Hey everyone! I've been out of school for two years now, and have been courting the idea of going to grad school to get my masters. There are a couple of problems though...The most obvious being that in the span of these two years a lot of my more academic knowledge has been replaced with industry knowledge and practices. I have also been working in a field that is somewhat far from what I (think I) want to study. In school I was really only good at two things: writing research papers, and scope work.

I may be remembering my mineralogy class with a bit of a haze, but if nothing else whether I was better or worse at it than I remember, I know for a fact that I enjoyed it. I've been considering what to go to grad school for, and have recently came to the conclusion that since at this point I'm pretty much equally screwed in terms of knowing things about this topic or that due to my two year hiatus, I may as well do something that I enjoy. What I would like to know is what skills make a good mineralogist? I know that a lot of skills probably do, but to capture the question more clearly: what should I focus on going into a mineralogy focused master's degree? What would you guys advise in terms of doing this, in terms of getting back up to speed, and eventually what types of discipline specific studies would be open to me?

Graduate school is as foreign to me as it was when I was sophomore in undergrad, but I know I can write well, and the idea of a thesis is not what scares me, so much as jumping into the pool and finding out that I can't swim. If I were to go to grad school and do some type of mineralogy based research, what would be expected of me starting out? What would I need to know from day one? I have grad school questions in general but right now I'm more focused on trying to get my bearings on what I would like to do, so for mineralogy post graduation what type of work is there typically available? If I take to things rather well I plan to continue on to my PhD no questions asked, but if I would like to work and gain a professional perspective where could I expect to be doing this? Sorry for the long post and all of the questions, but I'm on the brink of a potential personal renaissance (that's a bit dramatic but still), and I just need a few more answers before I feel comfortable committing to the idea because there's just so much I don't know. Thanks in advance for any help, advice, and/or clarifications!