1) I committed to attending School 1. It's done. Permanent. Set in stone. No looking back. The saga is over. Contacted all of the other potential advisors (in the end, by email, despite my dad's recommendations of making phone calls - yick). Responses were quite nice, including two "let me know when you need a post-doc" comments, so that's good. Nice to have those messages over with.
2) Excited - Very relieved to have the decision over with. In retrospect, amused by how much the psychological build-up to telling my advisor was reminiscent of asking someone to date, shudder. Excited to start making what was an amorphous vision of a new future into something with concrete, fun realities. I can let myself get excited now, it's safe.
3) Housing - Trying really hard to believe in the bold new me. Currently pretty intimidated by my preliminary attempts to locate housing... I will be spending my first 1-2 years living in Big Midwestern City, before getting to move back here to the bio station. I'm overwhelmed by the number of housing options, roommates, sublets, leases, locations, bus routes, neighborhoods, parking, etc, etc, etc. Back at my undergrad, you pretty much knew where everything was, what the houses looked like, and could walk everywhere. I've been looking at craigslist, and will start asking around. So far every place I've lived, someone else found/arranged, so this is a new experience for me.
4) Labmate - I will have a lab mate!!!!!!!! I'm really happy about this. My new advisor had another prospective student accept, so there will be two of us in the same year/program, with propensities for math and ecology. One of my concerns about this program was that this lab group is small, but maybe that's changing! Haven't interacted with her yet, but she sounds pretty cool. And, being kinda nervous about this whole new endeavor, the prospect of having a good friend, compatriot, fellow clueless soul, etc, is really quite wonderful.
5) Coincidence - I discovered that one of my cousins will be attending graduate school at School 1 too, in a very similar program. I had no idea he was even applying here; I haven't seen him in years. This is pretty nifty too! Maybe we could live together, i dunno.... I kind of wonder what he's like anymore, although I guess he's probably thinking the same thing!
6) Travel - All of last week (plus a few days) I spent visiting Eugenie back at SLAC. Almost a thousand miles round-trip (yeeeehawww). It was a nice visit, although I spent several days of it being quite sick, thanks to my younger sister. Good food, old friends, the works. Re-engineered parts of her chinchilla's cage. Cooked food. Watched movies. Hung out. I'm glad I went - it had been a long time since I saw her last! It's really different though to go back and visit a place where you used to live. Strange disconnects between what hasn't changed, and the fact that you don't live there anymore, or have a life there with things to do. Probably a week was about the longest healthy visit length. It was also a little frustrating to visit while Eugenie had a busy class/homework/research schedule.
7) Paper - I took advantage of my return to SLAC last week to bug my undergrad advisor, who was sitting on a final draft of my undergraduate research manuscript. Having extracted that from him, and being laid up in bed with a cold, I redid all of my figures, updated the citations, finished off the last edits, and, as of Monday night, I submitted my paper to a journal!!!!!!!
This is huge, huge news, as this paper has been delayed literally for years. So nice to finally get it out. I soooo hope that it is accepted, 'cause having to redo it my reduce me to quivering gelatin.
M'kay, that covers most of the bases for those that are curious. More to follow later - I should get back to work.
1 comment:
Congrats!
-Labness
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