I have a plan! Or so I think.

Ok, for those of you who don't know I have been thinking about going on to get my PhD in speech sciences.  So, as I'm nearing the end of my masters degree it is time to begin thinking about the possibility of becoming Dr. Brown (that has a nice ring to it).  So here is my plan, cursory as it may be.

I will take a year (or two) off of school.  I am burnt out and need some time to recoup.  If I take one year off of school I will look for a job in the same town as the PhD program I plan to attend.  If I take two years off I am going to take a job in a really cool city, get my certification and then move to the city were the program is in.  

During the year I am in the university's city I will work and network with the professor I plan to work with.  This will get me involved in research and allow me to maintain my sanity.  Right now I have two choices of programs that stand out in my mind.  The first choice is the University of Iowa, located in Iowa City, Iowa.  (I know, I know, Iowa City is the antithesis of what I wanted out of a city: big and on the water).  Anyway, I like Iowa because they are doing research into identifying subtypes of stuttering and risk factors in childhood stuttering: two key areas in my opinion of how to go about further researching stuttering.  I also like it because University of Iowa is were speech pathology was born.  Stuttering therapy was developed at WMU, but speech path was birthed at Iowa.  Furthermore, Iowa is dripping in stuttering expert alumni (Charles Van Riper, Wendell Johnson, Oliver Bloodstine [all of whom stuttered] the list goes on).  Not that I expect to join that short list of world renown stuttering experts, but just being where they were would be cool.  (For those of you who know of the Monster Study [teaching normally fluent children to stutter] - this is were it happened).

My second choice is the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  While UWM does not have the prestige that Iowa has, it does have very good research facilities.  And Madison is a cool city - so I 'd get to do my PhD in a cool city.  And that would be awesome.

A third choice is University of Connecticut.  Similar to UWM, they have really good research facilities.  However, unlike Madison, Storrs is not a cool city, and from what I heard when I was looking in UCONN for my masters, most of the faculty and masters students live in Hartford and drive the 30 minutes to school everyday. 

I  don't really know where I'm going to be or what I'm going to do.  I'm meeting with Dr. Tasko and Dr. Sharp sometime in the near future to talk about PhD stuff.  I'll get some good counsel from them.  (it's a little bit funny, but Dr. Sharp got her PhD at Iowa and Dr. Tasko got his from UWM).  The only thing I do know is that I am going to take a year off.  I'm a little leery to take a year off because once you leave it's difficult to get back into the swing of academia.  It seems as though most of my professors did take a break between their masters and doctorates, so they did it, I assume I would be able to make the transition too.  Also - if I move to the city were my program will be then there will be a forethought of: I'm going to get my PhD.  I think that might be necessary.

Anyway, I think it's about time I go to bed.  I'll talk about my day later - I had an interesting one including playing acrobatics on a playground for the pleasure of a 14 year old girl with a cognitive impairment.