I feel compelled to let you in...
The real entry, as promised.
I'll just tell you the important things, those that if you see me regularly in person I might bring up, and the things that changed me the most., closing with a bit about where I'm headed now.
My internship this summer was absolutely phenomenal. Though I try I really don't have the vocabulary to adequately describe what happened and what it all meant to me. The women in my lab (Natura, Lisette, and Maria Jose) were all very fun to be around, offered more than occasional moments of great mentorship (particularly Lisette), and taught me so much about what it means to be a woman scientist in neurobiology. I can't WAIT to see them all at the Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this November. My mentor/boss Dr. Pereira was a very interesting woman, her heart is in all the right places when it comes to her students. Sometimes our styles didn't match, and things got reallllly sticky and incredibly awkward (obnoxious story, if you ask very very politely I will tell it to you) for two days at the end, but otherwise she really liked my work and thought I did a great job. The plan is to ask her for a letter of recommendation at Neuroscience, and keep channels of communication open with her until, and hopefully long after, then.
I guess the next relevant "topic" would be the friends I made while in the city. How fortunate I was to have lived in the International House. The building is graduate student housing, mainly for internationals, during the academic year, but allows interns from all over to stay during the summer. Rachael, another SPUR student, and I clicked my first day in town and saw each other almost every day this summer. She's a blast, very fierce, and we both made it our undeclared job to remind each other of what we can achieve (granted, this usually pertained to men, but the lessons were still invaluable!!). My other close friends this summer were all made through the I-House, and I sincerely hope to keep in touch with Julia, Hannah, Erin, and Neha. Men passed through our party, and I was reminded once to keep "bros before hos", but its these girls I'm really going to be missing. Thank heavens for facebook, really, it does make keeping such friendships much more feasible.
Up next, what did I get up to while I was there with my posse? Well, I didn't see as much of the usual tourist attractions as I was expecting to, didn't get to the MoMA or any of the new Broadway shows...I did however discover many restaurants that I love, explored huge portions of Manhattan, and did many of the things more relegated to New York life rather than extended vacations. I took trips to Jones Beach (out on Long Island), Woodstock, Hyde Park, Rhinebeck (smaller towns north of NYC), and Stamford, CT. I shopped like a mad woman, and I am so excited to get dressed for the first day of class. Its a formal meeting day for Kappa Delta, so I've got to be in pin attire!!! Yay! I was told that I dress like a New Yorker, and I must say that my heart soared a little on hearing that compliment. I was also told that I navigate the subways quite well, and I must say that the only times I got lost were due to hopping the wrong train (uptown v. downtown). I managed to get myself out of Brooklyn, Queens, and Harlem when I ended up their by accident, thanks mostly to my Not For Tourists book. (Probably one of the best birthday presents I've ever received, thank you Mom) Some of my favorite really touristy things were the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum, the National History Museum, and Coney Island. Of the non-touristy things I must say I loved the gay pride parade, shopping in Chelsea and around Union Square, the Bryant Park Film Festival, and Bistro 1018 for their cheap and very tasty drinks.
And I guess the last thing that I should touch on before I wrap up this entry is Marlon. He's a student of the professor across the hall from my mentor, and he's been her lab technician in the past, so he was often around our lab hanging out with the graduate students and myself. One day I plucked up the nerve to ask him about his research, and so things began down a bumpy and occasionally silly path towards something that deserves its own paragraph in this description of my summer. Our conversations tended to be 10-14 hours long when they got started, and they ended with him escorting me all the way up to my building, though it added about an hour to his commute home. Around the middle of the summer I developed a serious crush on the guy, and it wasn't until Tuesday evening (when I was being a near no-show for dinner with my friends) that we manged to get out enough of our real feelings for him to ask, "So what would you do if you had 36 hours to date someone?" And so began the best part of one of the highlights of my trip, Wednesday afternoon we our first actual date (not counting the hours and hours we'd spend together previously), a picnic on Roosevelt Island. Details will be kept for real conversations if you care to hear them, and if you ask I won't be embarrassed to gush. Right now the two of us are, for lack of a better description, in between date one and date two. Date two will be our first night at the Neuroscience convention, three months and a day from date one. In the meantime, well...last night I was up talking with him from 1:30am until 5:30 or so....You can't predict how you're going to feel about a person months in advance, but if come November we're just two people having dinner together, we'll know. Personally, and this is LJ so I think I can say this hear, unless one of us meets someone geographically closer who sweeps us off of our feet, I see no reason why the spark (that word seems too small almost) should have died in three months. The next question is, what will we do after that?!
So that's my summer in a nutshell, I won't even call it a Brazil nut. If any of this prompts you to ask my questions about the trip, please do!!! I feel awkward talking people's ear off about it, it reminds me of those comercials where you see a captive audience being subjected to a slide show of an anniversary trip to Hawaii. Yuck!
Up next, an entry about what I'll be up to until August 20th!!
I'll just tell you the important things, those that if you see me regularly in person I might bring up, and the things that changed me the most., closing with a bit about where I'm headed now.
My internship this summer was absolutely phenomenal. Though I try I really don't have the vocabulary to adequately describe what happened and what it all meant to me. The women in my lab (Natura, Lisette, and Maria Jose) were all very fun to be around, offered more than occasional moments of great mentorship (particularly Lisette), and taught me so much about what it means to be a woman scientist in neurobiology. I can't WAIT to see them all at the Neuroscience meeting in San Diego this November. My mentor/boss Dr. Pereira was a very interesting woman, her heart is in all the right places when it comes to her students. Sometimes our styles didn't match, and things got reallllly sticky and incredibly awkward (obnoxious story, if you ask very very politely I will tell it to you) for two days at the end, but otherwise she really liked my work and thought I did a great job. The plan is to ask her for a letter of recommendation at Neuroscience, and keep channels of communication open with her until, and hopefully long after, then.
I guess the next relevant "topic" would be the friends I made while in the city. How fortunate I was to have lived in the International House. The building is graduate student housing, mainly for internationals, during the academic year, but allows interns from all over to stay during the summer. Rachael, another SPUR student, and I clicked my first day in town and saw each other almost every day this summer. She's a blast, very fierce, and we both made it our undeclared job to remind each other of what we can achieve (granted, this usually pertained to men, but the lessons were still invaluable!!). My other close friends this summer were all made through the I-House, and I sincerely hope to keep in touch with Julia, Hannah, Erin, and Neha. Men passed through our party, and I was reminded once to keep "bros before hos", but its these girls I'm really going to be missing. Thank heavens for facebook, really, it does make keeping such friendships much more feasible.
Up next, what did I get up to while I was there with my posse? Well, I didn't see as much of the usual tourist attractions as I was expecting to, didn't get to the MoMA or any of the new Broadway shows...I did however discover many restaurants that I love, explored huge portions of Manhattan, and did many of the things more relegated to New York life rather than extended vacations. I took trips to Jones Beach (out on Long Island), Woodstock, Hyde Park, Rhinebeck (smaller towns north of NYC), and Stamford, CT. I shopped like a mad woman, and I am so excited to get dressed for the first day of class. Its a formal meeting day for Kappa Delta, so I've got to be in pin attire!!! Yay! I was told that I dress like a New Yorker, and I must say that my heart soared a little on hearing that compliment. I was also told that I navigate the subways quite well, and I must say that the only times I got lost were due to hopping the wrong train (uptown v. downtown). I managed to get myself out of Brooklyn, Queens, and Harlem when I ended up their by accident, thanks mostly to my Not For Tourists book. (Probably one of the best birthday presents I've ever received, thank you Mom) Some of my favorite really touristy things were the Frick Collection, the Metropolitan Museum, the National History Museum, and Coney Island. Of the non-touristy things I must say I loved the gay pride parade, shopping in Chelsea and around Union Square, the Bryant Park Film Festival, and Bistro 1018 for their cheap and very tasty drinks.
And I guess the last thing that I should touch on before I wrap up this entry is Marlon. He's a student of the professor across the hall from my mentor, and he's been her lab technician in the past, so he was often around our lab hanging out with the graduate students and myself. One day I plucked up the nerve to ask him about his research, and so things began down a bumpy and occasionally silly path towards something that deserves its own paragraph in this description of my summer. Our conversations tended to be 10-14 hours long when they got started, and they ended with him escorting me all the way up to my building, though it added about an hour to his commute home. Around the middle of the summer I developed a serious crush on the guy, and it wasn't until Tuesday evening (when I was being a near no-show for dinner with my friends) that we manged to get out enough of our real feelings for him to ask, "So what would you do if you had 36 hours to date someone?" And so began the best part of one of the highlights of my trip, Wednesday afternoon we our first actual date (not counting the hours and hours we'd spend together previously), a picnic on Roosevelt Island. Details will be kept for real conversations if you care to hear them, and if you ask I won't be embarrassed to gush. Right now the two of us are, for lack of a better description, in between date one and date two. Date two will be our first night at the Neuroscience convention, three months and a day from date one. In the meantime, well...last night I was up talking with him from 1:30am until 5:30 or so....You can't predict how you're going to feel about a person months in advance, but if come November we're just two people having dinner together, we'll know. Personally, and this is LJ so I think I can say this hear, unless one of us meets someone geographically closer who sweeps us off of our feet, I see no reason why the spark (that word seems too small almost) should have died in three months. The next question is, what will we do after that?!
So that's my summer in a nutshell, I won't even call it a Brazil nut. If any of this prompts you to ask my questions about the trip, please do!!! I feel awkward talking people's ear off about it, it reminds me of those comercials where you see a captive audience being subjected to a slide show of an anniversary trip to Hawaii. Yuck!
Up next, an entry about what I'll be up to until August 20th!!