Two months in

One of the things I enjoy doing most in my job is sitting in on meetings--not that my personal tasks aren't exciting, but meetings are a nice break in the routine and a great chance to learn more about topics I'm unfamiliar with... like how an organization works. Even though Aeras is a nonprofit, it has a budget and a certain set of goals like any other business, so I'm getting introduced to concepts like how to promote investment and efficiency. A new vocab word I've learned is stage-gating, or a standard of criteria for deciding what products should continue to be developed. With limited funds, not every vaccine product will undergo proof-of-concept trials that cost millions of dollars and involve thousands of participants. Last week, I got to sit in on some stage-gating meetings for current products, which made clear how the process works and highlighted specific clinical benchmarks that have to be passed for a vaccine to progress in development.

One thing I remember past fellows enthusing over was how much free time they had in the evening thanks to working nine-to-fives with no homework. I have yet to experience this feeling, but to be fair, until recently I've been dedicating most of my free time to dealing with plans for next year. I think what it comes down to is that I need to force myself to schedule some extracurriculars into my weekly routine to ensure that I get all that I want out of this fellowship year. There's time for it if it's planned; otherwise, making dinner, hitting the gym (Sarah, don't rat me out for this being a lie) and relaxing with some high-brow reality T.V. (ahem- The Bachelorette) can easily consume an evening.

Tomorrow I'm going to attend the TB Vaccine Scientific Symposium, co-sponsored by Aeras and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). I will be taking notes all day in order to later write up summaries of the talks, so I'm going to turn in early in order to be awake enough to do a good job. That's one thing that's certainly different from college: you can't live like a night owl because there's no such thing as an afternoon nap in the working world!