I Never Planned to Study Planning (Background)

Finishing my Bachelor career at University of Florida I had a Diploma proving that at some point I was capable of solving differential equations, ensuring a structure had the proper size concrete beams, even designing pavement for varying load capacities, but as I walked off the stage I realized I was missing real world experience to solidify my studies and an unsatisfying feeling that my knowledge lacked the bigger picture from infrastructure planning and urban form to quality of life and ecology. I owe my recent appreciation for the larger picture after taking an online economic geography course, learning most notably about the environment and the concept of externalities. Knowledge I should have learned long before my last summer in undergrad, knowledge every college student should absorb when issues really start to focus their direction in life. The disconnect is clearly demonstrated in a discussion I had with a CE professor when I asked him about environmental issues with respect to our field, to which he replied that we work with concrete, steel and asphalt, the environment has nothing to do with Civil Engineering; I was appalled.

During my undergrad years I had relied on the Air Force to give me security and satisfy my need for adventure, at least long enough for me to figure out what I wanted from life. The summer before my last semester the physical stress of my triathlon training left me with a case of shingles (chicken pox for adults). The virus, setting up shop on my forehead, decided to send a crew down my trigeminal nerve to my eye, blurring my vision and stealing my AF pilot slot. Still on meds, a showstopper for the AF, come commissioning/graduation date I sought an alternative future.

Now to find this future I began with the Building Construction School but found the best lead from my good friend who had since left UF and was now attending FSU for his Masters. He advised me to look into the Master’s International, a joint degree with Peace Core service. This degree is offered though FSU’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning, specialization: Developing Areas. This led me to the Planning Department where I found the missing piece as I read about what planning is; now to figure out what to plan. Transportation Planning seemed to be the best fit given my undergrad degree but it also had relevance to my interests. Reason being that innovative transportation and land use planning has the highest potential to improve our quality of life, increase resource efficiency, and has immediate and long-term environmental gains. I wasn’t interested in planning the next highway but rail, from high speed to light rail. But something that also struck me was an incubator program - Sustainable Engineering within the Mechanical Engineering Department, involving the use of alternate forms of energy in mechanical systems, solar, wind, hydrogen etc. My intent was to combine course work from this program with planning, but it was not to be as the program had yet to materialize. However several FSU students were studying in Sweden on an agreement with the FSU ME Dept. in the interim. While it was not possible for me to join them, it got me thinking that perhaps there was an international program that could serve this end for me. Furthermore I saw a gap between R&D and implementation of alternative energy. I didn’t need to follow the engineering route, I wanted to ensure the implementation of existing and future technologies. I first checked the halls of Bellamy for posted programs and than to the web in search of Energy Planning, something I had never heard of but knew it had to exist. I found it in Denmark.