On stardom and future

The Operon seminar room is not that big. EMBL was built for four hundred people and, despite twice that number working here now, the seminar room has not been expanded. Still, it has a very respectable size. Last Monday it was filled to the brim. There were people on the steps, people standing at the entrance, people standing behind those.

Surely the speaker must be big. The Nobels had just been announced, could it be one of the recent laureates? The last talk of a outgoing very popular in-house PI? Darwin himself, raised from the death to discuss with zombie Mendel the implications of genetics in evolution? No, that would not take every single PhD student of this place out of their labs. It was something bigger. Jorge Cham was in the building.

For those of you who don't know, Jorge Cham is the author of the widely known in academia PhD Comics, which depicts in dark humorous tones the life of a postgraduate student, the lack of money, the working hours, the advisors and so on. And that day everyone was gathered to hear a man who has made a livelihood of pointing out how much their lives suck. Not to throw stones, as one might expect, but to laugh at his jokes.

And laugh they did. Jorge had it easy. He barely had to approach a subject before the crowd roared into laughter, which is a bit scary for me. Everyone was finding it funny because it's true. And if it's true, that is what expects me for the next four years... Goodie.