Can’t Sleep: Musings on The Future

Lying in bed and not being able to sleep, I found myself quite preoccupied with the future and what was in store for me over the next couple years. I decided to organize my thoughts somewhat.

I organize this by academic year because I know that I intend to continue in academic life for a few more years after my graduation from Evergreen.

Short Term: 2005-2006
I am currently working on a dual BS/BA at Evergreen in Computer Science and Writing, respectively. If I decide to chicken out on the Computer Science curriculum after Fall quarter, I have one program I really want to take — A Novel Idea, which is a full-immersion novel writing class that would finally give me no excuse but to work on the novel that I’ve been kicking around for so long. Of course, if I drop out of the Computer Science curriculum, that’ll lock out some of my future choices, which will make everything else significantly easier in terms of academic planning.

I also need to sign up to take the GRE and the GMAT, though I also need to do some assessment testing to see what path makes the most sense. Doing both the GRE and GMAT will leave my options open down the road so that I have those scores when I choose to go to graduate school.

I’m glad that’s a when, not an if. At least that part is settled.

There are other short-term choices I need to think about, such as applying for the Assistant to the Director position in the Writing Center come Spring Quarter (which I will definitely be doing).

Two Years Out: 2006-2007
If I’m not in the Assistant to the Director position, then this will be an interesting transition period where I will likely find another job while I plan my next step into graduate school or other work.

Three Years Out: 2007-2008
At this point, there are several options which all seem to me quite interesting, but I’m not sure how many are practical. I know I need to be doing one of them to be happy with the way my life is going by this point.

  • Graduate School: Business
    This one is really appealing to me because I have always been interested in business and the way businesses operate. I’ve taken a number of business programs at Evergreen which I enjoyed, which really makes this appealing. I also have a huge interest in sustainability, so the ability to combine sustainability and business (via an MBA through Bainbridge Graduate Institute) would be great. I’m not sure how this would fit into my life versus a normal MBA with no sustainability focus, however.
  • Graduate School: Creative Writing/Writing
    Writing has always been and continues to be a part of my life. My job at Evergreen’s Writing Center has been the best job I’ve ever had, hands down, and being immersed in that culture has allowed me to perceive writing from many different lenses. I can see myself still being a very active part of writing culture as a novelist or short story writer. I would also not be adverse to returning to the world of writing centers through a role as a director or educator.
  • Graduate School: Teaching
    For some people, this one makes no sense given what they know about me. However, I’m interested in how education can mold and influence future generations and how they interact with the planet and society. Changing the minds of children for positive means can change the future for the better. I believe in effecting change however possible; this is also why a sustainable MBA focus would be good for me, since that, in and of itself, is changing the way businesses think about the world.
  • Graduate School: Computer Science/Computer-related field
    Of everything so far, this one, right now, feels very unlikely. However, I keep in mind that my foray back into computer science next quarter is intended to allow me to determine once and for all whether computer science (or computer-related disciplines) is something I wish to pursue as a long-term commitment. There are no concretes about this yet at all. I put it here because it may still be a viable option.
  • Teach for America
    Of everything so far, this one is the one that feels like the biggest leap. I’ve always been interested in Teach for America and its philosophy of extending education into places that need quality teachers, but I’ve never really considered whether this is something I would fit into. It’s something that has crossed my mind numerous times and that would be very enriching for me if I chose to do it, but it would also delay my graduate school plans (which would still be in place after my two year commitment to the program, more than likely).

This may shift depending on whether I rule out Teach for America as an option I want to pursue.

Camping III/Moving

We have returned from camping. It was relaxing.

That’s all I’m willing to write at the moment on that subject.

Amanda and I may be moving by the end of the month to a townhouse about five minutes west of our current complex. We’ve already given notice and we’re waiting to arrange a tour so we can see what it looks like.

There’s a whole story behind that too, but that’s all I’m willing to write at the moment on that subject.

I will now wander off and write some poetry.

Camping II

It turns out that our two camping trips will instead be one long trip with two different groups of people. Millersylvania State Park is where the Writing Center booked its one-night overnight excursion for summer staff, and Amanda and I decided to extend that out to the 8th. So we will arrive there on the 8th, stay through the 10th, then switch campsites and stay on through the 11th.

Fun.

Not quite the break I had hoped for, but it should be relaxing anyway. I’ll need it, considering that I’ll be driving back and forth to Bellingham a number of times before school starts (probably three or four, minimum).

Camping

Amanda and I are trying to get another camping trip in before the school year starts, and it looks like we might actually get two. The first, if memory serves and without having my calendar in front of me, is between September 6th and 9th at a location that is yet to be determined. The second is a trip being planned by the Writing Center’s summer staff on September 10th as a wrap-up to all the summer work — sort of an “end of the quarter party” like we usually have during the academic year, only an overnight camping trip instead.

We’re trying to find a decent campsite for our trip earlier in the week that isn’t too long of a drive from Olympia — Amanda’s picking the place, and I told her that the maximum drive time was probably about three and a half hours. We’ll see what that nets us (since it definitely allows for a number of possibilities). The Writing Center’s trip, I’m told, is to a site no more than 20 minutes away.

Pulse and Glide

Coming home from Snohomish today, I decided to use some slightly different driving techniques to see what I could do in terms of maximizing my tank efficiency. I had just filled up earlier in the day about an hour before departing, then driven about 5 miles to my parent’s house.

I didn’t decide to try anything until about halfway home in stop-and-go traffic in Tacoma. There are two driving techniques that are not unique to the Prius but that are particularly useful in increasing MPG: pulsing and gliding. The best explanation of this comes from Yahoo’s Prius-2G list (specifically, this message):

Think about riding a bicycle. Pedal until you get up to speed, and then just stop pedalling
and glide. When you slow down, pedal again, then glide again. That is exactly what “pulse
and glide” is.

One fine point – the glide. Gliding is possible mostly at less than 40 MPH, when the
engine is warmed up and the battery charged. You mentioned taking your foot off the
pedal and coasting. That is a start. While watching the “energy” screen, after you take
your foot off the pedal, with a very light touch step on the pedal slightly until the arrows
all go away. That is gliding, with no electric motor, no gasoline engine, and no
regererative braking. You will notice the car glides a good long way.

Switching to the energy screen and doing some trial-and-error, I managed to do a couple of fairly long sustained glides under 25MPH, though, due to the activation of the internal combustion engine at higher speeds, the ability to glide becomes progressively harder. I did try, and managed to do it for a split second once near 55, but it’s not easy to sustain.

By the time we got back home, we had attained 62.4MPG with some heavy boxes in the hatch area and 89 miles driven. Not bad, but that MPG number would be more impressive with a higher number of miles. My goal for this tank is to beat the best displayed MPG of 55.8 for a single tank by at least 2.2MPG, resulting in a 58MPG screen or better. We’ll see if this happens – so far, an average tank takes me a little less than 340 miles per tank, with a wide range between 207 and 464 miles on a single tank.

I have to point out, however, that my refill policy thus far has been a little panicky, as I haven’t always waited for two bars on the gauge — this is my new policy and I don’t intend to break it if I can help it. Thus, my average tank length will likely increase over the next five to eight tanks or so as I’m careful to make sure that that policy is followed.

Graduate Work

One night, doing a Google search, I ran across the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which offers an MBA in Sustainable Business. This really piqued my interest, since sustainability, business, writing, and computer science are some of my more enjoyable academic topics.

I’m going to see about going up there for an open house sometime later this year, just to check it out. This will likely be towards the end of September, at the start of Evergreen’s academic year.

I’ll have to look into taking the GMAT and the GRE sometime in the next year or so. Of course, I’m not ruling out the possibility of doing graduate work in writing or computer science, but I will have to do a lot of deep thinking about where my priorities lie in order to decide which of those I follow.

GMail

After finally geting sick of having to manage two separate ways of viewing the same pieces of mail, I broke down and tried to find a way to transfer my e-mail into Gmail without causing too much pain. I found it in the form of Mark Lyon’s GMail Loader (GML).

I still wish IMAP had been available. GML doesn’t import messages quite the way you would expect — the date information is preserved, as is the sender information, but GMail displays the recieved date as being whatever time the e-mail was imported. Thus, messages from 2004 are now all labeled as being received within the last few days.

Most of the mail seems to have imported flawlessly, but I’m still confirming every message, just to be sure – pulling it up in GMail, then finding the copy of the message on Thunderbird. It’s a tedious process, but worth it in my eyes.

This has also allowed me to forward my Evergreen account and make my GMail account the only one I have to check, period. This might mean some updating of records in various places, but that’s okay. Hopefully, this makes everything a little easier.

Prius Experiences on Bainbridge Island

I also wanted to make note of the Prius’ performance on construction lots, since I had the chance to try it. Some friends of my parents are building contractors building a temporary home for themselves, and Amanda and I went over to see the construction. The driveway was a wheelbarrow type where there are two thin cement strips intended to assist trucks getting up and down the hill. Cassie handled this with no problem, and also handled the offroad parking and the tight turn needed to back out of the lot. Not once did I lose confidence in my ability to get out of the lot (though a tree got a little close to the hatch in order to get out, even with the wheel cranked — didn’t get close enough to do damage, just close enough to make me wonder).

The person who showed us around was also quite impressed with the car and seemed to enjoy the ride. Bonus!

Prius Experiences at Mt. St. Helens

I had a very interesting time with my Prius, Cassie, during our camping trip.

I keep up on Prius mailing lists via Yahoo fairly regularly, and before the trip, I had read a little bit about the “B” gear on the Prius. Basically, the “B” gear is equivalent to low gear on a standard automatic or an exhaust brake on a semi – it utilizes the engine as a braking mechanism to take pressure off of the brake pads. This is one of the rare things on a Prius that should almost never be used, since it can decrease overall MPG. However, anytime you see a low gear or hill sign, the “B” mode can likely be used quite effectively.

Forest Road 25 had a couple steep areas in which I was able to use “B” mode. Surprisingly, it doesn’t actually slow down the vehicle when used exclusively (though I suspect it does slow down the overall rate of acceleration). However, using it takes a bit of pressure off the brake pads so long as the battery doesn’t reach its full charge capacity. Once the battery reaches capacity through regenerative braking, braking results to the brake pads to slow down the car.

Shifting to “B” mode causes an interesting change in the engine noise to a fairly low-tuned hum and that hum lasts for the whole time in “B” mode. This is something I don’t recall from my test drive of an ’05 Prius, when the salesman (rather stupidly in terms of efficiency and demonstrating rather astoundingly his lack of Prius knowledge) switched to “B” mode in the middle of I-405, explaining it as a “battery-only” mode. At that point, I didn’t bother correcting him, since I didn’t know much about it either.

Cassie kept up very, very well during our trip. I never once had a concern about whether the car would break down or whether she would survive – we did the whole trip on a tank of gas which produced an astounding 75.45MPG tank (though the display calculated the tank to 53.1). This was after refilling the tank with roughly 4 gallons and filling a few days after the trip with nearly 7 gallons. Keep in mind that she was also loaded full in the back with cargo on the way to and from the campsite (though the day trips were done with very little cargo in the back seats).

The other nice part was the ranger in charge at Iron Creek, who started asking questions as I waited for Amanda to check us in. I explained that it was a Prius and that it was, in fact, on. He was quite surprised when I told him it was a hybrid and was fairly appreciative after that — appreciative enough that, when we went to make sure we didn’t need to do anything to check out, he thanked us for having “the quietest car in the campground”! That was the first time I had impressed anyone with this car, though I’m sure this will happen more.