Eurika! It hit me in the midde of my linkage class last week - the perfect career that combines the 3 things I love: genetic counseling! I wanted to jump up and down in the middle of class and tell everyone, but I restrained myself.

For the longest time I've been just "going with the flow" as far as my life is concerned. Going to grad school after college just seemed like "the thing to do" because I knew I wanted more than just to be a lab technician (which is all you're qualified to be with a BA in biology). But I've never really loved research. I find it challenging and stimulating, but day to day, it's very mundane and repetitive. I convinced myself that this is what I had to do to get the kind of job I wanted - although I really had no idea what kind of job I wanted. Unfortunately, I wasn't fooling too many other people, particularly my adviser. She noticed that I wasn't totally happy and ecstatic about my work, and she sort of forced me to deal with that fact.

So, I'm going to tie up the loose ends on my project and publish my work by the end of the summer, and then I'm moving to Pittsburgh to live with Alex while he goes to Carnegie Mellon, AND, very fortunately, the University of Pittsburgh (which is across the street from CMU) has a genetic counseling program. It's a 2 year masters - first year is classes and second year is just internships at local hospitals. I'm really excited!

We've gone through the Ikea catalog and picked out the things to furnish our apartment with. It'll be so great living in a real apartment! I HATE living out of my bedroom - I sleep here, I watch TV here, I usually eat here, and I don't even have a couch or anything comfortable to sit on (except my bed of course). I hate the redundancy of living with others - multiple bottles of ketchup, cartons of milk, bags of fruit, tubs of ice cream, a million sets of dishes and utensils - there's so much wasted space! Up till now my life has been "on hold." I've been living in an academic bubble, mostly because it's safe, but it's also not at all "real life." So I'm looking forward to finally growing up. I've never really taken any risks, so there's a certain thrill in making a huge change like this. But it also feels great to have a direction, to have a career goal.