Rite of Acceptance and Career Search Continued
This morning was my Rite of Acceptance into the Roman Catholic church. For those unfamiliar with the process, Wikipedia provides a reasonable explanation of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Essentially, I have now completed the first phase of being formally welcomed into the St. Edmund's parish community. At mass, the catechumens and candidates stood in the back of the sanctuary. I was asked, "What do you seek of God's Church?" My response was "Faith and Holiness," after which the paster handed me the processional crucifix and told me "This is your faith and your holiness." It was a really beautiful rite, and I felt especially touched when the entire parish raised their hands in prayer over me and the other RCIA participants.
As far as my job search, I have recently come to the conclusion that I have to go back to school. to move in the direction I want. I sincerely wish that this was not the case, as my time as a PhD student at Georgetown has burnt me out academically. Nevertheless, the program I'm considering is about as far from the humanities as possible. I'm planning on starting the Master of Information Technology & Management degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is a hands-on professional degree which would allow me to build up a portfolio of projects in cooperation with local IT companies /departments. It's normally a two-year degree, but I'm planning to bite the bullet and take 15 credit semesters to complete the program by December. Although I can take part in a similar program at the University of Chicago, I've come to the conclusion that IIT would be a more hands-on and practical training regimen. I'm hesitant to use any more of my Post 9/11 GI Bill on coursework that doesn't add hard skills to my resume. I guess you can say I'm a recovering humanities student.
I've also been working on a social-media resume. It's at www.spmcb.com. I'm currently hosting it through google, but I'm thinking about shifting to a service that will allow me a bit more freedom to toy with HTML, Ruby, etc.
Well, back to work for me. There is little time to rest for a modern married yuppie with a med student wife.
God Bless, Sean