Comps

I have an offical date for comps. I saw the schedule as it is posted in the Geography Dept. office this morning:

Friday, September 15
1pm


I'm the third one to go.

Two weeks to study. Hopefully I can have some time to eat and sleep during it.

Comps/Loan

So I heard a tentative date for my comprehensive exams. This isn't confirmed, but I heard it from another grad student who I have my MWF class with (and whose session will be right after mine). He said he saw me down for Friday, September 15th at 1pm. That gives me a time frame with which to work. About two and a half weeks. It works great because I get to have a feel as to the professors' general mood, while not having to dread it for too long. Plus now I have a finite timeframe with which to study and can guide my studies much better. That will be life between now and then.

Oh, and I got my loan check in the mail today. I won't go on blurting out how much it was for all to see (if you want to know, and know how to get in touch with me off the blog...just let me know). I fought getting the loan--to a fault, but when the University can't seem to figure how to pay it's graduate students for a month--long story, it was something I needed to go ahead and suck up. It was odd getting a check for that much in the mail, and it was particularly odd getting a check for that much with just a Pittney-Bowles type 37 cent stamp on it (apparently the actual cost to ship was 37 cents, not the standard 39...but whatever).

So I can get that in the bank tomorrow (I'll split it between checking and a fairly liquid investment fund) and can finally begin paying back those to whom I owe money before they break my legs as collateral (folks like my credit card companies, and mom).

Comps/First Day of class

Well, I talked with one of the professors who is on my board this afternoon about it (not my program advisor, mind you, I meet with him on Friday). Dr. Richetto answered some of my pressing questions about exam structure and such. Basically what he told me is that Dr. Weber (my program advisor and presumably my review board chairman) will sort of get me to talk about myself. Things like why I like Geography, why I chose to study it at Alabama, and some career goals. This, I suppose is to loosen me up a bit. Then each professor including Dr. Seth (Appiah-Opoku) will get a twenty minute session to ask me basically anything from any classes I've had with them, or any broad topics I should know as a geographer, specifically a second year master's student. For instance, Dr. Weber will ask me about GIS and Transport Geography, Dr. Seth about Africa, Environmental Management, and broad planning ideas, Dr. Richetto about some more specific (but still fairly broad) planning concepts on the public and private sectors, some broad human geography ideas (which will probably be encompassed in other planning sections), and since Dr. Jerry Webster isn't on my board, he will ask me some broad questions from GY500 (history, traditions, etc.). From that point, they each get a ten minute session with me to follow up on any questions they answered in their first round, or to get clarifications on what I meant, etc. Then I'll leave the room while they talk with eachother to get a concensus on whether or not I pass. This takes about ten minutes, at which point they'll call me back in and give me the 411 (pass/fail) and perhaps reasons why I failed (assuming such). I'm still nervous and apprehensive, to be sure, but now that I have some specific structure on what to expect I'm a little less worried (I've moved from a 10/10 to a 9/10 on the apprehension scale you might say).

I meet with Dr. Weber on Friday afternoon to discuss what I should study specifically for his section, then a more broad idea of what to expect on the exams, and how I should prepare. Things as serious as what to say if I don't know the answer to a question, to nominal such as what I should do in terms of dress for the day (the girl I work with who took it January was dressed up a bit more than usual the day she took them).

I should have a date by this time next week. Then my apprehension shoots back up to about 55/10.

On a related note, my first day of class this year went fine. Typical first day, to be sure. This class has only grad students. Except for GY500, this has been the only class that has had only grad students in it. GY540 had one undergrad, that was as close to no undergrads. I guess Dr. Richetto expects more from the class as a whole in this one.

websites

All my journal entries are now up. I have left a space for an epilogue of sorts in the future, but I'll tackle that at a later date. I may also attach a picture or to from the picture page to the journal entries in the future as well just for some visual aide.

http://www.krgilbert.net/ghana/

Also, Alabama Maps is pretty much back up and running again. I believe we've managed to recover all of our nearly 14,000 or so maps online and about 99.2% of our 5500 or so air photos. That 0.8% was the last few we did before the crash and hadn't had a chance to be backed up in any way, shape, or form. I'm thinking those will just be scrapped.

http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/