Archive for the ‘School’ Category
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008
Not that I’m sleeping, anyway. This semester has had a great deal more work than the last one, though more evenly spaced. This has its positives and negatives; on one hand, the workload doesn’t pile up into weeks of total insanity. Just… moderate insanity. On the other, that moderate insanity is ever-ongoing and doesn’t ever provide too much of a break. Well, I’ve held on so far!
One thing that’s helping is the longer days coupled with warmer temperatures. There’s finally hope for spring arriving. I have actually, truthfully forgotten what my back yard looks like without snow.
As for the other, well… I’m never bored with the cat around. Since, for one, he likes to make noise in the middle of the night, with the method demonstrated in the second video here. (You have to let the Quicktime logo sit onscreen for quite awhile before the video frame suddenly pops up.)
I can’t bring myself to stop him from doing that. He just seems so very proud of himself.
Posted in Pets, School | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
I’ve made it through the first semester of my program and things are looking good, if still very challenging. The real trouble is coming not from school, but from the weather. I am terribly happy that January is almost over, as this means two things:
- The days are now significantly longer than the winter solstice, when it would start getting notably dark at about 3:30.
- With one more — short! — month to go, we will be in the month that might have some reliable highs above freezing. At least by its end.
Hey, I’ll take these pluses where I can find them. And really, it’s only a fair trade-off for the summers we get here.
I’m ready for one of those any time now, thanks.
Posted in School, Life | No Comments »
Saturday, September 22nd, 2007
School has been running for a few weeks, now, and I’ve been in this house for more than a month. Both are starting to feel like home. I’m very, very happy that I chose Alberta for my PhD. I wouldn’t want to settle here tenure-track permanently (the approaching winter is frightening and it’s not terribly convenient for travel), but I can tell it’s going to be a very comfortable place to do my degree. I’m already involved in a couple of potential research projects with the faculty and am being well-supported with my own. Granted, it’s an incredible amount of work when coupled with classes (I front-loaded my schedule so that I’d have it easier later on), but it’s doable.
And I’ve taken the most important step toward making the house feel like a home: kitty! It was two kittens at first, actually. I brought home two brothers from a no-kill shelter with a very nice owner. Given the timing of the ending, I decided I’d wait to see which Potter characters they reminded me of for choosing the names. (What? Naming cats after literary characters is traditional! This totally counts!) There was an all-black, green-eyed boy that earned the first name. He was much braver than his brother and demanded attention, so he became Riddle. At first, the other brother — a tabby with lots of white — was Cedric, as I wanted a fair-complexioned name to play off the white fur. But seeing Riddle and Cedric play was just a little mind-breaking, and besides, the tabby was too much of a wuss to be named Cedric. Hmm. Fair-haired, a wuss, and tags along after Riddle… okay then, I instead had Draco.
Unfortunately, Riddle being so outgoing by the first, still-unfamiliar evening meant that he revealed his true hellion nature as he settled in. While I could deal with him until he grew up and relaxed, despite what it would have done for the stock prices of makers of antiseptic ointments, there was a real problem with Draco. When Riddle wanted attention, he would demand it by biting and pouncing until he was played with and would only ramp up his attempts if they were unsuccessful. When Draco got bit and pounced on, he laid down with the hopes it would stop and would only become more passive. When I had to pull Riddle’s teeth off Draco’s throat, I realized there was no way I could leave them alone once classes started. So, Riddle had to go back to the shelter, and the owner was thankfully just as nice then as she was when I got Riddle. She was happy to hear all I had to say about his personality so he could find a home that was a better fit. (I suggested that he needed a big, noisy family with adult animals, ones who would have absolutely no problem with smacking him if he bugged them too much. Not many kittens could handle that environment, but he sure could!)
Draco has since come out of his shell now that he doesn’t have his domineering brother to deal with, and is the typical kitten who veers between being adorable and being a complete brat. Ah, well. A kitten is what you go through to get a cat who you know doesn’t spray, got all his shots at the right time, and was never mistreated by an owner. If you look at the Flickr photostream on my blog (over to the right), you can see him there. He looks awfully cute in those pictures.
It’s a trap.
Posted in School, Life | No Comments »
Friday, May 4th, 2007
And 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.
Posted in Travel, School, PhD Hunt | No Comments »
Monday, December 11th, 2006
Phew! This was one very packed semester. I was managing four classes and an independent study (which I’m about to begin running a survey for), studying for GMAT improvement, and doing school research to figure out which universities would be the best fits.
(more…)
Posted in School, PhD Hunt | No Comments »
Sunday, July 9th, 2006
For the past five weeks I’ve been taking a 3 credit class in Operations Management. It’s one of the core requirements for the MBA, and taking it during the summer helps me keep my approaching fall and spring semesters down to 11 and 10 credits, respectively. But it was 10 classes in 5 weeks, 5:30-9:55 on Mondays and Wednesdays, and that is a lot of class in that time. Even more when, in those nine classes (as the last one was the final exam), you work through eight group case studies. Phew! The professor was great, and the content itself was interesting, but I pretty much stopped thinking about anything but Operations Management for five weeks solid.
And on Monday, I start another five week semester. Finance, this time.
I’m only a little scared.
Posted in School | No Comments »
Saturday, June 24th, 2006
I made a similar post just a few days ago, but that was before I dropped WordPress and moved to Movable Type. (I know I’m unusual in that regard. I do have my reasons, promise.) So, here’s a catch-up on what I’ve been doing, and what I plan to do:
I’ve been working on my MBA for the past year, will continue to do so this summer and through the next academic year, and hopefully, will start a PhD in marketing come Fall 2007.
So, there’s the short version.
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Posted in School, PhD Hunt, Life | 1 Comment »
