December 3

This past Thursday, my boss insisted (with prior notification of course) that I was going to give a seminar at the monthly TB meeting that is held at Harvard on the first Thursday of every month starting in October and ending in May. December 3rd was my appointed date. So, on December 2nd, I headed out to Everett to stay over at jumper boy's house while I finished preparing for my talk the next morning. I like to stay there before these meetings because in order to beat traffic going into Boston, you have to leave Worcester by 6am... so staying in Everett means I can wake up at my normal time. We both studied until about 11pm. My seminar went so well that my boss didn't have a single critique... even thought it was good enough to be a thesis defense! yay! I am so pleased. That day I got an e-mail from a friend of mine who is a post-doc at Harvard... apparently his entire lab came to the seminar and really liked it... and again today (almost a week later) I was told by someone who didn't even attend the lecture that he heard I gave a really fantastic seminar! yay again! As a graduate student it is easy to think that you're not very good at things or that nobody cares about your research. This is the first time I felt like I really am very good at what I do. It was a great reminder to me that even though most of the time I don't feel smart, I am, and I am talented. I just have to remember that more often!