Second semester senior year is realizing that you have an 8:30am biochemistry class Monday morning… approximately 12 hours before the first day of class begins. Yes, this was an actual thing that happened. Let me explain. You would think that, as a second semester senior, I would be coming back from a month long Wintersession break refreshed and put together. Well, I guess I came back put together, but not really refreshed.
You see, I spent all of January working. As in a paid job, at a renowned diabetes center in New York City. I was back at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, working on maintaining a massive clinical trial database for Type I Diabetes. This has been a project of mine, on and off, for nearly two years now. While its’ largely data entry from patient records, I learn so much from just being around such an active and inspiring clinical setting. What I love most about the Berrie Center (besides the general passion and empathy of the people I’m lucky enough to work around) is that I can clearly see, and even help in my own small way, how everyday people can take control of difficult circumstances.
The highlight of my month at the diabetes center, however, had to be the lucky cake. That’s right, a cake, at a diabetes center. It’s called the vasilopita, a Greek New Year’s tradition. There is a coin, wrapped in foil, slipped into the dough before baking. Whoever gets that coin in their slice gets some serious luck. Past stories include the “house” (center) getting the coin, and a $50,000 check being written upon some generous patient hearing the story. And the woman who got it last year now has a baby and a new job. So that is some serious luck involved…and yours truly somehow ended up with the coin. It’s in my purse right now, a Theodore Roosevelt state quarter.
For those of you who have never experienced vasilopita
I guess the vasilopita coin must be working, because I ended up leaving the Berrie Center with a job offer. I often hold back about writing about these things on the blog, and I don’t want to say too much until things are more concrete, but I was very grateful and excited to even have the opportunity. I was expecting to have to set up the perfect situation in which I would carefully (and awkwardly, I told myself) ask about any openings available. Instead, I had an offer by the end of my second day, and by the end of my time there we were talking about ways to find a position that would really play to my strengths.
In the abundant time I was not working full time, I was writing the introduction to my senior thesis. That’s right, your girl was in the library nearly every Saturday over her winter break, chugging away at explaining aldosterone biosynthesis. And I have a ten page draft of that, headed into the lab on Wednesday for some edits.
So yes, I might have woken up at 7:30 every day in January, including most weekends (no small feat), and I may be a little too exhausted for the first day of school (more on that next week!), but I have no regrets about the past month. I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.
Ever lovely yours,
Eleanor
