First article of the new year!
An Insider's Guide to Brisbane
There are a couple more coming in the next few weeks, then it's time for me to take a hiatus from writing and focus on the science. Hectic semester coming up- running my first experiments at Cornell, preparing a couple of big grant/fellowship applications... oh and coming up with a thesis topic! Hoping to bunker down and make some progress and reward myself with a trip home to see my lovely friends and family in Australia mid-year.
The new year has begun well! Currently I'm in Hawaii doing a graduate field course, getting to know my cohort better and wrestling with the challenges of 'field biology'. Hawaii is beautiful but it's sad to see how degraded some of the landscape is as a result of bad management and human-introduced weeds. On the lookout for thesis inspiration.... One of the academics here is a fellow UQ grad and we have great plans for 'faux Australia Day'... to be celebrated early in the tropics before we head home to frigid Ithaca. The Time Tams are in the mail!
I had a great Christmas/NYE with Linzie in Boston/Ithaca/NYC and enjoyed having some girly time and taking full advantage of Linz's cooking! Progress is being made on the academic front too- my first grant application was funded and a manuscript we submitted to an excellent journal was judged worthy of going out for review, so I have been compulsively checking it's online status everyday. Good start I hope, considering that basically my entire scientific career wil be based on asking people for money and convincing people to publish my papers...
Love to you all and Happy New Year! More news coming soon!
