Going back to the real world

After 5 years and 10 months, I finally received my Ph.D. degree from UCSF. I feel like I gained so much from school--not only knowledge and expertise, but also close friends whom I hope to keep for the rest of my life.

But I know for certain that I will never miss graduate school.

I started my postdoc work at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville as an employee of Sandia National Laboratories. I'm in Deconstruction Division for Enzyme Engineering. The laboratory at JBEI is not fully operational yet, so earlier this week I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. It's finally getting better, so I'm happy about that. It took me a while to get used to hear people introduce me as 'Josh, our new POSTDOC'(most of times) or 'DR. Park'(rarely).

For those who are not familiar with postdoctoral positions--these jobs in academia and industry are offered for recent graduates with a doctoral degree in science or some disciplines of engineering to gain more work experience for faculty jobs in academia or scientist jobs in industry. It is similar to residency programs for medical doctors. The reason why I chose to do postdoc is to expand my background in protein biochemistry and molecular biology to gain expertise in protein engineering. By the grace of God, I found an opportunity to work on biofuels research, which is very different from what I have been doing in laboratories for the last 11 years or so as an undergrad, research technician, and grad student.

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Renee and I moved to El Cerrito, about 35 min drive away from where we used to live in San Francisco. We now live in a 2-bed room apartment, and we love the place! I just bought a hybrid bicycle last week to bike to work. I'm going to have to get used to my bike to ride ~12 mi everyday, but I think I can do it as long as I find a safe bike route to take.