Reflection on being one year post-PhD

It’s hard to believe that I defended my PhD thesis one year ago on December 13, 2021. Two weeks before, I had moved into my new apartment in Annapolis, Maryland, where I decided to live during my time as a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center. So, instead of presenting in the cozy seminar room on the roof of the Geological and Planetary Sciences building, surrounded by friends and colleagues, I defended alone in the conference room of my new apartment complex’s club house while my family (Alex, Güni, and my parents) watched from my family room through a sea of unpacked boxes. Across the country, Caltech’s campus was still mostly closed anyway due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so defending from Maryland probably wasn’t all that different from defending in California.

Although I’m no longer in grad school, life has not slowed at all. Over the last year, I started my postdoc at NASA Goddard and transitioned from being an observational astrochemist to a laboratory one. In the past six months, I’ve attended five science conferences – the American Astronomical Meeting in Pasadena, CA; the International Symposium for Molecular Spectroscopy in Urbana-Champaign, IL; the fall American Chemical Society meeting in Chicago; the Division for Planetary Sciences in London, Ontario, Canada; and the American Geological Union in Chicago. (As I write the first part of this post, I’m sitting in Chicago Midway waiting for my flight back home from the AGU meeting). I attended my graduation ceremony, and I visited a new country—Canada—and saw Niagara Falls for the first time.

Two of my trips were funded through external means. First, I was named a 2022 CAS Future Leader, an honor which included a weeklong professional development workshop in Columbus, OH, before heading to the ACS meeting in Chicago. For AGU, I was part of the first cohort of SciAct Affiliates, which is a group of early-career folks eager to connect with NASA SciAct (Science Activation) projects.

Besides research and travel, I’ve become involved in new science engagement and service ventures. I became co-coordinator for the NASA CONNECTORS (CONNECting students TO ResearcherS) program, which pairs students from a local high school with NASA professionals (including scientists, science communication professionals, and program managers). Through the program, students participate in a shadowing day, and mentors commit to reach out to their mentees once per quarter during the next calendar year.

I’m participating in Letters to a Pre-Scientist, a pen pal program that pairs scientists with middle schoolers, typically in underserved communities. I’ve also given science engagement talks through the Anne Arundel County Public Library, Anne Arundel Community College, Project Scientist, SciGirls in Space, and the Royal Astronomical Society. I was invited to give a physics colloquium talk at my alma mater, Dickinson College. Earlier this month, I was elected a member-at-large for the Maryland Section of the American Chemical Society, and I started off my tenure by writing about the first chemistry results from JWST in the section’s online magazine, The Chesapeake Chemist.

In my personal life, I’ve gotten to enjoy observing my child learning to read and do math. I’ve spent lots of time in the mountains and at the beach. My husband and I celebrated seven years of marriage in July. We welcomed a new member of the family, Meatball, our tortie cat with disproportionately big ears.

I’ve been reunited with my friends at conferences. My dear friend Cam also defended his PhD and moved to Massachusetts. On his way, he came through Annapolis and stayed the night with us, which was so much fun. I’ve also made new friends this year.

But this past year has had its share of challenges. About a month after starting my postdoc, our first cat, Hennes, died under anesthesia when we took her to get fixed at six months old. We had only had her for two months, but we loved the heck out of her. And we still do.

I quickly learned just how hard lab work is, with equipment challenges ranging from face-palm-worthy (like spending two days trying to get a detector to work only to realize it wasn’t plugged in all the way) to beyond frustrating (like waiting three months for a facilities work order to be completed so we could get a critical instrument up and running). Supply chain issues have meant that extremely specialized parts and equipment have taken weeks to arrive if we’re lucky, months if we’re not. Combined, these challenges have caused delays in our experiments (which is normal for lab work), and as first-year postdocs, my lab mate and I just want to publish something.

I’ve also been sick a lot. My small child is now in school where masks are no longer required, so I’ve gotten my share of colds throughout the year. I even got pneumonia, which I realized after fever and coughing up bloody phlegm prompted me to go to Urgent Care. I brought home Covid from one of the conferences, during which I mostly hid out in my hotel room to unwind and take bubble baths. But a causal dinner with three other people in a mostly empty restaurant still managed to get me.

And yet, somehow, I have managed to go through these experiences without a major panic attack (unless you count me obsessively measuring my blood oxygen levels every five minutes when I had Covid, but I think that’s a special case). I don’t know whether I have a good handle on taking care of my mental health because my income has more than doubled, or because I’m simply just happy to be done with grad school, or because I have a colleague to work with in the lab whereas my thesis work was a mostly solo undertaking. Maybe it’s being able to reconnect with friends I hadn’t seen in a couple years.

Whatever it is, my first year post-PhD has gone pretty dang swell. I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished in my first year as Dr. Wilkins, and I’ve enjoyed the adventures to National Parks and new coffee shops with my family. Here’s to the next!