(no subject)

I'm trying to figure out what next, assuming I don't land a nifty full time job in my field anytime soon.

Here's a poll for you to offer me advice!
Background:
UCSC has one of the top Science Writing programs in the country. To go not this September, but next, it would cost me ~$21,000 including tuition, living expenses, the whole shebang (probably less, but I'm being cautious), and cost me a year of my life, with the summer being a potentially paid internship.
To apply I need three recommendations and I need to take the Physics GRE, which will take a lot of studying.
Cost:
-$160 total in application and GRE fees
-untold hours studying for the GRE
-$21,000 minus finaid and grants I get

City College is supposed to not suck terribly, doesn't require being admitted, and costs $12/unit. There are a number of journalism classes being offered next fall, 3 units each. The campuses are spread out around the city but public transport friendly.

Dunno much about UCBerkeley Extension except that they have journalism classes and they cost ~$400 each.

No matter what I do I will keep on job searching, keep on doing my job at the Symphony (unless something better comes along) and keep on trying to get SOME work freelancing, although I might lame on the latter.

Time for your two cents!

[Poll #133150]

*twitch* Money concerns

So I have this money. In Canadian dollars. And the US dollar has been plumetting, so the value of that money to me has been skyrocketing. The exchange rate three months ago was like .62, now it is nearly .72. That means for every $10,000 I have, I actually gained about $1000.

Well, for the last few weeks it has steadily climbed upward. Today it went down for the first time in a long time. Just a bit. Like, it was .718 and now its .716, or something like that. But now the game begins. When do I sell? When do I change all my money?

Part of me wants to bail now; could it possibly get any better than this? I don't remember it ever being better than this when I've paid attention to the Cdn. dollar in my past.

My brain says that I need to hold on. It is just a small fluctuation and probably not part of a trend.

But all the same, I'm not sure how to judge all this. I have graphs of the dollars progress I can look at at x-rates.com for the last 120 or 30 days, and that's helpful, but not enough.

Financially clever folks... Any idea if the US dollar will keep on falling? Any idea if the Cdn. dollar will keep on rising? Any idea how to make decisions on this sort of thing?

Physics folks, out of curiosity...

Anyone out there have physics textbooks they could lend me if I decided to take the GREs? I have a basic calculus text book and Griffiths Quantum textbook, and that's all. All the French textbooks, etc., I used in college I borrowed from my now ex-husband. My E&M Griffiths textbook went missing long ago.

Anyone who might be interested in tutoring me for affordable rates if I decided I needed tutoring? Anyone with advice on the Physics GRE and how heinous it is? I hear that it will ask some pretty advanced questions about all sorts of stuff I've probably never seen before.

Question meme

It's been a long time coming, so...

[Poll #133203]

I am CRAZY

So I just agreed to work full time here for the remainder of the internship. The Calendar woman is out sick still and needs time to recover, so they offered to pay me $12/hour to do calendar data entry.

This means that starting next Tuesday for the next two weeks, I will be working ~30-32 hours per week at the Weekly (though some of that would be for pay), 16 hours per week at the Symphony, and ~1 hour at the rink. So yes. I have kissed my free time goodbye for the remained of this month.

Should I go back on this? It isn't too late for them to ask someone else to do it. It seems that at $12/hour, it is worth it since it is only temporary. Am I smoking crack?