Today was my last day at Gemini, officially ending three years since I began there. I found myself leaving with a complex superposition of emotions; sadness at leaving a job I've enjoyed and the friends I made there, yet also a sense of peace that it was finally done, relief that I don't need to wake up to an alarm tomorrow, and – just maybe – the faintest spark of excitement for what comes next. We had a farewell lunch for me (with a cake!) on the lanai, which was nice. Someone found out it was my last day there and said something to the effect of, “Oh! Not taking any vacation days off at the end?” To which I replied (entirely sincerely) that the thought hadn't entered my head when there was still so much work to get done before I left, which our team coordinator told me she got a kick out of afterwards.
The work I've put into DRAGONS won't be coming out very soon; the most recent estimate I heard is that the version containing it might come out September 2025, so it'll be a while before you can be reducing your own near-infrared spectroscopy data using my work. It's somewhat bittersweet to have spent three years working on something and to have to leave before it's even come out for people to use, but I suppose I'm hardly the first programmer to have that happen. And at least it will be released rather than get canceled without ever seeing the light of day, as happens all to often in the programming world. Thankfully things went smoothly and I was able to mostly wrap up what I wanted to and leave the code in a working state; I spent my final three days writing one last test for the GNIRS cross-dispersed data reduction and using it to make one final tweak to make things a bit simpler and more elegant. There are a few remaining issues, but I spent the two weeks prior carefully investigating them and writing down what needs to be done about them (they were a bit too involved for me to start at that point). I know the code's in good hands, at least, though progress will probably be slower now that I've left.
As to what does come next? No idea. I didn't get the Gemini telescope operator position, and since I haven't heard back from the other two places I'm assuming nothing is forthcoming on those fronts. (From conversations I've had since then, ghosting unsuccessful job applicants seems to be the new standard, even after an interview.) With more free time on my hands and no more stress about wrapping things up successfully, I'm planning to go at the job hunting with more vigor. I've got a few astronomical opportunities that seem a pretty close fit that I've either applied to or am planning to apply to (though they're open till the end of the month so I won't hear back for weeks if at all), and I'm also going to be looking around locally outside of astronomy to see what's available. I've got a few leads and contacts, so we'll see how that goes.
But for the next few days, at least, I plan to rest; considering I went straight from submitting my thesis to working at Gemini, I haven't taken more than about two weeks off at a time for over seven years at this point. I have no lack of hobbies I'd like to take up again, new skills I'd like to learn, and other ways to occupy my time outside of job hunting, and I think it's high time for me to take a well-earned (if externally-imposed) break. Maybe I'll get some more posts out of it too, we'll see! A hui hou!
