Hello to everyone, from this strange new world where people live in boxes on a computer screen. (My box has a nice view of a vineyard in Burgundy, reminding me of a time when scientists still did things like travel to meetings and follow them with family vacations.) I am struck by how quickly we’ve tried to “adapt” to this new normal: doing our best to recognize each other’s masked faces, finding the positives in working from home: In sweatpants! With the kids and/or cats! With no running to meetings! Uh – scratch that last item. We seem to have way too many meetings, and too little running these days.
What we continue to miss, however, is connection. Those brief, informal encounters on Cedar Street, or in the line for coffee at Blue State, or at the gym in the basement of Harkness – they weren’t planned, had no agenda, but could lead to a blip of serotonin or dopamine, or perhaps something more profound. Happily, the labs are open (if at reduced capacity) and even I can have the pleasure of chatting with my students and postdocs as we set up experiments despite masks and social distance.
Community and connection are integral to the success of our MD-PhD program – we need them to sustain our individual efforts when things are tough, and to reward us when we have a breakthrough or success. So next weekend will see us having a hybrid virtual/in-person retreat for our student and alumni community. I look forward to sharing a physical space with our students, even while admitting that the world of Zoom allows us to invite many more alumni than usual to our career panels and programming.
I thank those of you who are joining us for our Saturday program, and encourage ALL alumni to join us on Friday, October 9 for a virtual cocktail hour – yes, you’ll have to pour your own drink, so make it a good one – and a conversation about supporting physician-scientists with Peter Glazer MD PhD ‘87 and our new dean, Nancy Brown MD. I look forward to hearing you share your collective experience and wisdom on this topic with Dean Brown as change comes to YSM.
Best wishes,
Barbara