Almost a year has passed since I first signed up on this site, and I - wearing my "Where in the World?" hat - wanted to say thanks to the Chemistry StackExchange community.
During this year, I shared some protein crystallography history, learned how compounds are named to reflect oxidation states in Slovakia, solved a puzzle involving two distinct chemical shift scales, learned how to use SMILES to create skeletal formulas, participated in an election, built some physical models, used Jmol to make lots of animated GIFs, and asked a couple of questions.
I also got to know people who care about typesetting, who know way more organic chemistry and physical chemistry than I do, who change their name more than once in a year, who write comments like it's poetry, and who close questions that need closing. Moreover, I reconnected with a colleague from a past job. Best of all, I got to think about a lot of fundamental, advanced and fun chemistry, got to see a lot of misconceptions and how to address them, and how much you can learn by just asking a question.
My goal for next year is to scale back my involvement a bit (the game and social media aspects of the site are definitely enticing, but I do have a day job and a family that also deserve attention). I've seen others make the transition from answering to writing comments (also fun, and takes less time) or focusing on voting up and down, so maybe I'll follow their lead, or take a break every now and then.
So, thank you for a great year and for your volunteer work in making this site possible. It is a great resource for chemistry education, both for students and for teachers, and great outreach to those outside of the field coming into contact with chemistry!
