shadowclaw

I'm thrilled that tomorrow is March. I got a few rejections early on (beginning of January), but I haven't heard a peep out of my remaining programs. Two of my 5 remaining programs do interviews, and sadly, I was not invited. Having not been rejected, I am likely on a waitlist (though they didn't tell me). I don't expect to get an official rejection until April (or perhaps a last minute miracle offer if a bunch of people decline their offers), which is what most of my prospective PhD programs did last time I applied. For the programs that don't interview, I am expecting news sometime in March, although FIU does have some results for April. But I'm hoping they'll get everything settled in March! It would be fitting to get an acceptance letter during spring break, since that's when I got my acceptance to my masters program 2 years ago. I'm also eagerly awaiting the results of the NSF GRFP, which has been sending out letters anywhere from March 30 to April 10. Winning the fellowship would likely get my suspected waitlists turned into acceptances, plus would provide me with substantially more funding than what these schools typically offer. So March is an exciting month for me. I'm really hoping for some good news.

Forever young

Luckily most of my friends can handle not talking about their kids for a little while. What really drives me up the wall though is Facebook. I don't look at it that much anymore, but when I do there are babies everywhere. One of my cousins is constantly putting videos up of her kids doing basically nothing. My one friend's husband enjoys photography, and he wants to start a business at some point. So he's been doing lots of free or cheap photos for people to build up a portfolio (engagement photos, cutesy baby photos with props, stuff like that). He's actually quite good, but he takes so many pictures of their kid and plasters them all over Facebook. Seriously, every week he does a photo shoot.

Since UTK's interview weekend has come and gone, I decided to contact my POI to get an update on the admissions process. As I feared, the interview weekend was for all top candidates (not just those they were unsure about), and since I wasn't invited, I am obviously not a top candidate. Admission offers haven't gone out yet, but she said I am unlikely to be offered admission since I didn't make the cut for interviews. So unless several prospective students really blew their interviews or choose other admissions offers when the time comes, I can kiss that program goodbye. That makes me so sad! I really wanted to work with that professor. I still have high hopes for OSU and FIU, though.

Credit card

Macro lens

I love traveling! Honestly, though, I don't get to do very much of it due to lack of funds or lack of time. I'm a Pennsylvania native, and I've visited (not just driven through) New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, St. Thomas, and Puerto Rico. Plus of course many places in my home state. I did visit Washington DC when I was 3 or 4, but considering all I can remember from the trip is the subway and getting a Gumby figurine at a gift shop, it doesn't count. Internationally, I've been to Canada, Ireland, Belize, the Bahamas, Grand Turk, and Japan. I really wish I could travel internationally more, but fights are so expensive and everyone I know is broke so I rarely have a traveling partner. Traveling alone isn't bad, but I have a lot more fun when I have a friend to experience things with and I'm not quite outgoing enough to easily make some friends at my destination. My favorite country so far is Belize. Part of it is that I've met many Belizeans (is that a real word?) during my two trips there that were super friendly and had great conversations with me and were just really outgoing and excited to meet new people. Trips are so much better when you hang out with the locals. The other part is that it's a very diverse country, both ethnically and ecologically, so there's so much to experience. I really want to visit more of central America and visit mainland Europe. I'd also really like to visit more of Japan (I was restricted to the southwest). My number 1 destination is Egypt, but I don't know if I'll ever get there.

I got an email about a fellowship application. For a moment, I was like "Whoa, they made their decisions on the NSF fellowship this early?!?!?" Then I realized it was for a fellowship for one of the schools that I was rejected from. Ugh.

I get really nervous on the phone, too! For me, it's an anxiety thing. I get very anxious when talking to people I don't know well, and for some reason phones make it worse. I'd rather text someone than call them up, and I love when restaurants have online ordering for take out. I had two interviews directly with POIs prior to applying (one Skype and one phone), and I honestly felt really good afterwards. For a few days, I definitely kept thinking about parts that didn't go as well as I wanted (like completely blanking out when asked about GIS experience). However, once I stopped focusing on the negative bits, I felt really good about my chances. I think it's safe to say that as long as you know you didn't blow the interview and the POI sounded positive, you have a really good shot at an acceptance.

I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I want everything to be submitted and done by the end of the semester, because I plan on taking a two month bird job about a week after graduation and I won't be in the position to be sending things back and forth. At the moment, I think I'm on track to defend my thesis in late March or early April, which gives me about a month after the defense to get the written component polished and submitted to the graduate office. My main worry isn't that my advisor or committee will want major revisions during that window. It's that the graduate school will be a pain with formatting and will delay my submission of the final bound thesis. My advisor's previous grad student never actually received his degree because he had issues with the graduate school. Since he was heading to a PhD program that didn't care if he had his masters, once August rolled around and his thesis still wasn't approved, he basically said screw it and abandoned it. Another complication is that the graduate coordinator has to sign off on my thesis and he's going out of the country in two weeks. He won't be back until June. He has assured me and the other students planning to graduate that the graduate school is fine with his signature being missing until he returns, but it still sits in the back of my mind.

There should be a head of the graduate committee or a graduate program coordinator listed on the department's website that you contact. If in doubt, the department secretary can tell you exactly who to contact. Send them a short email thanking them for the consideration of your application and that you would like to withdraw it. I know that when I declined offers to other masters programs after I accepted an offer, they requested the name of the school I chose and why I chose it. I'm not sure if they will want the same info since you didn't receive an offer from them yet, but they may appreciate knowing where you chose. Also, congrats on making your decision! You must be so happy to know exactly where you'll be for the next several years.

Tag team

Meat pie

I was also unaware that you could get paid to earn your PhD until I began looking at PhD programs during my last application cycle and read about stipends on the websites of different programs. I had no intention of applying to grad school until my junior year when I finally came up with some sort of plan of what I wanted to do with my life after taking an amazing field course. I definitely wasn't preparing myself for grad school at all. I did want to gain field experience, but I had no clue about where to find these opportunities. The only big field research experience I had besides my senior project was working for one of my professors on a project for a state agency. Lucky for me I even got that experience. I had impressed this particular professor on more than one occasion, so he had me in mind when he got the grant for the project.

- When I was 14, I met the Kinley sisters when they did a CD signing at Walmart. I don't even remember what they sang, but they were a country duo. - I definitely met a more famous country singer when I was 12 when I went to Nashville with my parents. I can't remember who it was, but it was at a taping of the Wild Horse Saloon that used to be on CMT way back when. I'm sure we have the episode on tape somewhere. Maybe if I'm feeling bored, I'll dig around for it. - I worked at a Quiznos for several years and made subs for Matt Hardy of the Hardy Boyz on several occasions. - I met Switchfoot and Relient K at a show and they all signed my t-shirt. - I met the singer from Five Iron Frenzy after I had just had a dirt fight with my best friend (and thus was coated with dirt) and we both gave him a big, dirty hug. - I met wildlife biologist Gary Alt at a conference. Some people in my life who had interesting experiences with famous people: - My mother-in-law dated the drummer from Blue Oyster Cult. - One of my professors saved Roger Tory Peterson from drowning. - The same professor taught high school biology while working on his PhD and taught at Jeffrey Dahmer's school. He had a few conversations with him, too. - My friend grabbed Taylor Hanson's crotch at a show - My sister grabbed Keith Urban's butt at a meet-and-greet - My friend's husband recently met Anne Hathaway at an air force base while she was researching for an upcoming role

I'm so sick of babies. They're ugly, disgusting little creatures and while I want children, the idea of carrying a child, giving birth, and then being responsible for a helpless being freaks me out. I'm at the age where a lot of people I know have started families, and quite frankly it annoys me that I can't see any of these people without their children in tow. Further more, some old friends live far away and only visit the area two or three times each year. I don't understand why the husbands get to go to the bar with old buddies, go golfing with their dads, and otherwise do any child-free activity they want while the wives never get a break from the kids. Blah. Maybe when I finally do have kids, my brain will rewire itself and I'll develop all of these maternal instincts and think babies are beautiful. Until then, I will politely tell you all that your baby is cute, but really I will be thinking that it looks like an alien.

I agree that it depends on where exactly you end up and how well roads are maintained. I live in a mountainous area of the northeast, so I get a fair amount of snow dumped on me each year. The interstates here are well maintained (and my school is just off the interstate), but the 10 mile drive to the interstate is horrendous when it snows because it's a rural area and the two snow plows take forever. In the valley on the other side of my mountain where it's pretty urban (and plows are in high supply), the roads are pretty good. That said, I drive an older FWD car (Pontiac G5) and don't have too much trouble. There are days when I can't make it, but generally speaking, school is closed on those days. My husband also drives a RWD Mustang with some sand bags in the trunk, and while he has significantly more trouble than I do, he still makes it to work. If we bothered to buy snow tires, our travel would probably be easier. But alas, we can't afford such things. Sandbags are also only useful with RWD vehicles, so I wouldn't invest in sand unless you want to have it to put on the ground to help with traction.

I am also surprised by the opportunities I wasn't aware of, not just in grad school but those that were available as an undergraduate. For example, there were many paid summer internship and field jobs related to my field that I could have applied for which would have made me an amazing ecology applicant had I done them. In terms of grad school, I honestly had no idea that fully funded masters programs existed when applying, nor did I know that there were job boards advertising these positions. I also never heard of the NSF GRFP prior to this past summer. Don't ask me how. I was also surprised at how much time I ended up spending sitting. I spend so much time on the computer or a tablet reading and writing. During my candidacy exam (and the time spent studying for it), I was surprised by how much I really remembered from my intro courses. At the same time, when preparing for my TA position, I was surprised at how many little things have slipped my mind.

I always made a mental distinction between nerd and geek. I doubt it's valid, but I always thought of a nerd as someone who could explain the science behind something they were into (i.e. the plausibility of different spaceship designs in scifi shows, the evolutionary adaptations for flight in birds). A geek instead is someone who is really passionate about something (i.e. space operas, bird watching) but isn't necessarily interested in the science behind it. I have no idea where this distinction came from.

Broken drawers

Stick insect

Hot tuna

29 right now, but will be 30 in two months

Cruel summer