Badging Day

Four months ago (and one day, to be exact), Dr. Stefanie Milam of the Astrochemistry Lab at NASA Goddard sent me a direct message on Twitter asking me to call her at her cell phone number. When she told me that she would like to offer me a position in her lab, I had no words. Like, I literally let out this weird almost-silent scream because I was both excited and in disbelief.

After what feels like forever—moving, completing my props exam, writing my thesis, defending my thesis, becoming DR. WILKINS (!!!), filling out lots of paperwork, and sending soooo many emails trying to track everything down—I finally started my NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellowship today! I’m also starting a new blog to share my adventures as an NPP in Building 34. I’ll still occasionally post things relevant to grad school and academic professional development in the Professional Student blog, but I wanted to celebrate no longer being a student and keep my current postdoctoral adventures separate from any advice I might share on my other blog.

I started my day with a selfie in front of the NASA Goddard sign by the main gate, obviously!

I woke up, excited for my first day at NASA, well before my alarm went off this morning. After struggling to eat a bowl of oatmeal because I was so excited, I gave my son Güni and husband Alex a big hug. Alex took G to the school bus stop, and I left for Greenbelt.

I arrived about 15 minutes early for my badging appointment. After handing over my passport and driver’s license, my picture was taken, and my fingerprints were recorded. A few minutes later, I had a temporary badge in hand.

I pulled out of the badging office (Building 9) parking lot and up to the gate. I took my brand-new badge and scanned it before being waved through on Goddard Road toward Explorer Road.

Building 34

home of the astrochemistry laboratory
part of the sciences and exploration directorate

Stefanie greeted me when I arrived at Building 34, home of the Astrochemistry Laboratory, part of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at Goddard. I got a loaner laptop from someone else in the building (because my computers haven’t arrived yet, despite being ordered several weeks ago with an ETA of last week) and picked out my desk in the office I’ll share with two other postdocs.

Lobby of Building 34.

Besides that, today was rather uneventful. I need to complete IT training to use a NASA computer, but I also need a NASA computer to access the training at work. Basically, today was one big “which came first, the chicken or the egg?” problem as we tried to figure out how to get me set up. It’s to be expected, and it certainly helped calm my “holy crap I’m going to be at NASA for the next two years or so” freakout. This week is all about online trainings, which will probably be a drag. Even so, I’m ecstatic to be in Building 34.

Looking forward to sharing some (inter)stellar science with you!

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“Goddard Begins With Science” in the lobby of Building 34.