Awesome

I woke up and realized life is great and people are awesome and life is worth living.

~ Hulk Hogan

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I think it's good to encourage people to do nice things.  I try to do that in a few different ways.  I try to role model doing nice things.  I try to acknowledge when I see people doing nice things for one another.  I try to highlight opportunities to do nice things.

I provided some of my colleagues the opportunity to do something nice before I went to a recent conference.  I left them each a note card that said, "I think you for your awesomeness," and encouraged each of them to fill it out for me and leave it for me as a surprise when I returned.

Their comments included the following:

Charyl - "I see the word 'Awesome' being replaced by the word 'Michelle' in the English language. eg. 'What a Michelle fireworks display!' 'Wasn't that a Michelle concert?!'"

Jan - "You are a fine colleague."

Pamela - "You are the epitome of AWESOMENESS."

Joy - "Love ya asshole."  (Joy needs to work on her approach a little bit.)

Some of them commented on my dissertation defense:

Abby - " Patty says we'll call you Dr. Michelle Awesome.  Or perhaps Dr. Awesome Boettcher.  Or maybe just princess doctor awesomepants forever."

Basil - "You won't even need to defend [your dissertation]!  You'll walk in and they'll be like, 'Ph shoot!  Here's Michelle!  She's so awesome we'll just give it to her!' And you'll be like, "Awwwwwww yea!  That's right!'"

Tiffany - "Michelle, Michelle where do I start?  Michelle, Michelle I have to fart."

Kipp - "I'm proud of you for being able to balance all the happenings of your life and still not be a pain in the ass to those around you."

Bailey - "In the words fo Ed Rooney (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) 'I did not achieve this position in life by having some snot-nosed punk leave my cheese in the wind!'"


Good work, people.  Good work.