Bad bus karma today. I am fighting off a cold, I think, and am gearing up for a long weekend of lab work and making figures. Anxiety about experiments. I just want to go to bed.
However, the term has begun and what does that mean to me? It means free food opportunities. My first term of grad school I lost several pounds on what I like to call the "Free Food Diet". Binged a little on the Thai food, and got to be familiar with all the pizza options near the Longwood Medical Area (not great, on the whole, but Boston pizza is not stellar in general).
I miss first year. It seems like just yesterday (cue violins) and it was such fun. They really woo you - and all the faculty want grad students, so you just pop from office to office like a little diva, offered flowers and candy and Nature papers . . .
It is exciting. You email these eminent people and go to their offices and they tell you all about their work like you matter, like you are one of them. I've compared it to speed dating. You decide whether you want to rotate in the lab, which is the next step in your search for lab love. Then after you've been around a little (3-4 rotations) you settle down and join the family of your chosen PI and usually evolve a dysfunctional love-hate relationship much like you had with your parents when you were in high school.
I had a similar conversation to this with a certain genetics professor when I was looking for rotation labs. I was feverish with a mild flu at the time and began to expand on the theme of speed dating and marriage to a lab and he was totally into the concept. Then, and I'm not sure who instigated this, we both started singing a song - possibly "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" but I was so febrile I can't quite recall - and changing the words to make it about falling in love with a lab or something. It was really bizarre. At some point we must have realized how odd it was and there was a very surreal, embarrassed moment.
It would be a better story if I could remember what we sang, but I swear this really happened. I did not end up in his lab, though, but it had nothing to do with the singing. I'm just not really a genetics person.
However, the term has begun and what does that mean to me? It means free food opportunities. My first term of grad school I lost several pounds on what I like to call the "Free Food Diet". Binged a little on the Thai food, and got to be familiar with all the pizza options near the Longwood Medical Area (not great, on the whole, but Boston pizza is not stellar in general).
I miss first year. It seems like just yesterday (cue violins) and it was such fun. They really woo you - and all the faculty want grad students, so you just pop from office to office like a little diva, offered flowers and candy and Nature papers . . .
It is exciting. You email these eminent people and go to their offices and they tell you all about their work like you matter, like you are one of them. I've compared it to speed dating. You decide whether you want to rotate in the lab, which is the next step in your search for lab love. Then after you've been around a little (3-4 rotations) you settle down and join the family of your chosen PI and usually evolve a dysfunctional love-hate relationship much like you had with your parents when you were in high school.
I had a similar conversation to this with a certain genetics professor when I was looking for rotation labs. I was feverish with a mild flu at the time and began to expand on the theme of speed dating and marriage to a lab and he was totally into the concept. Then, and I'm not sure who instigated this, we both started singing a song - possibly "Matchmaker, Matchmaker" but I was so febrile I can't quite recall - and changing the words to make it about falling in love with a lab or something. It was really bizarre. At some point we must have realized how odd it was and there was a very surreal, embarrassed moment.
It would be a better story if I could remember what we sang, but I swear this really happened. I did not end up in his lab, though, but it had nothing to do with the singing. I'm just not really a genetics person.
posted by Joolya at
4:05 PM
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