Saturday before the storm

So here is the deal. I am about to embark on a month of hell. I have one assignment to finish and one project worth almost half my course credit. There is little time in my life to deal with this. I have a full time job. I need some time to relax. I also need to get this course credit. I look forward to the summer, but yet I cannot look forward NOW or I will have problems this month.

I am spending entirely too much time on the internet lately, wondering and pondering at my future. I really wish I'd got a few coop terms under my belt in hardware. Without hardware experience an electrical engineering degree is like a napkin -- both useful for picking up spills and cleaning one's fingers. Hello, I'm approaching 30 and that is old in elec eng land. On the positive side I've now got almost 5 years of experience in optical systems. If that market ever turns, look out, I'm there. Still, I'm not sure that the effort was necessarily worth it. I could have enjoyed so many of my week-ends in my 20s better if I'd made that my priority. Instead I killed myself trying to single handedly save our company. Martyr complex. Gotta lose that.

Some days I wish I was 10 again. Not everything was peachy, but at least you could spend your time playing instead of stressing. If I have any advice to teenagers out there, it's to start thinking about career stuff early on. There is much you can do, say one day a week-end, to make your transition to college/uni much nicer. Say, you're interested in engineering. Then spend time building models and playing with stuff. When you get to university you will be very busy learning ODEs, PDEs, vector calculus and other maths that will leave your head spinning. I'm only 5 years out of undergrad, and I can't really remember much of it. I remember the stress, that's for sure. But the maths.... I could probably relearn.

Time to go out...