Good news

So, I got some good news today. :-)

I'm still pretty darn excited about this, although if I had had time to write this morning it might have come across more intensely (today was filled with seminars, lab meeting, and other meetings).

Due to some good fortune, and thanks to the NSF, it looks like I'm set for graduate school. I won't have to worry about TAing except for to the extent I want to do it, and I don't have to work on anyone else's research for grant funding... I'll have my own funding, and can direct my own research interests. I hate thinking about money, and so this will be a huge relief, to not have to worry, so I can just do the work that I love. I'm excited about the science that I hope to do, and wicked energized by this. I can feel some of the old creative energy starting to bubble.

A number of my good friends ended up similarly lucky, which is great. Others weren't as fortunate this year. I'm very happy for the lucky, and feel a little guilty that some will be reapplying next year, but maybe I can help them edit and focus their ideas for the next time around, if I know anything.

Part of me is a little sad this evening that I haven't really done much special to celebrate this good news (other friends in other places are out celebrating with lab groups and such) - just heated up some leftovers, lounged, watched a little TV (ok, so that's kinda decadent). I did call and talk to a number of my best ecology buddies, and that's always really fun. I also talked with my parents this evening and earlier in the day - apparently they went out to dinner to celebrate even if I didn't. I'm kind of a private guy though, so maybe this is a better way anyways.

I want to end this post a little differently...

If it weren't for someone who became a very good friend of mine in the South during my adventure there this fall, I would never have put together an application this year. No way. Without her energy and motivation, I just wouldn't have gotten myself to do it (for those that weren't reading back then, we worked on applications together, a sort of mutual support group of two). She didn't get an NSF this year, so I just wanted to recognize how influential she has been... sort of dedicating this post to her, if that's not too strange (she's not a reader). And, people, it really is amazing how little things can change your life. If I hadn't been here at the bio station last summer and made a different friend, I wouldn't have had a job in the South to go to, and I might never have met this awesome person, who has now in a very very real way changed my life (not that friendship in and of itself isn't just as powerful).

So, this is for my friend.

And for the rest of you, remember that life is an amazing, unpredictable, and wonderful thing. You never can tell the implications of the path you walk, but the directions you take, and the friendships you forge, they matter. So stay optimistic, stay awed, stay joyous in the unpredictablity of life.