.
• "It's fun to spoil stuff for people and then see how they react!" I'll admit it, I've been guilty of this on occasion. Doesn't change that it's still pretty dickish. What's more fun, though, is to give them fake spoilers. Same reaction, less cost for them! :D

Excuses, Excuses

Some of you might know about National Novel Writing Month, a month-long writing event (well, yeah) during which participants attempt to write every day to reach a word goal of 50,000 words.  Well, this year I decided to participate for the first time and...yeah. Not going so great. I'm hopelessly behind, and the weekends I'd planned to use to catch up I spent doing pretty much nothing.

See, me and writing have a complicated relationship. Sometimes I'll get super-inspired and just write for an hour until I get it done, when I really love the idea and I have free time. Slightly more often I'll get inspired, start writing a bit, then leave the piece alone for a week or so and then finish, revise, etc. Or I'll just randomly start writing stuff and let myself be inspired as I write and then edit for coherency later. I should probably mention these all generally only work for short stories.

What happens with anything more major (incuding novels) is that I start out with an interesting but vague idea, which then sits in my brain where I'm constantly plotting, characterizing, adding details, perfecting it before it's even written. And then when I sit down to write, it's hard to get excited about more than just a couple parts. Maybe I'm excited about the story as a whole, but getting to the interesting parts ends up feeling like slogging through scenes. And that's not fun.

The story I chose to finally (attempt) to get on paper for NaNoWriMo was one I've had rolling around in my mind for...about two years now? It's changed a lot since its initial (extremely vague) conception. And then I cannibalized interesting elements from stories that were just not working at all. I'd say the story in its current general form, with the right feel, has only been around for five or so months. But that's beside the point. In all that time, I never felt like I knew enough of the story to start writing it down, because some piece of the plot, or of a setting element, or a character, was always missing. I got stuck in a long string of "I should figure this out first"s. And the thing is, I really don't know how I would write without having any clue what to write.

So when I finally ended up with a fairly coherent outline, I felt if I was ever going to write it down, this was the moment - I knew everything I had to write, so the actual writing should be easy. Nope. In all that time figuring out everything about the story, I lost passion for it. Right now, I'm much more interested in another idea of mine - but with that one, I know hardly anything except one character. They'll be so much fun to write about if I ever figure out what happens to them in the story - but by the time I do figure that out, I won't care as much and I'll move on to something else. It's a vicious cycle, and in the end, it ends up with me getting hooked on brain crack.