Decision Made
May 4, 2007 – 7:53 am | by KristenAnd I am off to…
That’s right! Come late this summer I’ll be heading to the Great White North. (Though it won’t be white quite yet. After all, the people there only seem to talk about seven months of winter.) I’ve accepted a PhD program position offer at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton.
It seems like a really good match in terms of interest and support for consumer behavior research, as well as being a very supportive program for the students themselves.
Also, Edmonton itself seems like it will be a pleasant place to live for four years. If I wind up in the right area I can ride a train in to campus, completely avoiding the roads during the snowy seasons save for the quick jaunt to the park-and-ride. There’s plenty to do (metro area of a million people, after all) but it’s spread out enough that when I need peace and quiet to focus, I’ll have it. And the summers? Average high of 70, which is… something in Celsius. I’ll really need to learn that. (Yes, the winter temperatures are… something much lower in Celsius. It’s a lot easier to warm up in cold winters than it is to cool down in hot summers.)
Finally, even though I had no logical reason to do so, I had always sort of associated Alberta’s landscape with Saskatchewan’s. You know: wheat fields, and… well, wheat fields. Never mind that I knew that the Rockies fell neatly along the border between Alberta and British Columbia, or that I had been to Alberta (many years earlier).
And then I did some Flickr surfing and reminded myself. Oh, right. Within driving distance of my school is this.
