Dreams, Cats, and Uncertainty...Just call me Schrodinger

I had a very weird dream last night, and it goes something like this...

I was living in NYC, going to school, hanging out with friends, going clubbing, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then one night I take my cat, and decide to have him rob a museum for me. My wack-job reasoning for this is that he can see in the dark, thus he can see the laser beams that are used for security. Furthermore, he's small enough that he can easily slip past said laser beams and get to the target. That target happens to be the Hope Diamond. I have also equipped my cat with a little baggie into which he will place this massive-assed diamond for safe transport back to me.

So I take my little kitty to the museum, find him a window to crawl through, and send him on his merry way to get me a little "bling" (yes, I said bling, try not to die laughing). In he goes and I watch him make his way across the floor. He gets right up to the pedastal where the diamond is sitting and hops up onto the ledge to reach it. So far everything is going according to plan. He places the diamond in the little baggie and proceeds to come back to me. It's at this point that I realize I haven't accounted for the extra height of the baggie (worn like a backpack) and thus he sets off the alarm by walking through a laser.

Fast forward to me being thrown into prison for attempting (and almost succeeding) to steal the Hope Diamond. Fast forward several more years, my parole hearing is passed, I'm released back into the world, only to find that I have absolutely no chance of ever working again because I'm an ex-convict.

The dream ends when, several years later, I find myself lying in a gutter, unable to feed myself since I have no money (or prospects, or a future for that matter), and the despair hits an all-time low. So I grab a shard of glass from a broken beer bottle, and before I have a chance to actually do what I intend to do, I wake up.

I'm not exactly sure what this all means, short of I have a crazy imagination where cats can steal diamonds, and I'm a genius for thinking it might actually work (ok, maybe genius is too strong a word; how about mastermind?). Anyways, the message I got from all of this has something to do with my post-University future. What do I do after I graduate? What kind of job do I want? And most importantly, how am I going to make a career out of what I have so far?

I was always taught that University was really just an extension of high school. And it is. Look at your friends and tell me how many of them came to University because a) their friends were also going, b) it was the "cool" thing to do, c) they didn't want to face the "real-world", or d) they didn't know what else to do. University is so much like high school sometimes I wish we were actually in high school so that it might all be justified somehow.

As most of us step out from the sheltering walls of the University campus, we face a daunting world. Taxes, mortgages, careers, families, suburbia and minivans. It's scary. We're finally at that point to which our parents have worked so hard to get us. But what have we gained from our time here? Memorizing books, papers, and facts. All useless non-sense when it comes to real life. How do you use knowledge of the function of a gene called EGF-Beta to survive? Unless you intend to become a doctor (in which case you've known this is the path you would be taking for a long time already), such knowledge will do you no good. So why then do we attend University? Because we'll get a little piece of paper that reads, "So-and-so has graduated with a Bachelor's in something. Signed, Mrs-so-and-so principal, yadda yadda yadda," right? Wonderful. Fan-fucking-tastic.

So, to bring this back to my original point, I look at what I have ahead of me. This summer I'm graduating with a Bachelors of Science in Biology. I intend to return to Calgary, take a certification course in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and then I'll be going to China to teach for an undetermined amount of time. Following this, I'll be looking at applying to get my Masters in Education in Alberta, all the while keeping up with the latest in Science and Biology so that I can in fact teach these subjects. That, my friends is the end goal. To become a teacher. And not just any teacher, but a professor at a University. The reason for this being that I want students who want to learn. I want students who want to be in that classroom and who want to advance their understanding of the material I am going to present. How ironic, eh? I will someday be the professor urging students forward, while they struggle with the uncertainty of their futures. As a great man (robot/cyborg/whatever) once said, "The circle is now complete. When I met you I was but the Learner. Now, I am the Master." (Bonus point to whoever can name the speaker and movie).

I know that for most of you, graduation is a frightening thing. But it must be faced. How else can we grow if we don't face the dragons that block our paths (pardon the cliche)? Just remember to breathe, and to take things one step at a time. Hey, if a dream about a cat and the Hope diamond helped to renew my faith that I will find my way, then anything is possible. Cheers.