This note is the nineteenth letter in the 104-days-of-summer-vacation series. You can also follow the full twitter thread here, and leave any thoughts and comments that might come up!

Dearest Reader,

I am terribly jet lagged today, so this will be a short one. My 10-day trip to India is over, and I am happy to finally be back home. It’s funny how going to India has this time-dilation quality to it, the ten days feels like years but it was nice to spend some time with loved ones.

I’m also excited to get back to routine, there are a number of changes coming up. Tomorrow, I am starting an internship with Dynacyte Biosciences, working on modular, scalable and small bioreactors. This wasn’t in my original summer-2023 plan, which means I’m going to have to scale back some of my goals to make extra time.

Regardless, the team at Dynacyte are inspiring, and the vision of “grow all the things” is something I would love to get behind. Biology is beautiful and there’s a lot to learn. 🧬💗

In my recent reflections, notably in do-what-contributes and grieving-otherselves, I mentioned the classic 20s struggle of figuring out what I should do. Dynacyte is an experiment on that front, and an opportunity to work with feedback from an ambitious team.

On an unrelated note, I hope you never have to deal with allergies on a plane. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I will be sleeping now, contently back in my own comfortable bed. Good night.

~ Shan