Grad school???
So, I've reached a semi-official decision. I'm applying for grad school
(yikes!)
I know now that I want to focus on geology as a career, but there's only so far you can go with a bachelors. It makes more sense to bite the bullet and jump into a masters program while I'm still young and okay with being poor. Except the problem is that even though the excited, nerdy little kid in me wants to go into planetary geology and work with Io and Pluto, I'm also getting the sense that there aren't that many planetary geology programs out there, and the good ones are super picky about who they let in. And I don't feel very qualified or smart, and I feel like the chances of getting into any of these programs is super slim.
And then, is there any job security in planetary work?? Because I'm really not interested in entering academia and the Ivory Tower, and I suspect NASA hires the smartest in the bunch. So should I focus on a more general geo masters, one that I can use for a lot of fields?? Like, I can do surficial processes, and then that can be applied to Earth or other bodies.
I'm going to have to really dig into educating myself. In a sense I'm lucky I work in a university, surrounded by very smart people, so it's not that hard to find the resources. What's hard is finding the time and energy to read the textbooks and papers, especially if I have any more weeks like this one, where I'm working 9-10 hour days : /
I feel excited at the idea of furthering my education but wow, it's going to suck getting there, and I might not succeed.
(the silver lining in all this is it looks like most programs only need general GRE scores, not the physics GRE, which is good news for me because I am poorly prepared to tackle that particular beast.)
(yikes!)
I know now that I want to focus on geology as a career, but there's only so far you can go with a bachelors. It makes more sense to bite the bullet and jump into a masters program while I'm still young and okay with being poor. Except the problem is that even though the excited, nerdy little kid in me wants to go into planetary geology and work with Io and Pluto, I'm also getting the sense that there aren't that many planetary geology programs out there, and the good ones are super picky about who they let in. And I don't feel very qualified or smart, and I feel like the chances of getting into any of these programs is super slim.
And then, is there any job security in planetary work?? Because I'm really not interested in entering academia and the Ivory Tower, and I suspect NASA hires the smartest in the bunch. So should I focus on a more general geo masters, one that I can use for a lot of fields?? Like, I can do surficial processes, and then that can be applied to Earth or other bodies.
I'm going to have to really dig into educating myself. In a sense I'm lucky I work in a university, surrounded by very smart people, so it's not that hard to find the resources. What's hard is finding the time and energy to read the textbooks and papers, especially if I have any more weeks like this one, where I'm working 9-10 hour days : /
I feel excited at the idea of furthering my education but wow, it's going to suck getting there, and I might not succeed.
(the silver lining in all this is it looks like most programs only need general GRE scores, not the physics GRE, which is good news for me because I am poorly prepared to tackle that particular beast.)