Dec 27 2008

neighborhoods we move into and come to love.

Posted in: Best of the Blogs, Academics & Research

For anybody too young to have seen my name at the top of the recent entries page before, I'm Mollie. I graduated in 2006 with degrees in biology and brain and cognitive sciences, which means that I'm going to have my pi reunion this summer. (Yay!) I'm currently a third-year PhD student in developmental neurobiology at that other university in Cambridge, and I live with my charming rocket scientist husband Adam '07 and our rabbit (who did not attend MIT) in an apartment just north of Boston.

I'm here to update you on the breathtaking life of a biology PhD student, which is breathtaking enough to divide into a very small number of categories.

Lab and other school things I do less often than lab
Since I passed my qualifying exam last January, to my great joy and relief, I'm now a PhD candidate in biological and biomedical sciences at Harvard. Functionally, this means that I'm basically done taking classes, and I'm living in the lab full-time doing research. Eventually I'll finish... read the post »

Comments (21)

Dec 1 2007

An MIT wedding

Posted in: Best of the Blogs, Miscellaneous

(For those of you just tuning in, I'm Mollie. I graduated from MIT in 2006 with degrees in brain and cognitive sciences and biology, and I'm now a second-year PhD student in developmental neurobiology at Harvard. When I was an undergrad, I UROPed til I dropped, participated in my dorm's government, and was the captain of the cheerleading squad. When I was a sophomore, my friend Carl '07 introduced me to a cute curly-haired aerospace engineering major named Adam, and we dated for the rest of our years at MIT. In August 2006, he asked me to marry him in Killian Court with a bunch of tour groups looking on. I think that gets you caught up.)

Adam and I got married September 15 (along with someone else you might know), which dawned drizzly and dreary in Cambridge. Our ceremony started at 4 PM, and the sun came out and the sky cleared around 3:30. (Whew!)

We were married at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, with twenty MIT alums in attendance and two more in the wedding party. Mark... read the post »

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Mar 21 2007

Happily ever after

Posted in: Academics & Research

I bring greetings from "the little redbrick school up the Charles River" -- although my classes are all at the medical school campus, which is in the Longwood Medical Area, and the labs I've chosen to rotate in are all at Mass General Hospital. So really I'm more across the river than up the river, and of course I still actually live on MIT's campus.

Grad school has been treating me well. I've been doing mostly the same things this winter that I did last winter: going to class, reading lots of papers, mixing small volumes of colorless liquids in the lab -- the difference is that now I'm getting paid significantly more to do it. (Ugh, I just did the math -- I'm only getting $3.50 more an hour as a grad student than I was as a UROP. Well, at least my paychecks are bigger.) I'm also TAing this semester, and of course I'm trying to plan Adam's and my wedding without losing my already small parcel of sanity.

I haven't picked a lab yet -- just like you don't pick a major at MIT until... read the post »

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Sep 4 2006

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Since I start grad school orientation tomorrow, and tomorrow is Registration Day for MIT students (the official start of the new academic year) I figured today would be a good day for me to hang up my blogging hat.

I've really enjoyed the past fourteen months, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to help people discover the MIT that I know.

Those of you who are at MIT (2010s, bloggers, etc), you know where to find me, and my door's always open. I might even have cookies or pie.

Those of you who want to be at MIT, I wish you the best of luck. It's a fabulous place, and I hope you'll get a chance to be part of the community here.

Please let me know if you have any questions about MIT or grad school or the meaning of life, the universe, and everything -- my email's still mollieb at mit dot edu. I can't guarantee that I'll answer right away, but I'll promise to try.

I love you all, and best wishes in the future!

Comments (32)

Sep 2 2006

Two answers on a Saturday night

Posted in: Process & Statistics

Question One
Elizabeth asked,

I have one... I was talking to my dad, trying to make decisions about this whole college application thing, and he said if I were planning on going to medical school I should definitely NOT go to MIT. Apparently, MIT graduates are like the worst med students ever. He said they're totally lost and can't talk to people and all they know how to do is stick their noses in books and that older doctors dread having to train MIT grads. That seems completely opposite to anything I've heard about MIT--I thought, as you say, that it was a really collaborative, people place. I don't know if I want to go to med school. I actually have no idea what I'm going to do, but medicine is definitely a possibility I don't want to rule out. I'm thinking things must have changed in the twenty some years since my dad has been in med school... Do you know any MIT grads in med school? Should I worry about that?

And Lori said in response,

My daughter graduated from MIT in June. She... read the post »

Comments (5)