St. Louis Update

Life has been quite busy here in St. Louis since I finished teaching. Thankfully, I haven’t been as busy as I was during the summer course, meaning that I haven’t been getting sleep deprived. Still, there is a lot to do and a lot to think about. I am planning on finishing my dissertation this semester and defending it in mid-December. So far, I have written a little bit of chapter 2, and a lot of chapter 3. In addition to working on my dissertation, I am helping a student who joined our research group last year become familiar with the research that I have been doing and with the computer code that I have written. I am also a half-time teaching assistant (TA) this semester because my adviser does not have enough money to fully support two students.

Then there is the question of what to do after I graduate. I haven’t been very active in looking for jobs. The two main things I am considering at the moment are teaching at a university and doing a post-doctoral position. However, I am not very excited about either prospect, and I am not sure why, but I think the reason has something to do with academia. Just about a minute ago, as I was writing, it occurred to me that perhaps one reason I hesitate to go into academia is that college and graduate school have seemed like places of isolation for me. This feeling of isolation could be due to other things unrelated to academia (such as being a third culture kid), but for some reason I associate academia with some measure of isolation. When I say “isolation”, I think I mean isolation from people and what is happening “out there.” I’ll leave things vague for now, since I myself am not sure what I mean. Interestingly, when I think about teaching high-school or lower grades, I don’t have the same apprehension that I have when I think about going into academia.

On another note, a random storm swept through a small part of St. Louis about a week ago. At around 4PM last Saturday (the 3rd), I heard the storm coming, so I turned on the television to the weather channel; but the meteorologists were predicting no rain until 9PM. However, on the radar a small storm system was visible. About 5 minutes later the rain came, along with some strong wind. I was looking out of one of our windows when suddenly a burst of very strong wind came through. I think I heard a whistling sound, so I moved to the center of the apartment and then the lights flashed on and off.

After the wind had passed I heard a funny noise coming from the air conditioning vents. I looked outside in the back and a 10 in diameter log from the top of a tree had fallen on our air conditioning unit and smashed in one of its corners. There were a few other large branches on the ground. So, I turned the air conditioning off and then called our landlady. This past week we were without air conditioning, but thankfully the high temperatures last week were in the 70’s. Now the unit is fixed.

I never heard any reports of a tornado. I think there were just strong winds. In fact, I heard that in a parking lot not too far from where I live many windshields were shattered. Fortunately, I don’t think there were any injuries or casualties, although some people were without power for several hours.

Well, that is it for now. Please continue to pray that God would give me direction for the future, and that I would be more proactive in finding out what his will is.