Goodness! It has almost been a year!

I have a good reason for this!  Ha!  Not really.  I haven't had anything interesting to discuss...  No, that's not true either.
I've just been doing other things.
I'm trying really hard to stop making excuses for things.  I guess if I had made New Years resolutions (which I did not, and I haven't for years), stop making excuses would be one of the top ones.
It has been approximately one whole year that I've been freaking out and thinking about my oral exam, and I still have not taken the thing.  This only propagates my fear of the thing, which is not good.  I've been writing my original proposal and typing up my research summary, and that has been going alright.  It's the standing up in front of five professors and sounding like an idiot thing that has me worried.

Okay, so it's 2012.  Lets see, what happened in 2011 that is noteworthy...
I got myself over involved in things this past fall, pretty typical for me.  I don't just want to do one thing, I want to do eight!  All at once!  I volunteered to work the international student orientation at my university.  I now have even more friends from around the world, all which I hope will let me sleep on their couch if I ever find myself in their neck of the woods :)  Friends and lab mates defended their PhD or got jobs (inspiration!) and I baked them cupcakes and cookies.  I went to my first ever "conference" as a graduate student and presented a poster on work I have been a part of.  I wrote a research proposal for collaborative research that was selected for funding (yay!).  Graded 120+ papers a week.  About half of my garden died, but I learned to cook with the remaining half (eggplant mmmmm...).  Made my own Sailor Saturn costume in two days (not fun...).    Learned that I will not look horrible with hot pink hair (this is the post-oral exam plan so far).  Turned twenty-five years old! Square age!  Not another one of these until I'm 36, so I've got to enjoy it :)

err... I'm sure I'll think of other things.  I hope for this new-ish year that things are good.  I would like to be sure to see my friends, to do well in my oral comprehensive and in my research, and to smile a lot.  If its in my cards, I'd like to get to India.  I recently stumbled on the Dalai Lama's Google+ page, and it has reminded me to be mindful, compassionate, and to not be angry.  So here's to loving kindness!

Lasers