Grad School Throughts

I'm not going to school to learn how to program, that's silly. If that's all I wanted to do, I'd just take some classes at the local community college.
I'm going so that I can be exposed to challenges that I would never face just browsing around the internet.
I'm going to be exposed to problems, a wide range of problems, that would not come up in the course of normal programming or software development.
I'm going to explore areas of computers that I would never know existed.
I'm going to see if even more or even deeper education would be something I would enjoy, love or be passionate about.
I'm not going because 50, 60 or 70 hours of work each week and school for the next 4 years is going to be fun.
I'm not going because "computer jobs are hot right now."
I'm not going so that I can have a lot of money, although increased financial comfort is a perk.
I'm going so that I will be in an environment that will allow experimentation, exploration, and failure without severe punishment.
I want to learn about creating software from the ground up.
I want to learn about creating software that builds on the work of others.
I want to start by broadening my horizons.
I want to finish by finding my focus.
I don't want to narrow my vision at the cost of missing out on interesting problems and jobs.
I don't want to widen my focus at the cost of not being able to do anything well.
I want to expand horizons to find interest in areas I haven't yet considered.
I want to narrow focus so that I can remove from my list areas that I definitely don't want to get into.
I want to find areas where my interests collide and pursue those with the most attention.
I want to listen to the people who want to build me up.
I don't want to listen to anyone who only wants to drag me down.
I want to pursue, even briefly, every opportunity available to advance my skills and my career.

Interests include: artificial intelligence, graphics, natural language processing, interfaces (HCI), information management (Keeping Things Found), web applications, clustered applications, starting a software company,