9 posts tagged “graduate school”

Took my first trip down to Boise a few days ago.  The drive down there is 477 miles from Bigfork, so for me that would normally be about 7-8 hours.  Well, as I have learned, they don't make straight roads in Idaho, it is look me about 9 1/2 hours to get down there.  Which for that distance is unconscionable to me.  So that means there won't be any whirlwind interstate trips between Boise and Montana.  It is gonna be a bitch of a drive with a moving truck, since it is never ending windy ass roads the whole way, and a couple of mountain passes a in 100 degree temps.  I am hoping all goes well, but I am guessing it will be even slower going.

The town of Boise was a somewhat pleasant surprise thought.  I expected Boise to be this sprawling suburban metropolis baking out on the north side of the Snake River plain.  But to my pleasant surprise, the down town area where the campus is located, and I was looking for apartments was well laid out, with some class old town neighborhoods, and a nice downtown area with bars and restaurants.

My apartment search went like most of them do.  The place I thought looked great over the net was terrible, and I didn't find the apartment I ended up renting until the morning I left, and it turned out better than any of the others I had viewed.  The apartment is actually a 2-story town house off of the main drag, nestled back against a 3-4 million dollar estate in the old part of town.

The place met most of my criteria, in that it was 2 bedroom, 1.5 baths, with a garage, and a carport, relatively close to campus (about 1/2 a mile away).  It is a little more than I wanted to spend (700 a month).  I really like the neighborhood the place is in, and it has a great proximity to downtown and BSU.

I got my first taste of the geochronology work I am going to be doing down at BSU, and it is very, VERY time intensive.  When I get to a point that I am doing dating, I will be spending many many hours in the lab.  Just the time it took to get the datable material out of one rock was a solid 20 hours worth of work.  It takes about another 2 weeks to do the rest of the preparation for dating.  So I think it will be a busy couple of years down at BSU, but I think I will have fun while I am there.  

Today, I saw the first Master's thesis presentation that I didn't believe was actually going to be defensible.  I guess I should give some background on how you earn graduate degree in geology.  Basically, you go out, do some sort of research, bring the data you have collected back, then analyze and make conclusions about that data that are scientifically "defensible".  You then present these data and conclusion to a group of your peers and professors, for them to try to pick apart, and if you have done defensible work they usually will not be able to find any big holes.

So I saw the presentation of Jake Mohrmann, who did a project attempting to find the causation of fluctuation in the discharge of hot springs in Yellowstone NP.  The general thought today is that changes in barometric pressure, tidal forces, rainwater input, and earthquakes all affect the discharge of these hot springs.  To test this, Jake went down to Yellowstone and placed instruments that would measure how much water was being discharge from a few specific hot springs.

Jake had originally planned to measure several springs for two weeks, a couple of times.  Unfortunately he had some hardware issues, was only able to spend two weeks measuring the discharge in 3 different creeks.  The result of this was a data set that was too small to make any significant conclusions.  But, when you are doing a project like this, and you are raring to get on with your life, it is really hard to convince yourself to go back for another year so that you can make good on the project, which is what I believe Jake desperately needs to do.

Jake's presentation skills are not the greatest, he had a difficult time remembering details of his project, he had a difficult time explaining analytical techniques that he used, and he seemed to have a lot of things that he still wanted to do.  It is not unusual to have things that you still want to look at, but in Jake's case, it was unclear that he really looked at anything to begin with.

I will be very interested to see what comes of his defense meeting.  Whether they will let him get away with this sloppy work, or if he will be forced to make something productive out of his project.  The one thing I can say is that his presentation was a great experience for me; it convinced me that if I don't feel that all of the work on my thesis is done with it comes time to defend, I am much better off to tack on another year, and do things right.

So, last week and this weekend I really got the idea in my head that I was done looking for grad schools, that I was going to be going to UMass Amherst, and that no matter what Boise State had to offer, I would got to UMass Amherst anyway.  So I started looking how much apartments were running, how much the move would cost, starting to think about how to organize things, all of that.

Well, today I am sitting in lab, helping people with with Igneous Petrology; and I get an e-mail from Mark Schmitz at Boise State University.  He wanted me to know that I was being offered a TA at this time, but that I was very high on the alternate list, and to please not commit to any other schools until he could see if they could get me a TA.  So, I gave him a call and talked to him a bit, and it seems like really want me at Boise State, and they are going to do their best to try to offer me a TA.

I went and talked to Julie, my advisor, and she made my decision even harder.  Originally I really wanted to go to UMass because I knew that my advisor there would be a top notch professor, and I would have the chance to work on some really cool rocks.  Julie told me that I would basically have just as good a people and projects to work on Boise State, and that I might even be able to get a bit better advising from the people there, since they would not be stretched so thin.

So, I guess now I am waiting to hear from Boise State to see if they can offer me a TA, since is the only way I would really consider going there.  But, the hard decision comes when if they do find a TA for me, do I take the great opportunity, but sacrifice where I want to live, or do I go to the place I had my heart set on.  Ugh, the decisions only seem to be getting harder.

Had a whole stack of mail today, which included two letters from UMass Amherst.  The first was what I expected, a letter from the grad school telling me I had been accepted to the graduate school.  The second letter was from the Geosciences Department, informing me that I had been accepted, but unfortunately they could not offer me support at this time.  Pretty much what I expected.  Soooo . . .I guess that leaves it up to Boise State.  I will keep my fingers crossed, but I am not holding my breath.

I really wanted to go to UMass Amherst, I really wanted to spend some time in that part of the country, so this was pretty disappointing.  I looked at what it would cost to go to school in Amherst, and it is going to be $8000 a semester for the first year, and then it would drop to $4500 a semester once I had my residency; I just can't justify taking out atleast $30,000 in loans, when I could stay hear in the Montana for $10,000.  So we will see what happens with Boise State, if I don't get support there, I will have to decide if I want to wait for a year, and reapply, or if I want to bite the bullet and go to school anyway.

Anyway, after all of that, my buddy Jon (from Terracaching.com) called and said he pulled the dirtbike out of moth balls and wanted to see if I want to get my bike running and go for a spin around town, it seemed like a good way to get my mind off of things.  So we spent about an hours buzzing around on the bike, and the went and got some food and a beer, and all is better now.

So I went anxiously to the mail today for a number of reasons, (1) I might be getting a letter from a grad school, and (2) I had three Netflix movie showing up today, woohoo.  Well, I ended up with disappointment, satisfaction, and pure hilarity.  In that order.

I didn't get any letter from grad schools, but I have come expect that at this point, so I was not all that surprised.  But, my Netflix movies showed up, so that is quite good, and the only other thing I got was some religious junk mail.  So anyway, I was cleaning off my coffee table, and I saw the religious junk mail, and just like a horrible car accident, I couldn't look away, it was sitting their mocking me.

So I ripped open the letter, and what I found was quite hilarious.  Enclosed were 3 different letters, reminiscent of a sweepstakes letter, and self-addressed stamped envelop, and a "loaner" "Bible Handkerchief".  Here are a couple of excerpts from one of the letters:

Here is what I ask you do in Jesus' name (1) Print your name and your most pressing problem, by faith, in the center of this bible handkerchief, and the name of someone else whom you really love that needs god's help. (2) Then, open your bible to the book of . . ., if you have a bible. If not, it's OKAY, God sees. (3) Then Lay this bible faith handkerchief (with your name printed in the center of it) on this scripture. (4) Leave it there under your side of your bed for TONIGHT ONLY! If you can't, God will see your situation, but we would like you to sleep over it. . . .

In the morning, please take this faith handkerchief out of that Bible, put it into this self-addressed envelope (the church will pay the postage for you - this is so important) and return it to us in the morning. I repeat, please do not keep this faith handkerchief, and please do not break this flow of God's spirit from my home to your home. Rush this Bible, church handkerchief back, for I must write something, in the spirit, to you that's good and is coming to your door.

I couldn't help be laugh out loud several times during the course of reading the letter, and wondering how many people could read something like this, and believe that crap.  Then I decided to do some investigating, since this seemed like such a scam.

I found several references to sites reporting this St. Matthews Church of Tulsa OK as being a mail scammer.  At this one, there is a picture of one of their mailings (different from mine), so you can get a sense of what this thing looks like.  It looks like they used a little different scam each time, mine was a "Bible Handkerchief", others have been "Prayer Rugs" and "Golden Prayer Chords".

Someone has tracked down the guy running this scam, you can check out the website here, and it would appear that there are a lot of people who fall for this guys crap.  The last year that St. Matthews Publishing, publicly released its finances, it grossed 26 million dollars for a total of over 100 million dollars since its incorporation as a tax exempt 501(c)3, non-profit corporation.

Fair bit has happened in the past two days.  I guess the most important is that yesterday I got a letter from the University of Minnesota, and that was a big disappointment. "You were a very strong applicant, but we had a bunch of really strong applicants . . . limited number of positions. . .yada yada yada.  So I am still waiting to hear from BSU and UMass Amherst.  Keeping my fingers crossed, you religious folk can pray for me if that turns your crank.

I told Julie (my adviser) about my thoughts that I might be interested in going the academic route, and working as a researcher instead of going the industry route (oil or mining).  She was very honest with me, she said that it is a VERY competitive industry, and that I would really have to bust my ass and do some really creative research to be competitive.  She also implied that the school I went too was important.  Soooo. . .what I gathered from the short conversation was that if I wanted to go the academic route, going to a really good second tier school (like Minnesota or Massachusetts), and doing really creative research, writing grant proposals, and getting published, then going to a top tier school, like MIT, Stanford, Cal-Tech, or one of those and getting a PhD, is the path to a professorship.

That is a damn steep hill to climb.  So I guess we will have to wait and see what happens with my current apps to see if that is the way I really want to go.  The second option is, I could always teach at a community college, or small state school if I don't quite have it in me to get to the top.  But that is a long way down the road.

I got my first response from a grad school today.  This one was from the University of Montana, so I already had a pretty good idea what I was going to getting.  I was accepted, but they were not able to offer me a Teaching or Research Assistantship.  They claim that I qualified, and that I was on an alternate list, in case someone decided not to take their TA offer.  But I am not holding my breath.  So I guess it is just a waiting game now to see what I get from the rest of the schools.

Alrighty, I figured I would give the blogging thing a shot.  I put a couple of blog posts over on my myspace page, but I despise myspace, so I am pretty much just going to lock that account down so that only the people I already have as friends will have access, and everyone else, primarily nosy potential employers, can go screw themselves.  Besides, these vox blogs are MUCH more stylish than the crap over on myspace, those pages either make me sea sick, or they give me a splitting headache, so I think this will work out a lot better.

So, on to what is happening with me.  I got antsy today and decided to call and harass all the grad schools to which I applied.  I was only able to get a hold of one person who seemed to know anything, and they were vague at best.  Boise State said that my file was "complete" whatever the hell that means, but that they were still working on others, and the likelihood was that that would take a couple of more weeks.  At all the other schools I just got secretaries that didn't know anything who just forwarded me on to other people's voicemails.  So maybe I will hear something from the people that I left messages with, but who knows, I am sure they get a couple of those calls a day an probably don't bother responding.

Still cracking away at my thesis.  I got some of my thin sections back at the end of last week, but they proved to be the least interesting, so I am still waiting for the cool stuff.  In the mean time I am still working on the writing the geologic setting for the my thesis.  I still have a lot of reading I need to do be able to beef it up the way I want, but Julie told me I had a great start, so I guess that is good.  I have already expand the first 9 lines I wrote into out about 40, so if I can continue at that rate I shouldn't have any problems making 5 pages out of it.

I went out and hit some terracaches with Jon and Scott on Sunday.  I woke up to it raining, 33 deg., and windy, so what better than to go out hiking.  We were supposed to have a big group of people, but I am sure they said "screw this" when they saw the weather.  We cut out plans short, and just did a little 3 mile loop, we had been considering doing something around 7-8 miles the weather was pretty nasty in that area.

Starting to get my spring break trip planned out.  Right now the full length version is 8 states, 9 days, and 3400 miles.  But I am betting I will run out of time and end up having to haul ass a thousand miles home, but that is par for the course.  If I end going to east for grad school this will be my last chance to take a western road trip for a while, so I want to knock out Arches, Canyonlands, and Grand Canyon National Parks on this trip.

Anyway, I have to do a few things to get ready for my Metamorphic Terrane Analysis class, so I guess I had better do that.  Stay tuned . . .