Well, here it is. November 1st is upon us and there are only 55 days left in the shopping season. ON the home front, I've been offered a job in Iraq that would last one year. I would recieve a six figure income, TAX FREE, along with a really nice tan. The only problem I have with it, aside from it being in Iraq, is that the job I'm being offered isn't in the field I just spent the last two years going to school for.

I finally graduated with an AS in Criminal Justice but because of medical reasons I cannot be hired into any police force. I don't want to spend the rest of my life working as a security guard in some mall either. Crime labs are willing to accept people with just criminal justice degrees, though they would prefer BS's in some sort of science, but it would just be as an assistant. It would take years to move up into a technical position. I know that there are supposed to be lots of other jobs in the CJ field but I just can't seem to find them.

On the other I could take the job in Iraq working as a food service worker and deal with the possibility of getting hurt, mamed, or killed. There are wonderful job incentives though. Madical, dental, and vision are covered through the company. The six figure income could become more when experience and education are taken into account. With that kind of money I could pay off my bills, buy a new car and a house. I could even do a bit of travelling if I wanted to.

Isn't it a shame that as technology advances so does the requirement for operating that technology. That means that most people need a college education. But with the rising costs of tuition, books, and supplies most families can't afford to send their students to college but they make just enough money to make them inelligible for financial aid. Most college students are so far indebt by the time they graduate that they'll take the first job offered to them without really caring whether it is the right kind of job they want.

I'm just glad that school is over with, even if it means I have to go to Iraq to pay off my debt.

Today, was my last day of school for this quarter. I am currently one quarter, 12 weeks away from an Associate's Degree in Criminal Justice. For a kid who dropped out of school at the age of 16 this is an extraordinary event.

I moved around a lot as a kid, so I rarely had the chance to complete more than one year of education at each school. This created a problem for me when I completed my freshman year of high school in one state and my sophmore year in another. The credits I had earned my first year wouldn't transfer to my other school, and I had goofed around so much that I had only completed about a third of the credits I attempted in my sophmore year. I was now required to do four more years of school. This meant that I would have been the only graduating old enough to get legally drunk on graduation night. This was ot an option for me, so I did the only thing a teenager could do. I QUIT!!!! But not completely. I worked for the summer and then tested for my GED.

I am in no way saying that this is what every teenager should do but it was the right thing for me to do at the time. I hated school. The students were bullies, the teachers didn't seem to care, and the level of education was substandard. The city's education council didn't offer any kind of testing to struggling kids. If a student had a problem with a course they were deemed as having special education needs and were put in a class with students of varying needs. The math genuis who wasn't being challenged enough was in the same class as a student who was "mentally slow". My high school didn't offer AP courses for students. I finally figured out, after years and years of being out of high school, that it wasn't school that I hated, it was the lack of challenge in the assignments

I figured; "What's the point of doing something I already know how to do?" It wasn't that I was slow, or stupid, or lazy; it was that school wsn't challenging enough for me. When I finally figured out what kind of career I wanted to have, I knew that I would need to return to school to achieve the career I wanted. Vary daunting. After enrolling in college, I was terrified that I wouldn't achieve the kind of grades I needed to stay elligible for financial aid. All that worrying was for nothing. I just needed to be in the right kind of school environement; one that help students flourish.

In the two years I've been attending Remington College here in Largo, Fl, I've never made a grade lower that a B. That's a far cry from the D's and F's I was getting in high school. I think this experience has allowed me to kill a few myths from my past and has shown me that I can do well in school. In 6 months time, I plan on being enrolled in Northern Illinois University's Bachelor's of Chemistry program with a minor in Physics. I plan on working in the state's forensics lab after graduation from NIU. For right now though, I hope to learn new things and be the person with the best qualifications for any job I apply for.

I'm gonna walk across the stage as a graduate in October. It will be one of the best days of my life.

It's taken me a week to be able to talk about the series finale, but I find that the end of Stargate SG-1 is just the beginning. I am sorely ticked off that the Jack/Sam relationship storyline wasn't resolved during the ten season run of the show but with Sam taking Dr. Weir's place as commander of the Atlantis expedition perhaps that particular plot point can be resolved during the fourth season of Atlantis.

Another reason for this being the beginning of something is that it opens the series up for more movies. With the entire Ori storyline wrapping up in "The Ark of Truth" and Ba'al getting his just desserts in "Continuum" I can't wait to see what's in store for our intrepid explorers in the future.