So the last five days now have been spent largely in a sort of reorientation. This is good, since it’s largely what I needed to use this summer to do. In my last post I mocked Apple’s made-up term ‘phofilmusigner’, but I think the reason it rankled me is because it hit a little too close to home. Part of my trouble right now is that I am simultaneously a phofilmusigner and not enough of one.
Right now my primary interests are as follows:

• storytelling
• writing
• art
• filmmaking
• gamemaking
• photography
• web design
• music
• poetry
• comics
• animation
• design in general
• teaching
• technology

This list can be further (weirdly) broken down into the following:

• storytelling
  • writing
  • art
  • filmmaking
  • comics
  • gamemaking
• art
• writing
• filmmaking
• gamemaking
• comics
• poetry
• photography
• web design
• music
• design in general
• technology
  • digital storytelling
  • digital art
  • digital poetry
  • web design
• teaching
• digital storytelling
• digital art
• digital poetry
• web design
• storytelling
• writing
• poetry
• comics
• film

My great long-term plan is to move back to Ohio, land a teaching gig at someplace like Kenyon or Wooster, and do pretty much what I’m doing now only with a better paycheck. I want to own land, support a family, and make stuff – furthermore, to be encouraged by the school to make stuff. I’d still do consulting work, but with a broader scope. I could consult about different media types, I could consult on implementations of new media in business environments, I could consult about how best to use new media types in entertainment… So much I could be doing. The trouble is, teaching requires a PhD, and CMS doesn’t offer that yet. The Media Lab certainly does, and I’ve had my eye on the Media Lab as a possible post-CMS direction for years, but I’m a little freaked out by the concept of being in school for another five years after I wrap my current master’s. True, I’m doing very well here at MIT and I don’t want to leave, but there’s something about being in school now until I’m 34 that blows my mind. I’ve always sworn that I wouldn’t have kids until I could support them, and the idea of trying to support a family on a grad student’s budget is terrifying. Still. The idea of staying around to play at MIT for another fistful of years is wonderful, and the idea of getting my PhD here makes me grin from ear to ear. So what do I do?
If CMS doesn’t have a PhD in place by this time next year, the Media Lab makes the most sense to me. I like their hands-on approach (I definitely like the making of stuff more than just the criticism of stuff), but to get in I need to really crank up my programming skills. I have some experience programming for the web, sure, but there’s a world of difference between the C++, Python, Java, etc. set of programming skills and the ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP/MySQL set of programming skills. This is not to say that I can’t do it – I know that I can, and I’ve been meaning to for years. but the idea of trying to get myself caught up to speed in this area in the next few months is daunting, to say the least – and that’s certainly when I’d have to do it – and do it well – if I want to jump over to the Media Lab in – gulp – one year. Worse, I need to have my application together by this fall. If I want to be doing work in mobile media and ucomp, which are really starting to excite me, I think I need to start learning Java – specifically, J2ME. What’s one more project for the summer, right?
Jeez…