Last Friday we had a Retirement/Graduation/Lab Closing Party. We invited the entire MCB dept as well as previous Beckendorf graduate students and post docs. We decorated the lab with Christmas lights and streamers and brought lots of food and drinks - it was very festive.
I got the chance to talk to people I haven't seen in ages and catch up with previous lab members like Ryan and Vidya that I hadn't seen in awhile. Ryan was an undergrad researcher in the lab and is now a graduate student at UCSF. It was so strange to hear him talk about preparing for his qualifying exam in the spring. That seems like forever ago to me.
I also got to talk to two other graduate students that I hadn't seen in quite awhile and was surprised to find that they too are expecting. We exchanged morning sickness and ultrasound stories and marveled at how the whole experience is scary and exciting at the same time. So much is changing. We're finishing up school (all we've known for the last 23 years!), getting our Ph.Ds, trying to figure out what the next step in our careers will be and the biggest change of all - becoming parents. It's a lot to process to say the least.
No comments:
Post a Comment