Academia

I moved relatively recently. While laboriously packing all of my beloved belongings, I found an unopened envelop from almost three years ago: my college diploma. That's right, I still haven't opened it.

I graduated from Arizona State University almost three years ago; they give you some fake stand-in diploma shaped thing for the actual graduation ceremony because the real diplomas get mailed out a couple of weeks later, since the grading isn't necessarily finalized by the ceremony.

There's no real reason I haven't opened it other than I found academia to be over-taxing and I'd rather not have anything to do with it. While I had some decent professors that I truly respect and am glad to have met, I'd say that I had more that didn't take their professions seriously.

I wanted to major in physics, but I didn't want to teach high school kids, so I let myself be talked into taking a major that was new that year: a combination of arts, media, and engineering called digital culture. Being a new program, it was less structured than the established majors and it offered a lot of concentrations.

I originally concentrated in interdisciplinary arts and performance, but I changed it right after I started my second semester to media processing, the most programming-intensive concentration. My guidance counselor explained that if I were to change to another major instead of just changing the concentration, then I would've had to do an extra year, and I wasn't fond of that prospect, since my scholarship was only for four years (and I detest debt and academia equally).

Maybe in two or three years, I'll go back to school (probably abroad) and get a degree that I'll actually be willing to look at. Perhaps physics or mathematics (with a focus on cryptography).