School started today. I am so so excited! I feel so blessed to have this amazing opportunity. The Honours program that I am in is technically a continuation of a Bachelor's Degree out here. But it is perfect for me! Essentially, it is similar to our Master's degree in the states if you chose the thesis option.
In 10 months, we are working on a research project that has to be approved by the Ethics commintee for the school, we have to do the lit review, data collection and analysis, write a publishable paper, and finish of with a full thesis all by October. That is on top of the other work provided for the 2 classes we take each session. All in all, I don't doubt for a second that it is going to be busy, but busy is what I sign up for all the time, isn't it??
The first class we attended today I got in trouble in. I'm such a trouble-maker, let me tell ya! Haha actually it was because I wore thongs (my flippy floppys) to class, and the class was in the lab. Of course, like many labs, we aren't allowed to go in if we don't have the tops of our feet and heels covered. On the first day, usually they will give le-way, but of course we had a lab introduction last week with Jason, so I should have known better. Had I known class was in the lab, I swear I would have worn shoes. Damn. From now on I'm only wearing tennis to class. Haha.
Anyway, Rob Duffield is one of our Professors and also the coordinator of the Honours Program at CSU and he is awesome! He is young but has his shit together (obviously), but is fun and can relate to us to. As Honours students, we have more access and responsibility, but the labs out here are still very strict and in some ways, as Dr. Robergs puts it, there is too much organization. Is that possible? Haha.
The thing that I am most impressed with is the structure of the program and the fact that every teacher/professor works together to create a working program for us. All of them coincide with each other and several of them team teach together. If they aren't team teaching, they still have developed a program that seems to be very comprehensive. With only 6 students in the Honours Program, you better believe that there is competition and I'm ready for it!
One of my favorite things is that we are required to attend seminars that the faculty are at. They come together on set dates to talk about the research that they are doing or other things of interest in our field. I am so excited about this because it gives me a chance to check out what else is going on with the other supervisors in the program, which in turn, just by hearing different research topics, might help me to narrow down what I am seriously interested in and what I might want to focus on for a PhD. If not, I'm just going to have to go to Frank and start reading through the thousands of papers he has collected on different topics to find what I am really keen on.
Anyway, two great things to leave you with today:
1. They say dodgey out here a tone - like.."that gymnastics job was so dodgey." Meaning, it sucked so I didn't take it. (For many different reasons that I won't go into!) But I talked to Sara today and it sounds like she will have a good amount of hours for me at her sports shop! Keep your fingers crossed!!
2. We found red chile. Looks like an over grown red hatch chile! Yep, its cooking now and oh my god, it smells like home. Oh, how I miss you all!! Cheers!
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