Victim of my own success

For those of you wondering if I have stopped blogging (no posts since late August), the answer is no...I have just been really, really busy. For one, my husband and I decided to take a second honeymoon to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. It was glorious, but left me really, really behind at work (despite doing email and a paper review while on the trip). After that the travel roller coaster started and it seems that just when I catch up I go on the next trip and then am behind again. I have been to 2 conferences, 1 NSF review panel, and 1 family vacation in that time.

In addition to all that, things have been going really, really well here. I recently found out that a large NIH grant that I am on got funded and that I also got a small, local seed grant. That's great and all, but now we have to produce data, which means that I have to find students to work on all these projects and get them moving. Unfortunately, my 1st years are buried in classes and not much help, so the burden falls on the senior guys.

My students have sent me 2 papers that we think can go into high impact journals, but I am so busy managing all our new collaborations and other commitments (like teaching and mentoring those sr. students) that I hardly have time to read them. Some days I just wish that I could hit the stop button for a week and catch up. Things are clearing up now, but I am about to go to Important Annual Meeting in my discipline and there you go...I will be behind again. I am stealing five minutes to write this instead of working on my lecture notes for the class that I am giving in 2 hours. But you know what, with all this, I still LOVE my job.