<p>I think you have a rough plan. Don’t sweat it any more. You haven’t arrived at UR yet. Someone as intense as you will push through to find advisers/research/etc. You’ll figure it out. My point is this: you can’t figure it out now. You can’t. So you are spinning wheels when you could be doing something with more utility to you now. Knowing when questions are ripe is an important part of organizing learning. </p>
<p>Go chill for a while. Or do some other work. </p>
<p>If you want to learn something, pick up some material on Bayesian analysis or how to use r (or other stats tools). Since to my continuing amazement much work is still done using Excel macros (!), learn something about those. That’s actual preparation. Worrying about this other stuff is not.</p>