My research assistant position with the university has been cancelled, so I have the choice to stay on and pay for things myself next semester. Ugh... how bad do I need a masters degree? And the timing was placed with surgical accuracy; I bought the ticket to India and was relying on paychecks leading up to Christmas to finish paying for it. I guess I had it coming to me for taking a risk like that...

What does this all mean?

There were two important external decision points to help direct me. First, there was a ~3-month position open with the X PRIZE Foundation in California; this would have been some cash and some direction for a little while, but didn't pan out. Second, there is the potential of a tuition waiver from the aerospace engineering department at the university, but I don't expect that to happen. This leaves the decision up to me: stay or go. Stay means live on a student loan and some job that I don't have yet or haven't even searched for (the timing of this India trip went from good to bad in a hurry). Go means... well, I'm not really sure what it means, packing up the car and heading off somewhere to find a job that can pay bills temporarily until I can find something that I don't hate (I've given up being so picky as to hope for finding something that I like).

So. I've been faced with a situation that might rouse me out of my personal doldrums and into action. Happy 25th birthday, Kirk. Now grow up and do something.

(Confession: it sounds more tempthing now than ever to drop out of everything and create a new situation somewhere... if only I hadn't spent all the cash on this trip! Well, I am sitting directly in front of several hundred dollars worth of engineering textbooks; maybe this is where I start.)