The over-arching theme of our church's sermon series for lent is the desert. In a deeper sense, the desert is a representation of the trials and challenges we face in our lives as we move on to greater things, as a place where we push ourselves away from the comforts of the world we know in order to learn more about ourselves.
In many ways, the trials of graduate school have been like a desert. Away from the comforts of the life that I built in Omaha, I've learned more about myself during these past two years than I could have ever done in a whole lifetime. This summer I will continue to push myself out of my comfort zone and into a new desert when I study in Japan (conditional on official NSF acceptance and the resolution of the recent events in the north of the country...) and I am eager for the opportunity to both experience something completely new and to gain further insight into myself and my future.
Another desert that is fast approaching is the fact that my primary academic adviser will be leaving in June and I will have a new adviser starting this summer. This is not an uncommon event for grad students since professors move around and can leave graduate students behind. Compared to some of the stories I've heard about students who have lost advisers, I'm very lucky to have a new adviser who is very knowledgeable on the topics I am interested in and will let me maintain the same trajectory for my research project. My daily life will change once I move to a new lab, but I am looking forward to these changes as a way to push myself out of my current research comfort zone and make strong progress towards writing papers and finishing my research project.
For the near future, I'm greatly looking forward to a weekend in DC in two weeks, triathlon in less than a month, and a weekend back in NE/IA for Easter. Then before I know it, I'll be in Europe for our whirlwind tour! So even though I have to journey through the desert, there are plenty of oases and wells on the way :)
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