Qualifying Exam & Halloween 2023

This is my favorite meme, also accurate on how I have been feeling.

Life has been life'n really hard recently. For our program we have to do whats called a qualifying exam. This exam is basically writing an F31 and an oral defense of that grant. This is the first time they are changing the format and unfortunatly I was the first student from my cohort. This has been a difficult time in the program, very isolating and scary. Luckily by December we found out that all of us had passed the qualifying exam, making us now candidates. Shout out to my cohort members (pictured below) Zach Plumley, Shirine Moukaled, and Chase Richard. We did a little photoshoot together lol. We have been a support system for each other, both inside and outside of the research lab. Thankful for them everyday <3 Also pictured is a fun park day we did together, we rode some swan boats.

After finishing my qualifying exam, my lab did a haunted house together which is something we started last year together !

Also my precious undergraduate students have been maning our tiktok, so heres a cute video they made of a "Day in the life"