Almost Done

I finally defended my thesis yesterday and am now essentially done with grad school!! So freakin excited I can't take it. I still have some corrections to do on my thesis, but everything should be done in just a few short weeks.

In other big news I also did a few sets of pull-ups doing 3 reps each time. Mind you my shoulder was rocked afterward and it still hurts a few days later, but the point is I did it. Unfortunately my mind immediately went to thinking of climbing again. "If I can do pull-ups then I can climb too..." I am one unrational and overzealous human being. Don't worry though, I'll keep off it because I am truly scared of hurting this thing again. Not good.

Anyhoo, just thought I'd fill everyone in on the good news in various facets of my life. Maybe I'll even have a job soon. Woohoo!

Here's one of my favorite ski runs I've ever done. Steep and narrow. Couloirs are the greatest features out there.

It's always something...

Some of you know how much crap I've put up with while trying to get my masters degree finished. It's been a fight right up to the end. There was a point where I thought things would get better and my advisors would just want me to finish, but I don't know if they've ever really reached that point. I, on the other hand, have reached that point of wanting to be done about a year ago and finally let my professors know I was going to be done. And that's that.

To give you a little background the previous research done on prescribed fires in the political landscape has not been researched in the economic literature. Awesome, that means I'm contributing a strong paper to my field. On the other hand, though, it also means I'm trying to find what data is pertinent and significant. Well my data was hard to get (I was trying to get it from multiple government agencies who apparently think grad students are idiots), and my theoretical framework was extremely difficult. I made my own equation of how a public land agency acted when it came to prescribed fires and tried to get comparative static results to make predictions on my regression analysis. Low and behold I don't get any significant results and am stuck with a useless equation I spent months developing.

After all of the struggles to get things to work and get data to work I am finally at the end. But it wasn't that easy. I had to get an actual defense date set. Well I ask my head advisor and he's on vacation the next couple weeks. OK, that kind of sucks, but I'll make it work. Now I talk to my other advisor... and he's on vacation when my other professor gets back.

Oh, you've got to be kidding me. How is that possible. Well the last professor says he's on vacation yet farther into January when the second one gets back. No way. How is that even possible that the order in which I ask my professors when I can defend they're progressively gone later and later. Just humorous. Well, now I've changed my committee again and am now defending on the 22nd. Can't wait for this to be over. That will probably be the happiest day of my life. The constant struggle has been so tiring and it's taken a lot to grit the teeth and keep going after the finish.

Sorry for the boring post, but I at least thought I'd let everyone know that I will be defending. I realize everyone thought this was a mythical thing "defending" but it's real... I wasn't lying.

Hope life is going well for everyone.