Two summers ago when I did my internship at an aerospace company, I had one of those pivotal eye-opening moments.  One of the guys I worked with was talking about daisy cutters and how cool they are when they explode and kill everything.. and as I'm sitting there listening to him gush over the awesome death and destruction.. I realized I didn't want to devote my life to something I didn't feel good about.  I had every opportunity to come back to that company after I got my degree, and it would have been the smarter choice, with a great salary and plenty of people watching out for me and a shoo-in for a management position... but I picked the life of a starving grad student instead.  Sometimes you have to choose something based on what is most important to you, and when things get rough, you can hold onto that decision and remember why.

As I walked through the palm trees today, listening to the cool desert breeze whisper by, I was reminded of my decision and my hope that I'm pursuing something I can feel proud of.