Postgraduate education

So I was just saying before we hit record, I want to congratulate you on graduating on finishing your master's degree in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.

And I was wondering what led you to choose oceanography specifically in graduate school?

Thank you.

I just graduated this past May, so a few months ago, and I spent about 10 years after my undergraduate degree from the University of Maine working in the marine science field at various nonprofits and also at some outdoor education places.

I think of oceanography as a much broader field that has a lot of overlap with different topics.

The field of oceanography is generally thought of in four different branches, physical, geological, chemical, and biological.

And At the Graduate School of Oceanography at URI, you choose one of those specializations for your degree.

But as we learn in our core classes and through working on our research, all of them are overlocked.

Yeah.

Post-grad, yeah? Anyway, any.

Any.

Undergrad, post-grad.

They had keys to my office.

Wait, at UJ? Yes.

Post-grad.

In the 20s.

And probably a month later, I was flying down to where he was as well.

I was in probably the first year of graduate school.

And just formed a relationship.

And he was a character.

I'm like, you know what? I do have music to release.

And it's just all very like timely because I'm, yeah, I'm now returning to graduate school.

And it feels like, well, it is a new chapter for school and why not release this song? Because I also just had a very nice trip to Berlin this past August where I visited my friends.

So that's what now brings us here.

yeah so my bad yeah on my band camp it'll be miss natasha inquest.bandcamp.com and then um yeah you can feature like i have an artist website natashainquist.com That's showing my performance work and music videos.

Now you're heading into back to school, which is sort of the theme for our episode here.

And you are, we heard you're going to graduate school.

And when I looked on your link tree there, it had links to an article you wrote for undergrad.

Yeah, so he was just a complete character through and through.

And so, like, I would end up in graduate school flying down there, you know, several times every other month.

And then he would eventually take me on my first company visit to go visit a management team.

Who'd you go visit?

So, I mean, and so in grad school, so that would have been like 2004, 2005, you know, I would have, I would probably go on a half a dozen company visits each year.

know i would have it down where i knew what i could leave philadelphia and get back and only miss a class or a day and you know it's just kind of that passion that kind of pushed you and like in grad school obviously because i'm doing that you know the goal is to get b's you know because i had to keep it above a c plus to keep my assistantship you know and so the effort to take a to get a's wasn't worth it you know because that would take time away from microcap investing so it was like the goal was to get b's you know um But then it's kind of the similar thing in undergrad.

You're coming up to that end point in graduate school where you're like, well, now what am I going to do? And around this time in grad school, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wasn't hireable.

I wasn't doing any internships or anything that normal people were doing to get a job after graduate school.

He was the director of CIMSS, the Cooperative Institute of Meteorological Satellite Studies, for about 10 years.

Uh, Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Education at UW-Madison.

Uh, very involved with the students, leadership involving strategic initiatives, lots and lots of awards, Exceptional Public Service Medal, and these guys are the weather guys.

Welcome to the program, Steve.

So, um, I was caught very early on, John.

I had no choice really in the matter at all.

And, um, then I went to school at St. Louis University, which was a great place to get an undergraduate education, and then, um, University of Washington for graduate school.

And just like Steve said, when the ad came out for the job at Wisconsin, I just thought to myself, I, if I could get this, this would be a dream come true, and it was.

And, and then, and then I went on to Dallas Seminary and learned the languages there.

Uh, they had a great language program at the time and, and then went, went on to graduate school and from there began teaching.

Yeah, you went to Cambridge, as I recall, right?

Yes, sir.

I'm a postdoctoral fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia.

I'm interviewing Funga Hill, who was an undergraduate at the University of Arizona and now is starting graduate school at the University of Michigan.

I want to start by asking first, Funga, how did you get interested in astrochemistry?

So I honestly kind of stumbled upon astrochemistry by accident.