Thoughts on the future

Grad school has been a really enriching experience for me. I feel that I've gained a lot of maturity both in the things that I've succeeded in as well as the lessons learned from unsuccessful attempts. Thoughts on the future always flood my mind at the times when I'm the most busy in the lab it seems. As I chug through a day of scrubbing fish tanks and rinsing samples for in situs, I also ponder about what comes after my grind in the lab.

I've been asked a lot about what I want to do after graduation. I always have a few ideas of new fields that are appealing to me-consulting, risk assessment in government, non-profits-but I still have a long way to go (and a lot of experiments that I need to get working) and I'm sure my perspective as to what life choice will be the best fit for me will change as much in these next two years as it has in the past two.

I often like to think that I've got everything planned and figured out for myself. But to be honest, I really don't. I plan and I think but it seems like generally what happens is I do something, it ends up not going 100% the way I planned, and I adjust accordingly. So while grad school may not be going 100% according to plan (mostly since the reason for going to graduate school was to become an academic, which is not going to happen...) I'm doing my best to go with the flow of the next two years with the confidence that the connections I make will eventually lead me to the best option available.

2 more weeks of my experiment left, need to get to work doing lab stuff as well. Here's to chug chug chugging along until Christmas holiday!