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December 20, 2006
Another Semester in the Books
Holy cow these have been a stressful last couple of weeks, but I seem to have survived. Whether I've survived with my wits fully intact remains to be seen. The last couple weeks in particular have seen many late nights in Walker (often past midnight) trying to get research done so I could show it in 580 and for the IPR. I was coerced to go have some fun on Friday night for the wine & cheese party upstairs at Shannon & Steph's place, but then Saturday I spent all day in Walker, not leaving until my Meteo 580 paper and slides were all finished at 1:30am. Sunday I reserved for studying for my final in Grad Synoptic (512), which was Monday at 8am. I couldn't focus at all Sunday, and I had pretty much a hopeless feeling all day about the impending doom of the final.
However, both the 512 final and my 580 presentation went reasonably well, leaving me in a position to make a mad dash to get even more research stuff done so I could make my slides for the IPR. I spent most of yesterday listening to the other IPRs instead of working on my slides, and then I went to Dave Stauffer's big Christmas party for all the IPR folks (everyone from PSU, NCEP or other places that met up here to have projects reviewed by DTRA) instead of doing my slides, which I managed to finish at 2am (I only got three hours of sleep last night, ugh). But the party was cool, and Dave has an AWESOME model train collection, certainly rivalling (and probably surpassing) Dr Henry's collection back at Gustavus. Dave even has model trains from 1917 in mint condition with their original boxes...
Anyway, the project I'm on had its review this morning, and my 15-minute talk went quite well, much to the pleasure of Joel & Sue in particular, because neither of them had seen or heard even a hint of a draft of my talk for the IPR because of how busy we all were and because I didn't have time to craft the presentation until the night before. And Joel said it a few times verbally during his talks and put it in writing on his power point slides: apparently it's a done deal, I've officially decided to stay for my PhD. That's news to me, last I knew I was definitely leaning that way but hadn't come to a final decision. :-) And Joel also informed me that DTRA practically tried to offer me a job on the spot, before he pointed out that I wouldn't be finishing my Ph.D. for another 3-4 years. Heck, I don't even have my M.S. yet, but it's nice to know that there'll be at least one job offer waiting for me.
But I am SOOOOOO glad that all is done with. The huge research push, coupled with the 512 final and 580 presentation (though that was also about my research), has really exhausted me. I've printed out quite a few journal articles that I can pretend to get to while I'm home, I'll pack up in the morning and then I'll be heading to the airport in Pittsburgh with Jacob, Andrew & Marcus at 9am.
But first, there's the matter of an end-of-semester party upstairs at Shannon & Stephanie's place. Better get to it!
Posted by Jared at December 20, 2006 08:16 PM