Well, I feel like my plans for the 6-10 years of my life after I'm done with undergrad just got snatched out from underneath me.

My desire is to go into systematic entomology (that's, in simplest terms, the study of how different groups of insects are related to one another), and my plan was to go to Iowa State University for a doctorate as soon as I got my B.S. in zoology at the university I'm at now. Turns out, though, that there is exactly one faculty member in ISU's department of entomology that's doing work in systematics, and he's working with insects I'm not particularly interested in - true flies. So, I've been looking for other universities with entomology PhD programs, and I'm finding fuck all. There are hardly any schools offering entomology graduate degrees, and the ones that DO are mostly focused on pest management, which (while there's a lot of employment opportunity in that area) is not attractive to me at all.

I understand that I have two years to get grad school sorted out, but this has been my plan since I realized that I couldn't go to Iowa State for undergrad (they wanted like $11,000 out of pocket, not including student loans....), and having it just fall through like this is extremely distressing.

I wish that I could just live in the present like a normal eighteen year old.



EDIT

So, over the past week, I spent some time looking for other universities offering entomology PhD programs. Lo and behold, not only does Cornell, a very prestigious institution, have a program, but there's also a faculty member in the department that's doing EXACTLY the kind of research I plan on doing. On top of that, Cornell is VERY generous with its financial assistance - most graduate students are awarded assistantships, which have a full tuition fellowship, a stipend (this year it was a bit under $25,200), and university student health care.

My original plans going up in smoke was a good thing - I would have never found Cornell's program otherwise.