What Kevin means to me Kevin is my favorite lab member and has been a great help to me -- he was my "mentor" when I started, but rather than serving as a mentor as I knew it, he was more like a senior colleague or 2ndary professor contact to me. We many times discussed my data and hashed out ideas, his thoughts being extremely insightful and helpful. He also helped me loads improve my presentations, particularly my second year report. I owe him a lot -- so easy going, he never minded my barging in and asking him questions even once. He's always been supportive, if very hands off, casual and humorous, making me laugh and lifting stress from me with his silly jokes, bad singing and unexpected remarks. I will miss him sorely. His graduation is very bitter sweet to me. I delayed writing this post simply because there is no way I can put into words how much I value Kevin as a friend or mentor. |
Kevin's defense was amazing -- I loved it! His data was really interesting, and he showed additional data I didn't even know that he had with his nanorollers. The party afterward was great too -- I had way too much chocolate covered marshmallows and made myself slightly sick.
What's up now?
Kevin is currently looking for a post-doc position, and right after his defense left for a conference to mingle amongst the scientific community and see what's out there. He's not quite leaving yet, remaining with us until he gets a post. That's great for me, because he can teach / guide me on how to do some of the techniques in his papers -- a kind of passing of the torch, if you will. My project is a spin-off idea of Kevin's that he was never able to pursue, so discussions with him have been integral to my work.