Summer at CSHL

[Jonathan Schneiderman]

A few days after I walked into the Hannon lab I was assigned to a post-doc, and we then started thinking of a project we could begin working on. Things evolved rather quickly, and "my" post-doc, Jidong, and I worked around the clock, trying to accomplish as much as we could. We would usually preform our experiments, and then later on during the day "huddle" and discuss results and further tests that should be done accordingly. I was amazed to find out that the people whose articles I had been reading in "Nature," "Science", "Cell" and other leading scientific mazagines, were actually some of the nicest, funniest, and most helpful people I had ever met. I would come talk to Ahmed about my work, who would suggest more controls, or raise possilities I hadn't thought of, or come talk to Amy, who would, usually in the midst of an important experiment, tell me: "Oh, I already tried that" and direct me to a stack of articles lying on her bench to get the proper background information. Liz and I would usually try to synchronize meal-times (unsuccessfully I might add), but ocassionally go sailing in the harbor at the crack of dawn while we waited for the gel-dryer to finish its work.

Truth be told, in addition to the "rush" of actually doing science, I was over-whelmed by the community I found at CSHL. It was this positive experience that made me confident that research in biology is what I want to continue doing for years to come.