Revolving Door

This post bodes both ill and good news. The former is that my colleague (referring to the previous post, my "associate") Jing is leaving the group, because her boyfriend has transferred from Chicago to Michigan. I am quite sad that she is quitting, because she is both a good scientist and fun to talk to. Yet the good news is that there is already a replacement, which I also enjoy training and working with. Hence the title of this post ...
The new student's name is Zhu, a former undergraduate from Peking University in Beijing, China. According to her, "you can call it the Harvard of China". That is of course an ambitious statement, but Zhu is quite fast in picking up whatever I teach her, even considering that she has some background in our technique already. She is also very friendly - she gave me a box of cookies, so I can sustain the work in the lab better. She is a graduate freshman (freshwoman? freshperson?), so she is currently quite busy with her own teaching duties and taking classes, but we still manage to make noteworthy progress in her training on the equipment. She is quite tough: tonight I gave up at around 9:30pm, and she returned to her office to continue her preparation for the next upcoming test. Suddenly I feel old!