graduate-school – Katie Kearns

Changing course

A picture of a sign that says "Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory Southern Research Station, US Department of Agriculture". There are pine trees around the sign and rolling mountains in the distance. It's a sunny day. The picture is yellowed.

As much as I enjoyed living in the mountains of western North Carolina, I became aware that I did not enjoy the experiment and field work enough to keep going or do it over. The research question was important, but I needed to not be the person doing it with degree progress depending on the weather cooperating. My dissertation life had become unmanageable to me.