2002: I had just graduated high school, and the world was opening up to me. I had grand plans of double-majoring in chemistry and chemical engineering in undergrad and pursuing my doctorate after that. I was finally getting out of my small town and moving to the big city. That summer, a classmate of mine, just as wide-eyed about what the future held for her, was killed in a drunk-driving accident. The world we had known came crashing down around my friends and me. We were mortal, and were never promised tomorrow.
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| Graduation Day (check out Jill's pixie cut and Kara's highlights!) |
2004: I had gotten a summer job at a chemistry computer company to gain some work experience. I transferred data from lab notebooks to a database. Not terribly exciting work, but the hours went quickly because my supervisor was really helpful and really friendly. He loved pop culture as much as I did, and he exposed me to things like the White Stripes and This is Spinal Tap. I kind of had a little crush on him, but since he was almost five years older than me, I didn't think much of it. His name was Jason Self.
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| The first picture I ever took of Jason, under the pretenses of "Hey, cool chemistry shirt. Can I take your picture in it?" What I should have said was "I keep talking about you to all my friends and family, and I want them to have a visual." |
2006: I had finally graduated from college and was ready to enter the "real" world. I found a lab tech job at a family-run business called Enthalpy. A girl named Kristen trained me to prepare samples and to run UV-Vis analyses. She was soft-spoken, but friendly. I rekindled my friendship with my former supervisor, Jason Self, and we began to meet each other once a month or so for lunch. My sister was getting married and his college roommate was getting married, so we talked a lot about weddings.
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| Graduation Day, 2006 |
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| One of the pictures from Kara's wedding that I showed Jason during our lunches. |
2008: I married Jason, after a long, intricate love story. I never would have imagined that the flirting we did back in 2004, or the awkward lunches we had in 2006, would have led to me finding my best friend and perfect mate. I was now very good friends with Kristen from work, sharing an office and department with her and simultaneously planning our weddings together.
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| Another wedding picture, this time as the bride |
2009: Things at work had gone downhill. Layoffs had made us shorthanded, so I was now officially doing 1.5 people's jobs. My regular workload had increased, my boss was constantly breathing down my neck, and there was no end in sight. I would wake up in the middle of the night, panicked about something I had forgotten to do at work. Meanwhile, Jason got a dream job working at SAS Institute. We discussed it all summer, and I finally decided to quit my job of three years, the one I had been so excited to work at back in 2006, to pursue teaching. It had been my dream since high school, but something I had always put on the back burner. The time to act was now. I quit Enthalpy, applied (with no luck) for lateral entry jobs, and finally decided to go to grad school to get my teaching degree.
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| I nearly lost my job going to the Atlanta for Good Eats' 10th Birthday Celebration. My boss got mad that I was taking half a day on a week when I had already worked 50 hours. |
2011: I'm still pursuing that dream. I don't know what the future holds for me, but I know that all the ups and downs of my life have brought me to this point. The future can be a scary, scary thing, but when I look back on how all the events of my life have weaved together to make me who I am today, the fear subsides, and I look forward to tomorrow.
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| Posing in my new lab coat and hand-me-down textbook, graduation gifts from Kristen. |
Thanks for reading, and I will keep y'all updated when the crystal ball becomes a bit clearer!
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