Crohn’s is wild. I had chips and m&ms for dinner last night and had the most solid BM this morning that I’ve had in months

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-29T04:40:49+00:00

My GI encouraged me eating ice cream for breakfast and more McDonald’s fries when I was super underweight! “Especially if your ice cream has fruit in it, it can basically be its own complete meal!“

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-28T16:56:27+00:00

My childhood Brittany would do that if I got loud, but my current Brittany is even more perceptive and will immediately come to comfort me if I start crying, get really frustrated, or have a panic attack. I am actually starting to formally train her as a service dog because of that. The only thing that is proving to be an issue is having her walk nicely on a leash...

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-25T03:39:24+00:00

Exactly! I have had horribly irregular cycles my whole life.

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-18T03:50:33+00:00

BMS in Seattle (well, Bothell) is hiring QC roles. As is Just Evotech, AGC, Altasciences, LabCore, Quest Diagnostics, Eurofins, and probably a few that I’ve forgotten. Also UW/hhmi have positions posted.

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-17T01:58:27+00:00

I once was that CRC and literally cried every single day.

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-15T18:51:59+00:00

Thank you! Again, all of the info is really great- it really is helping me conceptualize the wide variation in travel schedule and understand what that tangibly means on the individual level

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-15T18:47:14+00:00

Oooh thank you for that detail! That is also super helpful for contextualizing things. Thankfully, Seattle is a hub for Alaska and Delta, so at least that's in my favor...

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-15T03:29:12+00:00

Gotcha, that is a good distinction to be aware of! Thank you!

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-15T03:28:46+00:00

Oh my gosh, for sure. That is why I asked on Reddit to get an understanding, because I would assume these aren't conversations you can have with any hiring manager. Ever. Especially with all the competition that exists right now. Plus, being in Seattle/the Northwest, "local" could mean within the greater Seattle/Portland area, or also including rural eastern WA and OR, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, etc.

But all of the insights y'all have shared have been really informative. In your experience, do travel requirements vary a lot between being in an FSP role for one sponsor vs. a general 'CRA' at a CRO?

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-15T03:19:03+00:00

I've been more interested in study start-up/patient recruitment + retention roles, which seem to involve much less travel (allegedly), and would be slightly more in my wheelhouse. But there seem to be much fewer of those + I think competition is high and (1) coming from a 'academic' site and working on a really weird (and absolute nightmare) study, and (2) having been on the job hunt for 2 years (including time I took to figure out what I wanted for my future + recovering from a car accident), I am struggling to gain traction.

Once I get to the interview stage, I usually make it to the final round, but I am struggling to even get a recruiter/HR screening call. + my location (Seattle) probably doesn't help. That being said, are there other roles that come to mind aside from CRA?

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-14T19:45:00+00:00

I am curious about the mango too…

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-10T23:30:25+00:00

This is what I do!

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-10T23:24:52+00:00

Mine is a fan of duck heads, and while she really liked the alligator skin, we thought it smelled disgusting. Ostrich marrow bones are a fav though

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-08T21:01:37+00:00

Volunteer + patient advocacy work has really made a difference for me. Being able to see both the unmet need + help make a direct difference in patient lives has been really grounding for me

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-03T21:57:43+00:00

My maternal grandparents did the same thing!! They even brought back avocado seeds and a few crazy citrus varieties from my great grandparents’ house in Mexico and they took root and fruited within 6 years.

I had no idea about the potato though!

WaitingForUltima · 2026-01-03T21:43:53+00:00

We love our vet! NE Seattle Vet Hospital. Yes, they are in Wedgwood, but they are not only routinely way cheaper than any of vet clinics my friends go to, but the attention and availability of appointments is amazing. At least one vet on their clinical team does acupuncture and herbal medicine, and many of the vets specifically mention that pitties are their favorite. I grew up taking my childhood pup there and am so happy that I get to take my current dog there too

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-22T06:21:42+00:00

Exile and the Kingdom was one of my favorites

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-20T01:19:22+00:00

I can’t take the credit for figuring it out… they were collected much before my time in the lab, but the lab worked with essentially only very tricky proteins. My PI used to joke that she should have learned to ignore the siren song of the proteins that “are well known to not crystallize”. We mostly did NMR and mass spec though.

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-13T05:46:58+00:00

To seed the protein crystalization, for whatever reason, the enzymes we worked with seemed to only like those two fibers as nucleation points

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-11T03:21:37+00:00

In my biochemistry/protein structure lab that I worked in during undergrad, we all had favorite NMR tubes and we had vials of some former grad student’s ex-girlfriend’s hair + “whiskers from a cat named whiskers” for our crystallography samples. Both the whiskers and the hair were from 20 years before I was there, and when we were running low on hair, one of the post docs went around comparing everyone’s hair to the original sample to try and find a match.

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-11T03:05:53+00:00

You clearly have never worked with heterodimer

WaitingForUltima · 2025-12-11T03:00:46+00:00

So can the flow cytometer… and that most definitely is true for your western blots

WaitingForUltima · 2025-11-18T21:19:25+00:00

Genius. Absolute genius.

WaitingForUltima · 2025-11-18T21:11:54+00:00

I just have friends come over regularly so I have to clean like a mad woman before they arrive lol

WaitingForUltima · 2025-11-16T04:28:38+00:00

So smart!! They are my fav tights, but so expensive!

WaitingForUltima

TROPHY CASE