Thesis defended successully
Which means I will shortly be awarded a Master's degree in foresight. I guess that officially makes me a futurist
I've been doing foresight work for about ten years now, as a side activity with strange hooks and connections into my science fiction writing. It was always evident to me that there was a lot more to it than the wild-eyed prophets and professional futurists like Alvin Toffler made evident; so, when an opportunity to gain a degree in it came up, I jumped at it.
--Actually, it's not that simple. In early 2009 I was recovering from heart surgery and really, badly needed something to make me enthusiastic about getting out of bed in the morning, because just getting out of bed was really physically difficult. Undertaking the degree gave me something to shoot for, and helped get me over the difficult convalescence period. It was also, well, just a hell of a lot of fun.
Now I'm done, and I'm pretty bummed about it, because over the course of the programme I got to know a lot of really amazing people, some my classmates, some my instructors, and some consultants and business people who came in to mentor us. I was part of the first cohort in the foresight programme at OCAD, and we became a pretty tightly-knit group. I'll be sad not to be seeing everybody on a weekly basis, though I hope to keep up my contacts with as many of my classmates and instructors as possible.
So, now what? Oh, who knows! It's not like recruiters are going from town to town snapping up recent Futurism graduates. This was always going to be a profession where we defined our own path. But that's half the fun of it, especially for someone like myself who's used to being adventurous in my career choices.
...All of which means, that hey, if you happen to hear about any futurist jobs opening up in your neighbourhood, well, drop me a line, eh? I could sure use the work.
COngratulations!