Thank you very much for the advice, it never really sunk that I need to think on the larger scale of the world to make it in this global economy and society, and thank you for the well wishes, school starts in a week and I'll be needing them. By the way, I am going to University of Illinois.

There are readers in this forum from Japan, Indonesia, India, Hungary, Belgium, China, the UK, and dozens of other countries. Welcome.

Do what attracts you, and just keep globalization aside for know. But be aware, the eco nerds have a cronical tendency to become geeks. Or even worse, they can turn into Al Gore. That would be plain horrible. Keep your eyes on the ball.

There I nothing wrong with having s few tree huggers too. Thanks to "Governor Moon Beam" (Jerry Brown from California) we have many bio-mass power stations and I personally helped to build what is still the largest and most successful solar complex in the world. Iowa, where I live now is fast starting to make almost as many wind generators as tractors. Dreamers are where the future is first seen. Do not be afraid of going in a different direction from the crowd. And welcome to the wolrld of engineers and our brethren.

Rich Hurd

If you are sincere about the eco side, you might want to look at minimizing the impacts of manufacturing lifecycle, Making PV silican is not exactly earth friendly.

I would also suggest that mastering some of the old time (ie metallurgy) knowledge rather than being ageneralist in the 'materials science cloud' would be helpful, ultimately, with out metal there is no "materials science" or technology...

Its been a wonderful career path for me.

milo

If you have questions about the field, Milo is certainly the person to ask!!

Take advantage of this opportunity.

WHat you think of your work in the field...

Existentialjoyofmaterialscience

milo