August 13, 2012

  • and the leaves will turn again

    Don't look before you laugh!
    Look ugly in a photograph!
    Flash bulbs, purple irises
    the camera can't see.

    - U2, City of Blinding Lights

    -+-

    Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

    - Dr. Seuss

    A Text Conversation:
    "As expected I cried the whole car ride home. So pathetic"
    -- "Super pathetic, or super reflective of just how much you care about everyone?!  And that, my dear, is not pathetic at all!  In fact, that's spectacular, touching, and is one of the many reasons I miss you so much already!!"

    Dr. Seuss has great advice, although it's advice that we evidently refused to follow.

    -+-

    As I left the Neuroscience Center for the last time, I realized that there are five notably monumental occasions in the lab for undergraduate research interns.

    1. The first time that you walk into lab.
    2. The first time that you have to work on protocol until late into the night.
    3. The first time that you perform a protocol independently and unsupervised.
    4. The first time that you teach a protocol to someone else.
    5. The moment that you turn in your lab notebook to your mentor.

    On Thursday, I finished achieving all five of those at Scripps Research.  (Of course, there are supplementary occasions that I've experienced, like the first time that I euthanized and dissected a mouse -- that was a pretty big deal to me, too!) 

    Towards the end of my last day, it was sinking in that I just performed my last protocol that I would ever perform at Scripps this summer.  I just finished sacrificing my last mouse -- halfway through the sac, I turned to the new rotations student, "Mah last mouse, oh my gawwddd!" 

    As I was writing my sacrifice protocol into my laboratory notebook, I turned to my mentoring graduate student with urgency, "...I'm writing my last lab notebook entry right now."  We both reflexively exchanged a "say it ain't so!" expression -- one that would last well until I handed her my laboratory notebook.

    I said, "Oh, and like you told me to, I also remembered to draw a smiley face at the end."

    She grinned and began flipping through my lab notebook, "You did?  Well, let me make sure that it passes my smiley face quality check… Ha!  There it is.  Excellent.  Well, Christa... I guess... that means you're good to go."

    My entire last day at the Neuroscience Center -- in fact, my entire last week in San Diego -- was marked by similar tones of thankfulness, sadness, denial, and surreal goodbyes.

    When I walked down the hall to start my last day of work, I tried to take it all in.  The way my shoes gently clicked along the white linoleum tile.  The delicate glow of the histology machines peeking into the walkway.  The Christmas lights that traced the corners of the microscopy room.  The hum of the autoclaves whirring into my right ear.  The burst of fluorescent lighting that spilled into the hall from the laboratory suite.  All of it.  I tried to engrave my last morning into my mind like a photograph.

    Later in the day, but before my last protocol, I sat down to eat one of the cheeseburgers at my goodbye BBQ.  At that moment, my desk neighbor came up to me and amiably whimpered, "Christa, why do you have to leave?"  He was always one of my favorites in the lab, ever since my very first day ten weeks ago.  So I whimpered back, "I'll miss you, neighbor."

    In fact, this entire week has been blanketed in a delicate somber for many of the interns in my program.  Then… well, then we hit Friday.  That was when the end of summer suddenly crashed down into us.

    It will be a long time before I forget my last day in San Diego.  It was a magnificent and sleepless 24-hour blur.  I presented my summer project to an audience of both peers and world-renowned research faculty.  Our last dinner was at In-N-Out for the interns from outside of California, which turned into three hours of laughter and giggling.  We all had those discussions that we were always waiting to have, finding our closure. 

    For my housemates and I, we realized just how much we cared about each other.  We realized just how close we had become this summer, and just how much we weren't ready for this part of summer to end.

    It will also be a long time before I forget the way that my roommate and I were sitting on our respective beds, when I texted our remaining housemate, "I'm going soon!"

    Her roommate had already left home for Maryland, and so she rushed back to say goodbye to me.  She admitted, "Christa, when you texted me that, that's when it really sank in that this is really over."  She started crying, which inevitably meant everyone started crying.  We shared sweet last words, when I said, "Okay… I think it's time for us to walk me to the door."

    Which, of course, obviously meant we all needed to cry even more.

    My last memory in that apartment would be my roommate and my housemate standing at my doorway, bawling and telling me the saddest, most incoherent goodbyes that I have ever had the privilege of receiving.

    What a damn good summer.