Spring has arrived.  My IRB approval has arrived.  The end of the semester has (almost) arrived.  I’m particularly excited about summer because I’ll be recruiting and collecting data for my dissertation as well as working part time as a clinician.  It will be a nice opportunity to work on balancing these two areas of my professional life.

In the interim, I’m looking forward to next week and my colleague, Katy O’Brien‘s dissertation defense.  Katy has been a dear colleague for the past 4 years.  I’m thrilled for her as she reaches this finish line.  Katy’s departure is a nice reminder to keep plugging away on my research project.  I’ve noticed myself getting stuck on minor hiccups (for example, when you write elegant syntax and R spits back 187094 warning and error messages) and losing sight of the bigger picture of my project and the reasons why doing research is important, motivating and satisfying to me.  For now, I’ll find inspiration in Katy’s journey and enjoy imagining (at least for 30 sec) my own finish line.