The home stretch, and next steps

Photo by zizzy on Flickr

I’ve been neglecting my blog lately, through no fault of its own. There’s been lots going on, and lots not going on as a result, so I just wanted to post a quick update.

I’m a little over a month away from handing in my dissertation, which means many hours that might have gone towards writing blog posts instead went towards writing the darn thing. Learning LaTeX wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, especially with a handy Stanford thesis template and some web resources. I just handed a copy of the draft to my committee for comments and hoped for a brief respite to take care of some random bits (like all those appendices, code documentation, etc…).

Of course, my advisor says, “Now that you have nothing to do, why don’t you write a paper?” So now I’m writing a paper… which is probably a good thing, since there does seem to be enough material for a paper, and I might as well write it while I’m in so-called “writing mode”. I have the feeling by the time this is over, though, even Twitter will seem like too much writing!

Most of the rest of the time is spent on activities related to Ultimate, which started up about a month ago. There’s been two tournaments, some practices, various pickup games which are pseudo-mandatory for me, and various workouts to get in shape for the season.

Even with those two things, there’s probably ample time to squeeze in a post or two. But the mental energy isn’t quite there. And maybe it’s also because I still spend a couple hours cooking and get 8-9 hours of sleep most nights. Some things just can’t be sacrificed. Like home made strawberry shortcake with freshly whipped cream. :)

So that’s mostly what I’ve been up to the last couple months. The next month will probably be much the same. And then?

Well, I think it’s official enough now that I can announce it: I’ve accepted an offer to join 23andMe as a scientific curator in late August! I’m very excited about working with them and hopefully will be able to contribute across multiple facets of the company.

The end – and a new beginning – is in sight!

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