Mistakes Were Made (By Me)…

As I was musing on this post, a phrase “Mistakes were made” popped into my head.

However, this phrase is often used by politicians and others to downplay personal responsibility, accountability, and as a deflection tool. It’s deliberately passive voice.

I decided to keep it (with an addition) because I’m having trouble coming to terms with how badly I feel I screwed up recently.

Namely, in continuing to pursue my latest degree. It’s heartbreaking in a way. And I am also getting really cynical because I trusted an academic institution whose values seemed to mirror my own, or, at the very most, values related to the environment, conservation, nonhuman animal advocacy, and things of that ilk that I also prized.

I feel betrayed, both by this institution, and myself. I was also on the fence about writing a post that might be more candid and personal than usual, but maybe it could help others be more savvy in pursuing career and professional goals.

Or maybe it could help open new doors, and build new connections with people. Help rekindle some motivation, or build the foundation for ways to network and transform the world, perhaps even through grassroots partnerships. I just don’t know what to do anymore in regards to “fighting the good fight”.

My motivations for returning to school this time were:

• Transition out of book publishing/editing and back into nonprofit work (work with a “mission”)
• Building on my newly discovered (or newly acknowledged) skillsets in helping companies build up their internal and external infrastructure through communication and leadership and outreach
• Continue my 25-plus-year attempt to break out of the minimum-wage level of income to get a higher-paying job

I signed up for a master’s in professional science in Environmental Branding & Marketing.

It was also a way to fulfill a childhood dream (I wanted to go to school for Marine Biology but was prevented from pursuing that pathway back in 1990).

I realized (too late) during my last two classes, Capstone 1 and 2, that I had made a terrible mistake. Or series of mistakes–costly ones that I can’t undo without going back in time.

I am sick both in my heart and in my stomach over my errors in judgment. I think I was blinded by both my desperation and my misplaced idealism.

I have been feeling so discouraged and cynical right now, and I don’t know what to do about fixing my mistake. Especially when I had been accepted into a DBA program in organizational development and change that I realized I would not be able to take because I used up the last of my available financial aid  on this degree program.

These were my mistakes:

• Not dropping out of the degree program when my original degree pathway, environmental branding and marketing, was not offered, as well as a more fitting degree program in alignment with the type of work I hoped to get (working on the business side of nonprofit and advocacy work).
• Letting my advisor talk me into switching to their suggested replacement, wildlife conservation and advocacy.
• Not trusting my own instincts, and, instead, trusting my advisor when they told me that there was room for me in the wildlife conservation and advocacy program even though I wasn’t an academic scientist and I didn’t have a rigorous science background.
• Continuing to believe my advisor when they also assured me my capstone would not be academic in nature but would be more on the practical. business side of things.
• Sticking with the program when they did not even have an active career services department to support their students.

I made it all the way to the capstone only to discover a few things, to my shock and dismay:

• I would be forced to complete an academic scientific research paper in true “publish or perish” style. The last time I did any sort of science-based learning was in high school in the 1980s. My advisor knew this, and told me I would be able to navigate a science degree despite my qualms about not being a formally/academically trained scientist, because it was a degree in “professional” science (my advisor emphasized the “professional” part).
• There was no opportunity to learn professional, practical business skills such as creating pitch decks, business proposals, or other opportunities, despite what my advisor had assured me there would be. That my capstone had the option to be tailored to my particular area of focus.
• I had planned to start reaching out to potential capstone partners long before the start of the capstone. My advisor strictly told me to absolutely not contact any potential capstone partners prior  I found out way after the fact that I could have done that as well.
• .I was lucky to even have a capstone partner that stepped up for me, because I had to scramble last minute to find a capstone partner, propose a project (that was delayed because the original project was switched a few weeks into the Capstone 1), and catch up on the required assignments.

At this point, I don’t know how to fix this whopper of a mistake(s) I have made.

Every day, I have to resist the urge to throw away my awarded degree (a master’s in professional science in wildlife conservation and advocacy)–to just rip it up and flush it down the toilet. I have shoved it in the back of my storage closet and am trying to forget it exists, while still trying to leverage this degree in any way possible to get a job in face of mass federal layoffs and federal funding cuts.

I am just trying to keep a roof over my head, am trying to pay down my credit card debt, trying to keep my car running, terrified about my future, shell-shocked by the state of the worsening-by-the-day political nightmare of Trump and the rest of his corrupt administration of racists, pedophiles, and grifters who have all the money, power, and influence they could ever want.

I am so burned out after 30 years of endless job hunting that I am struggling to even apply for jobs anymore. I mean, there was a period of time where I applied for five to six jobs a day, seven days a week, 364 days a year, for two years straight. I’ve revamped my resume hundreds of times, drafted probably close to a thousand cover letters, I have all these skills, training, and talents, and I still can’t break out of this level of income and life status.

Even more pie-in-the-sky? I’m trying to figure out a way to flee the United States. Talk about another layer to the impossible pipe dream, eh?

I am left with a growing sense of cynicism as exemplified by Trump and all of his cronies–that in order to be “successful” and have money, power, and influence, you have to behave like them.

I have a growing disquietude that I chose the “wrong” path in life by trying to be conscientious, ethical, and by having a love for nonhuman animals, nature, and for social justice as my core beliefs since I was very young.

I was, until recently, telling myself I was transitioning out of book publishing and editing (which I’ve been doing on the side since 2013) because even in leadership roles, the money just wasn’t there, and trying to break into the business side of nonprofits.

But now I don’t know how to forge a new pathway. I don’t know how to be any different other than an activist and an advocate, and, instead, transform myself into a person motivated by self-interest and greed and the bottom line.

I feel like I have been a fool.

In the words of George Carlin: “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”