sitting in North Canton: thankful for my colleagues

I just drove about four hours from State College to Canton, OH, where my friend and colleague Heather is getting married tomorrow. I’m super excited for her! She’s about the best colleague I could ask for — she and I came to Penn State at the same time, and she’s been the right kinds of supportive, inquisitive, challenging, and awesome. I like to refer to her as my “rock” in the department, because we’ve been able to go to each other with stresses, anxieties, and concerns in ways that have helped us both grow and thrive. Her fiance Cris is also super rad, and I am looking forward to watching (and videotaping!) the ceremony tomorrow.

I meant to write “thankful for” posts way back during Thanksgiving break, and I think this one should count as that. I’m thankful for Heather, but also for the other graduate students in my program, who have been supportive, bright, and fun. I’m living with Matt, who studies a lot of the same things I do, and it’s been awesome spending more time with him this year. It’s especially nice to bounce frustrations and ideas off of him—a roommate in your field of study can be a very good thing. (I could imagine it could be a very bad thing, but Matt is too awesome for that to happen.) In fact, I’m currently sitting in an Einstein Bagels in North Canton drinking coffee and charging my iPhone waiting for Matt’s (delayed) flight to get in. Our friend Sandi also thinks we are “cute” roommates. 🙂

There are too many great people in my program to count and list them all, but quick shout outs to Billy (who came into the rhetoric program the same time as Heather and me and brings good energy and different perspectives to things), Sarah (who might just be one of the sweetest yet subtly sassiest people I know), Andrew and Adam (who are sooo smart and great on Twitter). I feel blessed to be surrounded by such great colleagues (and sorry for not mentioning others!).

Hopefully I’ll make time to write a few other “thankful for” posts over the next few days. It’s a good time of year to stop and think about what makes life good.