I have a fellowship. A fellowship, that will allow me to live comfortably and do the research I want, as soon as I please. Bryce elbowed me today and joked that I would be the breadwinner in our relationship. I giggled.
What a wonderful thing! And this on the heels of our visit to Minnesota, where we found it to be better than we expected, but also pretty much exactly what we expected. Nice school. Nice place, despite the lattitude. But very urban. And it didn't have the hippie feel of Seattle, which we both really liked. And, for sure, the nature opportunities were not nearly as good.
There were more theoretical condensed matter physicists there, this is true. But there were enough at Seattle, plus the professors at UW who were doing experimental work that interested me. I actually just sent an email to one of them asking if she'd be the subject of my profile piece for science journalism class. I hope she says yes. I'd like to learn more about her research and see if it's something I'd like to do.
Of course, this fellowship frees me from teaching, which means I get to explore research a lot more. That'll be pretty cool. And that'll give me more time to resolve my experimental/theoretical doubts fairly quickly.
In the mean time, I'm still skipping several classes on the regular. Mostly stat and chem. Chem is just so easy--once you know the rules. So you have to learn the rules, practice the application, then: done. Easy. So I have an exam tomorrow, but I've been going over the practice problems and looking up concepts I don't recognize, and learning how to do the problems. Done! Easy!
Also, the arrival of this fellowship has come at a horrible time for my motivation. So now I've been accepted to graduate schools, have an awesome fellowship to accompany me, and yet still have to solve stupid precipitation problems??? Go to an 8am lab where the hardest part is measuring various volumes of liquids??? Euuuggghhhhh. Fuck that, y'all. I'll sleep in.
This fellowship will also give me a lot more time and money to devote to a dog...or a horse. Don't tell my mother.
