as requested, an update!

Nicole requested an update, and since I can't sleep, here it is!

I accepted the job offer! I sent off the letter last week. I'm so excited! I even got to pick the topic and my schedule for 1 class I'll be teaching - The Development of Symbolic Thought, an undergrad advanced topics course. The other is Intro Psy (which was already set). I start spring semester 08 and my initial appointment is for 1.5 years (so, through the end of spring 09), with the possibility to renew for an additional year.

So what will I be doing until then? The diss, of course. :-) I've collected adult data and gotten the kinks out of my procedure for child data collection. I'll be collecting lots o' kid data this summer and actually got a 3-month partially furnished summer sublet apartment in State Col. I'm not considering it moving back really, but just a place of my own since I will likely be at PSU 2-3 weeks out of each month. I have a few new research assistants to train and keep an eye on, plus I want to run some of the participants myself - it gives me a very real sense, an intuition about my data. Plus, then I can schedule when my RAs can't and we can cover more possible times to schedule during the week. I will also be writing & submitting some papers based on other studies I've done, and it is nice to do that while on campus so Lynn & I can meet about it and look concretely at hard copies of our drafts.

I'm hoping to be mostly done with diss data collection by the end of summer, and maybe have a bit of coding left to do early fall. Then it will be a race against the clock to analyze, write up, defend, make any revisions and turn that puppy into the grad school by mid-January and be Dr. Me! My advisor Lynn assures me that this timeline is fine, but I am still nervous about it.

Though I want to have everything in and done and be a Dr. by the time I start my job, if for some reason I don't, I still have a job (just the title "instructor" rather than "lecturer"), which is nice. But once I start teaching, I want to devote myself fully to the job, so I really really don't want to have any lingering grad school stuff hanging over my head - both practically (I won't have time for it!) and psychologically (to feel like I have more authority and the "right" to be there, and to be separated from my life as a grad student).

In other news, Steve & I went to see Jon Stewart (my first husband) stand-up on Fri night and it was great. Sunday was Steve's 29th birthday, so that was a great special thing to do. We also have a few trips coming up...going to New Mexico for his sister's master's graduation over Mothers' Day, and to Baton Rouge over Memorial Day to visit Erica & Jack and shower them with baby gifts.

And in mid-June we're going to Hawaii!! This is between Steve stopping his post-doc and moving up to his new job as an "Institute Scientist" at the same place. (Yes that's really what it's called! Incredibly cheesy isn't it?) I am excited about Hawaii, but also stressed about the nearly 2 weeks it will take me away from lab stuff...the goal is to have my RAs trained enough at that point that they can keep going while I'm away. This is what's keeping me up at night!! Fun = stress sometimes.