Guest Post - A Crossroads and a Recap

So I have been very busy since I finished my comps exam. Two things that I have really enjoyed about graduate school is my research and my outreach.

My favorite outreach activity was visiting Para Los Ninos. This is a science and literature charter school in downtown Los Angeles that serves orphans and children below the poverty line. They were the brightest and most engaging children I have ever meet. I hope to work with this school much more in the future.



Another outreach event involved over 100 eighth graders coming to campus for astronomy activities and Planetarium shows. I learned that middle school teachers are saints, and teenagers are awful.


This week I helped install the detector head in the MOSFIRE instrument that I have been working on. The instrument is like a giant (the size of a car) camera that will be installed at 14,000ft on one of the largest telescopes in the world, Keck. The detector head is the most expensive part, ~$500,000, and I spent the last year testing it before delivery.


So, in the last year I got my Masters degree, helped build a $15 million instrument, taught a bunch of classes, and started the UCLA Astronomy outreach group. With much of these things coming to an end I am left in a bit of an identity crisis. I think it is the same kind of thing that Janet has been going through for the past year.

I know that I will have lots more work to get my Ph.D., and that Janet has a lot of work to do to become a nurse, but I think that we stand at the greatest crossroads in our life. Here at 25 years of age we have done so much, plan to do more, and want to do even more. The best part is that when faced with these life changing moments, we grow closer together.