Counting the days

Saturday. End of the week. And I'm counting down the days until graduation.

This week was long. Tuesday was the big seminar presentation and it went pretty well, but I wish I would have fielded the questions a little better. I have time to work on that--more reading and comprehension and better understanding... But I got a lot of compliments from faculty and staff, so that gives me confidence for the big defense in a couple of months.

Very exciting news--we sent our manuscript out to Nature Medicine! After 42 drafts with a dozen different collaborators and several months of revisions, the paper is out the door! For those of you not familiar with the research world, publications are huge. And the Nature publishing group is huge as well. This study has some pretty important findings so we're shooting big--hopefully we make it into this high-impact journal. My boss told me that immediate response is not always good--means they aren't going to completely review the manuscript. But turn around for this journal is pretty quick, so hopefully we'll know soon. Fingers crossed!

The Heartland for the MPSs run was today; it went well. I think as a whole we had a lower attendance but it ran much more smoothly than last year--we're learning!

Rick was in Texas this week visiting his folks, so it's been long. It's hard to deal with the ups and downs this week provided without someone to come home to. I've always been a pretty independent person, but also very social. Rick is really supportive and I've needed his hug more than a few times this week. So glad he's home.

And the thesis is shaping up quite nicely. Finished those last few experiments and crunching that last data. The literature review is about done and the manuscript is done, that only leaves this last experiment and the summary chapter. The end is in sight!

Counting down the days until turning in the thesis, and the defense, and graduation, and the wedding, and getting a job, and a house, and a dog... Almost there!