Planning for the Future

I'm taking a bit of a break from studying today, well sort of, I'm still looking at Geology books and going through my rock samples.

I've also been going through the subjects I have to do, trying to decide which ones to do next year. This isn't as easy as just making sure I have the necessary prerequisites.

As I'm an external student, I have to do residential classes for some subjects. That means a trip down to Armidale each semester. As I have a full time job, I only have a limited amount of leave each year (my employer won't pay for me to study or give me study leave as it's not relevant to my job). So I have to try and work it so that, if I have more than one residential in a semester, I don't have too much of a break in between, otherwise I'm wasting my leave sightseeing around Armidale.

Not that sightseeing around Armidale is a bad thing.

The minimum number of subjects I can do over the course of the degree is about twenty four, that gives me the 144 credit points I need to graduate. Because I'm majoring in Geology and Aquatic Ecology I need to do a total of thirty three subjects to cover everything. That means, if I do three subjects each semester I have another four years to go (I will have done eight subjects by the end of this year). If I do two subjects per semester, that's six years till graduation.

Most of the subjects I'll be doing next year are Geology subjects and one of them has neither a res school or a final exam, which I'm pleased about. I have to do Maths and Statistics at some time and they don't have res schools, just lots of assignments and not really good teachers (at least not as good as the other subjects). I'd like to do Botany in the first semester, but unfortunately its res school is at the beginning of the semester instead of the middle, which would mean an extra trip down. I could do Chemistry, but that overlaps with one of the Geology subjects.

Exams and assignments are easy, it's picking the subjects that's the hard bit when you do a degree, especially when you're working full time.

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A couple of months ago a friend of ours was visiting. He has a commercial pilot's licence, which means he can fly small aircraft for money. He mentioned how poorly paid some airline pilots are and I commented that bus drivers can earn more than that. It just so happened that Brisbane Transport were advertising for casual drivers at the time and we still had the paper with the advertisement.

Anyway, our friend said that was something he'd always wanted to do. Well one thing lead to another and he passed his driving test during the week. He still has some other training to do, very much like Jimmy's training, but so far he's loving it.

He said I should try it as well and Donna agreed with him.

Now I'm not totally averse to the idea, in fact I'd love to do that instead of what I'm doing at the moment. Working as a casual would allow me the time off for studies and other holidays. Four years of driving buses until I get my degree would be great.

So why don't you do it? I hear you ask.

Because driving buses would mean I'd be earning about two thirds of what I'm getting now and we can't afford that. I've been in dire financial straits before when a restaurant I was part owner of went bust. I don't want to be struggling to make ends meet (I nearly wrote meat then) for the next four years.

Of course, if my employer were to make me redundant, like a lot of the techs in the company, I'd be straight down the bus depot before my manager finished saying, "Steve, we've got to let you go." Actually, that's not completely true, I'd wait around to hear the rest of what he had to say, in case he was just sacking me. Then I'd be straight down the depot.

The other option, and this is quite an attractive one too, is to get a job in the mines driving those big tip trucks. I'd be on double what I'm earning now, then Donna wouldn't have to work.

Gargoyle's planning a career change from the police force to the mining industry. I'd love to hear what he has planned.