I'm back! Sorry for the long absense, but since I last posted here in early November, I've submitted 3 papers, sent out many many job applications, and interviewed for 22 solid days, including giving 13 job talks at 11 institutions and talking one on one to about 200 scientists. I've been on something like 30 planes, and haven't been in one place for more than a week at a time. I hadn't initially planned to completely disappear from this space for so long, but I did manage to visit all of these states (plus a provence) in my absense:
Luckily you've been left in very capable hands at cosmicvariance without me. And, luckily for me, all this cavorting around the country has not been for naught. It's been completely exhausting, but energizing and actually pretty fun at the same time. I've really enjoyed meeting and talking science with so many great people. Especially after spending the past few years in a building populated solely by cosmologists, it's been fun to get to talk to people doing everything from biophysics to quantum computing to string theory to star formation. It was also very interesting to get a sense of how different departments operate, and to see so many parts of the country, and to have the chance to think hard about what it would be like to work and live in some very different places and enviroments. And so far, things are looking very good. I'll write more about that after the dust has settled, but it does look like I'll be a proper professor somewhere next year, and not milking the cows. By the way, I love this map maker, so just in case you are curious where I've been in my life and not just in the last couple of months, here's the states and countries that I've visited. You'll notice a distinct lack of southern hemisphere here, but I'm hoping to rectify that with my first honest-to-goodness vacation in a long long while sometime before I start my new job. Any suggestions?
You can make you own visited states or visited countries map if you like.
