The program’s been done for a few days, but my last week was exhausting and rewarding. Finishing up my lit review took forevvvver and in the end it was over 100 pages long, 35 of which were just me writing (the bulk of the remaining pages were parts of my interview transcripts). There was a serious amount of last minute work that needed to be done with the lit review, like formatting it, adding a table of contents, adding an appendix, a works cited, and citing things throughout the entire paper. Then it needed to be edited a few times, which was exhausting because of its length. It was really cool, though, to have such a tangible final result from my weeks of hard work. Finishing the poster was difficult too, but I think mine turned out really nice and even though I have no idea why I’d ever need it again, I’m excited that I still have it to remind me of everything I did and learned. Working on these two projects made me realize how much work can go into bringing about a small change within the scope of a nonprofit; since the last seminar we had, I’ve been thinking about how I’d feel about working in a nonprofit when I graduate. For some reason I honestly never thought about this before, but after the seminar, it kind of struck me how difficult it is to pursue a nonprofit career that I’m really interested in and make a decent amount of money. I’m fortunate enough to be able to go to the University of Michigan and earn a degree, and I’m smart enough to be able to pursue a career that I could make a good living off of. There are a lot of things to consider when deciding a career path, and I think it’s good that I’m beginning to consider all of them, not just what my dream job might entail.
