After three weeks of vacation, my boss will be back today. Is it my imagination or is everyone in the lab extra tense? He cut his vacation short by a whole weekend, drove the entire day yesterday, and scheduled himself to be back at work today, a Friday! That is the kind of boss he is, perhaps why he is the boss in the first place.

This has been the most ambitious working summer to date. Not a single day of vacation. There were times when I cared so much about the experiment that I cringed at every deviation from the protocol, and asked my mentor for advice at every turn. That, unfortunately, is not me, as anyone who was my lab partner will distastefully remember. Should I take a day or two off to pack? Me, the eternally fast packer, who when impulsively decided to go home two days early for the summer, packed up my whole dorm room in one day, plus studying and taking a three hour final! I'm not bragging. I worry abot my impulsiveness to get things done. In everything I do, there seems to be a drummer that fastens the tempo way ahead of time, and my heartbeat skips to follow. Is this anxiety, my dire need to be everywhere 10 minutes early? Sometimes I force myself to slow down, especially when doing an experiment, I stop to realize that the quickened steps trotting across the lab is my own.

A funny thought - working in the same hospital as my future husband, as I have no doubt that I will have one. Not in the same confined space, but the same general area. Not to see his face at every turn, but to harbor the hope of seeing his face at every turn. In my lab alone, there are three married couples. I see them come off the elevator together, eat lunch together, and wait for each other to get off work. If seeing each other everyday would lead me to feelings of claustrophobia or repulsion, then perhaps I should reassess the significance of this significant other. I have always, always been opposed to the idea of marrying someone in the same profession. It is like fencing myself into this defined corner of society, when there are so many other professions and corners to uncover. Two doctors... What if all we ever talk about is work? What if I become blinded by his professional brilliance and mistake stubbornness for discipline, selfishness for intelligence, intelligence for kindness, admiration for love?

Diet Coke. It started with college, will it end with college? I wonder...