It's official: I am a Master!

Well, I guess... At the very least it is official that I am going to be a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with my M.A. in Political Science! Yesterday I received an e-mail that the graduate secretary and my department chair were working on finalizing my paperwork for graduation! Although I will be technically done at UC in a few weeks at the end of the Summer Quarter my commencement ceremony (which I'm tentatively planning to attend) won't be until December 11th. Finals week for my first semester at FIU is the preceding week and if possible I will make the trip back to Cincinnati for my graduation ceremony and to visit with family and friends.

This is the end of a very exciting and challenging period of my life. In the past few years as I pursued my M.A. several life changing things occurred. I got married, I lost some loved ones, I made new friends and at the end of it all I made one of the most drastic changes in my life and moved out of Ohio, the Midwest and my comfort zone to pursue my Ph.D in Miami.

How did I find FIU? Well... that was the result of a late night of stress and frustration that led to my discovery of FIU's Ph.D. program. I was upset that several of the programs I was looking at for my doctorate (Miami University in Ohio, UC, and a few others) had cancelled their doctoral programs due to financial/economic issues. Thus I was panicking and struggling to find schools to apply to.

It was probably 2 AM when I stumbled upon FIU's program. It looked a perfect fit, they had a large number of faculty in my area of study, two student organizations for my specialty field, among a slew of other perks. I was thrilled, elated... I woke Andrea up from sleep to ask "How do you feel about moving to Miami?" I proceeded to keep her awake like a giddy kid to show her pictures of campus and tell her about the program... A few months later, I got my acceptance letter. Then I got funding. I was thrilled, and then I realized I was moving almost 20 hours away from everything I knew and all that was familiar to me. But this is an exciting opportunity and one that I couldn't pass up.