"The only way that we can live, is if we grow.
The only way that we can grow, is if we change.
The only way that we can change, is if we learn.
The only way we can learn, is if we are exposed.
And the only way we can become exposed, is if we throw ourselves into the open.
Do it.
Throw yourself"
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I saw this quote some time ago and I really liked it, I can find similarities with what I'm doing at this point of my life.
First of all, the choice to come to Montpellier. The people who know me, know my French wasn't that good in high school (and it didn't got any better over the past three years...) and that I said I would never want to live in France because of this. But with becoming a bit older and thinking about it, I could only see advantages: improving my French, meeting new people, become more independant, almost always good weather (in the South of course)... Also the lab I'm in is a big change for me. I work mainly with mass spectrometry and that's something I wasn't particually good at. But again, this is an oppurtunity to learn and develop new skills.
Second, I made a big decision some time ago. It's going to be a bigger change than coming to Montpellier with the idea of going back home after a few months. After my internship, I'll go back home to do my presentation and get my degree, stay there for a few weeks and then I'll come back to Montpellier in the beginning of August. The reason I come back is because they offered me a job at my internship and I decided to take it! I'll start with a contract of six months, after that we can see if I want to stay longer and if they have more projects for me. So this is a huge change for me... I'm going to search for a real appartment (and not just a room in a shared appartment), look how I have to do my taxes in France... I'm excited and scared at the same time, but I would really like to try this!
Since we're talking about changes anyway, the lab had a big amount of changes too the past few weeks. Marine her internship is done so she left (sad...), there is a new intern at our office (Marie-Laure) and in the other office (Martin), we got some new machines (a new SpeedVac, a MALDI-TOF from Shimadzu, a new AsseyMAP BRAVO from Agilent...).
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So this is our team at the moment,
from left to righ we have:
- Laurent (engineer)
- Marie-Laure (PhD student)
- Sylvain (director of the LBPC)
- me (soon to be laboratory technician)
- Aurore (engineer)
- Christophe (director of the PPC)
- Jérôme (engineer, my mentor)
- Laura (master student)
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So like I said, we got a MALDI-TOF from the Shimadzu copmpany and this will be a new project for me. They also send a Japanese engineer (Yuzo, the second from left in the front) and he's gonna be my new collegue for the remaining
time here in the lab. This is the picture
of our collaboration with the
Shimadzu company in Japan, we had
a meeting together and had a nice
dinner together afterwards.
Of course I will continue with my
project for my bachelorproject, but I
got a second project at the same time.
So when I come back, I'll keep working
on this project and I will be the
responisble of the machine and the
project!
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