My Story Part 36 – The Future

In the past, I wrote about how past events have shaped my life, but today I want to write about my dreams of the future. Next May, (May 7th to be exact, not that I’m keep track or anything like that) I will be graduating from UConn with my Masters in Social Work and I have been thinking about what I want to do then. One of the ideas that I have been thinking that I might like to do after I graduate, is teach. Last semester, I developed a curriculum to teach a course called “Working with Gender Variant Clients” and I would to peddle the course to the local colleges. One of the biggest complaints that I hear from the trans-community is that we end up teaching our therapists because they are not exposed to any classes about trans-issues in college. I would like to rectify that omission. I would also like to give
workshops on diversity to businesses and universities. People have joked with me about getting my doctorate and I joked along with them, but there is a little seed in the back of my mind that says, “you know, that might not be a bad idea.” I would say the probability of that happening is only about 10%. However, if I did go for my PhD, it wouldn’t be in social work, but in gender studies.

I would also like to continue helping the trans-community with civil rights, housing and employment. Hopefully, once I get my MSW that it will help me to bring about change here in Connecticut. I just see so many trans-people who are struggling to get by that it makes me feel so helpless.

I have been also thinking about traveling. Someday I would like to travel around the country in a RV to visit the National Parks. I have been to almost all the National Parks this side of the Mississippi and now I would like to travel west of the Mississippi and visit the parks there. I loved the trip that we took out west to the Pacific coast when my cousin’s son was married in Everett Washington in 1999. On that trip my brother, sister-in-law and my nephew drove up to Port Angeles and then drove down the coast to San Francisco. I loved seeing new places. Another dream of mine is to take a trip in a windjammer along the Maine coast in the fall.

I have no desire to travel overseas, there is enough to see here in the United States. Except I would like to take a train ride through the Canadian Rockies, from what I understand, Lake Louise in Banff National Park is beautiful. Also I would like to visit Nova Scotia.