Since I graduated in December, and really for the couple months before that, I've been looking for jobs to occupy myself for at least the next 20 months. 20 months from December being the earliest I could find myself back in grad school.
After 0 job offers before I graduated, I was starting to get worried. I was still trying hard for a ski industry job, and in January I was offered the opportunity to teach skiing at Loveland Ski area in Colorado, but there was a catch. I would have to move out there in 5 days (meaning a CO to WI to CO drive and packing) and find housing, all for the chance to maybe work full time for $9.50 an hour. I made that much in 2004 to sort boxes of rocks in a warehouse in Oklahoma. I said no.
At this point I gave up on being ski bum, at least this winter. I instead focused on applying for SCA conservation internships, which are generally offered through the National Park Service, BLM, or Forest Service. It took a couple months, but last week I finally accepted an offer to work as a Visitor Services intern at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. I think I will spend most of my time in the visitor center answering questions, selling books, and doing other miscellaneous tasks. The other 40% of my job is what I'm really looking forward to. When I'm not in the visitor center I'll either be hiking trails or working on some geology related projects, though I don't know what they are yet.
The tricky part about this position is that it's in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet is I think 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store/town is 60 miles away. I think the park employee housing I'll be living in has a rec room with satellite TV, and I think there's cell phone reception, so I'll have connections to the rest of the world. Still, this is going to last longer than the other times I've been removed from internet/TV/cell phone on the Stretch and in Dominica, and unlike those times, I don't know how many other people close to my age, if any, I'll be able to hang out with. It's going to be interesting, and there are going to be bad/lonely days, but I'm excited. I'll be there from March 18th to June 6th.
My luck continued last week when I offered another position for the summer through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program. From June 22nd to September 11th I'll be working (and getting paid!, the SCA position is volunteer; I only get a small stipend for food) as a Geothermal Resource Assistant in Yellowstone National Park (come visit!). I am really looking forward to doing this.
After that, I plan to spend the rest of September and October looking for ski instructing jobs, improving my GRE score, and figuring out which grad schools I want to apply to for fall 2010. After a couple months of uncertainty, it's nice to know what I'm doing for the next few months.
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