"Knowledge, like scar tissue, accumulates with experience."

That title was a gem from the student speaker at this morning's departmental awards brunch. His speech wasn't awesome, but it certainly wasn't terrible. And more importantly, it was brief.

Well the semester is winding up; commencement activities started today. Although since I'm done with classes, all this really means for me is that very soon it will be miserably hot, the lines to get food in the student union will be significantly shorter, and it will be easier to jaywalk a busy street to get to school.

While summer is a great time to be productive and get lots of research done (especially since it's way too hot to be outside during daylight hours), I miss summer vacation... I suppose I really miss vacation period - because when I do take time off from school/work (another point to ponder sometime, is it school? or is it work?) I never take a vacation vacation. I'm either traveling to see people, or I'm all-out globe trotting. Which is awesome, but not exactly relaxing.

Despite being miserably hot more often than not, summer in Tucson is fun. Because it's so hot, pretty much every apartment complex worth living in has a pool, so lots of time is spent hanging out at the pool. Thirsty Thursdays are lots of fun - who doesn't love a cheap baseball ticket combined with $1 beers? And once monsoon season rolls around we can get some pretty spectacular thunderstorms.

Even though I'm past classes, the school year is still significantly busier than summer. Over the summer there are no seminars and no committee meetings - nothing to do at work/school but research. There's definitely some pressure to have a produce summer research-wise, but the overall atmosphere and attitude around the department is still much more laidback. I've known for a while that I'm much less stressed with only one "thing" to work on rather than dividing my time between several things. So yay summer! As soon as this conference is over anyways...