The Future's Gettin' Kinda Close

This past week has been pretty busy.  I've...

~Started working with entirely new data for my research project
~Produced two new codes
~Tried to write a proposal to get observing time on the VLBA (I'm definitely going to have to write a blog post about astronomers and their acronyms)
~Listened to a really hard-to-follow lecture on how to take data and turn it into an image
~Gone on a (short) tour of the tattoo shops in Charlottesville within bussing distance of my apartment (that has nothing to do with astronomy; it was just really fun)

But, most importantly, I've learned a lot about graduate school and the different paths that exist thereafter.

Let's start with last Friday.  A scientist at NRAO invited all of the summer students to his house for an informal discussion about grad school, career paths, networking, and all things future-related.  We were there for about five hours, but I learned so much (and I got to eat Indian food, which is always a positive in my book)!  We discussed GPAs, the GRE, how publishing papers works, the different career options after graduation, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  I left that night with two things on my brain:

1) I need to start meeting more people
2) OH MY GOD I HAVE TO GO TO GRAD SCHOOL AND FIGURE OUT WHAT I'M DOING WITH MY LIFE!!!

(Yes, the caps lock was necessary, because I was that frantic.)

So I took some deep breaths and emailed the TF from the astro classes I took last year.  He was a huge help and pretty much got rid of the crisis altogether.

Come Monday, I was ready for the next discussion about grad schools, and this time, I was excited.  Afterwards, trying to take care of that first thought, I asked someone if they could put me in contact with anyone who did astronomy education and public outreach.  They did, and this morning I met Tania Burchell, the wonderful woman who further opened my eyes to EPO.  She had so much great knowledge and advice to share, and is completely responsible for the creation of my new twitter page (@GoAstroMo because shameless plugs are great).

I guess I should probably say a little something about my research... I'm still coding.  That's about all I can say.  But I have found my new pump-up song.  Every time I hit a roadblock in my project, I listen to this, dance like an idiot, and continue typing away.