Happy Chinese New Year

I am back from Panama. Living and working in California. This month I have to do a a lot of bioinformatics. Several datasets are waiting to be analyzed. I am now actively using R Markdown and Jupyter notebooks to make my work more transparent and reproducible. Stephanie organized a workshop for the Carlson, Power, Ruhi and Grantham group at UC Berkeley on data management plans. I found myself in all categories: the planning stage of a project, fieldwork, wet lab, data analysis, statistics, bioinformatics, preparing a paper, and post-publication. This is postdoctoral life. And it is beautiful.

Last week I read this blog several times. It gives me goosebumps because it describes my life in very beautiful words. It touches me right in the middle. What is a postdoc?

This blog post is by Jeremy Yoder, now professor Jeremy Yoder. He is a member in the committee of The Molecular Ecologist. They offered me to write blog posts for their website. I am extremely happy to fulfill this job. The journal Molecular Ecology is one of my favorites and I find it important to make its publications accessible to everybody. Writing for this website is one step in the right direction. I am planning to explain exciting Molecular Ecology articles to the general public and discuss trends in this field of research. Additionally, I am also looking forward to contributing articles about the challenges and strategies of researchers (mostly postdocs) who are trying to juggle work and family. I envision this website as a platform to assist academia in becoming a more inclusive environment. I know that the other bloggers are on the same page and I am extremely thankful that they offered me to become a part of their writing team.

I have been half sick as of yesterday and today. However, as a parent you cannot just lie in bed and wait until you recover. Sorry world for spreading my bugs. Yesterday afternoon, we went to Stinson beach to remember at what a beautiful place we are allowed to life. Today we joined the Chinese New Year party at the UC village. Such parties make this place unique. It feels so special to walk 300m to a community center and meet fellow researcher families from all over the world on a boring Sunday to celebrate the year of the dog. We met people who spoke Mandarin, Bangla, Japanese and English. We used too much glitter, ate good free food and took silly photos. I am enjoying every second of being affiliated with the best public university in this country.

 

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