Last symposium as a PhD student

Holy crap, tomorrow is the last MSTP symposium I will attend as a PhD student.  Next year, I'll be a third year medical student.

In some ways, time has flown by quickly; in other ways, it's gone by very slowly.  ~5 1/2 years at UCLA, and still ~2 1/2 to go.

I have a boat-load of work to finish in the next few months for this all to be realized, and according to some of the powers-that-be, "productivity" has "declined" over the past few months.  So be it; point taken.  Finishing is indeed a challenge, and in many ways since I turned in the "return from leave of absence" form to the medical school, I'm psychologically had one foot out the door w/r/t being a graduate student.

All that said, I can't complain.

Oh and I get a chance to talk about my research at the symposium tomorrow as one symposium speakers, which is both exciting and daunting: it's challenging to convince people what you do is interesting and very important.  In reality, it's all just another variation on the same theme of nitty-gritty, slow-and-steady work-- character building.