It feels almost sacrilegious, but I’m taking not taking classes for the first time in almost 3 years. I hardly know what to do with myself. My days are still full, but not having any homework or research papers on my to-do list is extremely strange. Here’s what’s on my summer to-do list instead (with little ⊗ to signify “DONE”):

• ⊗ Plan one-way road trip to Utah
  • See Monument Valley
  • Swim in Santa Rosa Blue Hole
  • Camp in Moab
• Finaly figure out MATLAB and ePrime
• Sell almost everything I own in a yard sale
• ⊗ Take the toddler to the Gulf Breeze Zoo
• Read Attitudes on Language Variation & return to UWF Library
• ⊗ Read The Girl With All The Gifts
• Read Memoirs of a Geisha
• Read Cien Años de Soledad
• Listen to audiobook of All the Light We Cannot See
• Listen to audiobook of Orphan Train
• Read Harry Potter 3-7 in Spanish
  • Make vocab lists
• ⊗ Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity Parade of Homes
• Develop functional meal planning system in bullet journal
• ⊗ Mail sample patches to all the USCG Air Stations in continental US
• ⊗ Catch up on Welcome to Night Vale
• ⊗ Catch up on Sneak Attack
• Write descriptives for language brokering manuscript
• Get a helicopter ride with the toddler at Ferguson Fly-In
• Take the toddler to the Blue Angels Homecoming Airshow
• Take the toddler camping at Fort Pickens

I’m trying to simultaneously relax, cram as much fun & literature into this summer as possible, and get ready for a week-long cross-country move with a toddler. I am, admittedly, getting a little worried about this whole PhD thing. The totality of the thing is kind of weighing on my mind. Is it the right thing for me to do? Do I really want this? What exactly am I going to do with a PhD once I’ve got one? So far, my internal answers are all positive- I’m still extremely excited to get out there and put my science brain back into action. Hopefully this excitement will carry me through my first semester with difficult classes and teaching assistantships and lab rotations… I may have been overzealous in switching from the Experimental Psychology to Neuroscience- I’m really not sure how in-depth I want to get on the internal brain workings. Obviously I’d love to take a few classes and have a working knowledge of it, but I’m somewhat nervous about getting a whole PhD based on neurons and axions and nodes of Ranvier and such. Neuroanatomy isn’t exactly my forte, to be honest… Not yet at least. We’ll see how it goes.