My Next Year

It seems that slowly, things are starting to come together. While my fall 2009 grad school plans are still uncertain, of course, I have made some good progress that's worth revisiting (to make myself feel better about where I am):

- I have come up with a list of 10 (perhaps 12) masters programs from which my final list of schools to apply to will come. (I will probably not need to apply to as many as 10 to 12.) During the last week or so, I decided that two programs on a previous iteration of this list that required the GRE Psychology subject test were not worth applying to in light of the need to do an entirely separate prep effort. I found two other worthy-looking programs to replace them.

- I have identified potential advisors at each of these programs - professors who have active research programs in an area of interest to me and has strong applicability to my future doctoral plans.

- I have identified 3 professors who should make very good recommenders, if they will agree to do it. I have one other that can be a backup if one of the three declines. I am feeling pretty confident that they will be amenable, however.

- I have put together my c.v., which looks really impressive for a would-be masters student.

- I have started reviewing for the GRE.

This summer, in addition to continuing to work on this math curriculum project until the beginning of August, I am starting to work with my marketing (consumer behavior) professor to turn the organic paper I did for her class into a paper to be submitted to conferences. I met with her last week to start talking about how we want to go about this. She asked, and I readily agreed, that she be a second author on my paper, which is great because I believe that it is appropriate and important for her to be rewarded for the effort she will put into the paper and this will act as an incentive for her to make the final product as good as possible.

She has already identified a couple of conferences where we could submit the paper and has determined that university funding is available to pay her and my way to present the paper if it is accepted. It's cool because I am going to be competing in the academic professional league (if not exactly the major league) and not submitting to undergraduate conferences.

I also had the opportunity to talk to her a bit about my professional/academic past and my future plans. It was a relief for her to be so positive about my pursuing a masters degree in psychology as preparation for a consumer behavior marketing PhD program. She believes (as do I) that the heavier research component of that kind of program will be better preparation than an MBA or the like. When I told her that I had secondary authorship on two journal articles from my stint as a research assistant at a psychiatric research center, she asked if they were medical or psychology journals. When I said medical, she was impressed because medical journals have a reputation for being very hard to get published in. This was an interesting and new take on my current publications - I had been sort of wondering how good medical journal articles would look to social scientists, and had a vague suspicion that they might look inferior or irrelevant in some way, but if her reaction is at all typical, they may be much stronger looking than I had thought.

I got a call today from one of the other marketing professors on the kid menu study I worked on over this past spring, and she offered me a job as their assistant for the coming spring (their current grad assistant graduates in December). One of the things she mentioned that they will want me to do is working on the actual writing up of the paper for publication, which will be a great experience and should get me a co-authorship on the paper (I assume). This should be pretty much fantastic for them, too, of course, because it seems unlikely that they very often find someone with my interest and skills in research coming through the MBA program from which they usually recruit their grad assistants.

I had been really wondering what I would do in the spring, since I will be in the process of wrapping up my grad school applications and only have one or two math courses I am interested in taking then. I don't want to be sitting around waiting for rejection/acceptance letters from grad programs or taking a bunch of extra classes just to fill the time. I had considered getting a "real" (outside the university) job, but finding a way to swing that with what is likely to be a 2:00 twice a week stat class would be difficult.

So, that's this summer and next spring. My plans for this fall have been pretty nebulous other than working on applications, taking a math class, and continuing to develop the organic food paper. Getting more publication opportunities is a priority for me and something I would like to put as much into as possible prior to applying for the masters programs. Even though it would be hard to get anything accepted by a journal by January, I would like to at least have some research in progress to put on my c.v.

I have two key opportunities here:

1. I may be able to turn some research I did at my previous employer into an academic journal article, especially with Robert's assistant on the statistical side of things. I spoke to my co-worker K about this via email this week and she feels like the agency would be supportive of my doing this, but she is going to check with the Powers That Be to get an official okay on it. Ideally, I would like to talk the agency into giving me some kind of status as a Research Consultant or Research Intern or something that doesn't pay me in any way but lets me have a concrete title to put on my resume for the fall semester, so I don't look like somebody who took one course and otherwise was just screwing around.

2. If that doesn't work out, I will ask my psychology professor if she or someone in the department needs a research assistant. While this would not be something likely to lead to publication credit, it would be more research experience.

As for the math course, I finally had the epiphany about the whole "Do I take Calculus 3 (Vector), which is more useful, or do I take Differential Equations, which is being taught by Dr P who is awesome, this semester" issue. I sort of forget from time to time that I have already taken Calculus 3 and gotten an A in it. So while I feel that a refresher of this material would be good, it doesn't actually help my credentials much to retake a class that cannot possibly improve my GPA, and indeed only adds the risk that I might get a lower grade. So screw it; I'm going to take Diff E. Calc 3 is taught every semester, and I can always take it along with the stat class in the spring semester if I decide I really want to review it in a formal way, as opposed to just looking at the textbook, which I already own.

So, that's an overview of my (likely) life for the next 9 months or so. My next grad school issue, aside from the GRE, is starting to work on my Statement of Purpose(s) for the various programs.