Six Weeks Left

I only have six weeks of classes left until I graduate. I can't express how happy I will be to finish school and enter the work force. The workload has been pretty tough over the last few weeks, but I made it through and am currently on spring break. I have spent the first few days of break doing some spring cleaning in the apartment and catching up on some other things that have been pushed to the side in an effort to keep up in school.

I was having a chat with the department secretary a few weeks ago. The department secretary spent some time in the navy before she came to work at WSU and we frequently have chats about one thing or another. She was asking how everything was going and I confided in her that I was running out of steam and was ready to be done with school. She accused me of having a Short-Timer's Attitude. She's right.

I have been receiving letters from the Business School at WSU encouraging me to apply for graduate school. I don't know how many people get these letters, but I seem to be the only Chemical Engineering student receiving these invitations to apply. I don't really know why I have been singled out. I have pretty good grades, but not the best grades in the class, so I guess it isn't based solely on GPA. I haven't participated in any extra-curricular activities. I am kind of curious why they put my name on their apparently short list.

Anyway, the letters say that there is funding to accept five students into a program which results in a PhD through the business school. The funding is available for up to four years. It is geared towards engineers and actually sounds like a pretty good deal. There is a stipend available in exchange for teaching a few classes. It is actually more generous than the GI Bill. Some other benefits include a full tuition waiver, several scholarships to cover various fees and textbook expenses, expense paid travel to conventions, a free computer, and assistance in finding summer jobs. I am not really interested, but if I was ten or fifteen years younger, I guess it would be a great opportunity.

The last two years, virtually the entire class of graduating Chemical Engineering students had firm job offers in hand at this point in their final semester. This year, there are only three of us out of about twenty students that have a job lined up. Tough time to be graduating. A lot of my classmates are getting pretty anxious about finding employment. Hopefully, some companies will be making some offers soon, but the number of companies that have been attending our job fairs at the university has been down over the last year and the ones that do come are not looking to hire very many people. We did have a few engineers from some of the companies at Hanford on campus a few weeks ago. They are looking to hire several engineers, so there are some prospects out there. Unfortunately, I don't think many of the students here are interested in working there. Still, if it comes down to choosing between no job and a job at Hanford, interest may increase.