Changes

I spent last Thursday through Saturday in Roanoke, Virginia and just wanted to put a quick post up of the pictures. Lately there have been a lot of changes happening around Baylor Medical College due to financial difficulties and as a result lots of labs are moving. Quite recently I found out that my Lab PI who has been at Baylor for over 20 years is moving in October. Although we knew changes were happening you can imagine that this came as quite a surprise. My lab will be moving to Roanoke, VA where a new medical school and research institute are being set up in partnership with Virginia Tech and the Carilion Clinic. At the head of this new institute is the previous chair of our neuroscience department here at Baylor.

http://www.vtc.vt.edu/research/

So our lab took a few days to go check out the new lab. It turned out to be quite a fun trip that felt more like a family vacation than a work trip. We ate way too much good food, checked out local area, drove through the blue ridge mountain area and even worked in some pool time. Roanoke is a cute small town and an old railway community that is slowly growing with the construction of this medical facility. And although I won't be moving there it was a nice chance to see the town and bond with the lab.

As you can imagine, this change creates a few obstacles in my future plans. This has been hinted at for several months so I have had time to think about my options. Things will be changing for me because I cannot continue as a graduate student working in my lab without moving to VA, but I am looking at this as an opportunity for me to find a career. One thing that isn't changing is my passion for the field of Neuroscience and the medical field. I sort of fell into graduate school because of my desire to continue in the field of neuroscience after working in a lab I loved for most of my undergraduate experience, but I was always unsure of what direction I would take when I was finished. I love my work in the lab but always knew that I didn't want to spend the rest of my career at the lab bench, instead I wanted something to bridge between my passion for the science and my enjoyment in working with people. Taking this all into consideration I have made the decision to graduate with my masters early. Moving with the lab would of course mean moving to Virginia and would possibly extend my already 3-4 years left because of the time it takes to disassemble and reassemble a lab like mine, and not moving and staying would mean finding a new lab, learning new techniques and starting over, forgetting about the year and a half of data I have already collected. Because my area of research is so technical and specific there are very few labs that I would even consider joining. I found my passion for the link between behavior and cellular activity when I recorded from my first cell in a moving animal in undergraduate and took on this project in graduate school because it is what I loved, but it also makes my options for projects and labs very slim. So to make an already very long story short I have decided that my best option is to stay here in Houston where my life is and where the largest medical center in the world is. There are many important things to me here and this is also the place to be if you want to move forward in the medical field. And while I am still unsure exactly where I want my career to go I am currently on the job hunt and optimistic that even if I have to start low I will find a job where I can combine my passions and interests. Due to hectic situation of labs leaving Baylor and the process of applying to graduate with my masters from the college nothing is set in stone yet but it looks like I will hopefully be graduating with my masters sometime between October and December and hopefully finding a new job to start by the beginning of next year. In the meantime I will be finishing up my few credit hours, continuing my research, writing a thesis, and job hunting.

All the changes and decisions have been a lot to take in and process but I am at a point where I am confident in my decision and optimisitic about finding a career that will make me happy. This wasn't the plan when I started graduate school but everything happens for a reason and instead of being upset about the situation I choose to look at it as an opportunity to figure out what I want to do with my life and find out what is important to me.

I will continue to update on the changes and my future plans but in the mean time here are a few pictures of the wonderful trip to Roanoke. Please excuse the poor quality of the pictures, most of them were taken with my Blackberry.

The Roanoke start sits at the top of mountain overlooking the town and lights up every night




Downtown Roanoke is a cute, small, and very old downtown. Has a small town feeling and holds a daily farmers market.





We stayed at Hotel Roanoke, which is a very cute, very old, and very nice hotel in downtown.



We spent the last day driving through the blue ridge mountain area which was beautiful. We had lunch in a tiny town on the mountain at an all organic restaurant and managed to get a few group shots of the whole gang.