So its been over two years.  Much has happened, but then again, much is quite similar.  I suppose there is some news to deliver: I recently scheduled my final defense for this summer.  Yes, after 6 years, its all coming together.  My labmate and closest collaborator recently defended and will soon be off to their new exciting job where they will be making boatloads of cash. I, on the other hand, am still on the search for a shiny postdoctoral position which will allow me to get my hands on some really exciting instrumentation, and learn some exciting condensed matter physics.  I'm really hoping that I can find my way into a group which frequents a synchrotron if I can... I dont feel like my tuneable x-ray research story is quite complete yet.  Basically, I'd love something which will put me in a good position to apply for staff scientist positions in the future, since I'm regularly day dream of landing a national lab staff scientist job.

Writing is rough.  I'm pretty sure everyone who's gone through this will say it though.  It's not like "playing" in the lab.  You isolate yourself with your research and books and papers and you just toss words on paper.  I'm constantly thinking I'm sounding like an idiot, which is slowing down my process.  Writing is nothing like data analysis or aligning optics for an ultrafast laser, its more of an internal struggle than a mechanically tedious one.  I don't know that I ever thought I'd say this, but I miss feeling like a mechanic, and I wish I were playing with my "toys" again.  I'm thinking of all sorts of experiments I could run or could have run, but its only a procrastination mechanism, as is this post... so I'll hurry it along.

It's getting weird. I know I'm not gone yet, I don't even have a job lined up to have a start date to know when I'll be gone, but its starting to feel more and more like I'm ghosting out of existence in my lab.  Lab mates are telling me that they'll miss me.  It's just really, really surreal.  I've been in my lab for the graduation of every one of the graduate students before me, and I guess it never really struck me as a reality that "one day this will be me."  Well, it'll be me.  The defense date is scheduled.  I walked in the College of Science commencement on Thursday, and my Advisor hooded me.  There's no dropping the ball now, a Ph.D. is going to be fetched by yours truly, and I'm pretty ecstatic and terrified about that whole concept.

I've got graduate students who I've mentored a bit, I hope I've taught them well, and that they'll use what I've taught them well, and carry on the group traditions and make their own way through grad school the best way they can.  All I know is, this past 6 years has shaped me in a profound way.  The graduate students who acted as my mentors had a major role in that, and I can only hope that I have had a good affect on the remaining years of the younger (not necessarily in age) graduate students in my group and department.  I've gotten quite close with a couple of the newer members of my lab in the past year, and I do hope that they'll keep in touch over the years, wherever I do end up.  Boy am I a sap.  Back to writing about science for me... less of a chance for mushiness there.

Cheers,
Lasers