My Pathetic Love of School

Today I met with my favorite Professor, a guy who I am endlessly impressed with. We were meeting to discuss the final draft of my independent study on Venezuela's economy. I felt really lucky to have him agree to advise me on the independent study, it is extra work for him and Professors have no obligation to do so. I got him to agree to it by putting a really good sales pitch together and convincing him that I would shoot for publishable quality of research and composition.
I started running through some really specific details about supply-side volatility for Orinoco belt oil extraction--something I just assumed he knew about. He stopped me and asked what the hell I was talking about, where it fit into my research, etc. I thought he was criticizing me about going off on a tangent but he was actually testing my knowledge of this very obscure subject. He let me elaborate on the issues surrounding Venezuela's foreign investment shortage and how that was effecting production and capacity maintenance and some other stuff that I think I am the only person on earth who enjoys thinking about. He then told me he was really impressed with the level of understanding I had about the vagaries of my study. We started talking about the possibility that my research was good enough to "keep working on" which he explained meant spending a few more months on, possibly in Venezuela. I then mentioned that I was going to be in Central America next month (in the neighborhood) and said I might be able to get over there for a few weeks. He said some stuff about friends of his in Caracas, something about a university, and that he was going to email me. He seemed really excited. He is never excited.
Long story short I might get to perfect my research in Venezuela. I thought that was good news.
I went into the library and back to work on random details in the research. I realized that I was tremendously happy to have gotten positive feedback on this work, and that I had an awesome time doing even the most mundane research on the topic.
Obviously I'm not going to have time to spend more than about a month on any more work, but it would be really interesting to be developing what I already have into something more significant and maybe getting published down the line. I think I have found the perfect thing to work on during this upcoming trip. This is positive.