New beginnings...

At the tail end of last year, having completed the MSc Environment & Development at the London School of Economics, I was duly promised that all manner of endless and very 'golden' opportunities would inevitably open themselves up to me - based primarily on the value of my university pedigree and secondly, on the quality of said degree.

In the real world however, whilst the phrase, "With Distinction, Bernadine Loretta Fernz" was indeed gratifying to hear at the Graduation Ceremony in December, I start 2012, alongside many of my colleagues, staring down endless job applications. Oh goody.

Being the Queen of Procrastination, I have devised numerous and varied ways with which to amuse myself, one of them being a new blog, in which I will surely lose interest in a matter of days. But for now, here I am. The devil really does make work for idle hands.

On a more constructive note, today I applied for a role at Earthwatch. Yeay! It looks interesting enough but paying less than half what my previous base salary was. Ouch! If crime doesnt pay, well, 'saving the world' certainly pays even less. Now that's the cue for many of my extended family and friends to chorus 'Why couldnt you just have stayed in your well paying job??', 'What's all this save the world nonsense??? Save yourself!!!', 'Why waste GBP35,000 on another degree when you can buy a house?' and so on and so forth. Blah, blah, blah.

So people think I'm crazy, or having a mid-life crisis at best. Still, in spite of the remuneration or rather lack of, I find myself, for the first time in a very long time, looking forward to a career that has the potential to really mean something. Perhaps I'm being naive, perhaps overly optimistic, perhaps the 'save the world' machinery doesnt really work after all... or perhaps it does, and perhaps I will, in time, find an opportunity to do something that matters...

Here's to new beginnings...