One of my busiest weeks ever came to a thrilling conclusion yesterday. Besides turning in two papers, and completing one PhD application (MIT), I also had my Fall Semester Final Review. The M.E.D. review is a different bird altogether: there are no pinups; we present our research topics to the M.E.D. committee members as well as guest jurors. Our jury was fantastic: Peggy Deamer, Sandy Isenstadt, Sean Keller, Karsten Harries, Kurt W. Forster, Keller Easterling, Alan Plattus, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, and Ed Mitchell. Our two guest jurors were Hadas Steiner (SUNY Buffalo) and Spyros Papapetros (Princeton) -- both were fantastic and made the day-long review a wonderful thing indeed. Both the first- and second-year cohorts made an impressive showing.

I am exhausted, but will report more once I can relax a little. I leave for Christmas Holidays tomorrow: flying to Chicago to visit my brother, and then on to San Antonio to hang out with my Parents and my sister.

Oh yeah, I also have 4 PhD applications, writing samples, personal statements to work on over the break -- although it will be time-consuming, at least it will allow me to get out of the "must produce, must perform" mentality that the end of semester always creates. It'll be nice to actually write about my interests -- in times like these it's indeed easy to lose sight of those things.

And on that note, Happy Holidays to all. See you in 2007.