MN Monday #3 - I went to see the doctor of philosophy.

The whole reason for coming to Minnesota was to go to grad school and I have to say that it was nice to feel academically desirable again for the first time since high school.

About to head home from a
class trip to the Badlands
of SD.  May 1999

At NCSU, as a physics major, I left a lot to be desired.  I spent most of my time in the music department and was average at best amongst my peers in coursework.  I had better luck in Math all the way up to when math ceased to be about numbers.

But when I applied to the University of Minnesota, it felt like I sent in my application on Friday and got a call on Monday to find out when I wanted to come check out the campus.  Turns out, the Geosciences were (and still are to some degree) hungry for people who aren't scared of math and technology.  So I was heavily recruited even though my GPA wasn't all that stellar.

When I finally got here, it was like getting to be successful again.  The coursework was accessible and I did pretty well across material science, geology, and computer science.  The faculty were interesting and  the subjects seemed to make sense again.  Maybe I'd just found a second wind.  I also made some good friends that I'm still in touch with today.  And even though I was working on laboratory research, I did get the chance to go out into the field some and rediscover why I had considered geophysics as a degree right after high school.  If those two NCSU faculty hadn't left before I got there, things might have turned out very different.

Ted, Nate, and Me in the lab at Kohltoff
Hall.

But the research....  uffda.  My project ended up being a year of chemistry, a year of auto mechanic, and a year of experiments to get one (1!) data point.  I had pretty much had it by that point and decided a Masters degree was just fine, thank you very much. So I hit the eject button. My advisor and I also never really came to an understanding about a lot of things which didn't help matters.  Looking back, I can see that I didn't have the attention span or the focus necessary to have gone all the way to a PhD.  At the time, there was some feeling of failure mixed in with disappointment at how things ended up.

But as frustrating as those three years were, they set the stage for what I do now.  I am a geoscientist. I have taught at the college level.  I understand some of what faculty members go through.  These have all been invaluable tools in working with those same faculty now to help them teach more effectively.  Many of those people that I met during that time (both fellow students and faculty) have become colleagues in various ways over the intervening years.  I am proud to associate myself with some of the most innovative and amazing college educators in the field and those years getting my Masters made it possible to be where I am.

Group picture on the class trip to the Badlands of SD.  Photo
taken at Dinosaur P.ark