Tanless Summer

This is the first summer in my recollection that I don't have a tan. I have been indoors too much. That's what summer school (and the D.C. heat and a bad right knee) will do to you. For the Masters program that I'm in, summer session means cramming 3.5 months' work into 10 short weeks. I swear I read over 900 pages of articles about cyber Ethics in that time.

Truth is, some of the ethics stuff was pretty cool - especially an article called The Dark Art of Interrogation by Mark Bowden. Most of us fail to receive ethics training when we enter our computer careers; it should be one of the first things taught and it should be regular corporate IT training. But I digress.

So I stayed inside every single weekend this summer. I had to stop my frequent walks in late June when my right knee went out (and stayed out!) anyway, so I spent the weekends icing my knee and doing school work. I managed to swing two A's out of it, so I can't complain. I am fortunate to have a 4.0 (which isn't saying much because it's based on only one semester's worth of classes because the previous semester's grades in the forensic pre-reqs don't count toward my GPA). We'll see how long it lasts. This ain't rocket science, but it's not undergrad school either. It takes a lot more effort to get an A than I'm accustomed to.

And, needless to say, it looks like I'm going to be unemployed again soon because the contract I'm working on is going south. There's nothing like paying two different companies to do the same job. Oops. I now have clarity on the phrase "good enough for government work," which my mom used to say to me when I was a kid. Need I say more?

That's OK. I'll survive. This job wasn't "me" anyway; I really didn't like the work, which didn't last long. It's been exactly five months since I started. But the staff has basically been sitting around the past eight weeks while the government works out the contract mess they're in, and I couldn't take much more of that. It's not easy spending eight hours a day doing next to nothing.

Besides, I'm ready to get out of IT work and do real forensics work. I can't wait until that day arrives. I'll have to start at the bottom and work my way up, but it'll be worth it to finally do something I'm passionate about. It's time I made my contribution to society—something beyond helping big-time corporate execs make their multi-million dollar bonuses. Ick.

It's corny, but I have a need to contribute to the greater good, not just be another cog in the corporate wheel. And I need a reason to get out of bed in the morning, a job that I'm excited about. If I can work in a law enforcement digital forensics lab for the same pay I was making in 1996—which is probably the way it'll go—I'll be happy. :)