I’m quite young, so it should come to the surprise of no one that I’m not precisely sure where I want to go within this field. But I do have an idea of where I don’t want to go.

I’ve come across a blog by a graduate student studying GRBs. She jumps at every burst, sometimes awakening in the middle of the night. Like so many others, she is eager to learn as much as she can within the first precious moments of observation. We discover so much because of these burst chasers.

I admire people with that kind of conviction and self-sacrifice, but I do not strive to become them. I do not want the observations of events that happened so long ago and so far away to dictate my short time here on Earth. The early birds can get their worms, which is fine by me, because I don’t like worms anyway.

There are purposes for me here, problems I can work on and mini mysteries I can solve so that I can contribute to this field in my own way. I just need to find them.