One-Year Countdown

I am "putting it out to the universe" that I am only going to be in Portland one more year. In the fall of 2008 I will officially be a grad student at CSUMB in the Coastal and Watershed Science and Policy program. All I have to do between now and then is take care of all of my prerequisites, take the GRE, ask for letters of recommendation, and apply. :-D

I spoke with the director of the program on Friday, and it sounds like I'm actually pretty well on track to get all that done and be able to attend in the fall. I will be taking biology all year, and one or two statistics courses (goody, goody), and I will probably take the GIS requirements when I get there. Fortunately, my science credits do not expire, so all of my earth science, geology, oceanography, etc. credits from Stanford will be accepted. And I technically already have the statistics requirement done, but I don't remember a thing of it (it was 5 years ago and I haven't used it at all since then, so why should I let it take up space in my brain?), and since I know it will be a critical foundation course for graduate work, I'm going to go ahead and re-take the quarter that I took, and probably the next quarter as well.

I was also given the names of a couple of faculty members to contact for possible research and advising opportunities, so my next step is to follow up on those. It's like Cristie said in her comment on my last post -- once you make a firm decision and begin to move in the right direction, things start falling into place. Or, to quote The Indigo Girls, "The sweetest part is acting after making a decision." Here I go! :)