Foresight

I have a testimony that the Lord knows which path in our lives will lead, ultimately, to the most happiness much more than we know it ourselves.  If we trust in the Lord... and even sometimes when we don't really, he will guide us toward the paths that will lead us to the most prosperity.  There are elements in my life currently that I never could have predicted nor have pieced together that has lead me to a great place, even in the midst of bitter circumstances.

I've pretty much blagged about all the elements of my life before, but have never really put the pieces together until now. 

My consideration of Oregon State University for a master's degree began well over a year ago while I was still under the impression that I would work in industry for a few years to figure out where I wanted to specialize before beginning a master's degree.  Like most of the other schools I began considering, my interest in Oregon State was based on their ranking in US News and World Report.  Though, unlike most other schools, Oregon State seemed to stand out at me as a good idea even though I'd never been to Oregon and had little experience with the university outside the '09 Las Vegas Bowl.  (In retrospect, this was an inspired decision.)

With most of the schools in the rankings, I could find one or more reasons to remove them from consideration based on their graduate assistant policies, grad programs, research, etc.  However, Oregon State, ranked at #41 (in an 8-way tie), managed to stick around.  While other schools lost favor, I couldn't find any reason to not like Oregon State.  The earliest list of potential grad schools I made in this blag was in March of '10, which would have been about the time I started considering Oregon State.

In July of '10, even though I still held out vain hope of finding a job, I decided to take the GRE just in case I wanted to apply to grad school in the fall.  This turned out to be another clearly inspired decision.

As my desires to continue fruitlessly applying and networking for jobs faded, I applied for master's programs at 7 institutions of higher learning.  As I began the process, it was fairly evident that I would have to pick a specialization, ready or not.  I decided that I had been trying to convince myself that I didn't like geotech and that that was really my favorite specialty after all.  Applying for the geotech program was a third inspired decision.

In March and April of '11, I was thinking that I wouldn't receive funding from any of the schools to which I had applied and that I would attend CU-Boulder.  I was wrong on both accounts.  I received funding for the 2011-2012 school year from Oregon State and immediately began the process of matriculating.  The tuition waiver and stipend that I received were the first immense blessing that I received on account of my inspired decisions.

On March 11, 2011, a megathrust subduction earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the northeast side of Honshu, Japan causing extreme loss of property and life.  A similar subduction fault exists a few miles west of the Oregon and Washington coasts, and the prospect of an almost identical quake hitting western Oregon scared the Benjamins out of the state government.  They will now be providing a significant piece of funding to the one significant civil engineering program in the state, at Oregon State University.  See my previous blag post about this here.

The professor who is spearheading much of this research (who did his undergrad at Georgia Tech) is brand new at the university, since they have been understaffed for the past couple years.  I just talked to him this morning and he said that administration and red tape would need to be taken care of for the next few months and that the research would begin in earnest in the first few months of next year.  To put it bluntly, the timing is perfect.  And since this professor is brand new, he doesn't have many grad students/other minions of his own, allowing me to slip in fairly easily.  Trust me, I'm at least as amazed as you at this point.

In summary, with foresight of a pair of unforeseeable events, the Lord was able to prepare a path for me leading to more happiness than I could have ever procured following my own plan(s).  I've rarely considered myself very keen on hearing and listening to the still, small voice of the Spirit.  However, will even the tertiary ear that I lent Him, the Lord was able to guide me.  And I'm sure that the guidance and blessings are not over.  My time in Oregon has only begun and there is almost certainly more in store were this much came from.

The Beaver is Doing the Richardson Dance

So, I have made my move to the great state of Oregon.  Both myself and my roommate are moved in and I'm pretty much loving it so far.  I found out that the roomy is actually 18 years old and doesn't have a driver's license, but that's not really a big deal.  The good news is that he's a computer (science) nerd and is pretty mellow.  So basically, we're both just socially capable enough to hold a decent conversation, but just socially awkward enough to leave each other alone most of the time.  It's pretty awesome.

The rest of my likes and dislikes I'll be putting into list form, so here you go:

Dislikes

• My apartment is in the middle of little Mexico.  Seriously, very few of my immediate neighbors speak English.
• The walls of my apartment are nothing but lumber, drywall, and air.  You can hear everything that goes on within 20 feet of your apartment walls, on any side.  Most this goes on in Spanish.
• Along these same lines, the door to my bedroom doesn't currently close... at all.  Neither brute force nor gentle persuasion will make it go to its home.  We'll see how quick they are on my maintenance request.
• More generally, the university is apathetic to the concerns of student housing.  Living in the 1-mile radius at BYU made rent slight higher, but it also provided some protections for students.  Namely, BYU ensured that student housing included furniture and mail keys for their students.  Since I've arrived here, I've had to spend a boatload of cash on furniture and I haven't been able to check my mail.
• The university and surrounding entities are profoundly liberal.  I went to a GTA orientation this week in which one of the presentations was on "The Diverse Student Populations of Oregon State University."  My dad suggested that this particular brand and level of liberalism was best described by the term 'pure collectivism,' with which I can hardly disagree.

Likes

• The people in my ward are pretty freakin' awesome.  I've never been quick to make legitimate friends, but it's been happening here so far.  
• There are more women than men.  During my Memorial Day trip up here, I figured that the ratio was about 60/40.  After attending this week, I'd estimate it's more like 55/45... either way I see plenty of women without feeling like I'm swimming in the estrogen ocean.  When you're an engineer, that's a nice change of pace.
• As I mentioned already, my roommate is pretty cool.
• The university has really nice accommodations.  The nice thing about going to a state school is that no one's all that apprehensive about spending the taxpayers' money.  As a grad student, I get my own desk and shelf space with my own computer.  It's pretty legit.
• Even in a disastrous football year, the students have spirit.  At BYU, students often walked around in other universities' apparel and wore pink and brown horizontal striped shirts to football games even when the team went 11-2.  I would always vomit a little in my mouth when I'd see someone wearing a USC shirt on campus (or even worse, the University of SpUtah.)
• I have my own car here.  Honestly, I'm sure how I survived 4 years as an undergrad without at least something resembling a motor vehicle.

 So far, I've been thinking that the state of Oregon and Oregon State University are pretty cool.  This might be really put to the test when I head down to the DMV to get my car registered in Oregon, but I'm going to need to actually be able to check my mail before that happens.  ;P