Moving Forward?

Not much knitting news in this one. I've caught up with MS3 and that's all I've really knit on in the past week.

In other, more progressive if maybe less exciting for others, news, I have registered to take the GRE. I have a college GPA of slightly under 3.00 because I slacked a little too much sophomore and junior years so I have to take it for pretty much any grad school program I would like to apply to. I really do want to start taking classes in something and so this is the first step towards that. I'm not quite sure what I want to do yet but my two main thoughts right now are either secondary science education (mainly chemistry) or a Master's in library and information science.

While I think the need for good science teachers is huge (my sister's physics teacher was horrible at interacting with students), I'm still trying to decide if it's something I could really commit to. In a way, I think I'm being selfish about it. I think I could do it. I've worked with middle and high schoolers a lot in the past few years and have enjoyed it. On the other hand, it wouldn't pay that much. I'm probably making about teacher's wages right now. I would only need the GRE for this if I decided to enter an initial licensure graduate program where you go to school and then student teach for about a year and then you're licensed. In order to complete your education Master's you only have to come back for three months (generally over the summer) to finish it off.

If i pursued the MLIS I would probably use it to research for companies that produce chemicals, most likely pharmaceuticals or to work in a science library at a university. I would still find this fulfilling, albeit in a very different way than teaching, and the financial benefits have the potential to be much greater. I love research so much and getting to explore different scientific advances for other people seems really interesting to me.

I do know that whichever program I would pursue I would continue to work while going to school, at least at first. Between that and the fact that I could defer my student loans while I was in school, I'm pretty confident that I could be OK financially while I went to school. The problem would just be the massive amount of debt I could be under once I left school. That's why, as much as I'd like it not to be, the financial aspect does have to be a factor in my decision.