I think that Kitchener Waterloo is finally totally agreeing with me. Loads of social time, skiing, the bar I like is growing on me (probably because of the extra large glasses of wine the bartender was feeding me), and homemade international food keeps showing up at my house.
The jigsaw puzzle of academia finally fits. I spent a few weeks just *concentrating* trying to pull together the comprehensive exam proposal, pick a dataset to work with on a publication, and pull together abstracts for conferences. I had to get this all done before the wisdom tooth got removed (yesterday).
Luckily, my profs liked my proposal, and gloated that I am going with energy, equity and environment themes. I told them not to gloat so much, reminding them that my proposed topics are much broader than their research. Two good outcomes came from that meeting. First, they accepted my first comprehensive topic, which will become a preparatory paper (although they said my other two topics will likely collapse into a giant topic, and I’ll have to choose a third). The other good news is that I don’t have to set my committee until after paper 1, since they can’t see anyone objecting to it. Therefore, I have lots of time to spy on professors, and think of reasons to reject or accept suggested committee members. Yahoo!!
I also took one of the datasets to publish with under consideration, and wrote my prof a long email explaining how his research design could be changed to something better. I think he sort of liked it and ran with the themes I presented in the email in the comprehensive meeting. So, I’m almost set on that, and finding a good intellectual space to debate how to cut the issues.
Finally, the tooth has been removed. Not much good has come of that. It just hurts, and I’m hungry and groggy. But my small friends downstairs decided to come visit me in my recovery space with some valentine’s cards (woo hoo!). So I know I have at least two suitors this year. One of them saw how bad I was feeling, so he went out of his way to make two more pictures for me, and he made sure to tape them to the wall next to my bed at eye level, so that I can roll over in bed and see them. So nice!
