I am starting to hear back from the emails I sent to a bunch of particular professors at universities in the region to see if they might entertain the idea of me providing volunteer work on a research question or data set they have as a way to explore whether it would make sense for me to start a PhD program with them. I have heard back from one good prospect at Texas A&M University in College Station who completely got the concept and understood my unusual skill set and proposed educational path. I also heard back from two who were not really interested–I really did appreciate the responses. Finally, there was one from UNT in Denton who said he really did not have a PhD slot for me, but he had a grad student that might be able to use the skills I brought to bear for her dissertation and he would be willing to talk to me about collaborating on that. He did not say anything about using that as a way for us to determine whether I might be a good PhD candidate for him in the future, just that he would be willing to collaborate if the project was right. He either did not read the email closely or was looking for a free resources so I marked that one off my list.