transition.

this year's transition from school to work has been a lot of change for me. after 16 years of education it was a shock to move on to something else.

*graduation - when the change begins.

i forget that i don't get to just take the summer off. i keep thinking about upcoming vacations and days at the lake in the sun, but then i remember i will have to squeeze all that fun into the weekends, because i will be inside - pale and air conditioned - all summer.

my job is the same all day every day - i don't switch at the semester. this is probably the biggest shock. i am used to spreading myself over a lot of different projects that were all required of me and although my job has a bit of variety i have found that i have to come up with projects on my own. its nice to be able to have the time and ability to put work into more things that i actually want to do, but it has been surprisingly difficult to come up with things that i really want to spend time on.

when i leave work at the end of the day i am done - no homework. this is probably the best one. it kinda goes along with the previous one... when david is doing his homework i always ask if i can help (the answer is usually no since i dont know about electromagnetism and nanotubes), but i kinda miss the assignments. wait. no. i really dont miss that.

people actually care if you show up. in college if i felt like going to get ice cream rather than go to class there wasn't anyone there to stop me, but at work people would know if i skipped. not that i skipped classes in college (seriously, i skipped like 5 classes in the whole 4 years i was there), but knowing it was an option was nice.