Busy week done, DC coming up

This week I got back into the swing of things more so that I'd been able to since I got back from Japan. I got some reading done for one of the topics in my proposal for the oral exam and was able to re-read some older papers with a better perspective on what I'm going to do for my proposal. I'm feeling much better about this topic than I was a week ago! I also gave an edited version of my proposal to my adviser, after knocking it down from 80 to 40 pages (quite the task that took up a good portion of my evenings this week) and set up a schedule for my written exam.

It's kind of scary that all of this qualifying exam stuff is starting to happen. Most everyone is confident that I'll do well but it's a big enough deal for the rest of my Ph.D that the pressure is definitely on! It makes for a lot of days that go by really fast reading and studying with work that carries on through the night. By the time Friday got here I was pretty exhausted!

It's also been a bittersweet week with one of my good grad school friends moving away. He graduated in August and is now taking a job in Helsinki. I love grad school because you make great friends but eventually they (and hopefully one day me!) graduate and move on to bigger things. At the same time it's also really exciting to see your friends get big kid jobs at far-away and exciting places, and hopefully that will be me someday too ;)

On Sunday I leave for the EPA STAR fellowship conference in DC. I'm pretty excited to be able to head back to a great city to learn more about this amazing fellowship and the opportunities available after graduation. I'm still a bit shocked when I realize that this is real and that the EPA actually picked me to get this award. The money even came to UF this week and I STILL can't believe it's really sometimes...

Lots going on to keep my mind busy in addition to the conference (exam for class next week, writtens coming soon), but it will be nice to take a couple days to get out of G-ville, meet some new people, and enjoy the benefits of last year's fellowship application successes.

See you on the other side of next week!