farewell Emi

After 4 years of working with Emilie in the Bradley lab she is off to do her postdoc in South Africa. My last year (or so) here will not be the same without her to share it with. She always made scientific meetings more like a vacation than work and we have managed to get along all that time in the lab. Our personalities could not be more different but we shared many ideas, stories, insecurities and experiences beginning with recruitment weekend of 2001 where we were already talking about boys around the camp fire. She'd get pissed when I listened to the same song over and over again even though I didn't think she could hear it from way over there and she thought my desk was too messy and I should stand up for myself more and I should not put me down or shop at target or workout so much and god, why do I wear pink? and is that another pair of "fake" shoes? She cracked me up and made me smile and I will always think of her when I sit on her big orange couch and I am so excited to read her blog while she begins her brandnew life in a brand new country in a brand new lab with brand new colleagues. Since I've known her she has gone from a 2nd year Ph.D. student who is NOT a physiologist, who surfed the internet for way too many hours of the day to a Ph.D. who IS a physiologist and who maddly wrote another paper the day before leaving here for good (don't worry, she still had plenty of time to waste on that internet). I wonder if every time she says "vegan" she will continue to turn up her nose like she does.