Communication, at last!
God, where to begin?? I have had literally zero time to do anything online, but my lab partner's grandfather died and I can't continue the major experiments without her, which messes up my schedule. I just spent ten minutes looking at my revised schedule in disbelief, because it looks like there's not much I can do tonight and tomorrow.
Very strange to be writing in this again. It's a nice chance to reflect and sort my thoughts out, though.
Okay, this is going to be a long post. I bet this entire thing is going to get deleted when I click 'post.' Just my luck. Well, okay, to do this thing properly, we're going to go back to junior year. ::cue flashback music:: Wait, no, for this to make more sense, we've got to go back to sophomore year. ::cue wavy vision and music::
Alright, so sophomore year I thought I was going to med school, right? But I won a fellowship to check out Stanford for a week, so I did that. And I LOVED Stanford. I felt right at home. My dad did his Ph.D in California, it's where Jean-Pierre was born, and I grew up hearing all these stories about San Francisco. Stanford starts with an S, like my name, and it's mascot is a tree, just like my elementary school mascot (Whispering Pines Elementary). So everything just seemed right.
By junior year I went to Stanford again on their diversity fellowship. By that time, I hated hospitals so much that there was no way in hell I was going to med school. I was having fun working as a tech and researching, plus I had a great time hanging out in Greg's lab at Stanford. The funny thing about Greg is that just a few days ago on MSN they had an article about Stanford researchers discovering a gene for dog coat color, and I was like, man, that has to be Greg's lab! The thing is, going to Stanford the second time around, it was JUST like being in Miami. I would have never known that I wasn't in Miami during the drive from SF airport to Palo Alto, plus the Spanish style buildings and everything . . . bleugh. Keep in mind that at this point, there was no way no how I was going to be a grad student.
So the summer after junior year at the Leadership Alliance conference in Virginia. This is the site of that massive, insane party with all of the Puerto Ricans that apparently is going to go down in history, since I keep meeting people from the party everywhere. Let me tell you, it is AWKWARD attempting a professional relationship with people you've seen dressed only in a tie and doing things involving ice and a bathtub. Ahem. Anyway, at this conference, a lot of graduate programs were giving out free application vouchers, so I snagged some. Plus at Dartmouth they made everyone take a Kaplan GRE course and take the GREs, even the people who were obviously just taking the MCATS to go to med school.
Can you see where this is going? :)
Senior year. Everyone's bugging me about what I'm going to do, and I didn't know or care. The only thing that I wanted to do at that point was to get the hell out of Duke, because my entire time there I just had this crushing feeling that this institution ruined my life. I still have that feeling, but being away from Duke has helped. Don't get me wrong, I had an awesome time at Duke. I just don't want to have anything to do with it ever again. Errr.
Annnnyhoo. My PI starts bugging me, Meck starts bugging me and I'm like, fine. I've got vouchers. I've got GRE scores. I've got subject test scores. I've got publications. Let me spend five fucking minutes of my life writing a personal statement and apply to grad programs so people leave me alone. Keep in mind that I STILL don't actually want to go to graduate school. Plus, I can't actually go to interviews, since I'm tied up with appointments on weekends.
Imagine my surprise when I get in everywhere. I had explained to everyone that I couldn't go to interviews. Everyone was okay with that except Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, and UPenn. I said, fuck Dartmouth, since Hanover's in the middle of nowhere and I didn't have much desire to go there again. My mom always said that Philly is full of radiation (yeah, my mom says a lot of random things), so I screwed them, too. I went to the Princeton and Harvard interviews because I'd always wanted to see if that area was the hellhole it was portrayed as on tv and I wanted free food. Princeton was gorgeous, but had a tiny, TINY molecular biology department and a habit of failing everyone for their quals. PLUS, apparently Duke was modeled after Princeton (architechturally - God, is that even a word??), and I didn't want a reminder of Duke. But, I totally could have lived in the chapel if I wanted to - there it was graduate housing. :) Everyone was mean at Harvard and hated everyone else. Plus it was uglier than I thought it would be. I think everyone there just lives in fear of being scooped. So after that, I was like, this is great, thanks for the food, bye bye!
At this point I'm a bit more serious about grad school, but still not entirely serious about it. I turned everywhere down except Stanford and Yale, put it on the backburner and kept looking for jobs. NO ONE wants to hire me, but apparently I did get one fellowship at Corning.
God, this is going to be a long post.
Anyway, so Corning. So, um, you know how I don't take my cell phone anywhere? There's no point, it's not like anyone ever calls me. Except apparently Corning kept calling me. And I have no voicemail box. Yeah. Then apparently they started calling my mom. And you KNOW she wouldn't pass along that message. So yeah, I got booted. You'd think I'd be really bitter about that, especially after how my summer went, but I was just amused by that. Go figure. I just really didn't care about much at that point in time as I was just as inclined to drive my car off a cliff as I was to start working.
Anyway, I figured I should accept one grad school offer just in case, because I knew that I could just turn it down later. Then I start asking EVERYONE about their opinions on Stanford versus Yale. Jesus, that was a disaster. In retrospect, I wish I had asked more people, but you know, had I asked any more people, I could've done statistical analysis on it and published it. It was ridiculous. My sample size was about 35 people. Half said that Yale and Stanford were equal. Half said Stanford was better. What's interesting is the source analysis. Every single PI (n=12) said that Yale and Stanford were equal. We're talking about Duke, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford PIs. I was even told by Dave to NOT go to Stanford because it was a postdoc environment. Every Duke graduate student and Yale graduate student said that Yale was BETTER than Stanford. I didn't ask any Stanford graduate students, but in terms of intelligence, publications and the schools they came from, they definitely seemed equal to me. But every Duke undergrad, myself included, thought that Stanford was somehow better. And you know, I have no idea where we got this impression from. I think I got mine from the Princeton Review rankings, plus the popular media always talked about research from Stanford. I specifically asked PIs about this point, going as far as to say that I had the impression that Yale sucked. But nope, they all thought that they were equal.
And God, I even threw in Duke vs Stanford vs Yale for fun, and had I not just turned down Duke I would be even more screwed because EVERYONE had a completely different opinion on that. Opinions ranged from Duke=Stanford>Yale to Yale>Stanford>Duke to Yale>Stanford=Duke. It was insanity. For the love of God, if anyone wants to comment on this piece of shite post, PLEASE do NOT give me your opinion on this matter or I will go nuts. I'm forcing myself to stop thinking about it.
Okay, so at this point, I'm still thinking that I don't want to be a graduate student. I love science, but I can't take the science crisis that this country is in right now, the stress, the time investment. I'm still looking for jobs. To be clear here, at this point I've turned everywhere down except for Stanford and Yale. I'm freaking out about not finding a job, and apparently everyone was freaking out about which college I was going to. I'm like fuck it, let's sign up for Stanford. I sign up for a Stanford e-mail account in order to be able to log in and accept admission. While I'm doing this, I'm thinking about the Stanford and Yale sweatshirts. I think about which one I can see myself in. I hate red, so I can't see myself in the Stanford t-shirt. I'm thinking, Duke blue, Yale blue. Four letters. Fuck. This is literally my sad, sad thought process. I decline Stanford.
Yes, yes, craziness, I know.
So I'm still looking for a job after that. I'm still thinking, I ain't goin' to no goddamn grad school. But during that time, Yale folks are calling me, I'm chatting with Yale students online, and everyone's really, INSANELY nice. Suspiciously nice, I thought.
So then what do I do?
I turn Yale down.
What does Yale do?
They reject my rejection and tell me to think about it for a few more weeks. I'm assuming this is because I've sort of explained my decision process to them. Yeah, I'm sure they were like, wtf??!
Anyway, so it's summer now and I'm looking for a job. I drive around the place applying to Burger Kings, Wendy's, McDonalds, JcPenneys, Sears, Old Navy . . . you get the picture. No one wants me. JCPenney's rejection especially hurt, because I LOVE JCPenney. Fortunately, I saw this coming and saved up enough money that the summer actually wasn't too bad. Minus this one incident that I don't really want to go in detail about. Well . . . bottom line is that I need to get an HIV test. I was really freaked out about it in the summer, but now I'm kinda like, meh. It wasn't a sexually transmitted thing, because God knows I'm NEVER going to get laid. It's more of a weapon transmitted thing. And yeah, I know, good luck explaining that to the HIV testing folk. I actually had an appointment this week, and I was really nervous about it. But apparently because I didn't specifically ask them for STD testing when I made the appointment, they couldn't test me. So now I have to reschedule it, allowing me more time to cop out of it. I think I'm just going to tell them that it was sexually transmitted, because that really is the easiest explanation. Unless they figure out that I'm still a virgin, in which case I've got some 'splaining to do. I'm really nervous about it, but lately I've been more optimistic about it. I mean, you give an immunocomprimising disease to a person with hyperimmunity and you'd expect them to be cured, if anything, right? I don't know. I've really been trying to not think about it.
Annnyway. Whooo, side-tracked. Where was I? Oh yeah, so I can't find a job, I'm not lucid from that event. God, I'm amazed I survived that summer. Yeah, so that $30K is looking more and more appealing. And I'm like, I like science. I like eating. I like living in a building.
So yup, here I am. Upon arriving in New Haven, I was just like, holy shit. This city is a complete dump. I was sort of prepared, because I had heard stories about it. But, Jesus. I was already depressed, and coming here . . . it was a rough first two weeks, let me tell you. The amount of crime here is insane. It's usually grad students getting mugged, too. I think half of the grad students from last year's class have been mugged, and they claim it's only a matter of time before my car gets stolen. I am literally terrified when I get stuck outside past 6pm. And now darkness comes earlier, so I'm constantly living in fear. Yeah, I'm reminded about that story of the boy and his father stepping off the train in the 1800s, and the boy sees all the smoke and hears all of the noise from the station and says, "is this hell?" And the father says, "no, son, this is New Haven."
But, having said that . . . I am actually loving Yale. The buildings here are amazing. The dorm I live in is amazing. This is definitely far more of a Gothic Wonderland than Duke ever was. I hear the phrase "Harry Potter" thrown around a lot when people are decsribing Yale on tours. The people here are extremely nice. Science-wise, there is a ton of collaboration that definitely didn't happen at Harvard. Even at Stanford, there was less collaboration than at Yale. PIs go out of their way to help each other. My class is pretty close-knit, so I'm happy about that. I'm actually loving the science and the busyness as a rotation student, but I'm still uncomfortable about what's going to happen once I start working on a project for real, y'know?
Now that I am here, there's a lot of thinking in retrospect. I wish that I took grad school more seriously. I may have taken Harvard's offer more seriously. Plus, they gave an extra $1k for computer equipment, which would have been nice. Maybe I could've handled all of the snottiness and active screwing up of each other's projects. I don't know. I'm still a little bitter about turning Harvard down just because I didn't know how big of a deal it was. I'm a little unsure about Stanford. I bet I'll be thinking of Palo Alto when it gets REALLY cold here, but walking around downtown here, it just feels right. I don't think I would give up this feeling of . . . I don't know . . . metropolitanness? Europeanness? . . . for being back in the suburbs. I might have to revise that opinion when I get mugged for the first time.
But in terms of the science between Stanford and Yale, which was my big question to begin with . . . having had experience with both of them now, I am really going to have to say that the PIs are right. The science really is about the same (I'm talking genetics here, computational biology and genomics is a different story). In terms of characterizing important molecules that we've heard about in science class, Stanford and Yale really have done the same amount of work. I'd definitely agree with the criticism that Stanford has more Nobel laureates, though, and that Yale has focused more on the humanities than the sciences post-WWII. I think that latter point is changing here, though. They're definitely trying to pump more money into the sciences and biotech here.
Anyway, so currently I'm rotating with someone who's apparently famous in the world of virology. But as a fly person, I'm more excited about my next rotation. It's with the guy who invented the piggyBac!!! How insane and fitting is that (my eye screen utilized PBac deletions)?? My only problem is that everyone knows that he'll be up for a Nobel nomination in the future (and if Andy got it, they damn well better give it to Tian), and so his attitude is kind of, well I've already developed something important, so let's sit back and do random exploratory things. Still excited about it, though.
God, I should end this now, because this is so random. That's my story. I'm basically living a huge contradiction. I'm very happy here, but wonder about what life would be like at another school. I'm still depressed about Duke, and about the whole HIV thing. Oh, and I had to euthanize Rain before I came to New Haven, so I'm sad about that. I'll never look at clove oil the same way again. But I'm happy with my dorm and with the food here. I like the science. So . . . yeah . . . make what you want of that.
Very strange to be writing in this again. It's a nice chance to reflect and sort my thoughts out, though.
Okay, this is going to be a long post. I bet this entire thing is going to get deleted when I click 'post.' Just my luck. Well, okay, to do this thing properly, we're going to go back to junior year. ::cue flashback music:: Wait, no, for this to make more sense, we've got to go back to sophomore year. ::cue wavy vision and music::
Alright, so sophomore year I thought I was going to med school, right? But I won a fellowship to check out Stanford for a week, so I did that. And I LOVED Stanford. I felt right at home. My dad did his Ph.D in California, it's where Jean-Pierre was born, and I grew up hearing all these stories about San Francisco. Stanford starts with an S, like my name, and it's mascot is a tree, just like my elementary school mascot (Whispering Pines Elementary). So everything just seemed right.
By junior year I went to Stanford again on their diversity fellowship. By that time, I hated hospitals so much that there was no way in hell I was going to med school. I was having fun working as a tech and researching, plus I had a great time hanging out in Greg's lab at Stanford. The funny thing about Greg is that just a few days ago on MSN they had an article about Stanford researchers discovering a gene for dog coat color, and I was like, man, that has to be Greg's lab! The thing is, going to Stanford the second time around, it was JUST like being in Miami. I would have never known that I wasn't in Miami during the drive from SF airport to Palo Alto, plus the Spanish style buildings and everything . . . bleugh. Keep in mind that at this point, there was no way no how I was going to be a grad student.
So the summer after junior year at the Leadership Alliance conference in Virginia. This is the site of that massive, insane party with all of the Puerto Ricans that apparently is going to go down in history, since I keep meeting people from the party everywhere. Let me tell you, it is AWKWARD attempting a professional relationship with people you've seen dressed only in a tie and doing things involving ice and a bathtub. Ahem. Anyway, at this conference, a lot of graduate programs were giving out free application vouchers, so I snagged some. Plus at Dartmouth they made everyone take a Kaplan GRE course and take the GREs, even the people who were obviously just taking the MCATS to go to med school.
Can you see where this is going? :)
Senior year. Everyone's bugging me about what I'm going to do, and I didn't know or care. The only thing that I wanted to do at that point was to get the hell out of Duke, because my entire time there I just had this crushing feeling that this institution ruined my life. I still have that feeling, but being away from Duke has helped. Don't get me wrong, I had an awesome time at Duke. I just don't want to have anything to do with it ever again. Errr.
Annnnyhoo. My PI starts bugging me, Meck starts bugging me and I'm like, fine. I've got vouchers. I've got GRE scores. I've got subject test scores. I've got publications. Let me spend five fucking minutes of my life writing a personal statement and apply to grad programs so people leave me alone. Keep in mind that I STILL don't actually want to go to graduate school. Plus, I can't actually go to interviews, since I'm tied up with appointments on weekends.
Imagine my surprise when I get in everywhere. I had explained to everyone that I couldn't go to interviews. Everyone was okay with that except Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, and UPenn. I said, fuck Dartmouth, since Hanover's in the middle of nowhere and I didn't have much desire to go there again. My mom always said that Philly is full of radiation (yeah, my mom says a lot of random things), so I screwed them, too. I went to the Princeton and Harvard interviews because I'd always wanted to see if that area was the hellhole it was portrayed as on tv and I wanted free food. Princeton was gorgeous, but had a tiny, TINY molecular biology department and a habit of failing everyone for their quals. PLUS, apparently Duke was modeled after Princeton (architechturally - God, is that even a word??), and I didn't want a reminder of Duke. But, I totally could have lived in the chapel if I wanted to - there it was graduate housing. :) Everyone was mean at Harvard and hated everyone else. Plus it was uglier than I thought it would be. I think everyone there just lives in fear of being scooped. So after that, I was like, this is great, thanks for the food, bye bye!
At this point I'm a bit more serious about grad school, but still not entirely serious about it. I turned everywhere down except Stanford and Yale, put it on the backburner and kept looking for jobs. NO ONE wants to hire me, but apparently I did get one fellowship at Corning.
God, this is going to be a long post.
Anyway, so Corning. So, um, you know how I don't take my cell phone anywhere? There's no point, it's not like anyone ever calls me. Except apparently Corning kept calling me. And I have no voicemail box. Yeah. Then apparently they started calling my mom. And you KNOW she wouldn't pass along that message. So yeah, I got booted. You'd think I'd be really bitter about that, especially after how my summer went, but I was just amused by that. Go figure. I just really didn't care about much at that point in time as I was just as inclined to drive my car off a cliff as I was to start working.
Anyway, I figured I should accept one grad school offer just in case, because I knew that I could just turn it down later. Then I start asking EVERYONE about their opinions on Stanford versus Yale. Jesus, that was a disaster. In retrospect, I wish I had asked more people, but you know, had I asked any more people, I could've done statistical analysis on it and published it. It was ridiculous. My sample size was about 35 people. Half said that Yale and Stanford were equal. Half said Stanford was better. What's interesting is the source analysis. Every single PI (n=12) said that Yale and Stanford were equal. We're talking about Duke, Yale, Dartmouth and Stanford PIs. I was even told by Dave to NOT go to Stanford because it was a postdoc environment. Every Duke graduate student and Yale graduate student said that Yale was BETTER than Stanford. I didn't ask any Stanford graduate students, but in terms of intelligence, publications and the schools they came from, they definitely seemed equal to me. But every Duke undergrad, myself included, thought that Stanford was somehow better. And you know, I have no idea where we got this impression from. I think I got mine from the Princeton Review rankings, plus the popular media always talked about research from Stanford. I specifically asked PIs about this point, going as far as to say that I had the impression that Yale sucked. But nope, they all thought that they were equal.
And God, I even threw in Duke vs Stanford vs Yale for fun, and had I not just turned down Duke I would be even more screwed because EVERYONE had a completely different opinion on that. Opinions ranged from Duke=Stanford>Yale to Yale>Stanford>Duke to Yale>Stanford=Duke. It was insanity. For the love of God, if anyone wants to comment on this piece of shite post, PLEASE do NOT give me your opinion on this matter or I will go nuts. I'm forcing myself to stop thinking about it.
Okay, so at this point, I'm still thinking that I don't want to be a graduate student. I love science, but I can't take the science crisis that this country is in right now, the stress, the time investment. I'm still looking for jobs. To be clear here, at this point I've turned everywhere down except for Stanford and Yale. I'm freaking out about not finding a job, and apparently everyone was freaking out about which college I was going to. I'm like fuck it, let's sign up for Stanford. I sign up for a Stanford e-mail account in order to be able to log in and accept admission. While I'm doing this, I'm thinking about the Stanford and Yale sweatshirts. I think about which one I can see myself in. I hate red, so I can't see myself in the Stanford t-shirt. I'm thinking, Duke blue, Yale blue. Four letters. Fuck. This is literally my sad, sad thought process. I decline Stanford.
Yes, yes, craziness, I know.
So I'm still looking for a job after that. I'm still thinking, I ain't goin' to no goddamn grad school. But during that time, Yale folks are calling me, I'm chatting with Yale students online, and everyone's really, INSANELY nice. Suspiciously nice, I thought.
So then what do I do?
I turn Yale down.
What does Yale do?
They reject my rejection and tell me to think about it for a few more weeks. I'm assuming this is because I've sort of explained my decision process to them. Yeah, I'm sure they were like, wtf??!
Anyway, so it's summer now and I'm looking for a job. I drive around the place applying to Burger Kings, Wendy's, McDonalds, JcPenneys, Sears, Old Navy . . . you get the picture. No one wants me. JCPenney's rejection especially hurt, because I LOVE JCPenney. Fortunately, I saw this coming and saved up enough money that the summer actually wasn't too bad. Minus this one incident that I don't really want to go in detail about. Well . . . bottom line is that I need to get an HIV test. I was really freaked out about it in the summer, but now I'm kinda like, meh. It wasn't a sexually transmitted thing, because God knows I'm NEVER going to get laid. It's more of a weapon transmitted thing. And yeah, I know, good luck explaining that to the HIV testing folk. I actually had an appointment this week, and I was really nervous about it. But apparently because I didn't specifically ask them for STD testing when I made the appointment, they couldn't test me. So now I have to reschedule it, allowing me more time to cop out of it. I think I'm just going to tell them that it was sexually transmitted, because that really is the easiest explanation. Unless they figure out that I'm still a virgin, in which case I've got some 'splaining to do. I'm really nervous about it, but lately I've been more optimistic about it. I mean, you give an immunocomprimising disease to a person with hyperimmunity and you'd expect them to be cured, if anything, right? I don't know. I've really been trying to not think about it.
Annnyway. Whooo, side-tracked. Where was I? Oh yeah, so I can't find a job, I'm not lucid from that event. God, I'm amazed I survived that summer. Yeah, so that $30K is looking more and more appealing. And I'm like, I like science. I like eating. I like living in a building.
So yup, here I am. Upon arriving in New Haven, I was just like, holy shit. This city is a complete dump. I was sort of prepared, because I had heard stories about it. But, Jesus. I was already depressed, and coming here . . . it was a rough first two weeks, let me tell you. The amount of crime here is insane. It's usually grad students getting mugged, too. I think half of the grad students from last year's class have been mugged, and they claim it's only a matter of time before my car gets stolen. I am literally terrified when I get stuck outside past 6pm. And now darkness comes earlier, so I'm constantly living in fear. Yeah, I'm reminded about that story of the boy and his father stepping off the train in the 1800s, and the boy sees all the smoke and hears all of the noise from the station and says, "is this hell?" And the father says, "no, son, this is New Haven."
But, having said that . . . I am actually loving Yale. The buildings here are amazing. The dorm I live in is amazing. This is definitely far more of a Gothic Wonderland than Duke ever was. I hear the phrase "Harry Potter" thrown around a lot when people are decsribing Yale on tours. The people here are extremely nice. Science-wise, there is a ton of collaboration that definitely didn't happen at Harvard. Even at Stanford, there was less collaboration than at Yale. PIs go out of their way to help each other. My class is pretty close-knit, so I'm happy about that. I'm actually loving the science and the busyness as a rotation student, but I'm still uncomfortable about what's going to happen once I start working on a project for real, y'know?
Now that I am here, there's a lot of thinking in retrospect. I wish that I took grad school more seriously. I may have taken Harvard's offer more seriously. Plus, they gave an extra $1k for computer equipment, which would have been nice. Maybe I could've handled all of the snottiness and active screwing up of each other's projects. I don't know. I'm still a little bitter about turning Harvard down just because I didn't know how big of a deal it was. I'm a little unsure about Stanford. I bet I'll be thinking of Palo Alto when it gets REALLY cold here, but walking around downtown here, it just feels right. I don't think I would give up this feeling of . . . I don't know . . . metropolitanness? Europeanness? . . . for being back in the suburbs. I might have to revise that opinion when I get mugged for the first time.
But in terms of the science between Stanford and Yale, which was my big question to begin with . . . having had experience with both of them now, I am really going to have to say that the PIs are right. The science really is about the same (I'm talking genetics here, computational biology and genomics is a different story). In terms of characterizing important molecules that we've heard about in science class, Stanford and Yale really have done the same amount of work. I'd definitely agree with the criticism that Stanford has more Nobel laureates, though, and that Yale has focused more on the humanities than the sciences post-WWII. I think that latter point is changing here, though. They're definitely trying to pump more money into the sciences and biotech here.
Anyway, so currently I'm rotating with someone who's apparently famous in the world of virology. But as a fly person, I'm more excited about my next rotation. It's with the guy who invented the piggyBac!!! How insane and fitting is that (my eye screen utilized PBac deletions)?? My only problem is that everyone knows that he'll be up for a Nobel nomination in the future (and if Andy got it, they damn well better give it to Tian), and so his attitude is kind of, well I've already developed something important, so let's sit back and do random exploratory things. Still excited about it, though.
God, I should end this now, because this is so random. That's my story. I'm basically living a huge contradiction. I'm very happy here, but wonder about what life would be like at another school. I'm still depressed about Duke, and about the whole HIV thing. Oh, and I had to euthanize Rain before I came to New Haven, so I'm sad about that. I'll never look at clove oil the same way again. But I'm happy with my dorm and with the food here. I like the science. So . . . yeah . . . make what you want of that.