In the first semester at the Nick School you get hit with some of the harder, intense classes -- Stats with Song Qian and Fundamentals of GIS with Pat Halpin -- not to mention Conservation Biology with Stuart Pimm. I remember finishing that first semester with a feeling akin to finally making it to the surface after some deep sea diving.

The second semester allows for the chance to get out of the Nick School home-base the LSRC -- but more importantly to head in academic directions a little closer to one's own choosing. Logically, I always figured graduate school would be a process of focusing on one or a few things for the entirety of the course of study. However, there are also many opportunities available in the program to shop around in other concentrations. For example, although I signed up in the Conservation Science and Policy track, there is also no stopping me from enrolling in energy and transportation, air and water quality management, or economics and business courses. I recalled this "shopping around" from a time of being "undeclared" during my freshman year in undergrad -- but I also remember wishing I had concentrated more from the get-go, and so have made sure not to stray too far in this academic stint.

In this third semester I did indeed stick to my conservation guns, taking courses such as Dean Urban's excellent Landscape Ecology course and Jennifer Swenson's Remote Sensing course, as well as several additional Japanese courses. I particularly appreciated the semester of Remote Sensing, which was quite possibly the course in which I learned to most to date at the Nick School. In addition to a great lecture and lab structure, the content of the course easily spilled out of class time to be a semester-long conversation with Doctor Swenson and T.A. Ph.D Joe Sexton, supported by the fact that many of the MEMs enrolled in the course are simultaneously tackling Masters Projects relying heavily on remote sensing techniques. Definitely a class not to be missed.