1. Next year: I'm fairly set on taking at least one year off, so grad school is off my mind for this instant. In the interim, I've thought about working internationally but that might be more of an adjustment than I'd like. Four months in Botswana might have been adventure enough. I would also rather not be an intern/flunky/gopher at some prestigious resume-padding company. Unfortunately those jobs usually pay rent pretty well.
2. Grad school: After a year or two, I imagine myself going back to school in one of three potential fields-- sustainable design/urban planning, global sustainable development, or ecological economics. My newest idea is to skip straight to the whole PhD thing (which, indicative of my science background, I often mistakenly write pHD). The problem with grad school is that I've unfortunately picked an unpopular concentration and there aren't too many programs to choose from. Field science isn't my thing. I don't want to research how climate change affects eutrophication in estuarine habitats; I want to do something interdisciplinary that looks at how people can and do impact the environment. Doing my own research sounds like it could be kind of cool!
3. Which leads me to the very-short term: senior thesis. Eek! I've totally neglected that this summer and now it's crunch time. Here's my favorite idea: investigate how economic incentives affect consumption and conservation of resources. Theoretically, pre-paid electricity systems encourage more conservation that post-paid billing cycles. Same with pay-as-you-go trash disposal. But does it really?? The United States has so far pretty much ignored these options, but maybe I could look at case studies and evaluate the effectiveness of different payment schemes. I mean, if it turns out that people do conserve more when forced to pay ahead of time, think how we could use that conserve oil, water, energy, everything down to cell phone minutes if we so desired. Economics is pretty powerful stuff.
Ideas, anyone??? The worst part about getting older is that suddenly, the decisions you're dealing with have become so much bigger, so much more important. Is there a carrying capacity to the scale of decision-making? Like, when I'm fifty or seventy-five or whatever, will the difficulty of life decisions finally start leveling off?
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