And We're Off... to Study!

We are now two weeks into our busy schedules, so we apologize for the lack of posts.  So here is a peak at what the life of a grad student is like...

Dan finally settled on a research advisor.  He will be looking at galaxy clusters, which is very similar to the research he did as an undergrad.  He is taking 3 classes which meet Monday-Thursday, so he actually has a day to get stuff finished on Friday!  The biggest annoyance so far has to be the number of colloquium/talks/tea time/meetings that the astronomy grad students are expected to attend.  It really makes being productive hard!  Dan likes his 10th floor office window that allows him to see approaching storms and not feel like a total workaholic.  As crazy as our lives have become, we are constantly reminded by profs/older grad students that this is the easy part of grad school.  Yikes!!!  Maybe these posts will become even less frequent!

Gail was definitely not expecting grad school to be this hard right away!  She's taking 2 classes that meet Monday-Wednesday-Friday and one small discussion class that meets periodically throughout the quarter.  The biggest chunk of her time is spent in lab working with mice!  She's really enjoying it and is finally starting to be able to do some lab work after reading papers for 2 weeks.  Like Dan, there are seminars and talks everyday that take up a lot of time!  The great thing about Michigan is the diversity of research going on, and, being 1st years, we're invited to all of them!  Also, we learned that you never go hungry in grad school.  They feed you everywhere you go!  Which is good, seeing as how we have decided to stop cooking during the week because of all the work we have to get done.  It looks like we will be surviving on Trader Joe's frozen meals for the next couple of semesters!

We went to our second home football game today!  Big Blue's offense was rocking as usual, but their defense could have made the game less exciting.  We still had a great time in the student section and now have the fight song permanently stuck in our heads.  Tomorrow we are going to the Astronomy Department picnic.  While we are really busy with work, we still try to take a couple hours out of the weekend for some fun.

Look for our next post titled "Get Me Out of Here!"

Go Blue!

The first two weeks...

The first two weeks have been better than we could have hoped.  We have been able to explore Ann Arbor and feel comfortable making our way around by bus and car (especially with our newly purchased TomTom!).  We've found some great local restaurants and parks to spend our "free time".  Gail has started working in her lab and should be starting experiments next week.  She's going to be taking 2 lecture classes and researching the aging process in mice.  Dan finally went through his many orientations and moved into his 1st year office in the astronomy department.  He will be taking 3 classes and will be deciding on an advisor this coming week.  In the mean time, we are enjoying sitting by our pool with complimentary Otter Pops!

This past Saturday we went to our first Michigan football game!  We started our day tailgating on the golf course with thousands of other crazed fans.  We then made our way through the sea of Maize and Blue to the newly refurbished Big House.  As newbies, we quickly learned the many chants and had plenty of opportunities to sing our fight song in Michigan's victory over UConn!  The crowd was a NCAA record: 113,090 people in one stadium!  We can't wait for the next home game in 2 weeks!