Long Beach Biophysics All Stars, Day 1

Here I am, at last the West Coast; I've never been here, outside of layovers en route to/from the far side of the Pacific, and that one time I took the BART out for a spin from SFO. I am in Long Beach, California, for the Biophysical Society meeting.

Yesterday, before I left, I had a day-long meltdown about grad schools. Rockefeller University sent their rejection letter and all of a sudden I freaked that I wasn't going to get into MIT or Harvard, that I wasn't going to Boston with everyone else, that it was going to be just like Columbia four years ago, like getting voted off the island. More than just a grad program is at stake here: I feel as though I'm not only wanting acceptance into certain grad schools, but also acknowledgment of my right to keep certain friendships and relationships I've painstakingly built over the past few years. Though it wouldn't be the end of the world if I didn't go to Boston. I know what exactly what will happen: I will go to some other school, I will be wiped clean, I will compromise, I will restart, I will adapt. As I have so many times before. It's not that I couldn't do it again; it's just that I desperately do not want to. Is this not enough? Am I not enough? Do I not deserve what I have found and made?

I have no answer for these questions right now, but I don't suppose I can spend too much time thinking about it; I have to stay lucid for a presentation on Tuesday and the Vanderbilt interview later next week.

Anyway. Considering this is the Biophysical Society meeting, there was surprisingly little biophysics involved today. We left Baltimore at 7:10AM. Arrived at Los Angeles a bit after 11, local time, an hour later than scheduled; I slept pretty much all of the way, as I didn't sleep at all last night. After checking into the hotel--real posh place, by the way, would never stay here unless it was on the university's tab--I grabbed the meeting schedule and some overpriced, lousy convention center lunch. I spent most of the rest of the day hanging out with Izzi, the attractive biophysics TA archetype, who is at Vanderbilt now, studying in the program I will be interviewing for in a few days. We talked a lot, about science of course, but also people's drug habits, and how everyone at the mixer seemed to know each other already and were impossible to talk to, for that reason, and also for the reason that many of them were speaking in foreign languages. We also talked about politics for a long time; she's more centrist than I am, but we share many similar criticisms of the status quo. I don't go so far as to day, "we're all fucked," though.

Granger drove up from Orange County to join us for a late dinner at a restaurant where two dueling (electric) pianists played the classics for the entertainment of the patrons. Near us were two tables of very, very drunk ladies, one of which reportedly had just won some sort of reality show. These people eventually began dancing all around the restaurant and even gave one of the musicians a lap dance (they played on). One of the ladies walked up behind an unsuspecting Granger, wrapped her arm around his shoulders and asked to rub his shaved head.

I'd expound more, but I'm still immensely tired from last night's lack of sleep. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to provide some proof that I'm not on some kind of pleasure cruise and am, in fact, here to do science. Or something resembling it.