Doings Doings Doings.

After my parents left, the busy-ness just kept on keeping on.  I'm not one to sit idlely by...well you know except for all the time I spend sitting around - but it isn't idle! It's cultural exchange!  But there hasn't been much sitting around recently anyway, so there it is.

It's just been super busy.  Let's see what all has happened, not in any particular order...

I had a Peace Corps training!  It was only a week long, but it's kept me in the city for almost a month.  I have had sooo many meetings and things and doings and goings on.  The training was focused on technical stuff as well as some standard safety and security style things.  And, in more exciting-ness, one of the days was almost entirely led by me and a partner in crime (another Volunteer)!

We gave led a day long training segment on Income Generating Activities - or more usefully on how you can help people in your communities that want to start a grow a business.  So we taught people the basic skills you need to evaluate a business idea, come up with a basic accounting system, a basic marketing strategy, and talk vaguely intelligently about business stuff so you can begin a business plan or meet with a bank or other potential funding source. 

It wasn't super intense, but it was detailed enough that people actually left with an understanding of what really goes into a business plan.  Or how you actually do a break even analysis to figure out when and how your business will make money, what your price point is, stuff like that.  It was doubly fun because, although I'm far from an expert about any of that stuff, it felt pretty good to be reminded that my soft skills BA in BS background hasn't stopped me from actually learning to do some real things that are actually useful - and involve basic math!

One of the other things that I've recently had going on is a Ginger Juice Business that my 6th grade class has started as part of our Youth Group.  So I've been going through a lot of this similar stuff with them and it provided a very helpful real life example several times in the class.  Ooh!  Also!  I pretty much free styled an Excel spreadsheet doing a real backoftheenvelope style break even analysis for a fictional rice mill business scenario the group came up with.  I miss Excel.  I know, it creeps me out too.

So I actually wrote a grant proposal for the Juice business while I was here too - submitted to a local Rotary Club.  Collaborated on a grant proposal to introduce solar lanterns.  Wrote another grant to start a new womens/business group in my village producing arts and crafts.  And wrote an infrastructure project grant to get my village those lampesi's. 

Of course, none of those have actually come to fruition yet or anything, but man oh man have I put out a lot of words and asked for a lot of money over the last few weeks!  Which is fun.  I quite enjoy trying to get free stuff.  And when it's for a good cause, I enjoy it even more.  I'm far from an expert grant writer either, but I'm definitely getting some practice in it and I think I'll have a fully justified resume bullet by the end of my two years out here!

All this professional-style work and time in the city - both during my Two Week Tour and this recent bout - has made me really think about what I want to do next.  It's something I've been trying to think about and figure out for a long time and it's just plain difficult.  One of the hardest parts of doing something are figuring out what to do...as any kid on a summer break afternoon well knows.

Increasingly, I'm leaning against MBA school.  It still feels like a waste to me.  It's a way to refocus your career on something new and if I still don't know exactly what that is - why spend 6 figures to do that?  Having a Masters in general, and MBA specfically, and a degree from one of the schools I would probably end up at also specifically, would open a lot of doors so it's far from off the table.  But I just don't think I want to do it.  Not sure yet.  We'll see.

But I do like trying to get free stuff.  And I do like operations and management.  And I do like trying to make the world a better place.  I also like having a lot of control of my way of doing things, which points towards being part of a loose structure or one of my own devising.  So something that combines at least a few of those would probably be ideal.  I've started to look more seriously at disaster management stuff - for the government or some NGO.  Event planning and fund raising for some NGO would also be pretty cool.

It's early yet to be developing specific leads, but I'm definitely spending time thinking about it.  It's scary to think that I just kinda appear back in the states in 15 months.  I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to appear in NYC or DC, but I'm also pretty sure I'd prefer to appear somewhere near Ariel.  A couple of assumptions there, but whatever.

So not sure.  And not that far away from when I will actually have to start sending out applications to things again.  Can't escape it forever.

I don't exactly want to go back to a cubicle, but there's plenty of stuff - like those excel spreadsheets - that I do actually enjoy that happens in cubicles.  So I'm not fully against it...but I'm certainly learning that I was wrong in what I said to McM years ago in my first full tilt job hunting bout.  I said that I like problem solving and people and it didn't really matter to me what the problems where and what the people were doing.  It was about the approach and the process, not the widget.

Turns out the content matters more to me than I thought, so that's going to play a much larger role in this next go around. I'm interested to see how it turns out.  Preferably with a higher salary than Peace Corps!  But also with a higher world-bettering quotient than generic corporate too.