OH man... I am done for the school year. Yes. Officially, I am done for the year. Not only have I finished my Master's work, but I am done with my presentation for this conference and now have no other responsibilities for a while.

I am still in Michigan right now for this conference... unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to bring my cool camera so I dont have any pictures to share with you. But let me tell you it has been pretty cool. Never before have I been so excited about research before, and for the first time... I really feel that I have all these research questions that have popped up, but I have resources and collegues who could help me to solve these problems over time. Pretty cool stuff. Here are a few highlights:

1. I gave my presentation today in front of about 150 people. Though I was the biggest noob, I keep getting approached by people who say that I was a very good presenter. I think when I am nervous, I tend to speak loud. During my talk, my prof (who was the chair of my session) asked the previous presenter for the lapel mic back. As he was walking back to the stage, I stopped my presentation to ask if I needed to put that on. He stops and say, "oh no... Not YOU!" To which point, the crowd burst out laughing. I didn't think I was talking THAT loud".

2. I've been meeting grad students whom are working on the same things as I am. And I realize that grad students are an interesting bunch... they think very differently from other people in that the level of analysis and thought that goes into a problem is ridiculously high. It's been encouraging because many of them have brought up questions for me or given some insight into how I might solve a certain problem.

3. I met a guy whom I base a lot of my research on. He now works for Honda doing work on the ASIMO robot. I was asked if I wanted a job with them. Um... I drive a Honda... YES. It may not happen right now, but hopefully a few years down the line I will find myself doing something cool like that.

Man, we are such dorks. Tonight we went out for drinks after the conference session tonight. A lot of the conversation tonight was still about research. But fortunately a lot of the people there were cool and we talked a lot about other stuff.

Anyways, I've got two more days here. While I am excited to go home... I look forward to the next few days and the things I will learn here.