So for the basics. My name is Mollie, and I graduated from MIT in June 2006 with degrees in brain and cognitive sciences and biology. I'm now a PhD student at Harvard in developmental neurobiology, where I study the development of several cell types in the mammalian forebrain.

While at MIT, I participated in UROP for three years, and ended up with authorship on an abstract, authorship on a paper that's been published in J Neurosci, and also wrote a first-author paper on my own project. I worked in the lab of a pretty famous professor, who wrote a ridiculously amazing letter of recommendation for my graduate school applications. My research was an important part of my life at MIT, both in terms of getting me into grad school (the boring part) and in terms of making me happy to be alive and able to get out of bed in the mornings. I love research, which is why I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing it; MIT is a pretty great place to be if you want to do something along those lines.

Even though I was a band geek/choir kid/drama queen in high school, I came to MIT and joined the cheerleading squad. I didn't have any experience, but I got pretty good (I'm stronger than I look!), and I actually became captain my junior year. I really enjoyed being on the squad for a bunch of reasons: the socialization and entertainment, the exercise (I weighed the same when I got to college as when I left), and for three two-hour chunks of time every week when I could run around and joke and not think about signaling pathways and dissociation constants.

I lived for four years in MacGregor, a very tall, very 70s-esque dorm on the west side of campus. It's a great place to live, and it fit my personality really well. My closest friends are the people in my entries (I lived in A for three years, then D for my senior year), and, rather critically, I met my dashing rocket scientist husband, Adam, there.

I happen to think that MIT is the most wonderful place in the world, and I hope you'll decide it's the most wonderful place in the world for you, too.

neighborhoods/we move into and come to love.
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Posted in Life After MIT (Careers & Grad School) | 24 Responses