Gotta Move!

Hello out there. It's Jenn - the long lost biologist who has been busy taking a year off from school.

But that year is just about over. On Friday (yes - just two days and some change away) I will be packing up the last load and heading to Tulsa. OK, well that's not very exciting, but on Saturday morning (the wee hours) I will be driving off again - only this time the destination will be College Park, Maryland! The plan is to get there on Sunday, but it may end up being a Monday morning arrival date because it's possible I could be overreaching myself by trying to make this a two day trip.

The movers, if all goes well (keep your fingers crossed!) should be showing up on Tuesday. Then all the joy I have been experiencing packing (read: sarcasm) will become even greater as I try to find places for all my stuff in my shoebox apartment.

Although I am excited about this apartment. It's an apartment complex for graduate students only. The price is extremely reasonable - with all utilities, phone, and internet included. I'm less than a mile away from campus, but for the icky weather days, I have 3 bus lines that stop in the area (the furthest of these bus stops is less than a 5 minute walk). So all in all, the fact that it is on the smallish side and the toilet doesn't exactly work well doesn't really seem to matter so much. (I'm hoping by the time I arrive the toilet problem will have been fixed. Either way it's a story for another post).

In other good academic, new-stage-of-life news, I am now registered at UMD College Park with a student ID and everything. Granted, I've only signed up for one class, but at least now I know how to do it. I took a trip to College Park a couple of weeks ago to check out the new apartment and the school and try to get as much figured out as possible. Sure, dealing with the administration was a headache (especially since we were both about a month early for our actual department orientations) but we got some stuff figured out which should make getting settled in easier.

One of those things I learned is: I need advice on good, reasonably priced (read: cheap) seafood, Italian, Mexican, Thai, etc. etc. restaurants in the area. So if any of you readers out there can help me out - please do.

The last bit of good academic, new-stage-of-life news is actually pretty fantastic. See, I was guaranteed a half-time TA position last April, with the somewhat hazy promise that "those who need full time positions generally find them" (hah. not a sentence I really wanted to rely on.) With the half time TA position, I would only get 5 credit hours paid for (I need 10 to be a full time student and I need to be a full time student to get done in 3 years) and I would also get half the stipend of a full time TA. Needless to say, the stipend I would receive as a half time TA would not have kept the proverbial wolves from the door. In fact, I would probably have had to rely on the time honored technique of making my dinner out of stolen crackers from Wendy's.

By last week, it seemed pretty definite that there were not enough positions to go around, and I would only be a half time TA, paying for the rest of my living expenses and credit hours out of my very shallow pockets. But then, I received an email asking for a full time TA for a calculus for life sciences class. This TA would be teaching sections that taught how the math the students were learning could be applied to biology. I thought, "hmm. I took up to Calc 3 for engineering. I also took stats for biologists. I can do this." And several emails later, I'm hired! I was supposed to receive the paperwork for it today, and I didn't. But I'm not too worried about it. I have a few more days before I get to full blown worry.

And I have lots of other stuff to worry about these days. Like what still needs to be packed, how my gray, fluffy cat will handle all the traveling and boxes and new home... how I'll handle all the traveling and boxes and new home. Not to mention all the friends I'm trying to see these last days (2 days and change, to be more specific). Whew! Oh yeah. I still have work to finish up from this summer. Sigh. I suppose I better get back to it.

Long Time, No Post

So it has been quite awhile since I've updated on this blog, and a lot has happened since then.

I am not the new Outdoor Recreation Planner at Salt Plains NWR. The previous ORP, as you may remember, left in Sept. 2007, and I left in Oct. 2007, expecting the ORP job to be posted on the government jobs website within a week or two. Instead, the job actually posted after Thanksgiving. By that time, I had applied to anther job in Washington state, and was looking at conservation biology masters programs across the country.

I found lots of amazing programs doing some wonderful things, and when the ORP job came open I decided that my best choice was to go ahead and finish with my education and experience something outside Oklahoma.

I narrowed my choice down to three programs: 1) The Biodiversity, Conservation, and Policy masters program at SUNY Albany, 2) The Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development/Environmental Policy dual masters program at the University of Maryland, College Park, and 3) The Masters in Environmental Management program at Duke.

I was accepted into SUNY and UMD. I haven't heard anything back from Duke, but it's pretty late in the year for accepting students, so I'm thinking I didn't make it.

After visiting both schools, I have decided the one that fits me best is the program at Maryland. I had a wonderful time visiting their school - I spent a lot of time with graduate students who were in the same position I was: young, ambitious, and idealistic. The program offers many diverse classes, so I can really get a good idea of what's out there and which aspect of conservation biology I am most interested in. At the end of 3 years (and 60 credits) I will hold two masters degrees, and I am very excited about that.

The campus is also gorgeous - it's very stately. Lots of rolling hills and red brick buildings with tall white columns. The fox squirrels are black there - which really startled me the first time I saw it. I whole-heartedly approve of the campus' mascot - the Diamondback Terrapin, named Testudo. Testudo has a long and dramatic history: http://www.umd.edu/testudo.html. And he is the turtle whose nose I am rubbing in the picture at the top (it's for good luck).

Here are some pictures of the buildings where I'll be taking a lot of my classes. The first is the building where I'll have my cons bio classes and the second is where I'll have all of my policy classes:



So while I am waiting for fall semester to roll around, and inbetween searching for funding and housing at Maryland, I am a substitute teacher. It's been an interesting experience, and I have learned a lot in how to teach children efficiently. I've taught everything from pre-kindergarten to seniors in high school, although I mainly work at the elementary school. That's fine with me, as I don't get a lot of respect at the high school - I still look too much like them. I have liked some of the classes I've taught, but I don't think I'll miss substituting much after I'm done.

As you might expect, I am rather impatiently waiting for August 2008 to get here. Completely ready to start my new adventure.