Spinning Yarns

The spring came and went, and with it, many changes wrought upon the fabric of my life. On a whole, I’m very pleased by the way things are going. After a winter in which I did not get to practise aikido very often, it was a great pleasure to come back to class on a regular basis again. I continue to maintain that the practise of aikido has been the single most positive influence in my life in years, a feeling that grows stronger each day.

I was greatly honoured this month be one of the recipients of the Filene Graduate Teaching award, for which the computer science department nominated me back in April. I owe a great debt of thanks to all the people who have made it possible for me to receive this award — my teachers, my advisor, my students, my family, and my friends. Such a reward is never really won solely by the efforts of the individual to whom it was granted.

The spring has also been very rewarding with respect to my research. With my advisor’s patient guidance, I’ve been digging more deeply than I ever have previously into some of the most interesting problems in distributed computation, and immersing myself in more and more of the existing literature. It is a rarefied atmosphere, but also a heady and rewarding one to breathe, and I am enjoying the process a great deal. I would go so far as to say I like it almost as well as I enjoy teaching.

At the end of the summer, I will be departing Thayer School of Engineering to accept a position as a Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science for the next year — a prospect which excites me greatly! I will miss the great community here at Thayer School, which has given me a vocational home for these past five years and more — but I am also thrilled at the prospect of getting to work with students again! I hope, too, that this move will give me more time to devote to my research work, as I must confess that I have not given it as much of my attention as I should, over the past year.

And, I can’t help but be pleased that I will finally get to take a vacation this coming August.

Filed by Michael at 15:03 under Personal
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