Would you like to dance around the world with me?

Welcome to the Jenkins Family

My trip to San Jose was better than expected. It was for winners of minority and women fellowships from NASA, so there were about 150 people of all ages and colors. It was a busy week, but meeting so many new people and attending some very interesting sessions ranging from leading a balanced life to networking to technical presentations. The Hariett G. Jenkins Predoctoral Fellowship, which I won, has been around for 5 years, and there are 20 students per year. It's very different than the NSF because it really is a family, and they take care of all the students personally. They did promote NASA a lot, of course, but they're more concerned about our personal and technical development. So it's eased a little nervousness about some aspects of MIT, but it's also made it just a little more scary.
On a small world note, I met a guy there named Kenny, and we were talking about grad school decisions, so I mentioned how I had visited Colorado, Stanford, and MIT. He said he had a friend in Aerospace Engineering who was trying to decide between Colorado and MIT. This sounded all too familiar to someone I knew, so I asked if the guy was from Austin, and coincidentally, the answer was yes. Turns out a guy named David that I met when visiting the two schools (and whom I still talk to) co-oped with Kenny at Johnson Space Center. So Kenny also knows Tanner from GT, whom I was in senior design with. We're already seeing the small world that is the Aerospace Engineering field.

Last night we had a pseudo Girl's Night Out, which was the best night in a while. Recently we met Madelyn, Alex's awesome girlfriend, and we've been hanging out more and more with her. Since Alex was out of town, we wanted to have a girl's night out at some bars in Fairfax, but oh shucks, we ended up meeting a bunch of Madelyn's hot friends. And to top it all off, they were giving away free Jager bombs for some reason at the second bar we went to. I haven't been that drunk in a long time...everyone seemed to find it amusing, so of course they wouldn't let me stop. I paid for that today - trust me! I miss my 207 girls a lot, so it's so nice to be able to hang out with Lindsay, Chrissie, and Madelyn. All of you are awesome. :-)

posted by Biff @ 9:07 PM