Speaking of my wife, my move would
have been completely hopeless without her help. She is the most organized,
capable person I know and thought of everything I would need to survive anything
short of a zombie apocalypse during the next 6 months. The plan is for my
family to join me in the summer, provided I still have a job and there hasn’t
been a zombie apocalypse*.
Prior to getting hired at UT, I
volunteered to take an on-line personality test (Winslow personality profile).
I got near the lowest possible score on “Ambition” (disclaimer:
this is actually true). This makes sense, because I had my cat answer some of
the questions, as I was too busy working on the move. I later discovered that
she was doing some covert background reading. When we moved the living room
sofa, we found 7 fur mice, 3 catnip toys, 6 rubber bands, and a copy of the
book the seven habits of highly effective
nappers.
 |
| Peaches the cat scored low on ambition on the Winslow Personality Profile |
Dallas will be a completely
different experience from Winston-Salem. As implied in a previous post, Dallas
drivers are insane. Not the slow insane kind of drivers you find in a congested
place like New York or Boston. These are high-speed maniacs who seem to be
taking their cues from the makers of Grand
Theft Auto. Fortunately, it’s Texas, so I can upgrade my shot gun to a
missile launcher any time I want. In addition to oil and the Cowboys,
Dallasites love valet parking. That probably explains all the crazy drivers out
there and the occasional quantum jumps in my car’s odometer. On the plus side,
if you survive the drive, there are endless options for dining and
entertainment here.
Neil Rofsky (Chair) and SAR member
Lori Watumull (Abdominal Interim Division Chief) were very accommodating of my Igor
Laufer visiting professorship schedule. Of course, I wouldn’t have considered
moving without being able to fulfill my pre-existing obligations; regardless,
they saw the value in such a program to all involved, and were fully supportive
from the beginning. For their support of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I
am most grateful. Here's a list of SAR members at UT Southwestern in no particular order. Be sure to say "Howdy" the next time you see one of them.
Drs. Gaurav Khatri, Ivan Pedrosa (just submitted application), Lakshmi Ananthakrishnan, Kristen Bishop, Travis Browning, Julie Champine, Edward Chen, David Fetzer, Jeff Pruitt, Lori Watumull, and Theresa Huang.
My new job will be challenging,
but there is remarkable energy at UT Southwestern that promises to make it fun
as well. Neil continues to recruit top talent from around the country, and I am
beginning to feel a bit like a Neanderthal compared to the typical new hire (no
offense to the 20% of people out there who have some Neanderthal DNA in their
genome). Academic endeavors are encouraged and supported at UT Southwestern, so
I expect to see lots more participation in the SAR from this exciting place. We
are currently looking for a Division Chief of Abdominal Imaging who can mentor
our bright enthusiastic young faculty, and I can’t imagine anyone better to do
that than an active member of the SAR. For those of you in the northeast buried under > 6 feet of snow, consider never having to shovel snow or pay state income taxes again.
Texas also provides some excellent
dark sky sites. Here are some photos I took recently about 3 hours outside of Dallas.
 |
| If you look closely, you can see the famous Horsehead nebula |
 |
| Star trails over Fort Griffin, TX |
*For information on how to survive
a zombie apocalypse, see http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/documents/11_225700_A_Zombie_Final.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment