Master of Chaotica

Ugh, my life is such chaos right now. There are quite a few reasons for this, but essentially, I have absolutely no clue what the hell I want to do with my life. Given my recent lab frustrations, I've been wondering if science is really what I want to do with the rest of my life. On the one hand, I really like science in and of itself, but I HATE my experience working in a lab. Then, I've been having all kinds of success with history recently, and I absolutely love history.



My current idea right now is that I'm just going to do Peace Corps without the affiliated master's degree, because it's something that I really want to do.



Then, I think I'll get master's in both history and a science, at which point I should know which path I want to follow. Whichever one I choose, I'll get the Ph.D. in.

Making life decisions is so frustrating.


Speaking of frustrating, I did want to wonder why people are still talking about the elections. My God, we just ended two years of non-stop campaigning, and people STILL want to talk about the voting? I mean, this morning, I heard on the radio someone putting forth ideas for who should run against Obama in 2012. Seriously? Have the last two years so changed things that we now have to campaign non stop?

If you're that interested in politics, keep your eyes on 2010 for the following 3 reasons:
1. Single party rule almost NEVER lasts more than two years. Americans hate the idea of unrestricted government historically, especially since the end of Roosevelt's administration. Divided government works, because it's inherently self-opposed.
2. While the Republicans have more Senate seats to defend in 2010, their seats are generally more secure. In fact, looking ahead, the only contentious seats will probably be Illinois (special reelections do NOT list candidates by party), Colorado (assuming the Republicans can put forward a non-psycho for a change), and Florida.
3. The 2010 census is again going to rip all kinds of house and electoral seats out of the northeast again, and transfer them to western and southern states. Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Arizona are in line to pick up at least one seat each, while New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts can all lose seats. The reapportionment of congressional seats will in the long term hurt Democrats as electoral votes shift away from reliable democratic states to more conservative states.

By the way, it is neither the end of the world nor is it the dawning of a new era of history. This election is nowhere near as significant as ones like 1800, 1844, and 1860. If you want that kind of talk, read some history books. At best, this election will have a moral victory, in knowing that we aren't all a bunch of racist bastards (implicates Europeans, by the way, who by and large are far more racist than we are...). No matter who won, there is not going to be any monumental change in the next four years.