Busy busy

Gosh, has it been a month since the whole job decision thing? Wow. So, we're staying in Philadelphia. Steve didn't have anything at Vandy, but I have possibilities at Temple in Philly, so he took the research associate job at his current workplace, Moss Rehab Research Institute. Actually, his official title as of July 2 (which is also E's due date!) is "Institute Scientist," which I think sounds hilarious. My possibilities at Temple have begun to materialize with some more concrete funding options, which is great too. Things are falling into place, yay! We are happy to stay in Philadelphia. We like it here, we've made friends, it is close to many friends in the Baltimore/DC area, and hey - we won't have to move again (a huge plus)!

That said, it was a tough choice. There was no way I would take the Vandy offer and live apart from Steve again (no thanks, we did the long distance thing for 2 years already, ENOUGH), but it was a very concrete point at which I was balancing work and life. Of course one makes small choices about that every day, but this was one specific choice at a specific time. It is worth it, yes, but still hard.

The day I posted about the Vandy offer, I had my dissertation proposal with my committee. It went great! There were some tough parts as usual, but as a whole I felt good about it. There was one part where one of the toughest members of my committee was asking me a question and after a few back and forths, I still wasn't exactly answering his question. This happened in my comps too, and we just moved on (and I felt like an idiot), but this time I finally nailed it. So that felt good, concrete evidence of progress! I also got great feedback from my committee. These meetings are always nerve wracking, but especially at the proposal stage when one hasn't actually collected the data yet (and has a chance to change things a bit), it is great to have 4 intelligent, accomplished PhDs all putting their brain into your project for 2 hours.

So now I've been on campus a lot for the past month (more often than I've been in Philly actually) training RAs and getting data collection up and running.

And in about 20 minutes, I am headed to Boston for the big conference in my field, the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). I am excited! It is a huge conference (5,000-6,000 people I think) and there is tons going on for 4 days, so I've gotten worn out in the past. This year I'm going for quality - picking out sessions I really care about - and I will be a tourist for some time too. In fact, Steve is going with me so we can do fun stuff together! Tomorrow morning I don't have conference stuff till 2pm, so we're going to the art museum and out to lunch. I'm so excited! Plus I get to see old pals from Furman, and my undergrad advisor "Dr. P" (or Sophia, as she now tells me to call her).

I'm off!