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.