What's new with me?

The last couple days have been pretty crazy, but now that I have a brief period to catch my breath (before a mid-term next week) I wanted to share a couple exciting new developments:

1. First, Kate and I got pre-approved for a mortgage this weekend, which we are very excited about. We're meeting with a realtor tonight and hopefully by this summer we'll be home owners! We plan on staying in the area, but probably a little further out... it's pretty pricey in Arlington proper and my plan to get fabulously wealthy by working for a non-profit and then leaving that job to go to grad school is not panning out how I was hoping it would.

2. I recently submitted an application for Mathematica's summer fellowship program. The fellowship is for independent research on racial disparities. Previous groups of fellows come from a mix of social science degrees. I'm proposing an evaluation of NSF's HBCU undergraduate grant program. Mathematica is a big player in the policy evaluation world, and a lot of previous work has been more big picture question researchy, and less evlauation-oriented, so I'm hoping this catches their eye. Plus science and engineering education always seems to be a topic that piques peoples' interest.

3. I'm working some today on my application to the Sloan Foundation for a multi-year research grant with my co-author on the engineering chapters. This is exciting because if we get it, it will (1.) replace my teaching assistantship at AU (which is really nice, despite how fun teaching can be), and (2.) support my dissertation research. My section of the proposal is going to be on wage expectations and the occupational choices of early career scientists and engineers. The broader proposal is going to look at the transition from school to the labor market for science and engineering majors, and specifically explore the relationship between major choice and career choice).

4. My paper on Newton and Keynes was nearing the point of cleaning up and sending in at the end of spring break... until I came across some Royal Society material suggesting there was a lot more activity from Keynes in 1942 than I had initially realized. So it's closer, but that needs some more work.

So lots of interesting stuff over spring break, but now it's back to reality. We'll see how these things move forward, or whether they'll have to be put on the back-burner until May.