Passion

Ow. This week has been intense.

I'm "done" with classes, so I've spent actual 9-5 workdays in lab (except they're more like 9:25-6:15 workdays) this week, working like crazy on my rotation project. I had a meeting with my PI Wednesday morning and told her that my postdoc was "difficult to work with," which is the understatement of the year. She's awful and stupid and mean and lazy and she's only in lab from 11 am to 4:45 pm every day (which happened to be exactly when I had class), so I NEVER saw her, and I NEEDED her supervision (I actually went an entire WEEK without seeing her towards the beginning of my rotation). Anyway, my (completely awesome) PI went, "Wow, I wish you'd told me this sooner," and immediately rearranged things so I'm now working with the grad student I really like, and MAGICALLY, life is 1000x better. I'm also working harder and getting WAY more done, and I attribute this to a) my grad student helps me plan things out, and b) the Amanda/Taso effect, which is, in short, that if you like the person you're working for, you'll work harder (Amanda and Taso were the editors-in-chief of my high school yearbook when I was a sophomore, and I ADORED them, which led directly to me being e-in-c two years later). I've accomplished more this week than in the last three combined. It feels great. Stuff is actually working, too; my digests this afternoon showed seven colonies with correct inserts, and I'm hoping tomorrow to have plates with colonies carrying different inserts. Oh, that reminds me, I need to split cells tomorrow...

Anyway, enough lab talk.

I've also been thinking a ton about transferring. Or, rather, I spent a ton of energy trying to not think about transferring. Finally, I made myself think about why I was trying not to think about transferring, and why I hadn't written that email to UCSF yet, and I realized that I didn't want to write the email or think about it because there was a tiny chance they'd tell me I could go. I didn't want to hear, "We have a spot for this fall! You can waive this this and this class, and start as a first year, no problem!" And I didn't want to hear it because that would mean I'd have to go.
And I don't want to go.

Now, that was a very strange revelation, and when I thought it to myself, I asked, "Now, Kara. Are you SURE you don't want to go? Are you sure you're not just scared of going? Are you sure you're not just afraid of losing the good things you have here?" These, admittedly, are sort of difficult questions to answer. But I think I'm sure. I think that I like what I have here, and that if I maybe just give it a little more time, I'll settle in, and the tiny hooks Yale has put into me will take a bigger hold, and slowly I'll fall in love with this place just like I fall in love with everything (TV shows, stuffed animals, types of food, small rocks). And I really really do think that I'm on my way to being happy here. Sure, it might be nice to live in a place with decent weather. But it's warm here from April to October, and hey, that's six months. It rains for three months in California anyway. So that's only a net three months of good weather I'd gain, and three months times the next five years is still only just over a year, and I'm not sure that I could justify trading that year of good weather for the year I just spent here. I mean, I've put a lot of energy into feeling at home here, and learning good science, and becoming an adult, and making friends, and all that sort of whatnot. And I don't want to throw that year away; I've let go of too many things in the last year to let go of the year itself. So I'm not trading the last 9.5 months in for 15 months of sun. I'm just not. I'm staying. And I'm getting a roommate and a cat. And if I live in an apartment that can't have pets, I'll make Andrew adopt it for me and then I'll take it from him and I'll still have a cat. And that's final.

And now, for the first time in more than a year, I feel like a human being. A whole one. I am here by choice, I am here by strength. I am a competent, intelligent, beautiful young woman, and I got here on my own merits because I wanted to, not because I was supposed to due to some higher fate, and not because someone told me it was the "right" thing to do. I'm here because I like being here.

And yeah, turns out that does make all the difference.

I'm gonna go make jell-o shots now. 'Cause my birthday is in a week and I have to write a fake grant/term paper this weekend and by god, I am going to write at least one of my specific aims drunk. Simply because I've never done homework drunk before, and this might well be my last chance.