My toxic trait is staying up far too late working on data analysis when my dog is begging me to go to bed. I wasn't even going to look at work on my computer when I opened it. I was going to turn on a show and finish said dog's Halloween costume.

How Fern feels about listening to me practice my seminar for the 3rd time in 24-hours.

Dear committee members, Please allow me to graduate this winter. My dog is done with my absurd working hours.

Our lovely annual break from the graduate school grind at the Saint Paul Holiday Market!

The cutest canine member of both the Hirsch lab and UMN Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology had a bit too much fun at the end of the year event.

Final month of graduate school checklist: ✅ Apply for graduation ✅ Complete dissertation ⬜ Gallbladder surgery ⬜ Finalize defense slides ⬜ Practice defense ⬜ Crohn's disease scopes ⬜ #PhDdefense I guess grad school looks a little different when you are #chronicallyill

✅ gallbladder removed (On Friday) Now on to defense slides for this Fridays practice session.

If I'd never done both, I would think it would be harder to catheterize a 17 g mouse than put ear drops in a dog's infected while she's on calming medication. And I would have been wrong.

Just a young service dog wondering what it takes to be a co-author on all these papers she's been "helping" write!

Couldn't have made it through (especially the first two years) without our cohort!

I would like to make a petition to not require an undergraduate GPA on applications for positions that require graduate degrees. My undergraduate GPA was far from ideal and highly reflective of my undiagnosed (and untreated) severe Crohn's Disease. Please disregard it!

And now as of Friday 100% of our cohort is officially doctors!

New reason why I'm not sure I'm ever supposed to work in academia: I can't handle students calling me Miss/Dr. Bixby. I'm teaching 1st-5th graders in summer school and I switched to Morgan/Miss Morgan on day 1.

I may have defended 6 months ago but coming back to Minnesota for work means ECP isn't getting rid of me that easily.

A note to research science educators: Henrietta Lacks is not the only case study on terrible research ethics. It's an important one, but by the time you're working with post-graduate fellows this is the 3-4+time we've looked at the same case.

From our Fall issue: Morgan Bixby Ph.D. Jenna Salay, and Betsy Hirsch, PharmD (TTIDPD) discuss the CLSI updates to the breakpoints for a variety of antimicrobials. #IDtwitter contagionlive.com/view/what-s-ne…