You might be surprised to hear how quickly a lab monkey can transform himself into a charming PR guy, when the need arises.

Less than a year, as it turns out.

So yea, I somehow managed to pull myself together and now I'm broadcasting live from the other side of the hell that was my doctoral.

I'm happy to report that last month, I successfully defended my PhD, and you may henceforth refer to me as Dr. Watney.

Hell, put that shit on my tombstone:

Here lies Dr. Mark R. Watney

Took him a few extra years

But he finally showed up!

So here's what wound up happening. I badgered and begged, and made such a pest of myself at the various government agencies, that finally some kind soul put me in touch with people who actually knew what the hell they were doing with Public Relations, and they helped get the word out that a University of Chicago molecular geneticist had some ideas for sustainable farming.

Guess who my first nibble was?

None other than a little agency known as NASA. Yes, you read that correctly. NASA. As in, those fine people who put astronauts into space? Talk about a big fish. I nearly pissed myself, once I was sure that it wasn't some kind of joke.

Turns out, they had some ideas themselves about some experiments that were vastly similar to my own.

Except for the microgravity aspect.

So, funding was awarded to the head of the Botanical Genetics department here at University of Chicago - but wait! There was no such person! The logical solution of course, was to make that person exist, before that offer of sweet, sweet funding disappeared. The only interested available party? Yours truly.

Now that I'm the anointed King of Botany here, I try to reign over my subjects with grace and aplomb. Alright, alright. I only have a staff of three. But we do have our own coffeemaker, so there's that.

Would you believe that all of that is not even the most exciting thing that's happened? Of course not. How much awesome is one person's allotted lifetime max?

Eventually we're going to be repeating these experiment processes on the International Space Station, I shit you not. And since it was my project, I might actually be the one who gets to go up there and do it. Apparently that engineering degree might come in handy, after all.

So now, I've got a new goal.

Is the world ready for this?

Mark Watney, PhD

Astronaut