State of the Arthur: employed for the semester

Let's pick up from the previous post...we were in late December.

This semester
I started out this semester hoping to get a Graduate Student Research Assistantship (GSRA) position where I would have analyzed survey data on energy and the environment. GSRA positions at U-M aren't technically part of the same union that won full tuition waivers, competitive pay, and health insurance for Graduate Student Instructors (heavy-duty TAs), but get remarkably similar compensation packages. The main effect of not being in the union, from what I can tell, is that there are no clear standards about when you'll get GSRA pay and benefits for a position, and when you'll get $15/hr. So, for example, the transportation research I did last Summer required a fair bit of expertise and finesse, but was still hourly. Long story short: in December, I was crossing my fingers to get an energy-related GRSA, but right before New Year's, found out that I didn't get it.

For the first couple weeks of the year, I made peace with having an expensive but relaxing semester. There had been at least 7 courses I'd wanted to take, but everything conflicted with everything else, so I ended up with a relatively low-stress schedule of 4 courses. Before I could get too far with that slow living concept, though, a new professor I really like encouraged me to apply for another GSRA. In short order, I had the job![1]

The GSRA position is to help design an online mapping tool that will meet the (currently unmet) needs of Great Lakes habitat managers. The idea is that I will interview some of these managers and catalog the existing Great Lakes GIS tools, and then write up recommendations for the content and design of our tool, by the end of April. It's all part of the Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat Framework, a project to create a standardized database structure for synthesizing and sharing the myriad data sources used in managing the Great Lakes. The past couple weeks have been a crash course. For example, so far I've learned:

• most of the U.S. agencies and research institutes focused on the Great Lakes are located right here in Ann Arbor—and there are a lot of them (GLERL, GLRI, GLOS, IAGLR, GLISA, and GLAA-C are all within 10 miles of my house);
• Ontario diverts water from a remote area the size of Maine into Lake Superior, partly for hydropower, but also to make Niagara Falls prettier; and
• the shoreline is where it's at. Other than shallow Lake Erie and the reefs at the bottom of Lake Michigan, biologically there's very little happening out in the middle of any of these lakes.

We're done with the prep work; next week I start the interviews, and the week after that I start cataloging existing online mapping tools. It's wonderful to have an office to go to, that's mine, and where I can tune out all my coursework, and to focus on ONE set challenges.

So yeah, there are also some courses I'm taking. I'm starting to pay more heed to what I want out of a course, and less to the grading. Meanwhile, a couple courses are allowing me to focus more on crafting my own nuanced position on a topic, as opposed to learning facts or parroting opinions. I've been enjoying both trends, and I intend to continue them now that I've survived midterms.

The future!
Which I will consider in (ahem) a future post.

[1] To be precise, in short order, I had a confirmed job offer. It took about 3 weeks of bureaucracy-on-tenterhooks before I was a Real Boy.