BEDiD 5: The Future

I must apologise to any musicians out there for my post yesterday. I had no idea that Spotify was such a shit deal! I had my views put right by Dave from Blue Skies and my guilt about not being able to afford real music is freshly restored. In retrospect, everyone buy physical or from iTunes, Dave linked a pretty chart in the comments yesterday that explains the best way to benefit the artist quite well.

This blog is as much for me as it is for you, it's a nice place to put down my thoughts and look back at them later (I have been doing it with a couple of my blog posts from years back, it's interesting to see how terrible my spelling is without Chrome auto-checking). I have been thinking a lot about my future recently, what I am going to do after I graduate in summer 2012, and what the hell I am going to do with my life.

I, like a lot of people, change my mind a lot about what I want to do. Things like teaching and politics interest me, but they are things I might want to go into when I want to settle down in one place, I'm not ready to do that yet. In terms of teaching, I know I can do that and that I am good at it, it is always something I can fall back on. I also went through a phase of wanting to go into some kind of journalism, but I have had quite a few brushes with the industry that I haven't liked. I don't like the mentality of the industry and, no offence if you work in that sector, but I think journalism has a lot of less than nice people in it. I don't want to have to work with or for dickheads for the rest of my life. I don't take bullshit very well (excuse my French). YouTube and the online thing is always something fun that I would want to do, but let's be honest, I'm no Buck or Charlie. I'm not going to be able to make a living out of it. I do know it is a hobby I will always want to dip in and out of though.

At the moment I am weighing up two sectors that I might want to go into. Both require me to go on to further my education.

I have been toying with maybe doing a law conversion course and doing that. I think I would be good at it and it is something that will challenge me and make me feel like I am making a difference. I would want to go into something like human rights, international treaty or environmental law. All are incredibly competitive and the kind of thing most people who start out in law want to do. It is also a lot more study before I go into the real world. Between five to seven years before I head out into the real world. Downsides; I don't know if I am comfortable spending so much more time in school and spending that much more money on my education. I also worry about the fact the profession involves an awful lot of reading. I'm not severely dyslexic (I can at least spell it) but I do struggle reading and summarising long texts, especially ones with lots of terminology. I'm not sure if I would be up to the amount of intensive reading that the studying and profession would require.

Number two on the table is doing a masters in something to do with Environmental Management. This is something that seems really suited to me; very hands on, makes me feel like I'm doing something worth while, I'm interested in the field etc. The problem is that my degree program at the moment is Chinese and Spanish, not really very related to a science based course. I could have trouble finding a course that will take me. They usually want something like biological sciences or geography for a course like that.

For both these options I would want to come back to Asia to study. If I can't get a scholarship to go anywhere it would involve getting out a pretty hefty loan but I am pretty sure that my immediate future is going to be here. I am not ready to settle down in the UK just yet. I have been looking at both University of Hong Kong and Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as the National University of Singapore.

If anyone could give me any pointers then feel free. The problem with both law and environment is that I don't know many people in those fields. I really need some advice from people who have been there and done it rather than just reading course bios and blogs about them. Also, any advice about good Universities in Asia would be greatly appreciated.

On a lighter note...

The Great Book of Chinglish, Entry 1.

People mountain people sea.

Chinese Root/ 人山人海 Rénshānrénhǎi

Meaning/ Literally "people mountain people sea", meaning "crowded", "packed"

Use/
Mary: Did you register for the Environmental Management course at NUS yesterday? There were loads of people, right?

Da pi: Yeah, it was really people mountain people sea!

NOTE: This is another one that Chinese like to use. Some Chinese people are so determined to prove that Chinese is also influencing English language, some teachers tell their students that not only "long time no see" comes from a translation of Chinese （好久不见 when translated literally does mean that, pretty sure it's just coincidence though) but that English speakers also go around saying that places are "people mountain people sea." We obviously don't, but it's fun to say.