Best News Ever!!!

Remember how I mentioned that my Research Assistantship is over come 8/1 because the grant that pays me is up? That means no more free health insurance, tuition remission, and stipend:( I applied for a fellowship through the graduate school and have been waiting on pins and needles to find out if I got it. WELL, I just received a personal phone call from the dean telling me they chose me to receive one of the six fellowships available to all the students that applied for it! HOORAY!

The best part about the fellowship is that the stipend is basically to get my ass out the door. I won't have any work other than finishing my dissertation. In fact, they stress the fact that they don't want you working on anything but your dissertation. I have really enjoyed my RA and gotten multiple publications out of it, but it demands 20 hours/week (and isn't at all related to my dissertation) and it will be awesome to devote all my time to finishing up. Believe me, I have A LOT to do. I was worried about finding a part-time job to supplement Jason's income. Not only do I have to spend almost all of my time in the lab until I begin writing my dissertation, but many of my experiments are time-sensitive. It would have been really hard to find a job to accomodate my schedule. So, one more year, people. The end is in sight!!!

In other school-related news, I have to redo the stats for a manuscript that was literally a day away from submission for publication. I can't tell you how depressed this makes me. I worked so hard and edited the damn thing so many times. The second author (who's basically my scientific idol) has also graciously spent an unbelievable amount of time helping me and editing the manuscript. One of the other co-authors recommended we change the stats and the stats guy in my department (yet another co-author) ended up agreeing. So, not only do I have to redo the analysis, but will need to rewrite portions of the methods, and rewrite the results, redo the figures, and possibly rewrite the discussion. Ouch. And this is for a paper that is not technically part of my dissertation. Oh well, I'll be a better person in the end, right?

And since I want to end on a happy note, that new protocol I talked about actually worked! I absolutely could not have done it without the hours and hours of time a professor who is not even on my dissertation committe spent helping me. Talk about the nicest guy ever. It's not completely perfected yet, but at least we know that it will work for my purposes. That means full steam ahead, hence the now insanely busy life. It's a good busy, though:)

Here's a picture of my two favorite guys in the world who will no doubt be helping me celebrate...but not until the weekend.