In which I am not quite THAT youthful

Two people in the last week told me they thought I was 25. I'll take it, I guess! It weirds me out a bit though. When I actually was 25, I was in Scotland, living an entirely different life - in some ways, I feel like I was an entirely different person. Odd how that goes. Never mind, it's been a fun ride one way or another.... even if the (cute) new departmental hire is a mere year older than me, with a solid academic job and a star-studded career.

The new post-doc, on the other hand, is 26 freakin' years old and gunning hard for a tenure-track position ASAP. He might do it, too. He has four times my paper count and a million NSERCs and whatnot on his record. He is hard-core.

Somebody remind me that it's not about competition and that I'm pretty freakin' lucky to have the most fun job in the world... even if it means living below the poverty line (at my age!)

That said, having a pretty fun semester so far. The big news (to me at least) is that I handed in a thesis draft last week. I was mad because it was a month later than I had hoped, but it is a huge weight off. Of course, this is only the start of the process - first my supervisor will make me change it all, and then we will send it to my committee and they will make me change it still further. Then the external examiner will tear it to shreds and then I will have to (gulp) defend it. But for the moment, it is Not My Problem until Mark sends it back. Hallelujah!

In the meantime, I am keeping myself busy with five piles of marking, four students to supervise, three side projects, two seminars to teach (and a partridge in a pear tree). I have an honours student and two internship students whose projects I'm responsible for, and one of the volunteer RAs just expressed an interest, so I've designed one for her as well. The more the merrier! I am still collaborating with Yale on a couple of things, and my labmate Tyler and I have a side project on the go that is looking really good right now. I looked at the pilot data today and am quite excited, so full speed ahead with data collection and we will see what we get.

Teaching is going pretty well too. I have two seminars and don't hate teaching them as much as I feared. They all just stare at me blankly the entire time, of course, but they do seem to be paying attention and I've just finished all the marking of that first assignment. It was kind of fun teaching them experiment design, since it's pretty much my favorite topic right now.

In other news, the new postdoc (despite inciting extreme CV-related jealousy) is totally awesome. He has single-handedly instituted Thursday/Friday Pub Night every week and for the first time in three years, I have actually met some people in the department who are not in my area. I had literally never seen these people before - sad. He also keeps inviting me round for games nights and dinner and this and that. It is glorious. On Tuesday I was at the grocery store when I ran into him and his wife, who scooped me up, bought me fried chicken and cider and entertained me until midnight before giving me and my groceries a ride home. Amazing how having ONE PERSON (okay, technically two people) in this stupid town who appear to enjoy my company and will actually go out of their way to hang out with me can have such a huge effect on my quality of life.

And the best part? One week till Reading Week, mega Del time and roadtrips! Cannot wait. I'm going to push through and work the weekend, in the hopes that by the time Del-time rolls around, I can actually take the week mostly off. Glorious!

all work and no play

Have only been updating when fun things are happening, so thought I ought to drop by to mention that it's been 13-HOUR DAYS ALL WEEK! (Er, except for Tuesday, which was 3 hours work and many more hours on the beach with the fencers). We are giving our final thesis presentations tomorrow and we're all stressed.

My stress is compounded somewhat by the fact that I only sorted out my results, er... today. Had a pile of data and no idea what to do with it, and the supervisor's been off gallivanting lately. But Jen the PhD student came to my rescue yesterday. We spent 4.5 hours looking at it last night, with an additional four or so hours this morning. This is merely a drop in the data-analysis bucket, but I am so grateful it is done. And.... it was kind of fun! We are both nerdy nerdy nerds and both extremely curious to see what would come out, so the time flew by. Dear lord. I have been forgetting to eat and everything! PhD studenthood, here I come.

Have also been chairing 3rd-year undergraduate presentations (and marking them). This was more fun than it sounded, plus ten quid a go, so I've done a lot of them this week. But perhaps I need to learn to say no...

The fencing beach BBQ was awesome, though. Proper British seaside fun. The fencers are all leaving this week and I'm going to miss them horribly....