Beginning of the End

The first day of classes is one month from today. So, in theory, I have one month left of summer “break.” In reality, meetings and “retreats” start August 11th, so it feels like closer to two weeks. Either way, the end of summer is in sight.

When I reached the half way mark, I think I was in freak-out mode. I was freaking out that the summer was halfway over, but I had barely finished what I wanted to get done for the spring semester and hadn’t really started what I wanted to get accomplished for the summer. Ah, what a month and some changed expectations can do! Maybe a little bit about changing what I expected to get done, but it’s also been a very productive month, in spite of visits from family.

Today is also the end of the summer program in which I was participating. My university has what it calls a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP), which I thought was a really cool and unique idea until I googled it and my school wasn’t on the first several pages. Apparently, SURP is a popular acronym. Basically, they give me a stipend for involving students in my research. So this summer, two students helped me analyze data. One student was a little better than the other in terms of getting stuff to me on time and depth of thinking, and I wish I had pushed the other student a little harder. They both did fine, but one seemed to "get it" a little more than the other. I had hoped to get a little more done with that, but I’m happy with what we did do. It’ll still take me most of the fall to finish the data and write it up, but the summer has definitely helped with that project.