A personal review of 2022
I am grateful to be here and to reflect on a year nearly done. While much is left to be resolved, I wanted to take a moment to pause and look back.
Let’s start from the beginning. It was January 2022 and we were coming back late from a New Year’s party in Brooklyn. We got a message the next day that someone tested positive for covid so everyone decided to get tested. Those first few days were freezing cold and all the outdoor testing sites were crowded with lines circling around multiple blocks. We were about to give up and go back home but spotted a man selling testing kits on the corner of 181st and Wadsworth avenue. $40 later we were home with negative test results! The first two weeks of January were gloomy, full of covid fears and lockdowns. I couldn’t go into work and tried to stay sane with daily yoga routines but times were rough. I was starting my second PhD rotation, the material was new for me and I was missing the social environment of an academic lab. My close friend Chloe was also departing back to Belgium after an internship in New York and I was worried I would be friendless for the rest of the semester. Once school picked up again, I started going in but most people remained at home. I was lonely, stressed and demotivated. Then, it snowed one day. The streets were lined up with beautiful, fluffy snow and I remembered that I lived in New York. All of the sudden, I realized that all I had to do was hop on the C train and I could be in Central Park! This was such an epic realization because up until that point, my days were mostly planned, built around routines and schedules. I felt free to explore the beautiful city that I found myself living in and it was truly one of the best afternoons of the year for me.
Things started to pick up, we went on a fun adventure to Vermont with some people from my program, had a nice visit from our friends in Toronto and visited several new exhibits. The Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim was definitely a highlight. We also started climbing at The Cliffs in Harlem which also greatly improved our mental sanities.
February came around and with it brought more snow and tiring deadlines at school. Phil went back to Toronto and in parallel my anxiety took a turn for the worse.
The onset of stress, darkness and loneliness combined with the news of the war invited many fears into my mind and day to day tasks became cumbersome. I finally signed up to see the therapist and psychiatrist on campus who were absolutely amazing. This journey was not easy but it introduced me to new coping mechanisms and brought on a comforting support system that I could turn to. This experience played a huge role in how the rest of my year unfolded and how I feel today.
I entered March with a visit to Moma with some friends. I remember still feeling on edge at that time, constantly looking over my shoulder but I am glad that I still kept pushing myself to enjoy the things that were available to me. We had “spring break” and I went to visit Phil in Toronto. It was a lovely time, catching up with friends, eating delicious food and seeing my parents. I came back to New York just before the end of the month and woke up to a positive covid test! I felt really sick but mostly I felt bad for myself. I hate being alone when I am sick but I also realize that it was actually for the best that I was. I had multiple assignments due during that week as well as a midterm so it was no fun. I remember feeling some brain fog which actually made me realize how much less anxious I could be. I felt that many of my intrusive thoughts were blocked and while I was super tired and ill, I felt a huge relief on that front.
I welcomed spring with open arms, excited for new adventures and experiences. April began with a maybe poorly timed trip to Spain but oh was it so worth it. I picked up the rental car at the Malaga airport after an overnight flight, forgetting which way was left or right. Luckily, I managed to drive far enough to pick up our friend Vincy who we haven’t seen for years (I made him drive afterwards). We picked Phil up from the airport and set forth on our adventure to the mountains. It was a beautiful time full of olive trees, hiking and even a day of climbing in El Choro! We journeyed on to Nerja where we reunited with my newly engaged sister and her fiancé, and my cousin and her boyfriend. It was a great family reunion, we dined, we wined and caught up over games and late night dancing. After our return to NYC, I caught up on all my work and finished off the semester. My parents drove down for Passover and we had a great weekend in the city. I officially joined a lab for my PhD thesis and started working on the real thing!
Given the craziness of the months before, the quiet of May was warmly welcomed. Phil was in New York and it was a lovely time living our lives day to day as if we were living together full time again. The days were getting longer and the season of picnics at the park was in full swing. We booked a cozy house in upstate New York for memorial day weekend with some friends and had a great time hiking in the Catskills and hanging out in Woodstock. It was also my first time driving a rental car through the city and I am glad I made it.
Ah, remembering summer is so bittersweet. June was jam packed with a month spent in Canada. We attended our first wedding! Erik and Netta had a beautiful celebration of love in Guelph surrounded by friends and family. Phil and I stayed at an airbnb in Montreal for a week and worked remotely from Mila. Surrounded by machine learning researchers, I felt silly working on my little single cell clustering problems. Niki came back for a visit as well and it was so nice to be with the whole family again.
We celebrated Niki’s engagement in early July, a slight deviation from the original plan but a great time nonetheless. Time flies and just like that my younger sister is engaged! I flew back to New York with a few days to spare before flying out again to Los Angeles. I spent a few hours throwing clothes all over my room, overthinking whether I would be too over or under-dressed for the conference. I am not sure if I succeeded because I snuck out to Target during one of our lunch breaks to purchase last minute fashion choices. I think I am learning to be more comfortable with who I am without trying too hard to dress a certain way to match a certain environment. Physical presentation aside, I think I managed to “network” decently well. I never really liked the word because it always felt to me like a transactional connection. I never want to meet people just to get something out of them like a job or a connection to a job. Perhaps, this is just part of our jobs but I wanted to make genuine connections with people even if it meant meeting less people overall! All in all, I had a great solo trip and fell a little bit for the west coast ocean and sun. Once back from LA, I joined Phil on a short weekend roadtrip to Baltimore where he presented his research at ICML. While he worked, I explored the city’s riverfront, ships and museums. Before the month ended, we also did this one big thing. We made it to city hall and got our official domestic partnership certificate! It was a pretty busy month which ended on a very sweet note.
I tried to slow it down a bit in August and to stay more local. We checked out a new exhibit at the Whitney and I caught up with some friends. We visited the sunset rooftop event at the Met which was absolutely incredible. It’s a bit funny to say that we danced and drank $20 cocktails on top of the Met but maybe that’s just life in New York? Before summer’s end, we made it to the glorious, sandy beaches of New Jersey and ate delicious creole food. To top it off, we departed on our first Burning Man adventure. Our lovely friends planned essentially everything for us and we just had to show up in California. Only positive memories remain despite some of those satellite photos everyone saw of the exit line at the end. We biked around, saw incredible art, survived the heat and sand storms, met super interesting people and made many new friends. That trip alone deserves its own post at some point so I won’t try to do it full justice here.
Classes kicked off in September although I was luckily only taking one this semester. With each new semester, come new routines and it took me a while to adjust to the new rhythm of the Fall and the end of this summer’s breeze. I flew back to Toronto towards the end of the month to spend some time with Phil and my parents. My mom discovered a new local family owned winery and farm. We picked pumpkins and enjoyed the early Canadian fall. I got to catch up with Dana who has been living in British Columbia for the last few years and stroll through Toronto’s Nuit Blanche!
After a quiet-ish September, October was filled with a lot more travel and birthday celebrations. I got a bike as part of my birthday present from my grandparents. I picked it up from REI in Soho and biked up to Washington Heights on a warm fall day. We saw A Strange Loop on Broadway, Yassy and I biked up to Terrytown and I learned a bunch about probabilistic modeling from one of the best professors in the field. Then came the time to pack up for another trip to LA. This was a longer trip, starting off with a 10K run by the ocean with my lab-mates, followed by a front seat view to Maroon 5’s concert sponsored by PacBio (officially the coolest sequencing company?) and giving my first oral presentation at a conference this big. My talk was scheduled for the last day so I spent the last two nights in our airbnb going over my slides over and over again until my brain felt mushy. Luckily, I didn’t embarass myself too much and things went overall okay. The next day, we drove up (or down?) to the mountains whose name I do not sadly remember. We went on a spectacular hike and it was a great lab bonding adventure. We ate many tacos and enjoyed the views, I will definitely be back!
November started off slow and then picked up with more travel. We first celebrated Phil’s birthday in New York and listened to some punk rock. We discovered the Cliffs in Gowanus and did a bunch of lead climbing which I missed a lot. I led a workshop on single cell RNA-sequencing analysis at Columbia which went surprisingly well with a sweet turnout. We finally got to check out Moma PS1 which was certainly interesting? Then I flew to London over thanksgiving to see Niki! I was welcomed with so much love both from her and the doggos, Panda and Gamora. Niki showed me around some great spots and my favorite part was just walking around late at night while the rest of the tourists were gone. I visited my friend Chloe at the Crick Institute and realized how lucky I am to be doing science as my full time job. I loved meeting people there and listening to talks. We crashed a karaoke party and convinced them to let us sing a Harry Styles song, which only felt appropriate. We had tea time at the Royal Theatre which felt incredibly fancy but I was pleasantly surprised at all the vegan options! We went to Tate Modern and saw a lot of cool art. I definitely want to visit it again next time and spend some more time there as well as other British museums. We ended my visit with a delicious vegan Sunday roast and off I was back to the US. I came back to the regular day to day chaos which included a last minute department party for all grad students and postdocs. We made it happen and it was a great success!
We are still in December but it’s a few days away from being done. It’s a funny feeling going back in time and remembering everything that has happened. The final month of the year started off with a lot of holiday parties and some tough deadlines that pushed my limits a little bit but also made me realize how much I have learned. I came to Toronto for the last two weeks of the year and spent many hours at Vector institute with Phil. I am grateful for the chance to have this time to catch up with my friends who I haven’t seen that much over the year. My mom is visiting my sister in London so we spent most of the holidays with Phil and my dad. Tomorrow we are leaving on a trip to Quebec for New Year’s celebrations. The sense of time flying by so fast worries me, making me afraid that I will miss something core along the way. I hope to keep my eyes open for the year ahead and take as much of it in as I can.
Cheers,
Karin(a)
