So.. What do you do??

First semester of grad school completed. I am taking a much deserved winter break and I am determined to relax and spend time with friends and family.. with no work. This is really hard for me because I like to take care of things while they are on my mind. I taught a class this past semester (which I loved. Very time consuming, but I taught a section in my favorite subject—animal behavior) and during break I received some emails from my students—mostly about grades and their final. I was told that I was under no obligation to answer emails right away during break, but I couldn’t help myself. I have to take care of things while they are fresh for fear I will forget to address these things later.

But anyway, I have been mostly sticking to my goal. I have seen a lot of relatives and extended family during the holidays and one question that seems to come up a lot is “So, what do you do?”. 

I get that everybody gets asked this, but most people can get away with quick one liners: I am a dentist. I am a firefighter. I am a teacher. I am something-that-everybody-already-has-a-concrete-notion-of-what-I do-on-a-daily-basis. Not scientists though. We have a much harder task when asked this question.

I am sure my fellow grad students can relate to me here; this is a tricky question to answer for a few reasons:

1.    How do I make my work not sound too specific that it sounds insignificant?

One of the first times I thought about how to answer “So, what do you do” happened to me while on a plane. I was wearing a Yale sweater. Next to me was an elderly man, whom I could only determine from his accent, was perhaps from New York.

He pointed to my sweater and asked in an accusatory tone as if to call me out on wearing a collegiate sweater to a school that I didn’t attend, “Do you go there?”

Or, maybe he was genuinely curious and it was just his manner that made it sound that way. I explained that I am in grad school—the ecology and evolutionary biology PhD program.

He then asked, “So, what do you do?” to which I replied “I study fish cooperation.”

He laughed.. no.. scoffed. “Why on earth would anyone care about that? Dear God, I hope that you aren’t getting any money from tax dollars to do that.”

Okay, my science is like my baby. I just stared at him, baffled at how openly rude this man was. I thought about defending my research to him, I didn’t think he cared to hear it, and I didn’t want to waste my efforts. At the time I wrote him off as an arrogant, grumpy, old man.

People not involved in science tend to think that science is some mystery potion making, daily-experiment running thing that will result in some huge discovery at the end. Science is much slower than that. Most of the time, I won’t be running experiments. Maybe a few times a year at most, and not during my first year of grad school. Also science is thorough. Being thorough requires many people to study very small pieces of the puzzle at seemingly slow rates. The pressure to do big, fast science just results in people making up data or sacrificing thoroughness to increase their output rates. Smaller scale science is worth something. I feel that most people, non-academics in particular, don’t always see it.

Looking back, I should have actually thanked him.. He taught me the first lesson I needed to know in how to answer “What do you do?”. Actually, I kind of knew this from writing manuscripts but never thought about applying it to a conversation with a complete stranger: start broad and interesting, then (if conversation permits) work your way into specifics.. this gives people the big picture at least, and makes it more relevant. Although his approach was harsh, it is a reality that scientists face. I am sure I will face similar criticism throughout my career. I know my science means something. I have to appeal to a broad audience and demonstrate why our science is worth funding. I took his harsh words as a lesson to think about how to better answer that question next time (and there were many next times).

2.    How do I determine how much someone cares to know?

I love what I do. I have to remind myself that not everyone shares this love.  I feel that testing the waters with a hierarchy of answers to gauge listener interest is a learned skill—one that I have gotten better at doing throughout holiday, family gatherings. Among these, one of my answers is “I am interested in marine biology”. This answer is reserved for non-scientists. It has some buzz to it. Marine biology— I like the way this sounds. I like for people to think I do something really cool. You know, focus on the glamour of what I do rather than the nitty-gritty. SCUBA dive in the Mediterranean.. field work in France.. But “marine biology” is such a broad term.. this could mean anything from ocean chemistry to counting sardines.

The next answer: “I am interested in the evolution of cooperation, and I use fish as a model system”. I feel like this is more accurate, however, it is far more dry to the average person. This answer is for people who ask beyond my “marine biology” answer, or my typical answer for scientists that may or may not be in my field. I may go into more detail, again depending on their reaction.. and my next reason for why answering this question is tricky:

3.    How much energy do I have to explain what I do?

Like I said, I love what I do, and it is my goal when explaining what I do to get other people to love it too. I feel like there is this pressure to prove that this is what I love by being animated and excited about what I do every time I talk about it. But I am human. I get tired of saying the same things over and over again to a lot of different people within a short amount of time. I have a limited amount of mental energy and explaining biology basics to people with little to no scientific background and sometimes to those that question the core principles of evolution is enough to send me into a mentally-drained, much-less-merry state of Stacyness. Or sometimes during winter break I want just that, a break from thinking about what I work on and focus on presents and board games and movies and food.. Especially food.

4.    It is my first semester of grad school.. what am I doing?

To be honest, I am still figuring that out. What am I doing? Right now I am learning how to do science. I learned mathematical modeling this semester and how to model social evolution. I learned how to use Mathematica (just basics..) and I made a 3D manipulation plot of a model that I made.. this is my greatest accomplishment so far. Though, I am not sure how good it actually is. But this model doesn’t really have anything to do with cooperation; it is about alternative reproductive tactics (super interesting, my advisor wrote a really great paper on this topic. I will include a link below if you want to learn all about it!) and maybe I will do that for my research, maybe I will do this and studying the evolution of cooperation. But I am still figuring it out. I am told that this is normal for a first year.. Hopefully I will have a more concrete answer not only for relatives at once a year get-togethers, but for myself as well.

If you are wondering what I do, here is what I have so far, though, this may change as I learn more, refine my interests, etc. (taken from my graduate student bio):

“I am fascinated with cooperation. Cooperation occurs in a multitude of situations from human romantic relationships, professional relationships, academia, and even in non-human, animal social groups. Why individuals cooperate and how individuals choose whom to cooperate with are questions that drive my current studies in graduate school. Particularly, I am interested in the cooperation that occurs when cost is immediate, but future benefits are uncertain. As a theorist and empiricist, I will tackle these questions using mathematical modeling, and test those models experimentally. Because cooperative groups occur in several species of fish, and fish are easily manipulated in the field and in laboratory studies, I will use freshwater and/or marine fish as model organisms to examine cooperation.”

But then as if “So, what are you doing?” didn’t cause enough anxiety, it is most certainly followed by, “So, what are you going to do after you graduate”. But that is another topic for a later time.

http://alonzolab.yale.edu/sites/default/files/alonzo_and_warner_behav_ecol_1999.pdf (male alternative reproductive tactics paper written by my adviser)

BEST DAY EVER.

So a few weeks ago I had this awesome dream that David Attenborough (my childhood/adulthood idol) came to the US to give a talk and that I was in the audience. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sir David (yes, he was knighted by the Queen for being so awesome) he is like THE man in all of the BBC nature and wildlife productions. He is the guy who did the Planet Earth narration and Life of series and basically the reason I decided to pursue animal behavior research as a career path.

David is the man

David Otterborough

Such a badass

Anyway, in the dream, after the talk he was walking past me and I thought to myself “This is crazy.. this is DAVID FREAKING ATTENBOROUGH.. I know you are excited and terrified but if you don’t go up to him right now, you will lose your chance to ever meet him”. So heart thumping and hands shaking I approached him and asked to have a photograph with him. He was SO NICE about it and said yes! It was the single most amazing moment of my life.. and then I woke up.. And it became the single most depressing moment in my life.. first world problems..

I then thought to myself, I have to make this happen. He is 87 years old now, and not to be morbid or anything, but my time to make this happen is fleeting. So I googled him to find out if he would be in North America anytime soon, but was unsuccessful.. but then, I found an address for him and thought “If I can’t meet him, I must write him a letter”. In the letter I told him he should come to Yale to give a talk. I wanted that letter to stand out.. so I also drew him a picture of the blue faced snub nosed monkey (which I remember he once said that is the one animal he has not seen but wants to see). So I put together my drawing, my letter, and a photo of me holding  a basilisk (the lizard, not the Harry Potter giant snake.. although that would have been way better..) and sent it off to him. I was hopeful he would write me back, but I thought it unlikely.

The contents of the letter moments before I mailed it

But then, today, I got a letter in the mail. It had no return address, so I had no idea who it was from. And it had been a few weeks since I sent off the letter to David Attenborough, so it wasn’t on the top of my mind. I opened it and as I read over the address on the letter (Surrey) and then down to the scrawled signature on the bottom (his greatness’) sudden realization passed over me. I started screaming. And jumping. And I am pretty sure my neighbors thought I was crazy. But I couldn’t believe that THE David Attenborough addressed me personally and wrote me back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And although he politely said he was a bit too busy with his productions at the moment to come to Yale, I was ecstatic to say the least.

If you want to write David a letter, this is his mailing address:

David Attenborough

David Attenborough Productions, Ltd.
5 Park Road
Richmond
Surrey, TW10 6NS
UK

So if that wasn’t enough awesome for one day, my friend Molly and I went to see A Streetcar Named Desire at the Yale Repertory Theater and met JOE MANGANIELLO!!! 

Joe (center right) in Magic Mike

Joe as a werewolf in true blood. 

ahWOOOOooo! 

He was soooo niiiice! And surprisingly sheepish! I was the first of the horde of ladies waiting to meet him after the show (in which he played Stanley). As he approached, I tried to swallow my nervousness and stuck out my hand and said “Hi, Joe! My name is Stacy” and he responded with a soft but sincere smile and said “Hi, Stacy. It is nice to meet you.” AAAAAGGGHH I nearly died. And then I asked if I could have a picture with him and he said yes :D so I tried not to freak out too much when I felt his hand on my shoulder.

 Okay.. this Saturday definitely had its fair share of star-struckness to last me a life time.. Although I would love to just replay today over and over again in my head, I have so much work to do.. SAD FACE.. But, today’s series of events will soften the blow of spending a beautiful Saturday night indoors grading things for the class I TF and studying for a phylogenetics exam..

I made it to Yale.. now what?

Busy never felt like this before. I feel like there is normal busy.. and then there is grad student busy.. and then there is grad student with child busy.. but thankfully I am not that busy. I don’t know how they do it..

During the first few weeks I found myself sitting in my lab space like “I made it to Yale.. now what?” Before grad school, I thought I would begin doing science right away when actually, I am just reading.. so hopefully, I am doing this research thing right. But these past couple weeks, shit got real. My schedule is so full. Not only do I have to learn things in grad classes, I have to teach things, and then go to seminars, and meetings. This leaves little gaps of 20 minutes to an hour in between to do research.. That being said, grad school has been a great learning experience in time management.

So in addition to time management, here are some other things I have learned from grad school so far:

1. No need to buy pricey probiotics from the drug store; you can drink your own fecal sample!

I know... who suggests stuff like that?? This was a real-life conversation that happened to me. In the café of the library on science hill, I learned from a girl (who was being completely serious) how to help my stomach gain back its normal flora by using simple, every-day practices in the lab. First you bring in a fecal sample to the lab and then you place that fecal sample in a centrifuge. Spin it until the globby parts are separated from the fluid parts, decant, and drink”, she made a motion as if she was taking a shot, “It is so simple and inexpensive. It can be done right in the lab!” I thought this was a joke. I laughed. She stared. It was awkward. Then I wondered how she knew this. Oh god. Bad mental image.

2. Some people actually think the library is a good place to bring babies.

To all the grad student parents out there: I know we have a tight budget with our grad student stipends, and if you have a child, it is probably even tighter. But if you can’t afford a babysitter so you can study in the library, maybe you should stay home and study. There is no children’s book section in the science hill library. And there is a lack of carpet to absorb noises in the section with the comfy couches. The library is a quiet place. And I know you think your baby's coos and shrieks of happiness are bringing everybody in the library joy, but truthfully, my biology is set up to become alert and respond to baby noises. I cannot focus on learning Fisher’s fundamental theorem with all those high pitch screeches reverberating around the library.

3. Just because it is Yale, doesn't mean that all the undergrads make good choices.

Trust me, one of my good friend lives right next to a frat house.. I am often at her place when the shenanigans happen. One time we were in the kitchen of her second story apartment and we looked out the window and saw a bunch of mostly naked drunk guys covered in mud tossing a ball on a trampoline.. hmmm

4.  (This one is more serious) it is okay to ask questions.

People say there is no such thing as a stupid question. But, sometimes it feels like questions are a good way to expose my professor and peers to my stupidity. What if the question I am about to ask was covered in the reading, but I glossed over it? Will the professor assume I didn't do the reading? And when I do get up the courage to ask a question and the professor explains it to me, should I nod even though it still doesn’t make sense, or should I fumble around with my words some more.. maybe I don’t even understand it well enough to ask a clear question. I have been forcing myself to ask questions though. I am getting more comfortable, but I still feel my cheeks get warm and my heart race when I go through this internal struggle. But then I am reminded when I am teaching my section, that I like it when students ask lots of questions. I never think that they are stupid even when they ask the most basic of questions. It actually makes me feel like they are interested. Like, they really want to learn the material. In fact, it is more frustrating to get a bunch of blank stares than to get a lot of questions. This is probably one of the more valuable things I have learned so far.

Anyways, although I feel quite busy, I still worked in some fun times this weekend. I went apple picking and then scuba diving in Cape Ann, Mass. I saw seals, lobsters, and ate a raw scallop right from the shell (which was quite delicious) just like an otter :D Speaking of otters, this week is sea otter awareness week!! Yaay! So be aware!

9 poor choices that I make on a (near) daily basis

Hello friends! This past weekend my mom and sister came to visit. It was wonderful to see them. I gave them a tour of campus, my lab, and went to the bookstore and stocked up on Yale goodies (my sister got a hoodie, my mom got my dad a t-shirt.. I am poor and got them key-chains as gifts, but those alone were 7 dollars each!). It was nice having them around and to show them I can do this whole adult thing. But then when they had to leave, I was reminded of how home sick I actually am. No matter how adult I feel, I still want my mommy. This is my first time living this far away from home (3,000 miles). And what is even harder is I don’t know if I will ever live close to home again. On the brighter side, only 3 months until winter break! I can’t wait!

Also while my mom and sister were here, we painted my living room! Yay! Here are some photos of my apartment.

The lovely mansion 

I love the new paint color in the living room so much. It was all white before. It didn’t feel that inviting. Now it is a wonderful place to relax. I just need to get furniture! And there is my sister in her new hoodie!

The boring dining room..

My favorite part of my apartment is the huge kitchen window.

So if I had to give myself a grade on how I am doing at being an adult, I would give myself a B+. For the most part, I feel like I have it down. I pay my bills on time. I clean regularly. But there are some areas that could use some improvement. After reading a buzzfeed article on decisions twentysomethings are bad at, I decided to make a list of my own.

Some examples of the decisions I have trouble with (#8 is the one I struggle with the most.. which is extra bad because is probably the most serious of them all..):

1. Go to bed on time, or watch back-to-back Psych episodes on Netflix until 3 am

2. Immediately address an email, or star it so I don’t forget about it and forget about it anyway

3. Work out at the gym, or work out why my bed is suddenly so comfortable

4. Make a home-made, healthy meal, or make ramen via the microwave and add frozen vegetables to the broth to trick myself into thinking that this is a healthy choice

5. Plan a budget, or spend a disproportionate amount of money on alcohol and clothes

6. Put laundry away right after it is done drying, or let it sit in the basket for a few hours and later try to get the wrinkles out using my hair-dryer.

7. Put my phone on the charger at night, or sleep in because my phone died and didn’t set off an alarm to wake me up.

8. Check that I have all of my belongings with me as I leave a restaurant, or suddenly become stricken with panic as I realize several minutes after I left, I don't have my purse/phone.

9. Eat breakfast at the kitchen table or opt for my comfy bed and then desperately try to wash orange juice out of my comforter with hand soap in my bathroom sink

Seriously! Why do I continue to do these things?? While my life would be infinitely easier if I didn't make these choices, in some ways it keeps it interesting.. like every time #8 happens (which is much more often than you might think) all the sudden my life becomes a scene from an Indiana Jones movie as I race back to the restaurant hopping over tables to save my precious phone from a person with malicious intentions about to snatch it up! Actually, I have never lost my phone or purse this way. Every time it is either still there or someone has turned it in to the hostess.. this restores my faith in humanity a little.

Okay, I am off to get ready with a friend for tonight's Yale speed dating event. Not for me of course. I am happily taken :). But a few of my friends are participating and a few that are not participating will also be going with (plus, it is two for one drinks night!). Apparently it sells out every year, so it should be a lot of fun! As a behavioral ecologist, I can't wait to people-watch this. 

Step aside, I'm a scientist

Hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend! For me, this weekend was full of beach going, paper reading, and more graduate student events/parties including 3 barbecues and one Ivy League douche party. I am not making the name of that last one up. That is literally what it was titled by the graduate student event coordinators. Basically you get all gussied up and fancy, then go to said douche party. A couple friends and I decided this would be really fun to go to because A) we never have an excuse to get fancy and B) the alcohol was super cheap. However, when we got there, we were directed to the stuffy, low ceilinged, pipe-covered basement of the HGS (hall of graduate studies) building.

I reasoned they chose this location despite the hoity-toity nature of the event because this room had air conditioning.. or, did have air conditioning. I found out when I tried to proximate myself as close to the air conditioning unit as possible that it was not working. We had just arrived and paid the 5 dollars for the never-ending refills and thought we should stay and at least get our money’s worth. But it was stiflingly hot. Like, I could taste the body odor in the room. So, I decided to try to fix the air conditioning unit. I pushed some buttons, probed around, and then was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around and a guy (I'd say 24), dressed in a suit was behind me. He said, “Is this unit broken?” I replied affirmatively to which he proceeded with a stern “Step aside, I’m a scientist”.

And with that he won the biggest douche at the douche party award. I told him "uh.. I'm a scientist too". And I realized that my particular brand of science had nothing to do with air conditioners. But neither did his. I asked. He said he was in biology. And how the hell did he know that I wasn’t a scientist? Or an engineer for that matter? When I told him I was a scientist, he realized how douchey and anti-women-in-science he sounded and stopped for a moment. I motioned as if to say “be my guest” and I watched as he followed the same progression of button pushing I did and he came to the conclusion that it could not be fixed.

Have to say I was sort of smugly pleased.. But it was still hot.. 

But besides that incident, my weekend was wonderful: friends, food, taboo.. and my classes this past week went well. Though, something that Yale does that is really strange is what is called a “shopping period” where students sign up for an insane number of classes and attend them sporadically until they find the ones they like during the first two weeks of school, and then drop the rest. This is a brilliant idea for students to get the feel for a course before committing, but I was really not used to it. I was in the middle of class, while the professor was lecturing and students just got up and walked out.. While the professor was talking. Like, mid-sentence. And sometimes in large groups (5ish students) and this was a small classroom of about 20-30 people.

Seriously?! How rude is that? I guess if they decide they don’t like it by the middle of lecture, they bolt.

 Additionally, this past week I settled into my lab space and got my own desk. My little haven of peace and quiet to read :). Also, I know in the case of a zombie apocalypse, my lab’s building doubles as a fall-out shelter. Check out this sign on the side of my lab's building. The shading makes it extra fall out sheltery.

The next highlight in my life is that I found out I get to TF (teaching fellow.. in verb form) an Animal Behavior course (my number one choice of class) this semester! I will lead a group of Yale undergrads in a discussion section starting this Friday. So much excitement!

P.S. if you can't tell, I just figured out how to add GIFs to my blog! Might have gotten a little GIF crazy..

A Haunting in Connecticut

I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in haunted houses. But I do enjoy scary movies (not gory ones, the ones with suspense). As a child, R.L. Stine was the man to me (seriously, I loved reading his books more than sleeping. I can probably blame my strained myopic eyes on him, because I would stay up all night reading his Fear Street and Goosebumps books, only a few inches from my face, next to my night light).  My love for suspense thrillers paired with my over-active imagination has me compulsively thinking of scenes from scary movies when I am doing things like closing my eyes in the shower, or closing a door with a mirror on it. I sometimes feel that when I open my eyes, or swing the door something terrifying is waiting to pop up. Obviously, that never happens, but it terrifies me anyway.

Ah, soo many memories..

So during my first night in my new apartment, I found out the many quirks of living in an old (but beautiful) Georgian mansion built in the beginning of the 20^th century. For example, the outlets are not three pronged, but two pronged. The bathroom has a total of zero outlets. There is no air-conditioning. The basement is where the laundry is, and you have to walk down a stone staircase into a dark, cold room not unlike how I imagine a catacomb would be. Despite these quirks, I love it. It is a large apartment with high ceilings, elegant details, and dark wood floors. It is pretty much the best apartment ever. But one quirk, which appeared my first night here, was particularly unsettling.

I had just turned out all the lights and settled into bed when all of the sudden the bathroom light flashed on. It is one of those pull string ones so it was extra creepy looking. The string was completely still and the bulb sent a menacing, yellow glow into my bedroom. Thank God my boyfriend was here helping me move in, because I would have just died. Sure, I always psych myself out and imagine scary things happening, but they aren’t supposed to actually happen. So after we went back and forth as to who should go turn it off, we decided to go together. As soon as my boyfriend’s foot touched the ground, however, the lights turned off leaving us in total darkness. So I thought, Great.. just.. perfect. I am living in a real-life haunted mansion. Which, considering a modest stipend and my inability to release myself from year-long contract living in this apartment, could complicate my grad experience.

This is the light:

But, it turns out the pull string wasn’t pulled enough to be “off” and after we fixed this, it has since not happened. So my apartment still remains to be the best apartment ever. Until one day when I swing my mirror covered door and see something behind me.. Okay, enough joking. It is starting to get dark.

There are some things that are scarier than my imaginary haunting though.. like, the reality of school starting tomorrow. I do not know where the summer went! But all the Yale Graduate School orientation events/tours I attended over the last week allowed me to adjust to the idea better. I had a tour of the gym the other day, which, by the way, is in a gothic cathedral. Yes, the gym is eight floors high, and looks like it is straight out of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.. Or Hogwarts (Yes! I always wanted to go to Hogwarts!) Also, it is the largest gym in the world and boasts 12 acres of indoor space. And if the architecture of this place isn’t Yale enough for you, they also have several indoor crew tanks, a fencing floor, and a squash room.

The castle-gym interior:

And a crew tank:

Anyway, I am already feeling right at home here. I have met so many wonderful fellow grad students through the orientation events. It is hilarious the type of conversations I over-hear, or find myself having. For example a few new friends and I were waiting in line for free food at an event hosted by a local bar when we over-heard somebody discussing how they preferred the square plastic plates to the round ones because they had more surface area. First of all, I love that like true grad students, this person wanted to optimize their foraging strategy when free food was offered, and was doing so by selecting the plate that could hold the most (honestly, free food at grad events goes so fast, and naturally after hearing this selected the square plate over the round one when I reached the front of the line), but mostly I love that I can let my inner nerd loose. This is my place. I have a feeling that it will soon be much tougher come the research pressures, teaching fellowships, and coursework, but this is where I feel like I belong. Also today is especially good because I finally got my internet turned on! Now I have access to online scientific journals! And Netflix (let’s be real).

Fingers crossed that first day of classes goes well!

Onward! To Grad School!

It is the eve of my life’s newest adventure: Graduate school. I leave for the 15 hour drive from Chicago to New Haven tomorrow morning. I decided to document the journey because I thought it might be useful, because I won’t have enough writing to do in grad school (ha!), and because maybe it will help me keep my sanity. I have heard all the tales from friends of graduate school past. That inevitably I will fall into a love/hate relationship with my thesis, that I will learn to rely on coffee and free conference food as staples in my diet, the adviser who wants nothing more than to squash your love of your chosen field, whining undergraduates (this was me as an undergraduate), etc. But truthfully, I am excited. Anyone reading this already in grad school, I know.. I am naïve. But let me have my moment, okay? Like I said I am excited.  Additionally, my field of study is probably the coolest one out there. I am a marine biologist at Yale (well almost, officially starting August 27^th). I spent this past summer travelling to France with my future lab to study wrasses in the Mediterranean Sea.. Be jealous. A day in the life of a marine biologist studying Mediterranean wrasses: ready? Beaches, French food, sunshine, scuba, cute fishies, more French food, wine, beach sunset, repeat.

My field site:

My daily cuisine:

My work:

I wish I had more photos to share, but my loving boyfriend accidentally wiped my phone two days ago. No, I didn’t have a heart attack (also he is still in one piece). But as I pondered all the time and effort I put into taking the perfect photos of all of my activities and adventures, I realized something. Maybe I should have put down the camera a bit more. If I saw something, anything interesting, a butterfly that landed nearby, a beautiful valley and mountains on the side of the road (while riding passenger, of course) it was a reflex to pull out my iPhone and experience it second-hand through my 2 by 3 inch screen. Sure I got some good photos, and sometimes (most of the time), I missed the shot altogether, all the while missing the experience. I will never stop documenting through photos, but I will try to keep this in mind. Also, thinking there is a benefit out of losing the videos and photos of my summer helps me to keep calm. And look at this face. How could anyone be mad at that face.

So not only does grad school define this new chapter in my life, but also this is my first time living on my own as a real bill-paying, dinner-making, adult. THIS terrifies me. How does anyone expect me to know how to pull this off? 

That reminds me. I forgot to eat dinner..