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Chasing Horizons with Migratory Birds Each autumn, the sky fills with motion. Birds lift from their nests and rise into the open air, tracing ancient routes across the world. They leave behind familiar forests and fields, not out of choice, but because the rhythm of survival calls them forward. Guided by instinct, by stars, and by something deeper that even they may not understand, they chase warmth, sustenance, and the promise of renewal. Their journey is long and often perilous, yet each wingbeat carries a quiet determination — a faith that beyond the clouds and wind, life awaits. I often watch them and wonder if they ever feel what we do — the ache of leaving, the thrill of reaching, the uncertainty of what lies ahead. In their flight, I see my own story reflected. Like them, I left behind the comfort of home — the language that once shaped my thoughts, the familiar rhythm of my surroundings, and the people who grounded me. I embarked on my own migration, not for survival, but f...
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Do You Cook? You Might Be a Scientist “Do you cook?” It was one of the first questions my former PI asked me— not in a casual lunchtime conversation, but on the day I started working in the lab. At first, I thought it was just a warm-up to a conversation or maybe a quirky habit of his. But soon, I realized he asked that question to everyone who joined the lab. Regardless of your background or academic level, he asked with calm curiosity: “Do you cook?” And no, he wasn’t talking about culinary skills or your ability to follow recipes. He wasn’t interested in what you cooked or how often you did it. He was asking something much subtler: Do you enjoy being in the process of making something? Do you find a rhythm in the mess? Are you patient enough with trial and error? That simple question was a window into your mindset. I didn't realize the weight of it right away. But the more time I spent in the lab, the more I saw how perfectly that one question reflected the core of what ...
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Juggling with Gloves On You learn to move before thinking. One hand sets a timer while the other swirls a tube. Your eyes scan the protocol, and your mind rewinds to check if you've added the buffer. Something’s incubating, something else is cooling, and somewhere in between, your laptop groans under the weight of a half-finished analysis. It’s not chaos, exactly—but a rhythm that demands attention in fragments. There’s no single focus. Just a layered awareness, shifting from one task to the next, always balancing, always just a few steps ahead. Multitasking in science isn’t a convenience; it’s a necessity. You learn to do it not by choice but by sheer demand. Experiments don’t wait patiently in line—they crowd your bench, overlap, and call out for attention, often all at once. And so, you juggle. And yes, sometimes the rhythm breaks. You lose track of a wash step. Your gel runs out of buffer mid-way. You realize—too late—that you used the wrong tube, the one without protease...
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  Incubate Overnight at Room Temperature: The Science of Procrastination Procrastination is a quiet thief of time. It sneaks in unnoticed, disguised as logic, reason, and sometimes even efficiency. In science, it wears a lab coat and whispers reassuringly, There’s always tomorrow. It often starts with a simple pause—a moment of hesitation before setting up an experiment. The rationalizations come quickly: I should double-check the protocol. I’ll get better results if I wait until I’m more focused. Maybe I should read another paper first. Before long, the minutes stretch into hours, and suddenly, the workday is over. That’s when the ultimate justification emerges, neatly written in a lab notebook: Incubate overnight at room temperature. On the surface, this phrase is a standard instruction in many protocols and a necessary step in specific experiments. But more often than not, it becomes a scientist’s way of saying, I’ll deal with this later. It’s an elegant way of postpon...
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Blotting My Patience Patience is often misunderstood. Many see it as passive waiting, a quiet endurance of time. But real patience is different. It is active—it is persistence without frustration, resilience without resentment. It is the ability to try, fail, and try again, believing that effort, no matter how exhausting, will one day be rewarded. I never truly understood patience until I encountered Western blotting . It has been my greatest teacher in all the experiments I have performed. It is a delicate process, an intricate balance of technique and trust. You begin with invisible proteins, carefully separated on a gel, hoping they will obediently transfer onto a membrane. Then comes the waiting—hours of incubation, endless washes, and the careful addition of antibodies meant to recognize their perfect match. A platonic relationship between protein and antibody, built on specificity and faith. And then comes the moment of truth. I stand before the imaging system, my heart p...
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Curiosity: The City of Achievers! There is a city unlike any other—the city that is not found on any map yet open to all who seek it. It has no defined borders, fixed skyline, or sparkling sign boards for paths leading in or out. This is Curiosity , the city of dreamers, thinkers, and explorers. A place where every street leads to a question, every doorway opens to a possibility, and every traveler is guided by an insatiable desire to know more. I have lived in this city for as long as I can remember. My earliest memories are of asking “Why?” and “How?”—small questions that led to bigger ones, like bricks laid one after another to build my path. But here, there is no final arrival—only deeper exploration, more layers to uncover, more truths waiting to be revealed. In this city, every scientist, artist, writer, and innovator who walks these streets knows the feeling of tug-of-war in their mind that refuses to let go until they chase it down. Curiosity is not a passive trait; it is...
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  The Silent Symphony of the Unseen: The Art of Noticing Scientific discoveries rarely announce themselves with grandeur. They arrive not with fanfare but as whispers, waiting for someone to listen. A stray observation, a dismissed anomaly, an overlooked pattern—the quiet notes of discovery, fragments of a silent symphony playing around us. The real question is: Are we pausing long enough to hear them? History is filled with breakthroughs that emerged not from grand theories but from the simple act of noticing. In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find an unexpected guest in his petri dish: a mold killing off bacteria. It may have seemed like a mere accident, a mess. Yet, driven by curiosity, he took a closer look—and that single moment of attention led to the discovery of penicillin, the world’s first antibiotic, revolutionizing medicine forever. A century earlier in Italy, Luigi Galvani noticed something strange while dissecting a frog. When his metal scalpe...
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