Kristen Walks: Blogging Hiatus, Explained

Hello everyone!

First of all, I wanted to extend my apologies for my extended blogging absence. I didn't intend to disappear for so long without an explanation. For those of you who don't know, in addition to my work raising money for breast cancer research and training for the Breast Cancer 3 Day for the Cure, I am also a graduate student working towards my PhD in Neuroscience. In fact, I have been a graduate student working on my PhD for far too long, for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, it has been my efforts towards changing that status and completing my degree once and for all that has kept me away from this blog for the last few weeks. Following a very stressful but successful meeting with my thesis committee members and my advisors, I was finally given permission to wrap up my research and focus on writing both my doctoral dissertation and a final research paper to be published in the near-ish future.

Being able to move into this final phase of my graduate career has been a huge reward for me after years of toil and frustration in the lab. However, just because I have cleared this major hurdle, there is still a lot of work to be done. I am hoping to defend my thesis before the end of March and I have a ton of work to complete before then if that is to happen. As such, while my commitment to the Breast Cancer 3 Day and to raising money and awareness for this important cause remains high, I will be stepping away from writing here at Kristen Walks for the forseeable future.

I am confident that this is not the last that you will hear of my voice here on the pages of the Internets. I am still going to keep up with my friends and family via Facebook and email and I will continue to use Twitter probably more than I should. I will also be helping Mug write about her experiences during the 3 Day season over on her blog at www.3DayMug.com. But given the level of quality I try to bring to the things that I share here on this blog, I wouldn't feel right trying to actively write and post here without being able to put a significant amount of time and effort into it.

Fingers crossed that my writing goes smoothly and that words and brilliant thoughts flow from my fingers to my screen easily over the coming weeks and months. I can't wait to come back here and finally tell all of you about my experience walking the 3 Day in Boston with my Relentless Optimism teammates way back in July, training with and getting to know the 3 Day Tweeps here in Atlanta and Walker Stalking the Atlanta event in late October. Moreover, my experiences over the years with the Breast Cancer 3 Day have shown me that biomedical research advocacy is a true passion of mine and I cannot wait to start pursuing a career in that area as soon as possible. But before all of that can begin, completing my dissertation once and for all has to be my primary focus.

Happy Holidays and Best Wishes!

Kristen