Ebikes Research Continues

I met this afternoon with Jennifer Dill to go over the small bit of progress that I made over the break on the Ebikes research. She seemed pleased with what I have added, and we are about to shift from me just doing the literature review to interviewing people about their experience with owning/purchasing an Ebike. I have a few odds and ends to take care of prior to our weekly meeting next week on Thursday.

At this point it's starting to feel like I have developed a bit of a rapport with Jennifer. I was incredibly insecure about the lack of progress that I felt that I was making last term, particularly when I was frustrated with school in general. Now that I have a bit better footing, my confidence in what I am contributing has risen. She went ahead and authorized the tuition remission for the extra three credits on top of the nine that I will get no matter what, so I can't be doing all that badly. I like the experience I have gained, and hope that I can make some money this summer on performing hourly work for the Family Activity Study again.

Meeting with Brian Rankin, City of Bend Planner

Last week I met with Brian Rankin, a Senior Planner for the City of Bend. I met with him to satisfy the interview requirement for USP 559, an ongoing 1-credit course that essentially is an internship experience. I got to learn about Brian's career, how he got to the City of Bend, his educational background, as well as his take on the challenges of being a planner in Bend. We covered far more material then I need for the assignment, which was nice, as well as discussing the prospect of me interning for the city over the summer. Now being that I live in Portland, interning would have to consist of me coming down to Bend two to three days a week for a short period of time, possibly combined with me doing some work from home.

He gave me some interesting food for thought in terms of thinking hard about geography of where I ultimately want to work. Until this point I have taken more of a I will take what I can get mindset rather then thinking of what I really want. I can't forecast where I will want to be, or where Annie will in a year and a half, other then I want to have a decent job within my field. Bend is a great place to live, but as Brian pointed out, the City Council tilts pretty heavily to the right, and there isn't quite the same progressivism as found in Portland. Of course, not many other places are in the same league as Portland. Brian also mentioned that Bend is isolated, and he had a few long stretches of time between jobs because he wanted to stay in the area. This was something that I had already considered, that Bend's location doesn't allow for the same career flexibility as a larger metropolitan area. There's certainly a lot to think about. Brian stressed that above all, an internship allows you to meet people and make contacts in a certain area, so it's really for the best to pick an area that you would want to work.

Adding Transportation Finance to my schedule

I think I have finally settled on a winter term schedule. I had been signed up for Sustainable Transportation, which sounds interesting, but am tentatively going to do it Winter 2012. I had been reluctant to switch over to Transportation Finance because only 6 people were signed up even though it fits my schedule better and didn't have an overwhelming workload judging from the syllabus. My concern with the small class size would be that the class might get cancelled and that I wouldn't get the social interactions I would get otherwise with more students. The second reason I know isn't great, but hey, it's a fringe benefit of being a student. I decided to look at how my schedule would shake out for my whole 2 years in the program, and it was this exercise that showed me that I would have room in my schedule next year to take Sustainable Transportation. Other courses this term that I would like to take Winter term of next year include Land Use Implementation and Regional Economic Development.

Fall term results pending

Thanks to the power of posting assignment grades on Blackboard, I now know that I got an A- in Planning Methods I. I had not been keeping a running tally of my performance to date and had assumed that I would be on track for something lower. I am pleased with this grade, however I feel that it comes with an asterisk given that most of the grade came from group papers - papers where my portions tended to be the weakest and were subjected to heavy editing by my group members. Two of the group members, Joshua and Carlye, tended to take various facets of assignments onto themselves, and that coupled with my sections always being edited made me feel like less of an asset and more of a liability to the group. The impending winter term means new classes, and therefore new groups, and I look forward to a chance to see what working with other groups is like.

As for my Economics class, I ended up with a B, which was what I expected. I kept getting mid-range B's on my assignments, and knew that I didn't do all that well on the final exam, even considering that he was going to curve it. My raw score on the exam was a 77, and Greg curved it to a B+. The exam was tough, but not in the way that my exams were for my Urban Economics class at CCSU. On the note of that previous class, I have somewhat mixed feelings on whether or not I should have waived this course. On one hand, not very much of the lecture material was new to me, on another, I only got a B, and I did get a bit more experience working with U.S. Census data. I did like the professor, and would consider taking additional classes with him if they were more transportation related.

I do not know yet what I got in History & Theory of Planning. My graded coursework thus far has been a mix of B's and B+'s, and I can't imagine what is remaining will be much different.

This quarter was disappointing, so it was good that it was mercifully short compared to the semester system I just came out of. I have already gotten an email from my professor for Regional Planning about a trip we will take up to Seattle in a joint project on High Speed Rail with a class at the University of Washington.

As for next quarter's lineup, here it is right now:

USP 510 - Sustainable Transportation

USP 535 - Planning Methods II

USP 541 - Dynamics of Planning Practice

USP 549 - Regional Planning & Metropolitan Growth Management

Since I know some people taking Travel Demand Modeling, and the fact that it's a useful course to have in general, I am trying to get an override to get into that class. It's full right now and I have sent an email to the professor seeing if he will let me in. I don't know anything about it, so I stand to learn quite a bit. If I do get into that class, then Sustainable Transportation will get the axe.

Over halfway through the term

Currently it's Wednesday of Week 6 of a 10 week term, and boy is it flying by. I am not used to the quarter system: I was on the semester system as an undergraduate and am feeling the effects of this compressed time frame. On the positive side, I have fewer classes, on the negative side there is a lot more work to do per class. As far as the work itself, the biggest change for me is the level of coordination involved. I have a group in Methods as well as in History & Theory, that I need to regularly check in with and do tasks for. My first few assignments have gone well enough, both earning me B's, so it appears that the A's I was used to the last couple years won't come nearly as easily. I don't seem to have that killer competitive drive anymore to get the highest scores possible, rather much more of my time and energies are being devoted towards my ultimate goal of getting a job within the field upon graduation.

I am reasonably enjoying my classes, although I do occasionally daydream about getting done and getting back into the real world come next June. For Methods I interviewed an East Portland resident and got great insight into some of the challenges that exist out there as far as getting more people to use active transportation. I like that the assignments for that class focus on a real problem, and that some of the data that we collect and conclusions that we come up with will ultimately find its way into the City of Portland's plans for that section of the city.

As I mentioned in my personal journal, I enjoyed the class trip down to Salem to learn more about what the Department of Land Conservation and Development does and meet some of the people that work there. My take from the visit was that I think it would be an agency I would enjoy working for, however I am not entirely excited by the prospect of living in Salem.

I am officially doing what a Graduate Research Assistant is supposed to do - research! I had a meeting with my advisor, Jennifer Dill, and she let me know about some research she had started with a visiting professor from Australia about electric bicycles. To begin with she wants me to do some literature review and get up to speed on what she has already discovered. She ultimately wants me to interview early adopters of these ebikes to get a sense of why they purchased them and how they fit in with other modes of transportation. I will be meeting on Thursdays with Jennifer to check in with her on my progress and to get direction on where to go next. At this time I do not believe that I will end up being a researcher after school, but I like the idea of getting credited for my contribution to a paper that she may ultimately get published.

Interviews are Lined Up

In two of my courses I have interviews that need to be done. Thankfully, they are both scheduled next week: regarding the Eastside Streetcar will be on Tuesday and then regarding Active Transportation in East Portland will be on Thursday. I feel incredibly lucky with both of these; I was practically handed the interview for East Portland, and Sy, my professor in History & Theory, pointed out City of Portland employees that had graduated from the MURP program and would thus be amenable to assisting current students. It does mean I will be busy getting questions ready for the interviews, and then the post-interview analysis, however I will not need an extension on the due date, which I would imagine many of my colleagues will require.

Since I am a forward looking guy, I have identified which classes I will be taking next term. Here's how it looks:

USP 510 Sustainable Transportation
USP 535 Planning Methods II
USP 541 Dynamics of the Planning Practice
USP 549 Regional Planning & Metropolitan Growth Management

This will be a total of 13 credits as opposed to the 12 credits I am currently taking this term. The only class that might get changed is Sustainable Transportation if I am advised that I ought to take other transportation related classes first. I am excited about the first and last course mentioned, not so much about the middle two. I am only taking those because they are required. My hope is that these courses will help prepare me for an internships this summer and next year.

Speaking of internships, Annie's dad and a long range planner for the City of Bend are coming up to Portland for a conference in a few weeks, and I will get a chance to meet the long range planner. Ideally I will make a contact in the field and potentially use that to get a job or an internship, even if it's short term. My Uncle Bob works in the construction field and knows people that would be beneficial for me to get in contact with, however despite his repeated offerings of asking around on my behalf, he has never gotten back to me with anything.

I feel slightly less overwhelmed with school then I did about a week ago. Getting the interviews in place was a big part of my feeling of relief in this regard. There's also something about knowing that soon I will be signing up for next term's classes and will thus being making significant progress in completing the program.

Phase 1 of the Family Activity Study winds down

Phase 1 of the Family Activity Study that I am a research assistant for is drawing to a close. The last day of data collection is November 7, and the last day for people to go out and pick up equipment from the families is November 8. I have been trying hard the past few days to squeeze some more families in, but it's been difficult since we are down to only 20 prospective families for the 3-4 remaining slots. This may sound like a lot, but most of the remaining families have been lingering in our prospects list for a couple of months and haven't called back after as many as the eight or nine messages I have left.

With the end of this phase means that what I do as an assistant will markedly change. Tomorrow will probably be the last day that I work the phones and try to recruit families. What will probably happen next is that I will help input information from the completed surveys into a database. That task is going to be extremely tedious, although it sounds like they will try to pay some hourly undergraduates to do it. They may have me be part of the crew that audits street segments to quantify how walkable and bikeable they are, or I may get shifted over to a new project and a new study. I would like to stay on with the study, but would be happy with a change too.

Interviews galore

This most recent week of school has brought a new challenge: finding people to interview. For History & Theory, I need to interview an official with involvement in the recently completed plan for extending the Portland Streetcar, and in Methods, I need to interview a tenant in East Portland. Both of these tasks are rather vague, particularly the second one, where it's pretty much all on me to find the appropriate people, ask the right questions, and draw some coherent, meaningful conclusions. This is challenging for me since I have never liked having to cold call people for something they may not want to do. I am not nearly as uncomfortable with the idea as I once was; between calling for a political campaign and recruiting families for the Family Activity Study, I am more experienced with that sort of thing now. The problem with this is that unlike those other tasks, I don't have a readily assembled list of people that are amenable to the task at hand.

Regarding the Streetcar, I started off with Portland Streetcar Inc., the non-profit the city contracted with to run and operate it. Unfortunately I quickly ran into a roadblock, the person there I was directed to talk to has already been interviewed by my other group members. I shifted gears this afternoon and emailed Metro, the regional planning organization that is involved with the potential project to extend the Portland Streetcar to the affluent suburb of Lake Oswego. Hopefully somebody there can make some time for me and offer a different perspective.

With the Methods interview, I need to interview a tenant, i.e. somebody renting in East Portland, about their views on active transportation (cycling and walking). East Portland is a huge chunk of the city, and renters make up about 40% of the population, so in theory most people qualify as interviewees. My solution is to try and get in contact with the head of a neighborhood organization in East Portland, and see if they could put me in contact with a renter that is active within the group. My thinking is that if they are active in their neighborhood, that they will see it as an opportunity to make their concerns regarding active transportation known. The sorts of questions I need to ask for this interview are less clear than the other one. Thankfully, the report on the interview is due in about four weeks and the professor should give us better guidance in the mean time.

Ponderings

I have decided for myself, that I need to continue to read for leisure, and not essentially give it up during academic terms as I have done in the past. This serves multiple purposes, for starters, gives me something to help me wind down at the end of the day. My interest in mostly reading non-fiction is probably puzzling to most people, however I do thoroughly enjoy learning more about my other interest areas, which right now are primarily U.S. politics and space exploration. I love urban planning; but not so much that it should crowd out my other interests. I will need to get on top of my required readings in order to not feel guilty when I do my leisure reading. To that end, I will try to be proactive like I was this week and get on top of the weekly reading right away so that it's done and over with.

I have also realized that I am ready to join the workforce again. This won't happen for quite some time, as I am not slated to graduate until June of next year. I enjoy academia, learning and all that, however it has become clear that a career in it is not quite for me. The cost-benefit analysis certainly does not bear out pursuing a PhD in lieu of immediately re-joining the workforce once I have my MURP completed. I am getting a little tired of doing creative stuff with my finances due to my being at the mercy of slow to pay out student loans and GI Bill benefits. I welcome a regular and steady paycheck thankyouverymuch. This does not mean that I want to quit school or anything like that, it's more that it means I will be excited for the possibilities when I am on the other side.

Speaking of on the other side, I hope to put together a body of internship experiences that is both instructive and helps me build connections for future employment opportunities. The MURP program is incredibly Portland-centric, this is good and bad, good in that Portland has a solid tradition of smart planning, but bad in that there are a lot of other places that need planners then just Portland. Rather than do what some students do and primarily intern within the city, I want to get some experiences outside. I am open to living in Washington when school is over, so I think it would behoove me to get a little internship time with Clark County, the City of Vancouver, or even C-Tran. Maybe here and there I can get some experience in Bend through Annie's dad's friend in Long-Range Planning there. I could try one of the growing suburbs here like Gresham, Happy Valley, or else Clackamas County (provided they don't blow me off again). The majority of my fellow students love Portland and want to stay here, meaning that there will be fierce competition for entry level jobs. I want to differentiate myself from that and give myself more options. There is a requirement for me to get 400 hours of internship experience, some of which my GRA will count towards. I want to turn this requirement into an opportunity and in turn give myself plenty of options for when I am done with school.

Week 2 begins

Today marked the beginning of the second week of the term, although it doesn't feel like it yet because I don't have any actual classes until tomorrow.

I'm not sure where I am at in regards to how I feel about graduate school thus far - and that's probably what has me off kilter. After begin confident that this was the right, best choice, I can't help but wonder if it truly was and if I would have been better served by just working first, provided that I could find a job, or even pursued my other options harder, i.e. waited out UW on their waitlist, or stuck with the more familiar UO in Eugene. I am not sure why I am second guessing myself now; perhaps school becoming a reality has brought the possibilities that can spring from it back down to earth. I don't know.

I think part of my problem is the cultural shift. I don't ride a bike everywhere nor do I believe that solution to all transportation problems must include more bike lanes and paths. I don't alternate between coffee at local shops with water bottles adorned with stickers of self expression on them; I drink soda. It almost appears that Timbuk2 messenger bags are part of the required uniform, yet I still shoulder my six year old Targus backpack. These differences of course are largely aesthetic, but I do know that they will go deeper and may make it more challenging to find like-minded acquaintances and friends.

Academics too are a big shift. It's all about group projects here. I knew that coming in, so it's no surprise. Still, there are group projects for things that in my opinion should not be. It's hard for me to feel that competitive, perfectionist focus that made me such a good student at CCSU, when the lines between what's my work and "our" work will be so blurred. The workload doesn't seem to be too bad with a focus on short technical memos rather than large papers. It is complicated by the fact that I find the instructions on the various assignments to be confusing and it's unclear how these memos are supposed to come together. Most of my confusion and frustration are related to Methods and History & Theory of Planning. Thankfully my Econ professor thus far seems to be using a style that's much more in tune with what I am comfortable with, so at least there's that.

My research assistantship is going alright. Flyering is getting old, but it should be done Wednesday. Doing phone calls for scheduling families for the study can also wear on me if I have to go more than a few hours at a shot. Speaking of hours, I am irritated with how flexible my work schedule is. It's not entirely clear when and how long I need to be there. I dictate when I arrive and leave and how much work I do. Joe, the PhD in charge, always seems thankful for my work, however I wonder if I am doing enough work, because he and Holly put way more than their FTE hours. I am slated for .35, or 14 hours a week. Joe made it sound like that was sort of an average, that sometimes it's much higher and sometimes it's a lot lower. Call me cheap, but I like to get compensated for what I do and am not too keen on overloading on GRA hours for the same pay, particularly since it will infringe on my study (and sanity) time. Whatever the case is, I did let Joe know that I wanted him to give me some sort of framework for a schedule, that I need feedback on whether or not my amount of work is living up to expectations. It's funny how sometimes I miss the rigid and crystal clear managerial methods that my supervisors in the Navy employed.

I'll hit my groove at some point. I am not helped by the fact that PSU still hasn't certified me to the VA. Translated to English: this means I won't get paid for several more weeks, maybe even a month. It will eventually happen, but for now I will have to continue to carry a much larger balance on my credit card than I am comfortable with. Once that gets resolved, there will be some uncertainty that will go away.

Classes Begin

Yesterday I started my graduate level classes. I haven't had to do too many things for hours at a stretch this summer, so taking three multi-hour classes in a day was a bit draining for me. I am sure I will get used to it once I get in the swing of things, it's just that I now know that the entirety of my Tuesdays from here until December will be completely spoken for.

Here's a quick rundown of my classes:

Economic Applications in Urban Studies: This course name is rather lengthy, but it's really a fancy way of saying Urban Economics, or Urban Economics for planners. I like the professor so far, Greg Schrock, and it appears that he definitely understands how economics and planning may sometimes seem diametrically opposed, but must be appropriately balanced in practice. I may have had enough economics background to waive the requirement for this class. Freeing up space in my schedule would have been nice, but I think that I will enjoy this class and am glad that I get to take it. Economics and its cold rationality and penchant for pushing market solutions to problems provides a nice balance to planning, which can sometimes get impractical with its squishy utopian ideals.

After Econ I had about five hours between classes, so I elected to work up in the office for a few hours making phone calls to prospective families for the Family Activity Study. I wasn't nearly as successful as I have been in the past in making recruitments, but I did well enough.

Planning Methods I: This class appears that it will also be numbers based, with a focus on how to obtain data in order to better inform planning. Our class project, an in depth study of the active transportation needs of East Portland, will carry over through next term into Planning Methods II. To be more specific, we are looking at the large swath of Portland east of I-205 that was annexed in the 80's and 90's. It's a geographically large area, and much different than the dense closer in neighborhoods that people normally associate with Portland. To be honest it's not really an area that I would care much for living in, but that doesn't take away from this being a great opportunity for us to hopefully provide useful data to help improve it.

History & Theory of Planning: It was about this point that classroom fatigue had started to set in. I had already been at school for about 8 hours, and only had a 10 minute break between Methods and this course. Our professor, Sy Adler, or just Sy, lectures more traditionally from his own notes rather than powerpoint. He jumped right into things and we were learning the vast majority of the class period. I had thought that this class might be a little repetitive for me since I had had prior planning classes, however this will not be the case. The way he presented things and way he wanted us to consider and think about things is much more of a thoughtful exercise then anything I encountered in my undergraduate planning classes. My previous classes were just a straightforward presentation of history, facts and things that occurred, whereas this lecture focused much more on how and why things should occur.

After about 2.5 hours straight of lecturing he broke us off into groups by specialty with the intent of us forming smaller groups of 4-5 people with a recently implement plan that we were to focus on. There are 14 people in the transportation focus, which meant it took us much longer to identify plans that people were interested in, and then paring down the interested people into groups that were small enough to meet the Sy's requirement. The first group to organize was, no surprise, for the Bicycle 2030 Master Plan. A little while later, a few of us drew numbers from a hat to see who could be in the Portland Streetcar Plan group, which I luckily made the cut.

Of all of my classes, the last one probably concerned me the most in terms of workload. This may have to do with my fatigue at having been at school all day, or possibly because of how oddly the syllabus was organized. Still, I have only have three classes to worry about, so that's certainly less to juggle mentally then back when I had five or even six classes a semester.

New job skills on the research assistant front

My GRA thus far has largely consisted of distributing flyers in target neighborhoods throughout Portland and calling prospective families that have indicated they are interested in participating in the Family Activity Study. Neither one is particularly glamorous, but I understand that this sort of leg work is necessary to facilitate what will hopefully be helpful findings once all of the data is processed. I find it a little ironic that I am not much of a salesman, nor am I terribly extroverted, yet in the log of contact with prospective families, I record a lot more contacts and conversations in a setting then my colleagues do. I suspect that the others don't really care as much for working the phones, after all many of the participants have tricky questions, or else have odd situations where a judgment call is necessary to determine if they are still eligible for the study. There's also the matter of scheduling a drop off and pick up of our equipment with them that doesn't conflict with any of the deliverers schedules, yet be close in enough that we are keeping our equipment out in the field as much as possible.

Today I learned a little about the process of mailing off gift cards as a reward to families that completed the study. We determine the amount of gift cards based upon how much useful data we received and how good they were about wearing both their accelerometers and GPS units. Anyway, there's tight control over the gift cards so as none go missing, and we also have to get signatures on a thank you letter from Jennifer Dill, the professor at Portland State that's ultimately overseeing this research. Anyway, processing gift cards is a rather bureaucratic process because of all this leg work involved and we didn't go through nearly as many households as I would have thought for how long we worked on it. Oh and people in Portland love them some Fred Meyer gift cards; they are by far and away more popular than the gift cards for New Seasons, Burgerville and Target.

I am getting comfortable with several of the other Master's and PhD students involved in the research. I won't have too many classes with these people since I have to take the first year core courses, and most of them are second year Master's students or else PhD students that aren't actively taking classes. On Thursday I will have my orientation and get to meet more of my cohort and of course learn more about the curriculum. There's a happy hour right after the orientation that I intend on going to and perhaps work on making some good acquaintances. I have had to remind myself that despite having gotten into the groove of being a research assistant, which I like very much, I will be a student first come next week and have to juggle both responsibilities.

First day on the job

Today was my first day actually working for Portland State. I met with a few other graduate students at SE 43rd and Raymond to flyer a neighborhood. The purpose of the flyers is to recruit families into the Family Activity Study research that is being funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. On a map it doesn't look like we covered a huge area, maybe 20 square blocks, but considering that we went to all but a few houses, there was quite a bit of walking. It was somewhat similar to my previous experience with canvassing for politician's campaign - with the major exception being that our goal was to not directly engage people. With this study it would take awhile to explain to each family what the study was about and what we are trying to do.

Time to move up to Portland

Labor Day seemed to mark the unofficial end of summer as I am now packing up to move to Portland. I spent this summer living in Eugene with my girlfriend Annie, and will check into our new apartment tomorrow afternoon. After looking at numerous apartments, we found one in a mixed-use building at the eastern edge of Hawthorne and within walking distance of Mt. Tabor. I will be going by myself tomorrow to unload a carload of our belongings and will then pick up a Wells Cargo trailer from my Uncle Milo in Clackamas so that Annie and I can use it for the furniture. We should do the bulk of the moving on Thursday, and hopefully focus on unpacking Friday.

Our apartment and overall location is a good fit for Annie and I. We were initially drawn to Northwest Portland, but higher overall costs made it just a little too expensive to live there at this juncture. Our neighborhood has plenty to offer and we are within walking distance of several local restaurants, coffee shops, a Fred Meyer, a New Seasons (think Whole Foods), and of course bars. I will take advantage of the bus stop that's just steps outside of the apartment and purchase a transit pass so that I won't have to mess with parking downtown when I need to go to class. This is exciting for me since while I have been a big advocate of mass transit and transit systems in general, I have typically only used them when touring major cities such as New York or Washington DC, but never routinely relied upon them.

I have been on the Family Activity Study mailing list for a few weeks and frequently have gotten messages about members of the research group flyering in various neighborhoods of Portland. I should get a few chances next week to roll up my sleeves and finally get involved in the project, meet some of my fellow researchers and classmates, and of course, make a little money. I know I am up to the task, although it's a little daunting knowing that from the emails that I am about the only person who hasn't been active yet.

On the not so exciting front in graduate school is the matter of paying for it. I still haven't received my Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA) letter, and it's not entirely clear to me how many credits my tuition waiver will cover for each term. The other part of the how to pay for school equation is my GI Bill benefits. Portland State is a little different than CCSU was in that they require me to have a course listing sheet filled out and signed by my advisor each term, plus I have to give the Veteran's Office a copy of a paper form that I actually filed online. It seems rather behind the times, particularly when I was able to submit everything for CCSU electronically. As with any sort of payment for the government, I know I will get my benefits eventually and that in the meantime I will have to lean upon what I have in savings to help bridge the gap.

Research Assistant Training

This past Wednesday I got my first taste of what I will be doing for my Graduate Research Assistantship (GRA). One of the transportation professors, Jennifer Dill, emailed me last week hoping I could come up to do training with the other research assistants so that we'll know what we need to do come the fall. I was excited about this opportunity because I have been feeling academically dormant these summer months and because I would like to have an idea of what my workload will consist of.

The training itself was actually quite interesting, which is impressive given that I had just had a frustrating apartment hunt earlier in the day and was pretty tired. Before I could begin I had to fill out paperwork to become a Portland State employee in order to get paid for this since my GRA does not technically start until September 16. The research project that we are all working on is to see the before and after of family activities once their neighborhoods have been made more bicycle friendly. This is just starting, so what we need to do now is audit the facilities of the neighborhoods, i.e. their sidewalks, lighting, aesthetic quality, etc., to try and set a baseline of what their activities are for this given street environment. After the additional bicycle lanes and other streetscaping is put in by the city, we will do a before and after comparison to see if family activity improved. We are also going to audit a comparable area where there won't be any modifications to essentially use as a control group. There are 3,000 street segments that need to be audited, which explains why there were about 10 people at our training since there is a lot of work to go around.

I am pretty excited about this research and look forward to getting started on it. It's being funded by a foundation that focuses on healthy children, so there is a lot of crossover between urban planning and the public health fields. I was initially concerned that I alone would get assigned an indecipherable task with high expectations, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I will benefit from the support and camaraderie of a whole research group coupled with the recognition that this is well within my capabilities.

Initial course schedule for the Fall Term

Today was the first day that incoming graduate students were allowed to register for classes, so I quickly took care of that as I had already decided what my schedule was going to be. Here are my classes thus far:

USP 507 Transportation Seminar - 1 credit

USP 533 Planning Methods I - 4 credits

USP 540 History & Theory of Planning - 4 credits

USP 544 Urban Transportation Planning - 3 credits

As always with my schedules, this is subject to change. I'm taking USP 533 and 540 no matter what this term and can take the other two courses in Fall 2011. I am loading up on my transportation focus courses early since I will be concurrently beginning my research assistantship for one of the faculty members in that area. If I weren't, I would probably take more of the core courses and then worry about my focus later.

It's interesting how a balanced schedule in the view of an undergraduate student includes classes from various departments and subjects, whereas I consider this graduate schedule balanced since two of the classes are foundational and the other two are in my interest area, yet they are all within the School of Urban Studies and Planning. I am looking forward to all of them, even though the History & Theory course should be primarily review for me and then the Methods course will largely be statistics. Of course not having a job and not being in school makes everything at all stimulating sound interesting right about now!

The choice of Portland State University

I put quite a bit of time, effort and thought into the application process for graduate school. I thought that with my near perfect GPA, that I should reach on some programs that are notably difficult to get into. Unfortunately during the process, I found out that urban planning programs don't put much emphasis on an applicant's GPA or GRE scores, but instead on their relevant real-world experience and letters of recommendation. I also picked an incredibly difficult year to get into graduate school as the acceptance rates in many places were half of what they were just a few years ago.

Of the six schools I applied to, I was rejected by MIT, UC Berkeley, and UNC Chapel Hill. The rejection from UNC was the hardest to take from that bunch because I had thoroughly enjoyed the open house and felt comfortable there, however I didn't have the experience that they wanted. Knowing what I know now, I can advise that people looking at doing graduate studies in urban planning, or frankly any applied program, should strongly consider working 2-3 years prior to submitting applications if the desire is to get into the most competitive program possible.

Of the next three schools, the ones in the Pacific Northwest near my family, I was accepted by the University of Oregon, Portland State, and waitlisted at the University of Washington. The waitlisting was hard to take because I had enjoyed a recent visit to Seattle and really let myself get attached to the idea of going there. Despite all this, I still had two good schools to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, however it was apparent early on which was the better way to go.

Even though Portland State University is hardly a top tier school, especially compared to its in state cousin, University of Oregon, it does house a strong urban planning program that's surprisingly difficult to get into. The program's transportation focus helped make it the right fit for me plus there is the added benefit that Portland is the mecca of sorts for planning and good mass transit. University of Oregon's program on the other hand is more geared for people interested in the environmental or non-profit focus. U of O did offer me a one term teaching fellowship, however Portland State one-upped them with a full year research assistantship which helped make the final decision a little easier.

It took me a bit to warm up to the idea of going to Portland State because it wasn't the most exciting or exotic choice, however all along I recognized that I would enjoy the benefits of a great program in a great city, reasonably near my family in Oregon. I was at first resistant to the idea of making what I thought was the safe choice that everybody else wanted me to make which I suppose means that even at 26, I can still have my moments of rebelliousness. Regardless of my earlier preference of going to graduate school at place that's more universally recognized, I think this will ultimately work out just fine for me. Living in Portland will be great, my family will be easier to visit, and I will obtain my Master's with only a modest amount of new debt.

Why I am getting my master's

My thoughts drifted to graduate school early on during my academic career at Central Connecticut State University. I was in complete control of my classes and on track to earn my first 4.0 grade point average since 7th grade, which was 1997. With this achievement came a corresponding rise in my confidence, leading me to think that, you know what, I could do alright in graduate school. My interest in graduate school was two-fold; the first reason is that in urban planning, my prospective profession, it is expected to get a Master's degree at some point, and the other was a chance to really sink my teeth into in depth issues in city development. The undergraduate courses I have taken seemed to just skim the surface and leave out so many important details that I wanted to know about. Admittedly, another reason I wanted to do a Master's degree was personal pride since I believe that if I can do more, then I should do more.

Within most urban planning programs there are multiple focuses available so that students can tailor their studies to their interests. For me, I am particularly interested in transportation planning, especially as it pertains to making cities more livable and vibrant. Now, this is not to be confused with Civil Engineering, where the emphasis is more upon raw numbers and such things as calculating turning radii of highway off ramps. My interest is in making transportation work for real people since the quality of it can have a huge impact on a person's quality of life. Just ask somebody that routinely sits in traffic each day on the way to and from work.