Wendy is a Doctor at Rockefeller!

Yesterday morning at 7:55 am, my brother in-law drove Paul and me to Manhattan. Wendy, his daughter and our oldest niece, was ready to defend her Ph.D. thesis based on her new findings on protein at Rockefeller University. The agenda was she would present her project, followed by a Q&A session. Afterwards, she would go through a closed-door defense of no more than 2 hours. My niece who I baby sat in May-October 1989 was really grown, calm, logical, and systematic in her presentation. She used clear and easily understood words and phrases to summarize the process of what she was doing in her 4 years of intensive lab work.

Shortly after 11:00 am, we left her with the grilling committee and went out of the auditorium, together with her close family consisting of her boyfriend, parents, younger sister, and future in-laws. We toured Rockefeller University, a private university founded in 1901, neighboring with Weill Cornell and Sloan Kettering to make a tri medical research center on York Avenue. After the tour we gathered at the open outdoor patio of the cafeteria and waited for the results of her defense.  It was one of the longest two hours that I had ever undergone in my life, all but like the birth of a child or country. My anxiety was triply shared by her mother and mother in-law to be.

Eventually, a text message was relayed from the boyfriend, "Wendy is Doctor!" We all cheered and then joined her in their lab kitchen for sandwiches, cake, and champagne. We met her PI (Principal Investigator) and lab colleagues, an unusual group devoid of jealousy and competitions, because of the abundance of opportunities and diverse research foci in this particular environment. The campus seemed to be a true oasis not only for us humans but also for animals. A miniature mouse scuttered around us on the floor for food, so did a couple of fearless sparrows invite themselves later on our picnic table. Such an oasis is not impossible to reach. It takes near-perfect scores all the way through one's high school onwards. In our niece's case, it also needs intellectual dedication and parental nurturing from a dedicated Cornell father and Regeneron mother.

Go, girl! There are more challenges awaiting at Cornell. But there will be more opportunities as well.