Day 925 of 1000

Christian’s PhD recruiting trip schedule was tough. Here is what he did:

  • Wednesday morning – Go to class at NCSU
  • Wednesday afternoon – Fly to San Diego (NC time–in bed after 1:00 AM)
  • Thursday morning – Up early to go do day one at UCSD (NC time–in bed after midnight)
  • Friday morning – Normal day, but in bed after midnight
  • Saturday morning – Up at 4:00 AM to fly to Phoenix
  • Saturday morning – Meets dad at airport, goes to interview at 10:30 AM
  • Saturday afternoon – Drive to Prescott. To be early
  • Sunday morning – Up early to go to meeting
  • Sunday afternoon – Drive to Flagstaff for Gospel meeting
  • Sunday evening – Drive to Phoenix
  • Monday morning – Board plane to Raleigh at 1:00 AM
  • Monday morning – Cannot sleep or work due to crying baby (not her fault)
  • Monday morning – Mom picks him up at 8:30 AM with clean clothes (change in car)
  • Monday morning – Go to class from airport

In N Out on Christian's recruiting trip

A lot of the trip was enjoyable, but most of it was just a grind. Christian went to all the recruiting festivities at UCSD. They held similar events at Arizona State, but Christian did not attend because of the timing. Not attending was a good thing. Christian’s sense was that those events, not unlike the freshman orientation he received at NCSU are a bunch of people posturing and acting like they are having fun as to an event where there is a possibility for a semblence of enjoyment. The exceptions to that were the meetings with the professors. That went very well both at UCSD and ASU, but the social aspects of these recruiting events must be extremely painful for the grad students and the professors.

It was great that he took the trip. He found out that professor contact is the important thing while planned University events are worse than just a waste. He stated that those social events were so painful, contrived and phony that they made him profoundly less likely to want to go to the school. The meetings with the professors made it a net positive, but it would have been way better if he could have just met the professors and gone home.

Christian applied to six schools. So far, he has been accepted by UCSD, ASU, and Stanford. He has been rejected by Berkeley and has not yet heard from Washington and UCLA. If he had to chose tomorrow, Arizona State would be the winner by a big margin for a variety of reasons that we will wait to discuss another day. He might get something better from the other two schools that have not yet contacted him, but they would have to be pretty amazing for him to change.

One of the very best parts of the whole trip was our stop at In ‘N’ Out, but that kind of goes without saying.

Betty Blonde #84 – 11/11/2008
Betty Blonde #84
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