It's never too late

I just graduated in May with a MS in biology, focused on animal physiology and biomechanics. I learned many things about myself during my graduate education; in particular, I learned that I truly don't want to continue in biology. Suffice to say, killing my research animals made quite an impression.

Throughout my studies, I had a growing interest in pointing my biomechanics knowledge less toward animal systems and more toward robotics. My interests grew until finally I broke biology ranks and took an introductory robotics course through the computer science department at my university the semester before I graduated. I didn't have the background everyone else in the room did, and I spent a lot of time outside of class catching myself up on unfamiliar material. I loved every second of it.

My new goal is to develop this interest to the point that I can pursue a graduate degree in robotics and make contributions in that field. Since I'm now out of school, a lot of this development is must be done informally. I'm documenting the process on my blog, robotfrogblog.blogspot.com. I'm hoping to use this record as a way to keep myself motivated, to follow my progress, and especially once I have something concrete in my new graduate school search, to set an example for anyone else out there who finds themselves wanting to re-chart their course. As I've been told, it's never too late to start over... or to change.

Cheers!


Paula Sandusky
Tampa, FL, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Favorites

This is a puzzle.

Beyond this message a challenge awaits; In the listserve, no links are allowed, what a cruel fate! The first clue must be deciphered by ROT 8. . Let me know and just email if your brain needs a spark Your first clue is just after this punctuation mark / dsoqwj vwxwfvafy lge jgtafkgf af lg cadd s egucafytajv Listserve Puzzle listservepuzzle[AT]gmail.com
Read more

21,612 is a lot

Hi, everyone. I'm a teenaged girl. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know much about the world. I'm 18, a freshman in college, and I struggle every day trying to see into the future: into what might be, where I might go. Recently I've decided that my destiny in life is to be a high-school biology teacher, but ask me again later and perhaps that will have changed. One thing I feel passionate about is body modification. Somehow my standards of beauty have developed in a way that put piercings, tattoos, implants and scarification at the forefront. However, my parents have threatened to cut off their funding for my education if I modify myself in any way. I already have piercings, and though my family will never see them due to their private locations, I would love to be able to share this important part of my life with them and express myself through modification in a more public way. Essentially, they have rejected my lifestyle, and through this, they have ...
Read more

Tiny wings

Hi all, I want to write about a subject that is very close to my heart - bees! I started bee keeping last year, and have two colonies right now. These two already managed to supply my family and my friends with more than enough honey, and keeping the bees is a tremendously satisfying activity. They smell so good, and are very tidy animals, and are just very, very interesting overall. The insects' way of dealing with the world is just so very different from how we as mammals approach it - it seems almost alien. Anyways, what is probably most impressive is the workload these little animals deal with. For one kilo of honey, they visit 4 million flowers, and fly a distance equivalent of more than 4 times around the earth. Think about that for a second. And then, if you start to think about how they "furniture" their housing themselves by the wax they sweat out, how they can control temperature inside the hive to the tenth of a degree, how they collectively make decisions i...
Read more