I’ve been active in the Brainstorms community for a couple of years. I even have my own topic there titled” How to make a Sociologist from Scratch”. I posted this earlier: The last 3 days were the Discovery Days at school. I met with lots of people and got a bucketful of information. Today I had my first classes. Because I have very little time to write/blog, but I need to clear my mind on this issue this message is about time management.1. It was emphasized over and over that if you want to go to grad school you will have to do extracurricular activities that are good and interesting. (I am lazy, so I will just shorten extracurricular activities to EA in the rest of this note.)
2. It was also mentioned by several people (including John Cleese) that the most important thing is to find what you love and go after that.
3. I have some bureacratic obstacles in front of me if I want to double major.
4. I was planning to get a second job to make a bit more money.
5. I was planning to get my degree done fast.
On #1: If I do as I plan, and go straight to graduate school I should apply next fall. That means that by that time I should have lots of extra goodies on my application. This is a pro for doing more EA.
On #2: I am hoping that some of the classes I am taking will help to have a sense whether I like that area, subject. I have some doubts whether I would ever find anything that I would really LOVE to do. I am interested in so many things. And I had this lack of direction problem from my teenage years on. It often bothered me, but recently I have been trying to treat it as a gift. But it seems its time to specialize more. Focus is good.
On #3: Any BA has to be done under 200 units at UCSB. I am transferring with 99 from my junior college and even if I don’t take any other courses just the required ones for the two majors I will end up with 199. That is under 200, however I am also an honors student and to stay that way I will have to take a few extra 1 unit discussion sections. I would also like to do research with professors and those add units too. NOTE (to myself): Regina Fletcher, the coordinator of the Honors program offered to help me with this issue. I need to contact her in two weeks. The departmental undergraduate advisors (both the Sociology and the Religious Studies) expressed their doubts whether I would be accepted if I petition to become a double major.
On #4: Because of my comment on #1 I guess I just have to accept, that while I am a student I won’t have time to work for money. This means I have to take more loans. And/or find scholarships, grants. I never owed money in my life. It is disquieting and depressing for me to have student loans. TODO: do more research on loans, apply to as many as I can. Work the summer. Ask BS for work. 
On #5: I was hoping to finish early and not taking the Spring 2006 quarter. That would mean paying tuition for a quarter less and a chance to go to Hungary for another extended period of time in 2006. But because of #1, I think that I should not take the extra heavy load of classes I was planning to finish early. Instead I should take a regular load and do more EA. And now to the meat (sorry, fellow vegetarians) of the question, what EA options do I see for this quarter: – Sociology Club – Don’t know the specs, what it entails, got only one inviting message, replied to it, but the person is out of the office till next week. – Transfer Student Associates – This seems to be a party club. It’s fine to got to/organize parties, but I don’t think it would show up as well on my graduate school application as some other options. – Hillel – I know that I will go to their services, maybe to their Torah study and other programs. I also know that to stay an Honors student I need to do some volunteer work. I asked around and helping Hillel would satisfy this requirement. The question I will need to ask myself later whether I want a leadership position in it or not. Right now the answer would be no, but for the application POV a yes would look nicer. TODO: Attend events and get to know Hillel people. – Usher/concession for Multicultural Center and or Art & Lecture series – Both of these have lots of exciting evens going on, that I want to attend anyway. And I have been doing this kind of things for 3 years at the Rio Theatre in Santa Cruz. Plus some of these positions would be paid. (around $7/hour) But do I want to make a commitment to them, do I want to say I can do 5-10-? hours a week? TODO: Ask them whether they take people for less time, on an event-by event basis. When asking I should have the application form and my CV in hand to impress them, that they need me and sign up if they say yes. – Honors contracts – To get a BA with Honors, I need to get 20 Honors units in two years and at least 6 in each of those two years. (Beside the GPA and community service requirements.) One way to do it is to sign up for the Honors section with the prof. Tomorrow I will learn the date/time of my history class’s honors section and if I can make it I will attend that one. But I am also interested in doing an Honors for my Religion+Film class. The professor (http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/pages/faculty/fac_hecht.html ) looks like someone I would like to work with and the books he required for the course are interesting too.
TODO: Approach him after the first class and once I saw the syllabus and ask about whether I can do an Honors contract (the other way to earn Honors credits). Maybe I can do some limited research in this topic, because I am quite interested in both. – A sport club – the last 5 days I worked out every day for an hour or more. I feel so great because of this. It occured to me that maybe spending so much time at the gym can be used in some ways for the academics. But it seems that all the clubs and teams are in it for competition and I do not want to compete in sports. I don’t think that as a 36 year old I could be very successful against 18-22 year olds. Plus the competition part may take the fun out of it for me. – Research with a professor – This is the highest value I could do for grad school. But I decided not to do it in the first quarter. I have to get a feel of the place and how much time it takes for me to get my As at the classes. I may change my mind if I see that it won’t be a problem. E.g. the Film/Religion Honors contract may grow something bigger. But I have to keep in mind that the professors who are specialized in Sociology of Religion are on sabbatical. One of them will return next year (the other not yet) so maybe I should wait till then. But then it won’t show up on my grad school application.
TODO: review my time allocation in a month and see whether a research program would fit. Check FRAP (http://www.ltsc.ucsb.edu/urca/frap/Directory.html) whether new research shows up that I would be interested in. Have to be careful because the research also adds units that I may not be able to afford to have. Any thoughts, comments, observations?