What am I doing in Tech Comm?

School starts on August 23rd, and I’ve signed up for a core class in my chosen field and an elective in the marketing MBA concentration that could also be a core class if I try to get into the new PhD program in digital rhetoric. When I registered and realized there were no classes I could take this summer, I told myself I’d figure out which one I was going to keep, because I know physically I cannot keep up with both classes. Especially not since my surgery. I’m dreading going to my first class and trying to heave up the stairs in Nelson Hall. Ouch.

I’ve had all summer to think this over, and I haven’t done a damned bit of thinking about it. Recently I heard from John Martin that he is going into the PhD program, and when he told me that, I could hear an audible click in the universe, as if something was going right in the world. I think John belongs there. I think John would be a fabulous professor. He has just the right combination of broad and deep interests, excellent communication skills, and easy-going personality to be a really effective teacher. But me, I keep dancing around this issue. I keep telling myself I need to get into marketing and get out of this program, yet I keep hanging on; I backed out of becoming an STC officer and haven’t paid my dues for next year, yet here I am, still enrolled. I’ve got to get on the stick and make a decision. It’s not like I can keep racking up student loans forever.

I’m very close to being finished with my M.S., but I want this degree to make a difference to me professionally, and I don’t want to be a technical writer. So I think my options are shaping up as: 1) go on to get the PhD. because there is something I want to do with such a degree and I have figured out what it is (a theoretical situation at present); 2) figure out how this degree fits in with the career I’m making for myself in online content management; or 3) throw my lot in with marketing and go for the MBA, either by getting both degrees or abandoning the M.S. altogether, which is probably silly, but I am four courses away from it.

I’m in a weird and wonderful position, I suppose, because as my professional education has progressed, my career has become very meaningful to me personally, and that is a gift. Work is back to being a joy for me. The only thing that is really missing is working for Bill Laughlin, the perfect boss. Which is no slight on my current boss, who is also great to work for and on a daily basis makes marketing fun, challenging and a platform where we can succeed. I truly enjoy my career and I’m really excited about the opportunities in online content, online marketing, and the online space in general. I feel like I belong here. I just don’t know if I belong in ETC. But behind all of this mental uneasiness may just be the fact that I just plain don’t fit anywhere. I’m just going to be a square peg for damned ever. Oh well. At least my husband and my cats love me square.