I’m going to blame my term paper for keeping me away from blogging. I wish I could but the truth is that I haven’t been that faithful at blogging recently for a variety of reasons. One reason was that I got tired of writing about waffling back and forth about my graduate degree. The good news is that a little more than a week ago, I made a decision! I’m going to do the master’s instead of Ph.D. My advisor had told me that if I didn’t want to go into academia there was probably no reason to torture myself with a Ph.D. I have been certain for quite a while that I did not want to be an academic. My fear is that unemployed Ph.D.’s will be competing for the master’s level jobs I want as a biologist with various government agencies. However, I have something they don’t: work experience and permanent status with the federal government since I put in ten hard years as a firefighter with the National Park Service. Now I have to convince people that I can be a biologist. Hopefully the master’s degree will be convincing enough. Oh yes, and we get to move up to WeWA (western Washington) next year! My husband is finally very excited about the prospect, which makes the idea of moving much better of course.
Another reason I haven’t posted in a while is that one of my favorite blog topics (riding lessons) has become rather routine. I’m fine-tuning technical skills and can’t imagine anyone would want to read about that. Actually I don’t even really want to write about that. I still don’t have my own horse. I’m still riding Goldie, who limps a little sometimes and other times not. Has my life become boring? Of course not! Last night I took a riding lesson from a spunky lady who is an eventer, which means that she rides her horses over jumps on a cross country course (outside of the arena), as well as does show jumping and dressage. My goal is to get out of the arena. It’s hard to think of yet more arena exercises for Goldie and me. Doesn’t galloping over hill and dale sound like more fun? I think Goldie would think so too. I have, however, learned that the position of the rider is different for eventers. More like the position I learned and didn’t do well in before I started riding with my wonderful hunter trainer. So it looks like galloping cross country and breezing over solid obstacles is not going to happen for a while. I need to get comfortable in what feels like an unstable perched position. I’m not even comfortable going over little cross-rails yet. I have a whole year to learn this before we move and I have to find another trainer.
Corinna: It’s never boring to read about your riding lessons and training. I love reading about it and, admittedly, am disappointed when you don’t write about riding and horses and all of that.
After reading the behind-the-scenes stories about the O’Connor’s eventing careers, I realized how dangerous the eventing is–they only mentioned two horses breaking their necks over difficult jumps, but that was enough to stop me from thinking about it. I did like the stud farm stories, though, I never knew how difficult and involved it could be. I know I’d never want a career as a “teaser” stud. I felt bad for that guy–never getting any. 🙂
Very nice site. Will sure visit again.