It's been four months and one half since we landed on US soil. Upon our return, I took the GRE again. Though frazzled on the second math section, I pulled my scores to the lower end of acceptability for top tier schools. Natalie and I had our first Christmas with family. After the dust settled from traveling between Memphis and Murfreesboro, I sent off my final graduate school applications. I applied to an array of programs--UC Santa Cruz, Environmental Studies (PhD); CU-Boulder, Environmental Studies (PhD) and Political Science (PhD); Yale, Environmental Science (MS); Cornell, Environmental Science (MS); SUNY-ESF, Environmental Studies, MS; and the University of Arkansas, Environmental Dynamics (PhD).
After it all shook out, I received funded offers from Santa Cruz, Arkansas, and the Political Science program at Boulder. I also made it on the wait list at Yale (which I should hear about soon) and got accepted into SUNY with potential for funding. Arkansas offered an incredibly generous four year fellowship. Given the style of the program, professors, funding, and location, we decided on Arkansas.
I will complete an MA in Geography, predominantly studying GIS and cartography, and then undertake coursework and research for the PhD in Environmental Dynamics. When all is said and done, I suspect it will take me 5-6 years to complete my doctorate. Most of my ideas center on using GIS and geoinformatics to assess food insecurity and evaluating how natural resource management may (or may not) affect this insecurity. I'm still batting around thoughts about location. I want to make this research meaningful for practitioners, which may be the real challenge in all of this. Why spend four years working on something that has no impact on the way we are solving or trying to solve problems on the ground? Thus, it may be best to concentrate on one country, or depending on what I find in my Master's thesis, research a handful of geographically contrasting regions across several factors. For now, my interest spreads from Laos to the Horn of Africa, and from there to Honduras. I'm certain it will become more apparent with time, but given the status of Arkansas' program in Near East Studies, I'll probably continue/revive my study of Arabic.
What will I do after this? I could pursue a range of occupations. I have a path for now, and the next five or six years, but after that, the world is my oyster. The US Foreign Service might be an option for someone with expertise in GIS and food security issues. I would bet corporate and NGO interest in geographers and persons with knowledge about food security will only increase as time progresses. These are all viable options but beyond them all, I see myself preparing for the professoriate. Tenure track placement will be my chief pursuit. It is the reason one pursues a doctorate--to research, to teach, to travel, to expand one's breadth and depth in a particular body of knowledge and espouse that expertise among both colleagues and the next generation of scholars and practitioners.
So practically, I must envision the next five years as my gateway to that position, which inevitably creates some anxiety, forcing me to think through the logistics of how to get where I want to go in such a competitive field. Year one: make up for my deficiencies in Geography and attend an academic conference in which I plan to present during year two; narrow my thesis, make it operational and begin data mining to build a literature review; apply for Master's research grants. Year two: complete coursework for the Geography MA; present initial findings at an academic conference. Year three: Fulbright fellowship overseas; complete the thesis during Fulbright; get the thesis published as a book, or in an academic journal. Year four: work through the Environmental Dynamics coursework; present at another academic conference; apply for multiple fellowships to fund my dissertation work. Year five: pass qualifying exams; present at another conference; continue working on dissertation. Year six: dissertation completion; perhaps another overseas fellowship. Year seven/eight: tenure track placement and/or post-doctoral fellowship.
That's a long time and a lot of hard work. I'll have to find ways to decompress, relax my thoughts, and enjoy life. Three things I'd like to do outside of school: a regular and varied workout routine, small-scale wood work and carpentry, and fishing, particularly fly-fishing. Outdoor pursuits have always kept me centered and healthy on an emotional and psychological level. These things will keep me grounded and hopefully well-versed in things outside of the academy.
I've been internalizing all of these thoughts for months with little time to write in between remodeling homes with my father-in-law. Today was perfect to let it all fizzle out on paper, mainly to clear my head and enjoy where I'm at and what I'm doing.
