Back and Forth

So after catching up for the past week, I can look back at my brother's wedding and say that it was great. I have yet to see the happy couple, but looking past the work that looked insurmountable on Monday (and was pretty overwhelming until, oh, about 10 PM on Thursday), it was a great time, my brother's a great guy and his wife (whoa...) is an amazing person. They'll be fun to hang out with.

To say nothing of spending the time with R (she made it into family pics too, so now you know it's serious). She was great during the weekend, the family loved her, I love her, and Tuesday night we went out for awesome Chinese food in Great Neck. I haven't been to a good Chinese restaurant since Mi Tsu Yun was a decent restaurant and I was...13? Yes, that excludes Estihana. If you've been there, you'll know why. So if you're from Chicago and miss the good old days of Chicago Chinese food...if you happen to be in Long Island, stop by Cho-Sen Village. And if you give about thirty minutes warning, you'll have one happy couple who'd love to join you.

So, as is obligatory (right?), it's the night before Rosh Hashana and I'm supposed to be in fear of my life (according to some of my HS teachers) or I can think about the life I've lived and the life I'm hoping to make for myself in the next year (that's the Evanston psak). I think this year I'll try out the latter.

This past year was great in a lot of obvious ways (amazing girlfriend, finishing college, getting into an amazing grad school, good times with family and friend generally feeling like things are going great) and in a lot of subtle ways too. I think I've finally kicked my occasional video game addiction (I hope...) and became a happier person. I get along better with the fam and I'm almost (kinda sorta if you forget my student loans...hoo boy) financially solvent. That's saying a lot in a year like this.

I'm in an amazing place now. No, not spiritually. Well, maybe that too, but I meant literally too. CSHL is inspiring. Allow me to explain. If you've met me, you might know that every once in a while, I get bothered by things that are way out of my league (the economy, Sudan, Iraq, homeless people in Evanston in New York, etc., etc.). There's just one problem--that whole out of my league thing. There's precious little I can do, save from giving a homeless person a few bucks here or there. However, I have the good fortune of being a nerd. Not just a little bit of a nerd. A lot of nerd. Sometimes I scare myself. But I can use it.

Every week, in addition to lots of science classes, we have three of the lab's professors come in and tell us about their work. I'm sure it's not surprising that a lot of them have some rather dry interests like "DNA replication". Make no mistake, this stuff is very very important and years from now, it can change the face of the world we live in, but there are also people with other interests. Like cancer or mental disorders.

One of the good doctors who came in had a research project on the genetic causes of autism, schizophrenia and depression, among other things. One of my classmates asked him a technical question which he (PI) probably overreacted to. But when he responded, you could tell he wasn't just doing this because he's curious. He's seen the suffering people go through when they have these disorders or when their loved ones have suffered through them. This wasn't an academic exercise for him--this was personal.

I don't know what I'll be doing yet (stay tuned for updates in January....), but whatever it is that I do, I hope I come out like that guy. Because I'm no economics expert, I don't have the money or the organizational skills to do something about a lot of problems that we read about and see every day, and I'm no politician or activist. But I can be a good scientist I think, so I'm gonna work with that for now. I just need to make sure I don't lose sight of the people I want to help (if I can be pretentious enough in this post to think that I'll help--we'll see).

Shana Tova (Happy New Year)

-Mitch

I'm Going to Elope

Not seriously, but I entertained the idea more than once this weekend.

My brother got married this weekend to a lovely girl (Mazel Tov to the new couple :-) ) and the weekend was actually very very good. R was with me the whole time, I attempted to read papers for school, but upon finding out my workload was going to be significantly lighter than I thought it would be this week (Yay!!!), I promptly abandoned them in favor of sleep, and J got married.

Shabbos was nice too, (time spent with R + good food) x my extended family liking her = better than I expected the weekend to go. To be clear, I knew the fam would like R, but the food was a pleasant surprise.

The newlyweds look thrilled. And they can hold hands!!!! In our spare moments, R & I joked that that was the express purpose of the entire weekend--okay, half-joked.

There was one slight problem. We flew early. Early is murder. On the plus side, I have actually identified THE ungodly hour. It's 5 AM. Don't believe me? YOU try waking up then and see how you like it. Friday's flight in was a 6:30 AM flight, so naturally I didn't finish with class until about 10 PM, got annoyed with a fellow classmate and decided to head to the bar for a Duvel to calm me down. I stepped back into the house at around 10:45 PM, only to start laundry, finish laundry, pack, shower, look up and see that I have to leave for the airport in 15 minutes.

Today was better. Today I got to go to sleep at 2 AM and then wake up at 5 AM. I set three alarms and only woke up after R knocked on my door at 5:15 AM. She's clearly better than me, but at least she's patient enough to help me out.

So I'm eloping because it seems easier than asking some poor schmo and his patient and loving girlfriend (I assume there's someone like us at any wedding) to get up at ungodly hours to come and watch us hold hands. If you've seen us already, then it won't be anything new anyway.

I wonder if there's a Jewish synagogue in the Galapagos....

Power Nerds Anonymous

As I found out over the weekend and most especially over the last two days, it turns out grad school does actually involve class, homework, reading and papers. Sigh.

I finally realized I was in for a ride today at about 2:45, when I was in an academic mentorship meeting (we're supposed to pick faculty who can help us with the non-research side of grad school) with Dr. C. Dr. C is a great guy and we had a great conversation, but he's also one of the faculty who helped develop the grad school curriculum. I wish I could quote him verbatim, but what he said was something along the lines of, "We carefully titrate the amount of work you have so that while it doesn't drain your soul, if you're not careful, it can take almost every spare minute you have." (Yes he said titrate. And he's now my top choice for my mentor.)

I had a feeling this might happen.

Luckily, I have one excellent reason to stay disciplined and keep working hard, and that's R. She comes to New York Sunday and I'll be damned if the first time I see her in 3 weeks will involve me reading (or honestly, re-reading) a paper, writing a presentation or finishing a problem set.

About the same time I realized that I somehow managed to be able to study or be in class for about 10 hours yesterday and perhaps 7 or 8 today.

All biology, all the time baby. That's how we roll.