Here's to new beginnings ... what was I thinking!

First I want to say, Ash you will be missed! I hope that you will have time to come back occasionally as a guest poster. And to all my fellow US citizens, hope you had a happy and safe thanksgiving.

Now on to new beginning ...

They are thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

I am about to start a part of my life anew in just a few weeks. I will be graduating college after 6 and 1/2 long years, and I will finally have a degree. I am so excited and yet ... not.

When I started my degree program, things were looking good. Teachers were due to retire soon, states were upping their requirments of science for students to graduate, and jobs were to be plentiful.

The reality now, several years later, is looking rather bleak. Teachers are holding off returing because they simply can't afford to. Classroom sizes are increasing as districts are requiring teachers that already have jobs to handle the increased demands in science credit requirement.

The new chapter in my life that is just beginning isn't starting out so well. With a mountain of school loan debt, and no real job prospects, I am looking at rushing right in to the master's program just to defer my debt for another two years in the hopes that I will be able to find a job then.

New beginnings can be a wonderful thing, when you find a new love, when you start a new career, when you embrace a hobby that fills you with passion.

But new beginnings can also be rather disheartening. I know that I have done something to be proud of, I stuck with school and I will soon have a piece of paper to reward all of my effors. Yet when job prospects are so dim, and I know we will be struggling the next few years just to break even, I could really do without the mountain of school loan debt.

So in a few years, I might have a better outlook. But for now ... new beginnings kind of suck.