In fact, I’m not even done the applications! In truth, grad school has been taking over my life since I started studying for the GRE General test back in September. I’ve been trying to take it all as seriously as possible, so I put in a lot of study hours for the GRE and then for the GRE Psychology subject test last week. Hopefully it pays off. I know I studied more than some of the people who took the GRE Psych test with me last weekend; they were bragging about how they didn’t study at all! I don’t know about you, but when I have to pay 130 dollars to take a test, I’m gonna study like mad for it. But it’s very nice to have those tests behind me now.
Also taking up my spare time has been the process of narrowing down schools to apply to, which is fun, but very time consuming. My criteria for picking a grad school initially left a lot of options open to me. I started off eliminating schools that were in geographically less appealing places like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Arizona. There were enough schools that satisfied my needs that I could afford to be a little bit picky about where I get to live while attending school.
The central states just don’t seem that exciting to me. I’ve driven through them. Boring. Maybe I’m not giving them a fair chance, but I have the luxury of not having to worry about it. Arizona, New Mexico and Western Texas are just way too hot for a warm-blooded Canadian boy and there’s no ocean nearby to offer a reprieve.
So that left basically the west coast, the east coast and the gulf coast, all of which I would be quite alright with. I’ve lived on the west coast and the gulf coast so I know I like it, and the east coast seems pretty cool from what I hear and Maren and I could use an adventure.
After I had the locations sorted out I looked at more important stuff like the kind of financial aid I could receive from each school, competitiveness of each school, faculty whose research interests matched my own. I made sure I wasn’t excluding any really good schools because of an unfortunate location and I came up with a list of ten schools. It turned out to be exactly the kind of list that your academic advisors tell you to make. I had three ambitious schools, UCLA, Yale and Penn State, each ranked in the top ten clinical psych programs by US News. I had three safety schools, U of Maine, U of Houston, and Rutger’s University. And four moderately competitive schools, U of Virginia, USC, U of Oregon and SDSU/UCSD, ranked in the top 20 and top 30. I’m not bragging when I mention Yale and UCLA, I’m just reaching for the stars, so to speak. Honestly, I might have a stroke if any of those top ten schools contact me for an interview.
Finalizing a list of schools to apply to was a relief, but the real work is still ahead of me. Applying to one grad school is a lot of work, let alone ten of them. What am I doing to myself?! Oh well, it’ll be worth it. By the end of December, I’ll be done with applications for a while and I won’t have to start stressing again until it’s interview time! (Keep your fingers crossed for me that I’ll actually get an interview or two).
I’m interested to know what you (all three of you) think. Which school do you think would be the coolest for me to attend? And give reasons. And which school do you think I’ll actually end up going to? Remember, they’re UCLA, Yale, Penn State, U of Virginia, USC, SDSU/UCSD, U of Oregon, U of Maine, Rutgers University, U of Houston. What do you think?
So far blogging has been a welcome distraction on days when I’m spending hours making sure I haven’t forgotten some crucial part of an application. So, hopefully I can keep up with the regular blog posts in the near future.

With the recent release of things like The Beatles Rockband and Michael Jackson’s film “This Is It” I found myself pondering the future state of what we consider to be the most influential music of the last century. Music has evolved and proliferated so much in the last century that it is hard to predict what the future of music might hold. And it is hard to know how today’s popular and influential music will be perceived by music historians a century or more from now.
I wonder if Beethoven and Mozart could have ever imagined the kind of music that we listen to today. And I wonder if, one day, future generations will think of 20th and 21st century music in the same way that we currently think about music from centuries past. So called classical music is comprised of a variety of styles and subgenres that were probably starkly obvious to musicians of the “classical” age but which, for us, have been melded into one giant genre. Will our Beatles and Britneys and Metallicas be lumped together as a genre of 20th century popular music by amateur music historians of the future? I think there’s a good chance that something like that will happen. Especially if music making continues to become so ubiquitous. With more and more people making music, music archives will be so jam packed that everyone but the hardcore purists will want to lump things together for simplicity’s sake.
Another thing to consider is the enormous effect technology has had on the evolution of music. The electric guitar and the drum kit, which now make up the most basic instrumentation of the majority of today’s popular music did not exist until the early 20th century. I wonder what Mozart would have done with an electric guitar or a synthesizer in his hands? The device AutoTune is an example of some technology that is currently revolutionizing (for better or worse) the music industry. Where does music technology go from here?
Will there continue to be social outcries over new kinds of music as they emerge? I recently watched the film Amadeus in which (if I remember correctly) young Mozart raises some eyebrows by writing a French ballet for the German king (yikes!). This week the movie Pirate Radio opens, depicting a time in the 60s when England banned rock and roll music. And who can’t remember a time in the 90s when Eminem or some other rapper was making the news for making controversial music? Where does music go from here? What other toes can modern musicians step on?
thinking about it makes me excited to see what music is like when I’m an old man. Even though I’ll probably hate popular music when I’m old and wish that kids could appreciate “real” music like Our Lady Peace and U2. I probably won’t live long enough to see my favorite bands enter “classical” status, though.
and Spears are relatively equal in terms of hit songs and media coverage (or something to that effect; I don’t know the exact statistics; and for the record, my personal opinion is that Britney Spears is a speck of dust compared to the Beatles). To me, it seems a sin to conflate two so obviously different musicians. But chances are, people a century from now aren’t going to see the difference so clearly.

By this point I hope it’s becoming obvious that when I speak of fabricated, inflammatory emails I’m referring mainly to the hateful, politically motivated messages that have been circulating through inboxes pretty much since email came into existence. I urge everyone within the reach of this blog to think critically about the material you choose to pass on to those you care about. I know you’ve already thought about it enough to care that those close to you know about it. The only other thing you need to do is make sure that what you pass on is true!
I blogged a little while back about how much I was looking forward to this movie. Well, I finally saw it and was very pleased with it. I think that the film version of Where The Wild Things Are is the best possible movie that could have been created from the book. That being said, you have to remember that the book had only 48 pages and somewhere around 330 words. A feature-length film adaptation is bound to have an effect on the essence of a book that takes less than 5 minutes to read.
