A Weekend Down South

I spent the weekend down at OSU, hanging with a bunch of enginerds, trying to crack the big mystery: where will k go to grad school? All in all it was a good weekend. I wanted to walk out of it with more of “feeling.” Either – this is it; this is where I’ll be next year!! Or, ugh I hate it, why would I ever think of leaving Seattle?!?! I liked it though, a lot. The prof I’d be working under is great. Really personable, and really well known in the field. Having my name next to hers on a paper could do a lot for my reputation in the academic world. Corvallis is a cool town as well, in between 2 mountain ranges and only 45 minutes from the coast. Downsides… it is far from all my friends, who I adore. And I felt so old… I was the oldest of all the prospective students, by 5 years. The other students I’d potentially be working with were great, really fun and nice, but obviously a lot younger than me. Not that this would be different at UW, but there I’d have all my other friends still around. So basically, while the weekend was great, I didn’t come out of it with a clearer picture of what I am going to do next year. I do, however, have something to compare UW to now. I am meeting with a prof there on Friday and then their recruitment weekend is at the end of the month.

I got back early this morning and spent the day lounging around, watching a movie and catching up on email. I had dinner with Laura and Max to fill them in on my weekend (they were happy to hear I wasn’t 100% sold on OSU because they are pushing so hard for UW). I called BMG too, to see if we wanted to come along since we hadn’t seen each other in over a week. As I suspected, he confirmed that will finals week starting tomorrow, he is confined to campus for the next few days. We talked for a little bit though and he provided some insight into his thoughts on selecting a grad school (from his own experiences). Things (if anything) are progressing slowly with him, but I like it – we both are busy but we are comfortable with just calling each other up out of the blue, not worrying about who’s (or is that whose?) “turn” it is to call or any other that other silly stuff. He’s pretty sure there will be a party at his place Friday night, so I’ll get to see him soon enough.