I have only enough time for a quick update since I was so busy this weekend that I have not gotten a lot of the research I need to get done in order to write a paper for Thursday. Whoops! Anyways, good news! Saturday (as in yesterday), I went shopping for food with Mia. We came back around 4 P.M. and I checked my email. I got an email from the lady from UConn Health Center who was supposed to be interviewing me by phone for the PhD program I applied to. She never got back t0 me on what time she wanted to call but in this email, she said she would try calling in 1.5 to 2 hours from the time she sent that email. By the time I got home, read the email, figured out how long ago she had sent the email, I realize she was going to call in 30 minutes to 1 hour. Lets just say that I was completely freaking out because I was not prepared (although there is not much that needs to be prepared, that I know of, for an interview like this). Everybody at the house was great, especially Mia. They gave me a sponge to squeeze to relieve stress, kicked everybody out of the dining room and told nobody to disturb me and set me up with some calming tea. Anyways, the interview went amazingly! All in all, the lady, Lynn Puddington, loved me. We are pretty much the same type of person, total science geeks who get really excited over things that other people do not care about. She said that a problem in most interviews is you do not get a sense of maturity, motivation or passion from the interviewee but that was not the case with me. Lynn said that she would highly recommend me for this program and her only concern was that the program may not be a good fit for me, personally. I explained my research interests and in doing that, convinced her that this would be a great program for me. She is confidant that I would excel in the PhD program since I was so motivated and since several researchers matched my interests exactly. Lynn mentioned that she really wished she could have met me in person and we agreed to have lunch when I get back, just to talk. She was a really great person to talk to, to interview me and it was just so great. So I am very relieved because I am highly confidant that I will get into the program and that means that I at least have a fallback for next year. I will actually have somewhere to go for next year which is a HUGE weight off of my shoulders.

Oh and today, I went to Clifton beach - it was amazing but the water was colder than the water in Maine (yes that is possible).