Now that my plans have changed and I have some extra time to prepare for my master’s degree, I need to make sure that it doesn’t go to waste. For the next year, I’m setting some goals to keep myself on track and focused.
Financial: Save More Money
Coming out of my 4th year on JET, I had enough saved to cover most of my tuition. Living expenses, not so much. After not getting ANY of the scholarships or grants I applied to, I was resigned to taking out loans again to cover food and rent. Going into this next year, I’m going to try to save as much as I can to go towards my living expenses.
The good news is, my living expenses in Japan are pretty low and consistent. So I can roughly estimate how much I’ll need each month.
The bad news is, Japan has many ways to tempt you out of your money.
Back in the US, I would be more inclined to stay at home, maybe occasionally picking up some used books for cheap. In Japan, with multiple public holidays and widespread public transport, travel is a constant temptation. There is also an endless supply of cool and unique things (events, limited merch, food) to coax the yen out of your wallet.
Luckily, after four years in Japan, I’ve already done quite a lot of travel. I’ve hit a lot of events and visited like half of the prefectures. Now I’m reaching the point where travel is seeming like more effort than I’m willing to put in, to be honest. I’m more inclined to stay close to home and rest or work on personal projects. With the continuing state of the pandemic and cases rising again, despite Japan’s domestic travel campaign, I probably won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
I’m going to need to work on the shopping aspect a bit though. After shipping my stuff home I had to buy new winter clothes, plus fabric to make masks for myself, and I couldn’t resist a few books. . .
Career: Expand Conservation Skills
Given an extra year, my gap in relevant experience in conservation is growing. It’s hard to believe my last internship was almost 5 years ago. Worried, as ever, that this gap could be a problem, I am looking at ways to improve my skills. I already have a couple of courses in mind, but the first I’m going to start with is the free online GIS course offered by the Marine Mammals Research Association. I have noticed that GIS experience seems to pop up a lot as a desired skill for fieldwork/research and in resumes. I’m not the most tech-savvy, so this is an area I want to work on, and I think it will be a great addition to my resume. Plus, it’s something I can do on my own time.
I also want to work on my research skills. I haven’t done much reading of scientific articles in recent years, but when I started this blog, in the interest of being as factual as possible, I started looking for more research papers about the topics I was writing about. I would like to get more efficient at finding, reading, and understanding these papers as well as finding reliable scientific information. This should help me finish my posts in a more consistent time-frame, and prepare me for research during my degree program.
Health: Physical Fitness
This has been a long-running goal of mine that always gets thrown off track by weather, work commitments, low motivation, you know the deal. I don’t know how I managed to cook regularly and exercise semi-regularly before because now I can barely seem to fit one into my after school time.
I’m not unhealthy or in terrible shape, I just want to be better.
Establish a habit that I can stick with.
Unfortunately, I hate finding and cooking recipes and working out.
So this will be a continuation of a longstanding goal. I’ll have to work on meal planning and better time management so I can fit in those workouts
Personal Project: Improve blog
And of course, after neglecting it over the summer (fall, and winter), I want to get back on track with this blog. This is something I want to grow and develop. Given the unpredictability and competition in the job market, I think it could give me some focus and consistency in my life. I’ve already managed to come farther with it than I initially thought. Now I need to make sure it doesn’t end there. It has been a learning curve as I don’t have a ton of confidence or experience in writing or the technology end of things (it was a full year between getting the site and naming it and publishing my first post). Going forward, I want to improve the site design and stick to a posting schedule.
2020 has been a rough year with a lot of hard decisions and changes. If I can make some progress on these goals, it will be a positive step into 2021. I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
