So excited

This is definitely a bragging post, for which I apologize, but I'm so excited to have just found out that I won a Goldwater Scholarship!! The scholarship comes with a $7500 stipend and a nice chunk of prestige, and the whole thing is making me extremely giddy at the moment. What's more, my boyfriend also won, which means that Hunter had two winners in the same year for the first time (out of about 300 scholarships awarded across the country). And it means that I get to be doubly excited.

The very best part though was sitting down to write thank you letters to all the advisors, mentors, and such who helped me along the way - I suddenly was struck by the incredible amount of support I have and, though it may sound mushy, the number of people involved in my education and my undergraduate career in various ways who really care about me. The fellowship advisors from Macaulay, CUNY, and Hunter all helped with every step and flooded my inbox with congratulatory messages today, even though a huge part of the credit goes to them. there are so many great people who wrote me recommendations, helped me draft me essays, and more importantly help give me the experiences which shaped my, from my PI (principle investigator, which is like a boss in the research lab world) here at NYU and all my lab mates here who are sharing in my excitement, to my PI at Hopkins from last summer who by all accounts wrote me a beautiful recommendation (I haven't seen it myself of course but all the advisors were talking about it), to the postdoc at Hopkins who has been my closest mentor and took me under his wing from day 1. So many people to be grateful to!

Now I'm trying to calm myself enough that I can be trusted around lab equipment so that I can go back to actually being a useful member of society, at least for a few hours.

- Celine