Someday, I'll be that cool.

Today was going to be just hugely busy with science- then it took jaunt down Awesome Street. It started when I got a message from a grad student in my program asking for more of this reagent that I have consistently supplied for them (I was sending much more to the robots in Alabama, so his use is not an issue). His boss (who serves on my committee) now feels this merits co-authorship on the eventual manuscript. Yeah! This would have made the whole day awesome on its own.

Then I got an email from the president of SCWIST, who I met while in Toronto. She is a SUPER cool scientist, who spoke on an exciting panel about democratization of science (eg. scientific knowledge has power, how can we ensure fair distribution of power?) which was both novel and compelling. We interacted very briefly, mostly me explaining why I had come from Pittsburgh to hear a meeting on Canadian Science Policy, and she asked me to write a very short piece about my search for a career for the newsletter. I figured I wouldn't ever hear from her again unless I wrote the piece, and it was very short. So, I sent it off, and hoped such an awesome person would possibly remember me.

I almost swallowed my tongue when I got her email back today. She thought it was great, they'll plan to use it for the SCWIST quarterly newsletter and would I like to be e-introduced to some science journalists? O_O I am so happy/excited, I can't even imagine how I'll respond to her email- right now it would be ZOMG!!!YESTHANKYOU!!!ACK!! <-- not the way to launch a writing career. Also, I need to find a way to clarify, I don't think I want to be a journalist, persay, but I know I'll be in a career that requires some non-technical writing skills. Ah, getting ahead of myself. The newsletter my piece will go in will be e-published in January, although if you can't wait to see my 250 words, I'll send them by email.

Matt and I went out to celebrate with crepes. Maybe grad school is going somewhere after all.