Lord Willing, we will go here and do that...

I have been asked recently about what Justin and I am doing and what our plans are, so here is a brief summary.

[Note: any references to children are speculative. We are not pregnant, we just know we want to have kids at some point.]

I am in my first year of graduate school (for a Ph.D.) in economics. I would like to be a professor when I am done. There are a lot of caveats to this however. Supposedly being a professor is very competative; your research has to be very good. I've never done research so I don't know how good I will be at it. Also, it depends on where we're living. Since I am not a single person, I cannot just apply to lots of places and go wherever I get a job. And of course, most importantly, we want to have kids. We don't know exactly when, but assuming I have kids by the time I am looking for jobs, they will be my first priority. Ideally I could find some sort of job that allows me to teach and research part-time. One of my undergraduate professors who was encouraging me to go to grad school said "everyone needs to hire women! And being a professor is an easy job. You'll have lots of time to raise baby!" I don't know how accurate that is, but I suppose I'll find out. Of course, all this depends largely on what Justin is doing.

Justin is in his first year of graduate school (for a Master's) in geophysics. He thinks he might want to be a professor also, or maybe work in industry doing research & development. He has the option to continue at A&M for his Ph.D. The benefit to this would be continuity (working on the same stuff with the same professor), and he would be done sooner than if he were to go elsewhere. The (obvious) downside is that he would have to continue commuting for several more years, or we would have to move to College Station. We also have anecdotal evidence that to stay in academia (i.e. become a professor) it's better to get your Ph.D. somewhere other than where you did undergrad. So another option for him is to go somewhere else for his Ph.D. If he were to go to Rice, he could of course start as soon as he finished his Master's. Or he could wait until I'm done with enough of my school that I can live somewhere else, and we could move to be close to his school of choice. If we were both students or professors with reasonably flexible schedules, this might work well for raising children. Of course, if Justin goes to work full-time then I would need to be a lot more available for taking care of our future children.

There are certainly benefits to staying in Houston, most importantly being close to family. Having grandparents and aunts & uncles and cousins around would be good for our kids, I think. But we also think it would be fun to live somewhere else, at least for a while. We really enjoyed living in Denver last summer, getting to see a new place and experience different weather than we're used to.

I feel a little bit overwhelmed thinking about all the decisions we have ahead of us. Thankfully I know that I am not the controller of my life; for now Justin and I will both do our best in school, and try to plan responsibly for our future.

"Come now, you who say 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what you life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.'" James 4:13-15