rollin' rollin' rollin'

It's Friday!  This week is finally over!!

I've been anxious about this week for some time now, and now it's finally over!  And what a good week it was!

This week was our first phonetics candidate's visit, plus my first Skype meeting with my potential post doc advisors, plus the trial run for the workshop I'm offering on R, for D-Lab.

The phonetics visit went off without a hitch, but gosh, this job search is a lot of work and totally exhausting for me... I can't even imagine how exhausting it must be for the job candidates!  Then, my Skype meeting, which was so much fun, but gosh (again), I'm really glad I prepared well for it.  I'm about to start working on a huge research grant that would pay my salary for three years, as well as all of my research-related costs, with Penn State's Center for Language Science as my sponsoring institution.  So I'm having these Skype meetings with the two women who would/will be my post doc sponsors/advisors, if I get the funding, and I had my first one on Thursday.  They've been sending me a bunch of papers to read, so I've had to carve out a few hours a week to just read and digest articles on things I don't usually read about, and try to think about what kind of project I can do that's related to these types of questions.  So I've been reading them, and taking notes on them, and trying to come up with reasonable project ideas that are kind of related to my dissertation, but not too much.  I came up with two main ideas that I was feeling pretty good about, but you never know if other people are really going to connect with your ideas...  Then I had my Skype meeting yesterday morning, and I had to talk about how my dissertation is going, and what my project ideas are, and how all of this makes sense and fits together.  And it went really well.  I really, really like these two women, so I'm glad I was decently prepared and able to communicate my ideas effectively, and they seemed to really like what I had to say and were excited about my project ideas.  Things are rolling right along, friends.  I will be writing up a mini project proposal over the next two weeks, at which point it's time for Skype meeting #2.

This morning was my introductory R workshop, which I was feeling a little anxious about, just because I haven't had that much time to devote to it, and I didn't know who was going to attend my trial run, and whether they'd be way better at R than me!  (It sucks getting questions you don't know the answers to...)  Anyway, it's over now, and it went well, too, and now I'm excited about doing my workshop, too.  I still have to put together the second part of it, but the first part is now done, and I think people will get a lot out of it.

So now, I am going to sit on my chaise in my lovely apartment with the windows and door open wide (it's still 65 degrees here... sorry, Illinois) and do some dissertation-related reading.  And drink some yummy tea.  And maybe take a break to play the piano.  And probably get dinner with friends tonight.

Yay weekend.  Yay February.  :)