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Returning to “Normal”: Hitting the Easy Button on Stateside Life
We loved our experience of living in Seoul and wouldn’t trade that time for anything. It was hard to leave a city we had come to love and the people who made our year really special. As happy as we were, we knew that parts of life in a different culture and with a significant language barrier were very stressful at times. The moment we landed in Hawaii, our first stop in the U.S. after leaving South Korea, we were reminded of how much easier life’s simplest tasks are when you are in a familiar culture and speaking your first language. Here are some of the first everyday “easy button”…
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A Chemical Mystery: Navigating the Unpredictable Course of Research
Did you know that research scientists and detectives have some things in common? Research often does not go according to plan, and sometimes in the lab you stumble upon something unexpected and mysterious. If you’re lucky, you can follow the clues to solve a mystery that you didn’t originally set out to solve. This is the story of how my biggest discovery during my sabbatical year at Seoul National University (SNU) was not in the research area I set out to study. It’s not a disappointment, nor is it something that really surprises me. In this post I’ve described the chemical mystery that I stumbled upon and how I solved…
