Decision

[paleseptember7]

So...some of you know this already. But I've made the decision to stay at UK for my Ph.D. It's been bothering me what I was gonna do for a few months now, and I finally made a certain decision last week.

I had been planning to fill out grad school applications starting last week, and i wanted to ask Rudy to write me letters of recommendation. Well, we got to talking and this threw the whole prospect of me RAing for her this spring into question. She didn't want to spend money on a student who wasn't going to stay at the school, etc., which is a completely understandable position. So then I was faced with quite a dilemma.

Do I stay in Lexington, or risk it all for a school/town that I know relatively little about?

A few factors went into this decision.

• I've already been accepted to the Ph.D program, and have passed the comprehensive Masters exams here at UK. I'm not sure if I'd want to do that at another university (which it's highly likely that I would have to).
• As interesting as the material is (not being sarcastic here), I don't necessarily want to repeat the Master's course work at another university.
• I don't have the emotional (or financial, for that matter) capacity to move to a strange place again. Not this soon, anyway.
• My mother's health is getting worse by the day. I need to be close. Not to be morbid, but I give her 5 years :(
• I want to be recognized for my own accomplishments, and not necessarily the school I went to.
  
• I like the faculty here.

A lot of people may already know that I've been praying about this like crazy. The funny thing is...once I told my closest friends about it, all the pieces just started to fit together. I just knew it was going to be okay, as superstitious as that all sounds. I hit a couple rough spots in my life over the weekend, but other than that...

I dunno. The pessimist in me is pretty much waiting for the punchline. Sometimes I wonder if I'm afraid to make myself happy, being that I seem to create my own obstacles.