What is going on in this last bit of 2005:

Yang and I are working on revisions to the Neuron paper with the hope of sending it out tomorrow or (more likely) next week. Some interesting results came to light from the data I have been tearing my hair out to get over the summer, and from some new analyses, so I am actually quite a bit happier with the paper than I was with it when we first submitted it in May. There are also some results that won’t be going in the paper, which I will try to follow up in what time free I have from:

Writing my dissertation! Sadie and I have fully conjugated this word in preparation for our separate labors. Dissertinate, dissertification, dissertinatator, etc. There are some odd hoops to jump through, like meeting with my thesis committee in early October, and turning in various drafts, but none of these compare with the herculean (some would say sisyphean) task of formatting the dissertation so that the nice ladies, whom some have compared to the Fates and others to the Furies, in the dissertation office, who will measure all the margins with Vernier calipers and perform forensic analyses on the paper to make sure it is all up to specifications. Once they accept it I will be Dr. C. D. Meliza, Ph.D., and I expect everyone to call me that for at least a month.

Finding a job! I have made some progress on that front. The funding situation in Europe is not good for someone who only has one first-author paper to their name, so I am afraid the bees are going to have to go about their business without me. That leaves me with the birds. They look like this:

I am sorry to say, though, that I will not be studying boobies. They are pretty darn awesome, but it turns out they don’t sing, which is the interesting behavior for most bird neuroethologists. Instead it will be zebra finches or starlings. It will be in San Francisco or in Chicago. I have interviews in October and November, and I expect that, if I have a decision to make, I will have to decide by the middle of December or so.

Ski haus! In any case I won’t be starting the new job until later in 2006. I am putting down a chunk of change with some wonderful people to rent a place in Tahoe, to which I will retire in December to dissertinate, and in early 2006 to be a ski bum. It’s unclear how I intend to support myself during this time. Perhaps I will be a postdoc in my current lab, trying to get the paper published. Perhaps I will be a barista at your local Starbucks. The options these days are endless.

(cdm | OpenTrajectory)