Falling into place

Things are sorta looking up as of Monday, for a couple of reasons. Keep in mind that I'm INFP with an emphasis on the N, intuitive, obsession with how everything fits in the broader context. So the big reason is that, after a bit more of this informational interviewing, I'm finally starting to see the patterns that unify the baffling gamut of degrees that I could be pursuing.

In short, pretty much all the people I've talked to so far have said that to become a college career "coach" (some places are deprecating the use of the term counselor, since that sounds like it refers to more holistic psychological effort) you probably need a masters, but it can be highly flexible what discipline it's in. Some people in the field have counseling degrees, but it's a little superfluous since they refer people to somewhere else on campus for real "counseling", i.e. to address deeper issues.

So in summary, I'm getting a much clearer idea of what I want to study -- probably student affairs, which goes by a million different names but has this helpful directory. Although counseling is still a viable alternative, and arguably a more versatile one, I don't see the point of pursuing a more expensive degree that takes longer to complete when people tell me it's less applicable to the field I want to go into!

One other unrelated pattern that's a little funny: So far I've called a couple of in-state colleges' career offices, in addition to my own alma mater's, to ask for an informational interview by phone. In both cases the person taking the call has played "gatekeeper" and tried to explain that they can only offer services to students and maybe alumni. And in both cases I've somewhat assertive explained that I'm just asking for a professional courtesy -- today I pointed out that I'd be delighted to do the same for anyone wanting to become a software developer who asked for 10 minutes of my time! -- and eventually gotten through to the real staff. And here's the great part: In both cases, once I got to someone fairly senior, they were delighted to help me learn more about their field. Successful people usually like to talk about their own careers.

I said things are looking up for a couple of reasons, and the informational interviewing is by far the most important one. But I also applied for a contract job in a larger city nearby, one that would make me much happier to live in, and will be going to visit the agency in a couple of weeks to interview with them. I know that tech recruiters are a weird breed, dogging you for days upon days to convince you that you need to rearrange your schedule to go interview with their client, and then not bothering to call you for weeks to let you know when the client turns you down. Arrrgh. Like piranhas. But it still feels good to have somebody treat you like you're valuable, no matter how contrived.

Finally a minor tech note: I screwed up the header, ironically enough, trying to remove the "box" (border) around it. I'll fix it soon when I'm not lazy but that's why it looks like crap.