back to the real world...

i love conferences. i just spent 4 days listening to math talks and hanging out with a bunches of people who i know from various mathematical parts of my past... it probably sounds nerdy, but being in a convention center of 5000ish mathematicians for the week feels like a mini-reunion of the past 10 years of my life rather than a chore or responsibility. and a trip to san diego for said convention was awesome too. now, alas, i'm no longer in math reunion land...

however, it appears that i now know what i'm doing with my life post grad school, but i'm hesitant to give all the details until they're all completely ironed out (which they should be within a month or so). it looks highly likely that this is my last semester of grad school and that i'll be moving in late july, which is exciting and moderately terrifying at the same time (seriously, i've ALWAYS been a student, and in a few months i won't be anymore... and i have a LOT of stuff (mostly books) that i'm dreading packing). but complain as i may about packing and transition, this is an exciting one, and the more i process the decision i made on monday (TBA in a month or so ;) ) the more enthusiastic i feel about it. :) life is crazy.

back in TN for the weekend. apparently i get to teach my mom's 8th graders for half an hour tomorrow morning. she wants me to tell them what a mathematician does. exciting, right?

this is a post composed of completely random paragraphs, so the conclusion will be no different. i flew memphis -> chicago -> san diego last saturday, san diego -> las vegas yesterday, and las vegas -> denver -> memphis tonight.
on the plane from denver to memphis, i ended up sitting next to brit, a hilarious 30-ish year old arkansas soybean farmer who really wanted to chat the whole time.... it started with
brit: "what do you do?"
me: "i'm a grad student, i study math."
brit: "oh! so see if you can beat my score on this quiz (pulls out a magazine quiz of which the first problem is "compute 2/3 x 3/4 x 4/5 x 5/6 x 6/7 without using a calculator"). my dad got a degree in accounting, if you beat him i'm impressed" (the dad sitting across the aisle didn't understand how i quickly concluded the answer was 2/7 and had me explain it slowly on the way off the plane later ;) )

quite some time later of oohing and aahing over math tricks, sharing crazy travel stories, and talking about gun control and soybeans....

brit: well, lara, i'm sure glad i sat by you this flight. it's made the last 2 hours a heck of a lot more fun.
me: yeah, me too. out of the 5 flights i've been on this week, you're the first person to be any kind of friendly.
brit: well, i bet you anything the rest of them were yankees!

(... it's good to be a southerner ;))

the end.