Is it finally fall? Jobs, teaching, and life.
As I stepped out of the apartment this morning, it struck me … it’s finally fall. Tomorrow is the actual first day of fall, so that works out well for me. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons, and I hope this is a good one.
In other news, I’ve finally decided on my job/career move for next year. If you remember in early August I posted about the opportunities I was facing. Well, a few weeks back, I accepted an offer for a postdoc at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. It is a one-year appointment, extendable up to six-years, and I’ll be starting work on January 11, 2010. While it was a hard decision to move away from Christine for the first half of 2010, this is a great career move for me, as I’ll be working with some world-class engineers on some very cool projects. The downside is that Albuquerque does not have a lot of industry, so we’re not sure if Christine is going to be able to find a job that she really likes in Albuquerque, but we’re hoping for the best.
One thing that this means is that I actually have to graduate this semester! Kind of exciting, very scary. Primarily scary because I have a lot of work to do, and this fall always ends up being a busy time of year. However, last week, I came up with a schedule how to complete my project, write my thesis, and defend by the end of the semester, and I think if I work really hard, it will be feasible. My plan has me defending during the first week of December, so wish me luck between then and now.
Besides trying to graduate, I’ve also started my new job as an instructor for Senior Process Design in our department. I was worried that this would be too much work for me to do this semester, and it is taking a lot of time. However, since the entire class is working on one project, I’m not responsible for developing my own project, saving a lot of time. So far, I’m really enjoying the class. I like preparing for my recitations, and my students seem fairly responsive to me during lectures. All in all a great experience so far, but of course there’s a lot of work left to do.
On another topic, all of my friends are leaving me! Masano graduated a few months ago and is now working for Bristol-Myers Squibb in New Jersey, Janice defended a few weeks ago and is about ready to start a postdoc at Navy Reserach Labs, and Chongai just left town last week to begin his postdoc at Brookhaven National Lab. It’s sad to see all of my friends leaving, knowing that I’ll be here for another 3 1/2 months, but I’m very excited for all of them to move on to new and exciting things. I’m also looking forward to everybody coming back to Minneapolis for my wedding next summer and getting to see my friends again.
This weekend, Dan wanted to get out of town for a night, so he, Kyle, Christine, and I took a 24-hour trip to Lake Elmo Regional Park to do some “backpacking”. I say backpacking in quotes because we were originally headed to Afton State Park, where we would have had to hike ~3 miles to our campsite, but the sites were all full. At Lake Elmo, however, the campsite was only 1/4 mile away from the car; hardly what I would call backpacking. However, we did get a 4 mile hike in, consumed nearly a box of wine, and played some good games of Five Crowns. All in all, a very relaxing and enjoyable trip.
That’s probably all for now. I know it was quite a while ago that I posted, and a lot of things happened between then and now. I went to Kansas for Labor Day to see the family, etc. etc. However, I need to go to class now. Another week of work!!!
Originally published at http://saroberts.com. Please leave any comments there.