It's been too long. Where to begin? Last semester I started over in a
new program, finished a fellowship, and took lots of neat courses. This
semester I'm feeling a bit more wise, as well as keeping busy with
schoolwork and a pretty rewarding job. And since a grad student can
never stop running, I'm also pursuing summer opportunities and keeping
my eye on post-graduation job prospects. I'll focus this post on catching up.
Last semester
Last
September, I thought to myself, "Year two? Should be like year one, but
without having to figure out how it all works. Easy!" While it helped
to know the course rhythm and school bureaucracy, I wasn't expecting how
much my first full semester in the School of Natural Resources &
Environment would feel like starting over. All of a sudden, I was trying
to find my place in a new cohort of students again —and SNRE has 120
students per year to Urban Planning's 60. Courses were much larger, with
less interaction. It all started to come together when I realized I'd
found/made a close-knit social circle. I've found a group of friends
with whom I can as easily have dinner, critique courses, dance Contra,
or play board games with. They make me feel like I've got a home here.
Last
semester I also finished up the Dow Sustainability Fellowship, which is
to say that four of us over-committed over-achievers got to turn a
storm of wonderful ideas into a well-organized, somewhat-grounded report about how cities should make sustainability decisions based, in part,
on measurements of subjective well-being (a.k.a. "happiness" or "life
satisfaction.") I'll point you to the final report
and lament the fact
that our final presentation wasn't taped, because Sabrina is a
rockstar.
Courses? Lots of neat courses. I'm planning a separate post for those.
Stay tuned for This semester and The future!
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