An Internship in New York

I had the immense honour to get accepted for an internship at the Simons Institute’s Flatiron Institute. You can find out more about the work I did there in the Center for Computational Biology, 🧪, here.

I fell in love, with New York. But that can be understandable.

After reading, 📖 a lot about the work of some Professors. I then spent many month reaching out to any of them, learning in the process the best introduction, documents etc.. Many of them were not interested but still gave a lot of relevant feedback.

For some reasons I got accepted to work as a research associate in the team of Mytia chklovskii. This was an amazing opportunity for which I will always be thankful to him.

But my amazement have not stopped here. The salary given in the contract was otherworldly. 5 times as much as the best internship contract given to my fellow schoolmates.

The flatiron was on thee 5th avenue and I would be freely hosted at NYU on Washington square. Due to unavailability of the room I however, had to spend a couple of weeks at a luxurious hotel, 🏨 .

That was a New Yorker’s life as it should be! Damn my standards just had a refresh and my friends now hated me. The lunch, 🥙 could be ordered from anywhere in Manhattan, each month had its team day. Each week had its lab cocktail, 🍸 .

The place was amazing but most amazingly I had the chance to eat with Jim Simons and discuss about my projects and life goals and get some very good advices. The culmination fo chance, my girlfriend found at the same time an internship in New York’s french embassy.

A morning routine would be to go running, 🏃‍♀️ through washsqua, to NYU’s gym, work out, 🏋️‍♀️ , go get a free Starbucks cold brew, take a shower, 🚿 , dress up and skate up to the institue on the 5th avenue.

The evening was often spent in a restaurant or exploring the city. Friends, 👫 and Family came visit me and it might have been the best days of my short existence. The flatiron can be sure they will hear from me again, with two more Masters and a Ph.D.

Now I know what I want to do, where I am going and how to get there.