An Exciting Day

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HAPPY GRADUATION (soon) to my brother John (Auburn University), cousin Clarissa (Madonna University), and best friend Dr. Olivia (Wayne State University)!  You have accomplished SO MUCH and I am incredibly proud of all of you :)

    

As for me, I have completed all academic requirements and am free to graduate!  Huzzah!

Disclaimer: I know none of these lovely humans.

Yesterday at about 2:50pm I gave a presentation about Maximum Covariance Analysis (contact me if you're interested), and at 4:28pm I turned in all 29 pages of writeup, figures, and code.  With that, my academic requirements were complete!

Just today, a variety of students took their written qualifying exams down the hallway from me.  That should have been me last year or this year, but I decided I needed a break, I needed time, and I needed to figure out what I want to do with my life.  Although I regret leaving the people right here at U-M, including my adviser and spectacular officemates, I am so happy to be taking a step away from the pressures of academia to work a (technically) non-academic job.  For the first time in my life, I will be able to come home from work on evenings and weekends and not feel crushing guilt when I decide to cross-stitch before bed instead of reading a 15-page peer-reviewed publication or two.  I'll have relaxation time with my husband and future dog or three, we'll go on walks and picnics and trips, and it will be glorious.  Knowing me, I'll bring home work anyway because of my insatiable scientific curiosity, but if I leave it at work it's going to be okay.

For now, that is enough to make me happy.  In a few years that might change, but right now I'm so glad to finish up my schoolwork now and my orographic precipitation research over the summer, and take an adventurous forward step.

In addition, I just accepted a very part time job to manage an online column in Physics Today!  It's going to be a column populated entirely by student authors writing about atmospheric science and its applications.  I can't wait to see what students come up with!

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