Post-Graduate Study

Because my college worked on a weird trimester system, this is about the time some 30 years ago that I was commencing. I arrived late and processed with some friends from the School of Speech and heard Secretary of State George Schultz tell us something important.

I kept my cafeteria job through the summer because I didn't have work lined up in my field, and I figured I could earn a little before returning home. Which means my "success" level immediately after graduation was somewhat less than Michelle Kunimoto of the University of British Columbia, who found four exoplanets -- planets orbiting stars other than our Sun -- in between returning her graduation gown and framing her diploma.

Actually, she found them as part of an independent study course after having been taught how to comb data collected by the Kepler telescope. Her advisor created the course after Kunimoto took the regularly-offered course on exoplanets and became interested in them. In other words, she took a class in which the final was finding E.T.'s home.

Yeah, my summer of washing dishes and filling soda machines suddenly looks even punier.