Tired from an exciting and productive day

It's been one of those days... I spent the morning across the border mailing jewelry to Europe and searching for support scaffolding to use in a display I'm going to have in a local artisan's showcase throughout the month of March (more details to follow in a later post). This afternoon, I worked on putting together an informative pamphlet about AARI's mission, fundraising endeavors, and plans for the future. Then, this evening I recieved word that I was awarded the BP (British Petroleum)-University of Wisconsin Minority Research Assistantship along with my acceptance to the PhD program in the department of Geology and Geophysics (the University of Wisconsin is a NASA Astrobiology Institute Lead Team). I'm really excited about everything but to be honest, all the hard work and excitement has me completely wiped out. I hope you can empathize with my situation this evening.

For reasons I'm not quite ready to go into here, I'm completely drained so the details will just have to wait. However, I will tell you that I fully intend to use this blog to document my experience before, during and after my time in Madison. Furthermore, I hope to keep writing as I continue to develop AARI into a mature and proper research facility with all the trappings of a large scientific organization. Since astrobiology is such a young field, there haven't been many opportunities for those whose interests mirror my own (outside of NASA). I hope that by showing the world that it is, indeed, possible to construct something so ambitious from the ground up (and with an initial budget of $0.00), anything is possible... and that includes synthesizing life from scratch and discovering alien life on other worlds.

UW Acceptance Letter