Sara Bareilles wrote this absolutely hauntingly beautiful song for the Broadway musical, Waitress, called “She Used To Be Mine”. For those who haven’t seen the 2007 movie or the musical, the protagonist, Jenna, is an expert pie maker who has a new baby on the way with her unloving husband. When you hear this song, you can hear the pain in her thoughts as she tries to reconcile who she wants to be, with the person that she is, in the situation that she’s in. But I can’t stop listening to this song because it can so easily apply to anyone. It’s not just about relationships; it’s about anyone who is still wondering what they ought to be doing, anyone who questions if what they chose was right or not, anyone who questions whether or not they can do it, anyone who’s trying to figure out who they are today.

With that in mind –

No one ever said that graduate school was easy. There are good days and bad days, days when everything works, days when your brain feels so numb from something incredibly repetitive and monotonous, days when you feel like you have good footing on your project, days when you feel completely overwhelmed by the number of papers you haven't read or have stacked up on your desk or on some electronic To-Be-Read-ASAP list, days when you have assignments hanging over your head. Similar analogies can easily be made about life in general, but let's stick to grad school for now, okay? It’s less daunting than tackling all of life.

I've learned a lot already in my first seven months of grad school, not only about spindles and frogs and mitochondria and lipids and microglia and a bunch of other biology, but also about the type of scientist I think I want to be, the type of person I know I am and want to be. And I’m happy. But I would be lying if I said I haven’t experienced those days when I wish I could throw all of that out of the window. Days when I wish I could turn back the clock and “give it all back / for a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two”.

Let me explain what I mean while you’re still gaping at me, incredulous that I would say that.

I was so sure and excited about heading to graduate school about a year or two ago, and that continued in the first months of landing there. However, in the first year, you have to deal with your own self-doubt and imposter syndrome, moving and adjusting to a new place, learning to call it home (and actually meaning it), meeting a bunch of people and making new friends, finding your own little niche in science and in your class and in your program, realizing that your classmates are amazingly brilliant people with so much more experience and knowledge than you, wondering what you want to study for a thesis project, freaking out about how you're going to choose a lab and construct said all-important thesis project, and more. It's stressful! You try not to think about it too much because it will all figure itself out and turn out for the best in good time, right? RIGHT?

Deep breath. Actually, multiple deep breaths.

Okay, look. “It's not easy to know / I'm not anything like I used be, although it's true”. That’s a terrifying feeling, realizing that the person you were a year ago, even six months ago, doesn’t seem to be the person you are now. Things change, I know, and not necessarily in a bad way, but they change. And then you wonder if you’re stuck where you are, in this rut of thoughts. Maybe something happens-- something that scares the living daylights out of you and gives you nightmares and panic attacks. Maybe you don’t feel excited anymore by the science, by the experiments, not like you used to be. Maybe...the list goes on.

That was me. That is me sometimes, and that will probably be me again at some point in the future. Yes, it's alarming and petrifying and confusing. But when I stopped to think about it, and got my spinning brain to slow down, I could accept that "sometimes life just slips in through the back door" and that it would turn out alright in the end.

Because, eventually, I remembered why I did all of it in the first place. I remembered how it was six months ago when I clearly felt “the life that's inside… / Growing stronger each day". I let it "remind[s me] / To fight just a little, to bring back the fire in [my] eyes”. The fireworks will come back, even if they’ve been gone, not because they used to be mine, but because I’ll find them again. They might not be the same fireworks, but they’ll be there nonetheless.

It’s okay to be imperfect, and hard on yourself, messy and confused and uncertain and scared. Because on top of all of that, you’re also trying, you’re figuring it out, you’re also remembering how it used to be, and that's what matters. It's part of the process. That's called being human, whether you're in grad school or not. So it’s okay to be “all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie.”

I know that I am happy where I am. Happier than I would be had I chosen something else. Yes, all those other thoughts have crossed my mind. All the logistical worries of rotations and data collection and choosing a lab and a project, questions about my abilities as a scientist, doubts about whether I can do this in this field for at least the next foreseeable half-decade with all of the issues that come with academia as well as science. Even with all of that and wondering where my past-self has gone, I'm still happy and smiling and laughing. Because this is what I want now. All of it. The good and the great and the bad. And sometimes, it just takes a minute, a deep breath, or a song to refresh that memory, to call her back and remember that she is still mine.

*All quotes are from the lyrics of “She Used To Be Mine”, written by Sara Bareilles (2015).