“Do you own any pets? You always post cute animal pictures at the end of your slides.”
“No, I don’t. But I really want a hairless cat. They’re really cute. My husband thinks they’re terrifying.”
“Have you ever had any jobs outside of research in development?”
“I did when I was an undergrad. I was a camp counselor for one summer, which was awful. I don’t recommend that one. It was an academic camp where kids would come and stay in university dorms and take classes. It ran from ages 7 to 15 and I had the 14- and 15-year-old girls. I spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to make sure they weren’t escaping to sneak into the boys’ dorm. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had in so many ways. It was so physically exhausting.”
“You mentioned you’ve been to Amsterdam; have you traveled much?”
“I was really lucky and got to travel a lot in grad school. I got to go to conferences in London, and Berlin, and Budapest, and Barcelona… I think that’s one of the really great things about research: actually, you do get to travel a lot. These days I travel less. Now that I’ve got it out of my system, I’m pretty happy to just chill out.”
“If you had a chance to say anything to students, what would you say?”
“Take your time. Don’t rush. And whatever you’re struggling with or dealing with at the moment, you’re not alone. And I think that there’s a lot of… You feel like it’s so much inside you, but it’s so common for other people to be going through the same thing. Even I will sometimes feel like that. I often have students come in and they need a deferment on a paper or an exam or something like that; and they’re always like, ‘I feel so bad, it’s so much trouble to ask of you.’ It’s not a trouble, and trust me, you’re not the only one.”