So far, whether or not a college education is valuable appears to be largely determined by how much debt you incur during the course of your studies.  One rule of thumb I found particularly helpful was the following:

If your annual income your first year out of school is not greater than or at the very least equal to the total amount of your student loans, your degree probably isn’t worth it.

So, if Aidan wants to go to university to study Russian literature, I’ll probably discourage the notion.  He can read all the Tolstoy and Dostoevsky he wants in his spare time without garnering thousands of dollars in debt for the privilege.

I heard from a lot of people who didn’t take on any debt while in college, and they all said they enjoyed college and found the experience very valuable.  Truthfully?  If I hadn’t had to work so much while in school and hadn’t graduated in so much debt, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more too.

The people I talked to who graduated in debt, however, were a lot less glowing in their reviews of the experience.  One person cracked me up with her suggestion that we stand on the side of a freeway offramp with a sign that read, “I graduated with a liberal arts degree.  Any bit helps!”

As for the idea that a college degree is the new high school degree, I’m starting to wonder if that’s an idea propagated by college admissions departments.  I’ve just met and talked to so many people who are successful and never finished college, the argument doesn’t seem to hold water.

It stands to reason that if you interview well, network your tail off, and do your job well, you stand as much of a chance of getting hired as anyone who graduated college.  How else can you explain a college drop-out who makes $80,000 a year doing Web design existing in the same city as the college graduate earning $35,000 a year doing data entry?

The gist of the conclusion I’ve drawn from this discussion is that if someone else is footing the bill for your college education, study whatever you want and enjoy yourself.  If you’re signing your life away in exchange for college credits, though, you’d better make sure you’re majoring in something that’ll pay well.  Or, just get really used to the idea of using half your monthly income every month to pay for your student loans.

In exchange for my student loans, the payments of which eat up a substantial amount of our monthly income, I have a degree in psychology from a respected institution.  And self respect and blah blah blah.

What I have to wonder is, what is really the value of that degree?  I know not everyone goes the whole graduate-get-a-job-get-married-have-beautiful-babies-stay-home-with-beautiful-babies route, so maybe this isn’t applicable to anyone but me, but I am curious: Was my college degree worth the tens of thousands of dollars I paid for it?

Wes and I were discussing this the other day and are at a bit of an impasse.  He went to college but didn’t graduate.  He started off studying music composition, left school to pursue an internship, started working full time, and never went back.  Then, when his sales career took a nosedive thanks to the economy, he went to a trade school, got the proper certifications, and now he makes way more than I ever will.

His education took him less than a year, cost a quarter as much as mine did, and he makes more than twice as much per year as I’ve ever made his first year out of school.

Obviously, Wes is not everybody (because he’s awesome), but if this kind of thing is possible, is it even worth it to get a four year degree if you’re paying for it yourself?

I suppose you could say that my degree enabled me to get a job out of college, and that if I hadn’t gotten that job, I never would have hated my job, started blogging, and then switched to blogging as a career.  I have to wonder, however, if I wouldn’t have found blogging some other way.  You certainly don’t need a degree to be a successful blogger.

The reason this is on my mind is, having one parent who graduated college and another parent who didn’t presents an odd example to our kids.  I mean, can I reasonably make a case that it’s important to graduate from college when I’m no longer sold on the value of a college education myself?

(This is obviously not an applicable discussion when applied to careers that require advanced degrees, such as doctors, therapists, lawyers, brain scientists, etc.)

My degree was fun to earn, and I learned a lot, but I can’t honestly say that college prepared me for the working world any more than any of the jobs I held during school.  I can tell you how to correctly cite an academic article in an APA style paper, but I have never used that skill outside a classroom.

What do you think?  Am I just jaded by huge student loan payments, or are college degrees worth it?

This discussion is continued in part 2, which you can read here.

Then, we went into my boss’ office.  Now, one thing you should know about my boss is that he dislikes babies.  Not any baby in particular, just babies in general.  As a concept, if you will.

He hates how babies steal people from the office (like, er, me I suppose), he dislikes how they, in his words, “ruin your life”, and doesn’t appreciate that you can’t just kick them out into the backyard when they’re naughty.  Babies love him, and smile like crazy when they see him, but the smile only goes one way.

Just in case you’re wondering, no, he does not have kids.

Anyway, I bring Aidan into my boss’ office and sit him down on the corner of the desk.  Just because I’m the kind of girl who enjoys antagonizing people, I encourage Aidan to spit up on my boss’ desk.

And he does.

Spit up runs slo-mo from his mouth, down his bib, and pools in a hideous little puddle right there on my boss’ desk.  The desk of a man who hates babies.  The guy who signs my paycheck.

I honestly thought he was going to faint.  There’s a shocked hush throughout the office, which then erupts into jeers and incredulous laughter.  I grab the baby and make a mad dash to the bathroom for a paper towel and some hand sanitizer.  I wipe up the spit up, douse the desk in hand sanitizer, then wipe that up too, all while shaking with audacious laughter.

We left pretty soon after that.  I feel good about what we accomplished though.  We got some cake, talked some marketing, and despoiled some company property.  Not a bad day’s work, considering.

I believe I’ve written before about how, even though ostensibly I’m a stay at home mom with oodles of spare time, I still seem to keep stumbling into black holes that eat up my day before I’ve even finished my morning coffee.

He's a little disgusted by how quickly I ate that English muffin.

For example, let’s look at Friday.  I had a dentist appointment on Friday, at 9:30 in the morning.  I woke up later than I should have, and spent 45 minutes frantically getting dressed, placating the baby, scarfing an English muffin, feeding the baby, and then scooting out the door as quickly as my denim-clad legs could carry me.  I dropped Aidan off with Wes’ mom, did the whole dentist thing, went back to get Aidan, came home, put him down for a nap, and ate lunch.  By then it was 1 in the afternoon, and the only thing I’d accomplished was going to the dentist.

Sad panda!

As ridiculous as my days seem to me now, I do manage to squeeze in some worthwhile stuff (you know, besides keeping my baby alive and nurturing him toward greatness and all that).  I went into work during Aidan’s nap time last week and it felt great.  For one, I have a really sweet computer set-up there (dual monitors!!!) and for another, I have some fabulous coworkers.

I spent two hours building new pages for the website and problem solving and when I went home I felt energized and refreshed.  If nothing else, it confirmed for me that even though there are definitely days when I would much rather take a nap than get some work done, working (even my paltry five hours a week) is essential to helping me feel fulfilled as a mother.

Aidan, working on being more stimulating.

I mean, for sure my baby occupies a staggering amount of my brain power.  I’m trying to figure out a nap schedule for him right now and it’s eating my brain, and don’t even get me started in trying to figure out an organizational system to keep up with how fast he outgrows clothes.

But, having work problems to solve stimulates other parts of my brain, and that’s making me very happy indeed.

Job hunting sucks.

It sucks hardcore.  It is the single most frustrating, harrowing, life-shortening thing ever.  Sure, I should probably add a disclaimer about how lucky we are that looking for a job is our biggest worry right now as opposed to life and death health issues or a tyrannous government, but dude.  I’m not a saint.

Wes has been looking for a job for four weeks now.  He’s had some great interviews, taken countless phone calls from recruiters and hiring managers, and had at least three people tell him enthusiastically and with much sincerity that he’s perfect for the job and can expect an offer soon.

And now he has an offer.  A very, very good offer.  An offer that he just accepted for a job he starts work at tomorrow.

CAN I GET A FREAKING HALLELUJAH?!?!?!

Let me tell you a little something, dear readers: The relief over here at Casa de Mitchell is freaking palpable.  Wes gets to wake up tomorrow, get dressed, and head off to work like the other sleepless masses and he couldn’t be happier about it.

After all the late nights spent at school, and all the interviews and applications, Wes is done.  He has a job.  And he’s going to rock it.

Join me in congratulating my tireless, attractive, geek superstar husband, won’t you?

Ok, thank you.

So, at 37 rotund weeks of pregnancy, this baby is, medically speaking, fully cooked (when I first typed that word, I mis-spelled it “cookied” which, I suppose, is true too).  If I go into labor right now?  I can have this baby at the birth center and he will be just fine (assuming he doesn’t have any covert medical issues he’s been hiding from me).

This is a very good feeling.  A really super stupendous feeling.  I of course want him to stay in there for longer, as I feel like I have so much more fat I can give his chubby little cheeks, but no matter what he’s safe.  His only job now is to accumulate fat, and my only job is to avoid jumping too much when one of his wayward feet makes it way into my ribcage.

This brings me to my other job.  The one I actually get paid for.  I’ve been putting a lot of thought into when I want to start my maternity leave.  It’s a tough proposition.  On the one hand, most first babies are born an average of five days past their due date, so if Squishy holds true to that I still have oodles of time (I’m due February 24).

On the other hand, if he comes early I could be in quite the predicament.  My midwives advised me that I should put some serious thought into stopping work soon.  My midwife explained it to me this way: Imagine working a full day and coming home tired as usual.  Then you go into labor that night.

With the average first labor taking 20 hours, the odds of me making it through close to 48 hours of intense physical work and pain without any sleep and after a full day of work are not good.  The #1 reason first-time moms get transferred from the birth center to the hospital is because of exhaustion, and I really, really do not want to get transferred.

I keep telling the baby that he needs to stay in there until at least Valentine’s Day, and then after that he can come out whenever he wants to.  That said, I’ve decided to make Friday the 12th my last day of working in the office.  After that, it’s sweatpants and no makeup and afternoon naps time to build up my sleep reserves in preparation for bringing a human being into the world.

Sleeping at night is getting more and more difficult to do.  I’ve never had trouble with insomnia my whole life, and yet falling back to sleep has turned into a no-win proposition.  I just lay there thinking about how tired I am.  I’m not even wide awake and thinking, I’m just a puddle of fatigue with no sleep.

So now I have a finish line in sight.  So long as Squishy listens to his mother and stays put until after Valentine’s Day I reckon we’ll all make it through this in one piece.  If he decides to come on the evening of February 11, however, he and I will have some words as soon as I’m capable of stern speech again.

I was feeling really crampy last night, so the minute I got home I laid down on the couch with some water and watched while my (amazing, generous, thoughtful, and handsome) husband cooked dinner.  Then I sat down on a different couch and ate dinner, after which I promptly fell asleep (from all the exertion of the not moving I was doing) and slept for an hour.

I capped off that mind-blowing lethargy with a solid eight hours of quality sleep, and now I feel like a million bucks.  Or, rather, a million pregnant bucks, which is like $700,000 in normal-people currency.

Right now I suppose the thing I’m feeling most positive about is the time I got to spend with Wes over my two week holiday break.  Man, those were some good times.  When you’re pregnant, everyone’s always telling you to enjoy going out for dates together because dates become rather sparse once the little one arrives.

We took that advice and ran with it.  We went to a Seahawks game, saw two movies (Avatar and Sherlock Holmes, both of which we loved), took care of projects around the house, and baked and consumed vast amounts of cookies.

In retrospect, I’m so glad we really took the opportunity to enjoy our time off together.  With me being off work, and him being done with studying and test-taking and getting ready to plunge into the job market, it was the perfect chance to pay attention to each other before real life came back around.

Now, Wes is running around like a mad man balancing interviews with sending out resumes, and I’m consumed with my tasks at work, helping get my company’s new site launched.  Our nights are spent enjoying one another’s company in the easy silence of the completely exhausted, which is restorative in its own right but not quite as much fun as going out to dinner and then strolling a beautifully decorated mall together.

As it stands now, life doesn’t show signs of slowing down.  The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for Wes is that a job will result from all the interviews he’s doing, and once he starts that job life will be busy in an entirely different way for him.  As for my job, launching a website is a ton of work and I would be surprised to come home with any energy between now and, well, my maternity leave I guess.

I don’t mind the busyness for now, and I think the reason for that is because of all the lovely dates we went on during our break.  Who knows how I’ll feel two months from now when our newborn is home and life has been crazy and demanding for a few months straight.

But.  For now I’m happy.  I got some sleep, I’ve very recently spent some quality time with my husband, and the sun is shining.  I’ve got no complaints.

Today was my second day back to work after an epic two weeks off, and so far both days have thoroughly kicked my behind.  My poor brain, which has been used to a daily nap right around mid-afternoon, keeps politely tugging on my sleeve and inquiring when we’ll get to rest while I struggle to make sense on the phone and keep my hair from catching fire.

Not helping matters is my sudden fondness for insomnia between the dastardly hours of 2 AM and 4 AM.  I was awake during those hours this very morning because my freaking feet were too hot.  I mean, is that not the lamest freaking excuse ever for not being able to sleep?

I kid you not, the alarm clock felt like nothing so much as a sledgehammer right to my face this morning.

This made work an interesting proposition today.  I have been officially relieved of my additional duties as my colleague is now back from her maternity leave, and I was a little worried that this meant I wouldn’t have enough to do.

This is where the universe laughs at my expense.

It turns out that all my responsibilities that I hadn’t quite had time to get to because I was doing another person’s job didn’t disappear.  They were quietly biding their time in the corner and they all jumped me en masse today.  I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Wes has also been really busy.  He’s gotten numerous calls from recruiters, all of whom have jobs they assure him he’s perfect for.  He’s had three phone interviews and one actual interview, and he is one hot little tamale as he balances out phone calls, sending out his resume for new jobs, interviews, and skills assessments.

It’s so encouraging to know that his skills and talents make him hireable.  We have no idea which, if any, of these job opportunities will pan out but it puts him back in action and I think he’s enjoying the heck out of it.

If I were way lame I’d totally stick a sports analogy in right there.  Something about benches and getting back in the game.  Because I’m lame in an entirely different way, I’ll just say that it’s good to see him so flustered and busy.  He’s worked really hard to get to this point.

As I stare down January, in all its fresh start, resolution-ridden, cold weather profuse glory, I can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive.  January means a little something more for us this year.  It means we have two months (maybe less) to get a lot of stuff figured out before everything we know changes.

I…well, it’s very safe to say I dislike change.  I don’t like switching jobs, I keep an extremely clean house because I don’t like it when things move, and if a plan changes I get upset if I don’t have time to process it first.  It’s borderline autistic, but it’s how I get things done.

As January begins with February hot on its heels, I’m feeling ever so slightly out of my league.  I know my life right now.  I’m a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, and an employee.  I’d like to think I’m pretty darn good at these roles.  I have no idea how I’m going to be as a mother.

I’m fairly certain that becoming a mother won’t change much how I behave as a daughter, a sister, or a friend, but it’s sure as heck going to change my role as a wife and employee.  These two roles are the most pervasive in my day to day life, and the upcoming shift has me feeling a little unprepared.

I make no secret of the fact that I love my job.  I love what I do, I adore the people I work with, it’s all around just very good sauce.  They’ve been patient with me in establishing my plan for when the baby is here, which is good since I’ve tried very hard to not think about what I’m going to do once Squishy is here.

I mean, it’s just so difficult to imagine what life is going to be like once this little baby is out and about.  I can easily imagine working.  I know all about that.  I have no idea about motherhood.

I’m sure there are some people who slip into motherhood like it’s a warm bath they’ve been looking forward to all day.  I hope I’m one of them.  I just feel like I’ve never seen a bath before and have no idea how deep it is because of all the bubbles.  And rubber duckies.  And I don’t know how to swim.  And did I mention the bubbles?

Obviously this baby is going to come whether I’m ready or not, and I’ll jump in with both feet because that’s how I roll.  But for now, in this deep breath before the plunge (a.k.a. the last eight weeks of pregnancy) I feel like it’s the first day of kindergarten and I’m not quite sure how to behave on the playground just yet.

So there you go.  How do I feel about my impending motherhood?  Bubble baths and playgrounds.  That just about sums it up.

Seriously though, that nap was magical.  Almost as good as the nap I took yesterday afternoon.

Why, you ask, do I have the luxury of napping my afternoons away?  Because my job is awesome.  My company gives everyone the last two weeks of the year off, and the best part is that it’s paid time off.  How could you not love a company who pays you to nap all afternoon?

I remember this time last year with fondness, though I think this break will be far better.  Last year I got stir-crazy less than a week into the vacation time and was chomping at the bit to return to work by the time January rolled around.

This year finds me blissed out on baby hormones and really savoring the ability to shut my eyes whenever and wherever my body deems it necessary.  Which is often.  And everywhere.

I do have projects planned for the time off, however, just to keep things interesting.  For example, I’m planning to start calling and scheduling interviews with pediatricians tomorrow.  I hear this is kind of important to get squared away before the baby gets here, so I might as well schedule the interviews for next week when I know I’ll have time.

I am also in the process of deep-cleaning the house to help me cope with Doc being gone.  I did this with my Dad’s house after he passed away and it drove my brother crazy, but this is how I cope.  I clean things.  I organize.  I restore order to the outside world so I can deal with the chaos of my emotions.

It’s probably strange, but it works for me.

While I putter and sleep, Wes continues to study.  He missed passing his huge exam by one measly question on Saturday, and is scheduled to re-take it tomorrow morning.  Where others might be intimidated or discouraged by not passing, Wes is determined.  I have a feeling this test will be destroyed tomorrow by the time he’s done with it.

I told Wes that the first test attempt was really just a reconnaissance mission, to scope out the enemy’s weaknesses.  Now that he knows the lay of the land, he’s going to crush that test and I, for one, can’t wait to see him do it.