weird little scaredy cat

A lot of the people in my lab are currently working on their NSERC applications for next year - either Master's year 2, or PhD or Post-doc. I'm finishing this year [s says so! so it must be true!] so I don't need to do one, though I've gone through the fun fest each of the past two septembers.

You would think that I'd be feeling really relieved about this - the application is really long, and really tedious, and it sucks. Instead I'm feeling this rising panic as the deadline approaches. I've been saving all the emails about the application deadlines, though I have absolutely no logical reason to be doing so. I even found myself thinking about maybe just applying for the PhD one, y'know, in case. In case I change my mind and decide to do the PhD after all. Even though I don't want to, I know I don't.

But the scared part of me figures it would be so much easier to do the PhD, and as usual, it's at least partly right. Doing a PhD would mean at least three more years in the same place I'm in now where I'm [fairly] happy and comfortable, and let's face it, quite well funded. It would be so easy...most of the people I know in the lab are doing the finish-master's-go-directly-into-PhD thing. I could stay in Calgary. I could stay at U of C. I could keep working with the bands. I could avoid change.

However, if you get your PhD your job options are pretty much limited to research or professorial positions. I like research, I really do, but it's not what i love and I know it. I want to do design work, and a Master's followed by industry work is the best way to get to do that.

The smart, strong part of me knows this. It also knows that if I was to do three more years in school, and if I was to get a fourth degree, I would do industrial design which I absolutely love. However, even that is a little bit of a scaredy cat solution because it still lets me stay in school and in calgary.

What I know I need to do [but am scared of doing] is to get a design job wherever I can find good work, be it in Calgary or elsewhere. I am blessed in that I have p's unconditional support in this - he will move with me, which makes it a very little bit less frightening.

I'm terrifed to move to a new city. I'm terrified that I don't know enough, or that I'm not talented enough or technical enough. I'm terrified that I won't fit in, or make friends, or find a community I love as much as the one here. I'm terrified of getting into a job I hate because I'm too scared to try for the ones I really dream of.

I don't know what to do, and it is scaring me to death. I am trying as hard as I can not to let it show, but every once in a while, like my current NSERC crisis, it sneaks out in all these weird little ways.