PhD... does it sound fantasy?

With Farrah's consent, I wrote this post to wake myself up, this is for real! Apa keje la Kak Fidah ni pegi publish email Farrah kat sini ek. Ala Farrah, bukan ada orang baca pun blog akak ;)
Akak sangat2 excited dengan Farrahnyer progress. Bestnya! Akak tak tau mana pergi my determination. Tak taulah apa yang hinder me from making it happen. Keje ke? Nak kata ambitious-tak pun, main2 je keje. Responsibility? Hmm, saperlah yang depending no kat aku ni kan, ada tak ada pun seruper je. Don't know what, yang aku tau there is something... takpe, forget it.

Farrah ni expert dalam Remote Sensing (akak silap, ingatkan Geoinformatics, kekeke, lain eh). Dia ni graduate first class masa kat UTM dulu, mana ada orang senang senang leh grad first class kat sana. Memang genius. Seronok akak tau bila awak share share ngan akak. Dulu kata nak apply Minnesota, tapi macam nak ke Texas lak ni eh? Colorado tu sounds good jugak. Nevermind, comes what may, you've got a husband as your best companion. (Takleh la aku nyibuk, hehehe)

Diana, aku tak rasa aku lama kat Toyota, tu pasal la aku tak berani nak commit to any long-term loans ngn company ni. Tu pasal la jugak aku 'password-protect'kan blog ni. Kang boss aku baca, uhuhuhu....

There were times I thought this would not be just a dream... hmm do you sense an Antarctic-sized "but" coming along.

PhD... why does it sound fantasy, 'cause it ain't no easy!

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From: Farrah Melissa Muharam [mailto:farrahmelissa@gmail.com]
Sent: Mon 1/7/2008 6:43 PM
To: smaas@lbk.usda.ars.gov; Maas, Stephen
Subject: PhD Opportunity - Initial Discussion

Dear Prof. Stephan J. Maas,
First and foremost, I would like to thank you for allocating a few minutes of your time to entertain this email.
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Farrah Melissa and I am a Malaysian citizen. Currently, I am a tutor at the University Putra Malaysia, one of the public universities in my country. I am attached to the Department of Agricultural Technology and a member of the Precision Agriculture research interest group. The reason I write you is to discuss any possibility for me to be attached as a PhD candidate at your institution and to have you as my supervisor for my PhD study. I came to know about you through your extensive publications on Remote Sensing related studies during my research background study.

As for my academic background, I was awarded a BSc. (Remote Sensing) from a local university and an M.Sc. (Remote Sensing) from the University College of London (UCL), United Kingdom in 2005. After graduating from UCL, I exposed myself to the palm oil plantation industry for 2 years, researching on yield monitoring and nutrient assessment using Remote Sensing and GIS technologies before I made the decision to contribute and to expand my skill sets by joining the academic world.

My area of interest is to apply Remote Sensing and GIS for crop monitoring/crop yield mapping/crop yield estimation and crop nutrient assessment/management. I am also interested in implementing Remote Sensing Image Processing for vegetation information extraction. Attached is my resume for your further reference.

It will be my great pleasure if you can consider my application to pursue my PhD project under your reputable supervision and thus allowing me to gain precious experiences while working together with your research team. I hope that we can further discuss this matter.

Your kind attention is highly appreciated. I am looking forward for your respond.

Thank you.
Best Regards,
Farrah Melissa

From: Maas, Stephen
Date: 9 Jan 2008 03:12
Subject: RE: PhD Opportunity - Initial Discussion
To: Farrah Melissa Muharam

Ms. Muharam-
Thank you for inquiring about a PhD program at Texas Tech University. I am very impressed with the information you provided in your resume. Please allow me to review your material over the next few days to assess how well you might fit into the program here, and to determine if funds would be available for an assistantship to support you. When were you thinking about starting a PhD program--in the summer or fall of this year, or the spring of next year?

-Steve Maas
_________________________________________________________________________

From: Farrah Melissa Muharam
Date: 9 Jan 2008 08:42
Subject: Re: PhD Opportunity - Initial Discussion
To: "Maas, Stephen"
Dear Prof. Maas,
Firstly, I would like to thank you for your reply and concern. It is my pleasure to inform you that I will be awarded a funding assistantship from Malaysian Education Ministry if my application is successful. The assistantship will include tuition fees, personal allowances, equipment allowance and health insurance. Yet, this excludes research activities expenses such as traveling and data collection. I have in mind to start the PhD program within this year, if possible. Again, many thanks for your kind response and I hope to further discuss on this opportunity.

Thank you
Best regards
Farrah Melissa

From: Maas, Stephen
Date: 10 Jan 2008 02:47
Subject: RE: PhD Opportunity - Initial Discussion
To: Farrah Melissa Muharam

Ms. Muharam-
Thanks for your reply. If you have funding through your own assistantship, that would make it easier for you to join my program here at Texas Tech and study whatever topic you were interested in. I am checking with the University administrators regarding how we could handle your situation, particularly with regard to whether you would qualify for "in-state" tuition (which is much less than the tuition normally paid by foreign students). I hope to have this information tomorrow.

If you were to start in the fall of this year, there are also some university fellowships that you can apply for here at Texas Tech that could help pay your costs here.

Can you email to me a copy of your college transcripts showing what courses you took in your undergraduate and Master's programs? This would not have to be an "official" copy from the universities (a scanned photocopy will do). This will help me decide if you might be a good candidate for my program here.

I will contact you again when I've heard from my university administrators.
-S. Maas
_________________________________________________________________________
From: Maas, Stephen
Date: 12 Jan 2008 06:13
Subject: RE: PhD Opportunity - Initial Discussion
To: Farrah Melissa Muharam

Ms. Muharam-

I have found out that, since you would have an assistantship from your Education Ministry, you would qualify for in-state tuition at Texas Tech. In-state tuition is significantly less than out-of-state tuition.

I am curious about how the assistantship from your Education Ministry would be handled. Will they pay you a fixed amount (like a monthly salary), or will they pay you back for expenses (like tuition and insurance) that you incur? As you probably would guess, the cost of living in the United States is rather high. Typically, my Ph.D. students receive around 1500 to 1800 $US per month from the research assistantships that they have from me. This should give you an idea of what it costs to live and go to school here. Here at Texas Tech, we are very concerned that foreign students have sufficient funds to be able to live a reasonable life while they are here in the U.S.

Please remember to get me those copies of your transcripts.

Have a good day!
-S. Maas
_________________________________________________________________________

From: R. Khosla
Date: 20 Jan 2008 11:00
Subject: Re: Malaysian PhD student
To: Farrah Melissa Muharam
Cc: "Nelson,Carissa"
Dear Farrah Melissa:
Greetings! My apologies for not responding to you sooner. You may have seen my auto-generated email that I am traveling overseas for my sabbatical. I have intermittent and limited email access during my travels.

Thank you for your email and interest in graduate program in Precision Agriculture at Colorado State University (CSU). Congratulations on earning a scholarship from your government for Ph.D. degree program. Indeed, your academic background, preparation and credentials are quite impressive.

CSU has a strong graduate program in the area of your interests, spanning from site-specific nutrient management using a suite of active remote-sensors (hand-held, air-borne, and satellite based) to site-specific precision manure management, weed management, integrated pest and disease management, etc, using a suite of precision technologies. I have several graduate students and one of my recent Ph.D. graduate students did extensive crop monitoring using hand-held active remote sensors and satellite imagery for yield estimation, he recently finished his graduate degree and is now working for Natural Renewable Energy Lab. You may choose to continue his work further if you would like. Alternatively, we tailor make the graduate degree program for each and every graduate student to best meet their need and area of research interest.

I realize you have a scholarship from your government, however, in addition, we may be able to offer you a "recruitment scholarship" based on your credentials. You would be a very competitive for that scholarship as well. When do you plan to start on your Ph.D. graduate program? Have you had a chance to write your TOEFL and GRE exams? Please let me know and we can send you the application material or you can apply online as well.

Thanking you for your interest and looking forward to hearing from you.
SIncerely,
Raj Khosla
--------------
Dr. R. Khosla
Associate Professor, Precision Agriculture
Associate Editor, Soil Science Society of America Journal
Chair, International Precision Agriculture Conference 2008-2010

Department of Soil and Crop Sciences
C13 Plant Sciences Building
Colorado State University
Ft. Collins, CO 80523
Voice: (970) 491-1920
Fax: (970) 491-2758
www.precisionag.colostate.edu