Our Big News

I haven't posted much online lately because we've been busy, mostly because John has a new job!! He has been hired as a fisheries biologist for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. It is an excellent career opportunity, and John will be responsible for developing a biomonitoring program for Northern Minnesota. His job will include a lot of summer field work sampling streams and rivers for various fish species, so he will be excited to get out of the office and into the field (after all, that's why all aquatic ecologists enter the field...so we can play around in lakes and streams and call it "research").

However, his new position is based in Brainerd (he actually starts training in St. Paul tomorrow for 2.5 weeks and then begins in Brainerd on Dec. 16), so we have been busy arranging housing and figuring out the logistics of living apart during the week and visiting each other on the weekends. We were lucky this past weekend that Dad's cousin gave us the name of a couple who wanted to rent out a small one-bedroom cabin on Clark Lake, only about 1.5 miles from Idylwilde. The property is full of mature white pines and the cabin is high up on a hill overlooking Clark Lake. The cabin has many windows and faces west, so there will probably be some pretty sunsets. I will likely be spending a fair amount of time at the cabin writing and analyzing data, since I only have one class spring semester on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Eventually, we plan to move to Brainerd full-time, once I finish my classes this spring and wrap up some lab work. Both of my advisers have said it is fine if I work remotely while I write my dissertation, but right now my funding situation is uncertain. I'm hoping to receive a fellowship or a research assistantship--if that happens, we will likely move out of our Duluth rental in May or June.

Even though we are both a little sad about leaving Duluth, and it will be hard living apart during the week for the next several months, this is a great opportunity for John, and I'm really proud of him for receiving this job offer. Ultimately, we still aren't sure where we will end up once I finish my Ph.D.; however, for now, we will make the best of being "Brainerds" and will enjoy being closer to family.