Does anyone have any suggestions for how to go about contacting professors and seeing if they are interested in taking on a Masters student?

Is it better to just send a polite “request for information” type email, or a “Hello, I’m Caitlin and I’m awesome and you should be my Masters Advisor, let’s meet to discuss this” email?

To toss a wrench into the works, my university grades were less than stellar. I had an 89% overall GPA at Seneca, with a 92% for the last year, but my UoG grades are… not as pretty. Which, if you’re wondering, no, I don’t like admitting. I’m hoping my shiny smile and real world experience will make up for that part (and have it on good authority that one of the current PopMed MSc students has a 0 on his transcript, so it’s not all about the grades, despite what the Grad Calendar says).

—– long back story follows, if it’s tl;dr, please just reply to the above, thanks! —–

I was out for lunch with my awesome boss and her friend from UoG the other day, and this friend gave me three (!) names of profs to contact about being an MSc Advisor. Holy crap wow, she’s now my new favourite person. 😀

I was feeling a bit down on the whole Masters thing, since going to the info day and poking around the Graduate Calendar was rather discouraging to how I was envisioning this process. Ideally, I’d like to keep my full time job (because it is made of awesome and win) and go to school part time for a couple more years and at the end get a piece of paper with a higher degree than I currently have on it. I’m not interested in being the type of MSc student that’s chained in their lab for 16 hours a day for $20k a year (I already have a better job, thanks). And I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly interested in writing/defending a thesis. I just want to learn. (and get that dangling carrot)

Anyhoo, it was looking less and less likely that that was even a possibility, based on the rules and procedures in the Calendar and looking at what other MSc students were doing.
Then at lunch the topic swung around to whether or not I’d done a post-grad degree, and I said I’d like to. My boss said they were trying to convince me to keep my full-time job while I did it, and I quipped that first I needed to convince the school to let me do it that way. Friend-of-my-boss seemed confused that they wouldn’t, and I admitted I hadn’t actually talked to any profs because I thought doing it that way wasn’t actually feasible. She said that was exactly what some profs look for in a Masters student. We talked briefly about what type of MSc I was interested in (Epidemiology in the Population Medicine department of the OVC – in part due to my new interest in the dairy industry) and she mentioned there was an Epidemiology By Course Work MSc (which I knew) and gave me some names to contact (which is awesome), and said basically all I’d need to do is convince someone to be my MSc Advisor and then I could do it roughly the way I’m picturing.

So now I have to actually contact these people, and I don’t want to screw it up. Yikes! o_0

Turns out the $50 was indeed for a supplemental exam I took back when I first started going to Guelph, due to a funny credit swap from Seneca.

When I asked why I hadn’t received a bill for said exam, they said they don’t send bills or invoices for supplementals, and it would not have appeared on my tuition bill either. The guy I was talking to said that if the prof running it didn’t tell me it cost money, I’d essentially have no way of knowing about it.
Nice, eh?

When I asked how I managed to graduate while still owing money to the school, he said he didn’t know how that was possible, and that it was weird that it happened. o_0
Oh well.
I want my transcript so I have to pay it I guess.

Hey ! Here is a poke for you to try to remember to get over there and give them the $50 for me. ^_~ If not, that’s ok, I’ll go on Wed afternoon after the meeting with the lawyer. But in that case, I’ll need my cheque back.

I wanted/needed a copy of my transcript so I sent in a transcript request to UofG last week.

Today I got an email from the school saying there is a $50 sanction on my account from a supplementary exam in 2005.

I don’t know what that’s about, since it never appeared on one of my UofG bills (or else it would have been paid years ago), and I received my degree. I thought you couldn’t officially graduate and/or get your degree if you owed the school money. I clearly graduated, and my degree is framed and in my house.

I can’t outright dismiss it, because I did some weird things in 2004/5/6 because I came to UofG through Seneca College, and some of the credits transferred funny and I had to shuffle things around a bit.

I called Student Financial services today, but all I got was someone’s voicemail. I left a message, and I hope someone gets back to me so I can figure this out.