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