What I Want for Mother's Day This Year

In a few weeks, on May 19, my husband will receive his Master's degree from George Mason University. He has been working toward this goal for the past two years. During that time, he has also continued working part-time, helped take care of our son, and done his fair share of chores. It has been a remarkable juggling act.

Now that he is so close to getting his degree, the main issue on his mind is to find a job in the field he has been studying -- public policy. So far, he hasn't had much luck despite a lot of hard work. Even though he is a Presidential Management Fellow with a GPA of 3.96, he has only received one job offer so far, and that offer is from an agency that seems to want him for his background in the information technology and security fields. This is extremely frustrating. My husband decided to go to graduate school in order to facilitate a career change from information technology to public policy, but so far he has not even had any internship offers in his chosen area of study. Lately my husband has been questioning whether or not the sacrifices our family has made over the last two years have been worthwhile. What is the point of paying thousands of dollars and sacrificing hundreds of hours to get a degree if you continue to get the same kinds of job offers you would have received if you had not gone to school? The sacrifices are not all on my husband's part either; my mother, for example, has spent a significant portion of the past two years taking care of our son rather than enjoying retirement in order to give my husband time to study and conduct job searches.

This year Mother's Day will fall on May 14. If the Fates are listening, I would like to note that a really great gift for my mother and me this year would be an interesting job offer for my husband that makes the sacrifices of the past two years worthwhile.