Thursday, August 19, 2010

Career Musings

Recently, I have been looking for places to live once I graduate.
I have decided upon Boston for an immediate first time employment opportunity (among other obvious reasons).
So Boston has: A baseball team, a football team, a basketball team, MIT, Harvard, BU, a culinary school, an ocean, a metro, and Newton was ranked the third best place to live in the country. I also hear there is a rather large and dynamic institute/single's ward. Also, pea coats. And scarves. Men who actually wear scarves. On purpose. It would be like waltzing through a J. Crew catalog. Boston is also home to about 3 dental schools (Tufts, Harvard and Boston University) and no real hygiene schools. Hopefully that means job placement will be fairly easy and straightforward. Who wouldn't want to hire me? I mean, really? I'm awesome!!
But then there is the question: What do I do after Boston? I establish a repertoire of being the best hygienist ever, but I certainly cannot live on the East Coast forever! That's when I discovered The International Federation of Dental Hygienists were I could apply to work in a foreign land. Being limited in the number of languages I know, I narrowed it down to one country, specifically one region, and eventually a city: Geneva.
Geneva was ranked third best place to live in the world. WORLD. Geneva has world famous lakes, mountains and beauty. Plus the language is French, and it's a short train ride away from Paris and the Riviera. Also, it has CHEESE, and bread, and so many other delightful things they are hard to mention. Men also wear scarves in Switzerland. And I could go skiing there. In the Alps. One my goodness what sheer joy and delight! Of course there is the somewhat ginormous possibility that I wouldn't get accepted to the program... so I had to think of other places that might strike my fancy and I came up with:
San Diego.
San Diego was ranked sixth best place in 2006, but was notable absent from the 2010 list. San Diego has the best weather probably in the world. It also boasts a baseball team, and a football team, as well as an ocean. And this one can actually be entered. And surfed in. Home to La Jolla and UCSD, San Diego makes a striking choice. Unfortunately I hear finding a job there is nigh impossible. However, if I live in San Diego I could join a Yacht club. Ok, I probably couldn't but it's a nice thought. Julianne, Yacht Club member. I could carry a card in my wallet. Men do not wear scarves, probably because they don't need to. But they do wear boat shoes because chances are they have a sail boat. Furthermore, San Diego was my dream location when I was 8 years old and wrote an essay about my dream life (Marine biologist, living in San Diego).
But Is San Diego a little too commercial and possibly too crowded? So to round out my possible options of future abodes, I went ahead and threw in Santa Barbara. I don't even know why. Maybe it was the movie It's Complicated. Maybe it's just sheer obscurity. Who knows. Santa Barbara has no football team, there is no baseball team, and I'm guessing only the gay men wear scarves (which isn't a lot of help to me, but they might be nice to gaze upon). They have only a few universities, namely UCSB. But it's a small, quiet, and devastatingly beautiful town. Like my hometown, on the ocean. Additional perk? Very close to Ostrichland, USA. Yes, you read the correctly. Why wouldn't that be a selling point? In addition, they have a mission, and a cute downtown and beaches. Lovely beaches.
Those are all of my options for the coming years of my life. At least all the foreseeable ones. The only similarity they share is a body of water. At least I'm consistent in one thing.
But who knows, maybe I'll just end up going to culinary school after all?