Delegating Responsibility & A Few Words About UW

I'm about ready to tear my hair out... I haven't been able to write for nearly 2 weeks because I just can't seem to cram it into my ridiculously busy schedule. For a while, I was doing so well keeping up with it too! Then, I went to Madison for the Department of Geology & Geophysics' recruitment weekend (at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and it all fell to pieces.

Seriously, I am going to have to learn to let go a little and delegate some responsibility to other people here. I can't be trying to do it all next year when I take off for Madison (yes, I have officially decided to complete my PhD there). In fact, I even discussed how I was going to handle AARI (while I'm there) with Dr. Clark Johnson, who heads the astrobiology program. In his words, "It will sure be a balance!" He wasn't kidding! So now, I'm toying with the idea of bringing some volunteers on board to help out. With nearly 200 people in our Facebook group, I'm sure we can find a half a dozen, or so good people... It's just difficult to place your baby in someone else's arms and as far as I'm concerned, with all the time and effort I've invested in AARI over the past year, it might as well be my own flesh and blood.

I keep meaning to post a nice entry about my trip and how wonderful everyone was in Madison, how incredible the astrobiology program is there, and how great it is that all the machinery in the labs there is virtually self-shielding (a very big deal for someone with implanted medical devices like myself). Maybe that doesn't seem like much, but after the last lab I worked in (where there was an unshielded NMR that practically banned me from an entire hallway), I just wanted to do a happy dance right there in Weeks Hall! Oh, joy! Somebody actually anticipated having someone like me work there! I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised. When I was choosing NASA Astrobiology Institute-affiliates, UW really stood out as a place that cherishes diversity (they even awarded me a minority research assistantship on top of their already-generous offer). As you can tell, I'm really excited about going there. Heck, I even have a PR-guy there already who felt the need to introduce me as, "This is Heather and she has a website!" Gotta spread the word about AARI! Given his extensive outreach work with the UW-Madison Geology Museum there, I'm sure he has plenty of experience!

See, Jason? I told you this was going to wind up in my blog! Just because the details of that little "field trip" you took us all on isn't in here yet, doesn't mean that it won't ever be! Just you wait until I have an entire day to myself with nothing to do...

Hey.... would you look at that! I actually got around to putting in a blog entry today! That just made my day... whew!

This is me (left) with Andrew Honma (current graduate student; center) and Eric (fellow recruit; right) at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on State St. in Madison, Wisconsin. Photo taken by Jie Xu.