Longwood Graduate Program in Public Horticulture: My Experience

So this may not be of interest to many of you, but maybe it will be for at least one person, and that would be enough for me! Maybe that one person is thinking about applying for the Graduate Program and would think its nice to know someone else’s experience with the application and interviews. Plus I like to document cool things, as you may well know… haha

So… here we go…

In November of last year, I applied for a Masters Program in Public Horticulture. It is actually a Fellowship program offered by Longwood Gardens through the University of Delaware.

The application process was actually pretty tough for me, because I decided about a month before the application deadline that I was going to apply. Everything seemed to be pretty well in order. I needed some references, check. I needed official transcripts from my undergrad college, Andrews University, check. Resume, check. Essays, check. GRE scores, che… whaaaatttt? Needless to say I spent countless hours studying things that were of no interest to me just so I could take the test. It was also while I was taking three night courses from Parsons-the New School for Design. Looking back now on all that was going on… I feel a little lazy the last month or so, haha.

So I managed to get a passable GRE score (I’m embarrassed by how bad it actually was… I’m a terrible taker of standardized tests.) and got everything in on time. I got a confirmation e-mail that the application was received. And then I waited. I found out more near the holidays that a decision would be reached January 5, 2009 as to who would be asked to the interview weekend.

I was accepted as one of the ten to go through an interview weekend, which in itself was pretty shocking. Honestly. One of my professors from college is friends with the past director of the program, so he gave me some good pointers. Mostly they all led to ‘be yourself’, which was great advice really.

There were lots of things due regarding paper work and other things like meal preferences, etc. But the nerve racking thing was the preparation of a 5 minute power point presentation on any topic we wanted. The only guidelines we were given was that it should pertain to horticulture or a related field. That really narrowed it down… haha

My first thoughts were about what I wanted to talk about. I went over different topics and just couldn’t find something that I felt would define me as a person or what my interests were. Then I realized I should step back and really see what it was they might be looking for. For one, I assumed the five minute limitation was to do more than keep them all from being overwhelmed with information, but also to see how we best facilitated such a short time. So I knew I had to be organized. Second, I assumed this might be a time for first impressions, as it was the ‘official’ time we met the 5 committee members who ultimately make acceptance decisions. So I felt like there needed to be at least a glimpse of personality in the presentation, because that also would play into who they felt would be the best fit for the program. Which didn’t really alleviate the pressure. At all… haha.

To me, a presentation is given for one of three reasons (you can argue, its just a personal thought). One, to teach or inform an audience. An example would be a seminar or guest speaker who presents a topic in which they are well versed. Two, to share an experience. An example could be someone coming back from a mission trip and showing an audience a slide show and describing what they did there. Three, to propose an idea. An example is a marketing company pitching a new idea to one of their clients. My thoughts on that were pretty mixed. Mostly because I knew a little bit about the panel, and the are all have very impressive backgrounds and have such varied knowledge bases. So I thought it would be weird to try and ‘teach’ them something, so option 1 was out. I thought about an experience, but how can one experience really describe my passions and interests and goals? So that seemed out too. Proposing an idea sounded like a fun idea, but what to propose? I had no grand ideas that I thought were original. Sooo, I decided to develop a topic that would involve all three. Educate, reveal experience, and propose.

I thought about doing something on rooftop or urban landscaping and design, but I didn’t feel that would work for me. Mostly because it wasn’t directly connected with Botanical Garden work. Also, I knew that I’d spend a lot of time talking about that simply because it was my current line of work. But I had done a summer internship at Kew Gardens in London, which I knew wouldn’t come up as much in conversation. Plus, that was thee single best experience of my life thus far. I’d love to go back there, it was, for lack of better words…, amazing! It helped me to realize what I wanted to do with my career.

So the title of my presentation was “Helping Kids Grow, Horticulture and Child Development”. I talked about an existing education program that I only knew about; hadn’t participated in. Then I talked about my experience with Kew and how that shaped my interest in botanic gardens relating to children. And finally, I proposed some new ideas of how to incorporate our ever developing technological world in botanical garden programing to keep the attention of children/young adults in the realm of horticulture and learning. I got extremely nervous, but only missed a couple sentences due to the 5 minute limit.

There were many AMAZING meals (three a day actually, haha). And amazing people. Both in the program already and applying. It was so much fun to be around like minds.

We spent Saturday at the University of Delaware in the morning, with one of the fellows as our tour guide. He was an awesome plethra of knowledge, I really enjoyed our tour of the school. I mean, it was a beautiful campus and it was a warm-ish day for February, so that made it easy to have a good time. After lunch was the 5 minute presentations from all of us applicants. Once that was over we were all pretty much ourselves again. Its amazing how nervous you become, even if you think you’d had all that under wraps…

Sunday was the actual interview day, which we spent at Longwood. I signed up for my interview to be in the afternoon, so I was able to participate in the morning tour. Our group chose to do the ‘perimeter’ tour, which essentially took us around to all the areas of the garden that are not seen by the public, like student housing, the water treatment plant, the composting and topsoil areas, the test nurseries, etc. That was pretty neat because I’d certainly never been in those areas. There may even be employees at the garden who haven’t seen all those areas.

The interview was actually pretty laid back and I felt very comfortable in the room with the panel. It wasn’t like I imagined it would be. You know, like I would have to walk across a large completely silent gymnasium in loud shoes to a table where 5 people sat with pens poised and questions such as ‘do you think Longwood should use any chemical pesticides?’. Which is pretty much a trick question if you think about it. But no, they were mostly questions about me and how I felt about things. So it was great! And since everyone on the panel was incredibly friendly and easy to talk to, it wasn’t nerve racking at all.

So after all the goodbyes were said (I was bummed, I really liked spending that time with my new friends), I got on a plane and headed back to good ol’ NYC. The following night I got an e-mail saying that I hadn’t been one of the five accepted into the program. I was extremely disappointed of course… BUT, I was offered a different unique opportunity instead. Maybe the opportunity will lead me into the program next year, or maybe it will provide me with the perfect job. Who knows. I’m just happy to be taking a step in the right direction!!!

More about this opportunity I speak of…

Philadelphia Flower Show 2009

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My new blog site – Philadelphia Flower Show 2009

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