Becoming professional

I had a meeting this morning about two policy papers I'm going to be writing for a higher education group. I'm excited about these papers because they should be interesting (and I think one might be able to generate a peer-reviewed article), but that's not all. I realized this is the first project I've taken on that didn't come out of a class, work for a professor, or my dissertation - the first thing I've done as an independent professional. Woot!