Earning my PhD marked the end of a verrrry long phase of my life. You can probably imagine that pursuing a doctorate during the pandemic made things even more difficult. I am very happy to finally be finished. Like they say, the best PhD is a done PhD 😂

The end of my PhD signalled a number of pretty significant changes in my life. I left New York, a city I moved to for pursuing my PhD which I never liked and only tolerated. I transitioned from living in an apartment surrounded by strangers to a house surrounded by loved ones. And the many things I refused to engage in as a PhD student like traveling, dating, and adventures were now options available to enrich my life.

So let’s start from the beginning. I decided to get a PhD because I knew it was a path to doing what I loved, research. I applied to several programs and the program at New York CUNY was the best one that accepted me. Where I really wanted to go was Washington, where I was rejected. I sometimes wonder how my life would have been different if I had attended a school I loved in a city I loved instead of CUNY in a city I fled every time I had more than 2 days off 🤣 I’m deeply grateful to CUNY, its an awesome school with awesome people, but I wasn’t the right fit there. But now I can pursue a life that IS the right fit. I had to finish first right?

During that time another layer was added to my life by moving into an affordable coop my mom purchased. The apartment was located in a hispanic enclave which seemed very closed off. Once again I didn’t fit. At first I made an effort to connect with my neighbors, but after a few months I stopped trying. The result was that I lived on and off for a few years in an apartment building of complete strangers. The one Canadian neighbour I befriend was a traveling nurse often gone with her family. But the story’s not all bad! I ended up making friends with a sweet Russian lady who lived in another building on the street. The only thing I would have changed about our friendship was that we would have met sooner. We both spent countless months shut in during the pandemic when we could have been hanging out 😢

My PhD journey was fraught with surprises, problems, and disappointments, but I did finish and I’m glad I did. What my PhD allowed me to do was find a topic I love and be introduced to that topic. I can now chase my long-time dream of doing a postdoc in Europe and fully immerse myself in my work trying different techniques and directions to meet my research goals 💞