Aaaahhhh!
As you know, senior year has been a real roller-coaster ride so far. I have worked myself up about senior essay and have nothing to show for it. I don't have a close relationship with a tutor in Santa Fe and have had no luck finding an advisor who clicks with me. Either I am too ancient and the tutor is too modern, one of us is socially inept, or I am too passive and the tutor too aggressive. It feels like I am incompatible with the thoughts I encounter, like I am excited only by inferior ideas, and there seems to be some relation between a tutor's fondness for Kant/Hegel/Wagner/literature above all else, and our inability to communicate. So, it has been a very frustrating process and the time to turn in a paper topic proposal looms. Last weekend I figured out that getting myself worked up about it is probably not a good idea, and so I am beginning the process over again. I want to explore a very general question: What does the religious life have to offer that philosophy doesn't? The problem is finding a great place where these ideas intersect. Plato? Kierkegaard? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Augustine? I haven't read Brothers Karamazov yet, which is the only one of these ideas I've found a tutor receptive of. So...any advice?

The other movement/struggle of senior year has been planning for next year. The more I think about medicine, the more I am drawn to sides of it that are more intimate, more interpersonal, and less sterile. The three options for next year I am considering seriously are:
1) Apply to the JET program and go back to Japan for a year or two. Make some money and improve my working Japanese. This does not replace options 2 or 3 but does delay them and give me a (much-needed) adventure.
2) Midwifery
3) Pursue a degree that would allow me to be a therapist.

I have shifted towards midwifery and therapy as I have become convinced that I want my role to be that of someone who frees people. I want to give the people I encounter more options. I don't want to be part of an institution that imagines it is superior to those it serves. At this point I am absolutely fascinated by both midwifery and therapy... midwifery feels like a true calling, but I'm not sure it's the right time for it. The traits of a successful and helpful midwife are the ability to work very hard, compassion, open-mindedness, ability to work cooperatively and selflessly with a group of various (probably strong) personalities. Doesn't it seem like a psychology or social work degree could be a part of developing those qualities?

There is a really great program in Taos, New Mexico at the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center. It is a 18-24 month apprenticeship that gives aspiring midwives a lot of experience and support as they prepare to take the NARM exam, which is required to become a CPM (certified professional midwife). One of the scariest things about midwifery is that I want to be a direct-entry midwife, as opposed to a nurse-midwife. Direct-entry midwives have much more freedom and are able to attend home births, but also accept certain risks from which nurse-midwives are better protected. If you are interested in midwifery at all, I recommend the book "Babycatcher", by Peggy Vincent.
I just finished it and couldn't put it down. It is an anecdotal account of being an independent nurse-midwife in the Bay Area during the 80s. If you are interested in the advantages and disadvantages of midwifery from a more statistical or medical perspective, I also read "A Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth". I think this would be the book for Dad to read when I finally get him on the phone about all this stuff.

The problem with Taos is that there is very little hope Ben will be able to find anything interesting to do there for two years. It is just a little too far from Santa Fe (1 1/2 hours) for us to commute or stay connected to Santa Fe. So this is a bummer, and I am currently casting about looking for a program like Taos' in California or Washington or New York...or anywhere other than Florida and Texas (which have an overabundance of midwifery schools). So if you happen to know a midwife who wants to be my preceptor, let me know.

Meanwhile, the following states are totally out of the picture if I'm a direct entry midwife. They ban it all together: Alabama, Illinois (sad!) Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, and D.C.