Regrouping

Hey all -- I know things have been quiet here, and I suspect it will continue to be fairly quiet until June or so. Partly I'm just tired, and partly I'm trying to figure out what the future of Galaxy Girl should be.

First a brief update: I made all of the required revisions to my thesis, and submitted the final version to the University before April 25 (the deadline for May graduation). So, I will be walking in graduation ceremonies in a little over a week. My family is coming into town next week, as well as several of my closest friends. We're having a huge blow-out party next Saturday to celebrate, too.

I don't know what I'm going to be doing with my life much beyond that, though. I have a summer position, kind of a mini-postdoc, along with my half-time contractor position. However, after September, I will need to move on to a new position. Both of my long-standing contract positions will be going away with FY09, and the mini-postdoc only lasts 4-5 months, half-time. Ideally, I'd like to find an education/public outreach or science writing position. Even more ideally, it wouldn't require moving. The latter is unrealistic, with my current odds placed at about 50-50 that I'll have to move. I'll keep you posted on my job search.

As for Galaxy Girl...I originally started this blogs with the hopes of talking about astronomy. Specifically, I wanted to make a few posts that were meant as "tutorial"-level posts talking about active galactic nuclei (AGN). I also wanted to make a few more advanced posts about peer-reviewed articles, to discuss current-happenings in X-ray astronomy and AGN science. Once my thesis started to gear up, and especially when I started to have lots of troubles, both with the data and with my advisor, this blog took an unexpected turn into a "life of a poor grad student" blog. I'd like to get back to my original vision, if you all are on board with that. It may take a bit for me to feel less bitter about my place in the food chain, but I'm working on it.