But when I be adjustin' the pitch an' yaw o' my polarizin' beam splitter, I be feelin' like a pirate on the open seas.
Yes, this is what happens to my brain after I spend too much time in lab. Imagine what'd happen if I became a researcher?
Which brings me to that PhD I keep aberrantly mentioning. I figure I ought to give you a briefing on what's going on in my head on that count, since you may be sitting there going, "Wait, is she staying? When did that happen?"
It hasn't, but it could, potentially. A couple weeks ago one of my professors sent out an e-mail listing open research topics in his group and inviting anyone who was interested in one of them to get in contact with him. One of the topics sounded really cool to me (actually, two did, but on talking to him in more detail, one sounded much cooler than the other), and I have spoken with him twice about it. Just informational, once about PhDs in the UK in general and how they're structured and what the funding opportunities and difficulties are, and the second time in much more detail about that project itself. So now the idea of staying here for a PhD has real substance because there's at least one specific research topic attached to it, and I'm looking around at both this and other options, as well as trying to figure out exactly what I do want.
Rather than give you the entire thought process, I'll highlight the main point I've been considering and would like prayed for, which is, whether or not I want to "settle down" so very far from my family and friends and home. I know that if I stayed here, I'd make it my home--it's what I did in Atlanta, it's just want I do. Gather a community around me, a surrogate family like my roommates at Tech, and make the place I live into the place I belong. HOWEVER. I also know I'm getting tired of this transient thing--I don't want to keep transplanting myself from school to school, job to job, family to family--eventually, I want to stay with or at least near one of these places where I establish myself. But I'm having a hard time with the idea that staying here for a while might mean being comfortable and settled here and staying "for good," and how far this "home" would take me from my home and Atlanta "home." I realize it's a far-distant, hypothetical consideration that I'm getting caught up on (and my Dad points out that whether or not I can even afford it is a more salient point at the moment), but it's made me think a lot about the nature of homes and families, and made me grieve a little bit for how the community I developed in Atlanta was by nature a transient one (at a university) that I might not be able to recapture even if I went back there right now, and encouraged me a little that there are some things I know for certain that I want in my life, like a family and a place that really is HOME for me. So just so you know, I love you all and consider you my home and family in both Jackson and Atlanta, and as I try to figure out what I want to do and where I want to go next, you are definitely in my mind and heart!
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