The end of an era

So I did it. I finally made a decision and accepted a job offer! In less than six months I will be an Assistant Professor. Mostly I'm excited at the prospect of having my own lab, but every so often my brain goes, "Holy s--t! I have a real job!"

I've been training for this job for... 12 years now? Not content with my string of unsatisfying jobs in retail and strangely excited by my cousin's college course catalog, I started taking courses at the college down the street in 2000. After moving to one of the local universities and experimenting with a wide variety of courses, I finally settled on a major. Somehow this snowballed into volunteering in a lab, writing an honours thesis, and applying to grad school. Then came five years of masochism grad school, where I spent countless hours training to be a professor one day. The training continued with a postdoctoral position, the idea being that you are more independent but still being pounded into shape for that fateful day when you become a professor.

It feels really weird to know that the training era is over. Not that I won't still be continually learning new things, but now I will be responsible for training other people instead of being trained myself. Freaky.

Also, I today I got to delete all my RSS feeds for job ads! My google reader is a little less full, but I'm sure I can find something entertaining on the internet to take up that space.