End of Term Bliss

I finally finished my last projects for school this weekend. In fact, I was half an hour late to our CU-WISE potluck dinner organized for execs and officers because I packaging up my project to send to my professor after waiting all day for some test code to finish running. And now I'm free...

This is bliss.

When you're so busy trying to take care of everything school related, it's very easy to lose track of how good you have it. So I wanted to take a minute and reflect on all that's happened this term so I can be purposely thankful for it!

• Defended my Masters thesis, submitted it, and finally officially became a PhD student.
• Attended Grace Hopper with some amazing women from CU-WISE, and presented two very well received talks. Did a good job as Lead Blogger. Got my photos published in Communications of ACM. Fell in love with the saguaro cactus.
  
• Attended ISMAR09, where I made a lot of excellent contacts to add to my network, and received positive attention for blogging about the event. Got really excited about augmented reality, and made me even more sure of the direction I am taking for my PhD research topic.
• Enjoyed great success in my role as TA Mentor. I'm still surprised there were so many attendees to my workshops.
  
• Got random emails about cool companies wanting me to work for them.
• Learned a lot of really cool stuff in my computers and cognition class, which I took for no credit but found it to be totally worth it. Happy with the paper I wrote on cognitive advantages of augmented reality, and hoping to publish some form of it.
  
• Made lots of awesome new friends through CU-WISE, especially those who joined us on the exec and as officers this year.
• Had a great birthday thanks to my husband and some CU-WISE friends.
• Didn't totally burn myself out during the term and especially at the end of it -- for once!

This is bliss!