Tomorrow is my birthday, so I thought I’d commemorate the end of my 20’s today. I started this decade as an undergraduate in physics, but I would soon switch to biology. The next year, when I was 21, I went onto my first field season in South Carolina for the project that would become my M.S. I graduated with my B.S. somewhere around when I turned 22 (Dec. 2008). The following year, in spring of 2009, I would move to Clemson start my M.S. degree. I interviewed for my Ph.D. at 24, and at 25 I would defend my thesis and move to Wisconsin. I defended my dissertation this summer, at 29, and started my first research associate position at the end of summer. Now, I live in the great white north with my first “real,” livable paycheck, and in my first time of not being a student. It’s another life transition and new place, and it’s been a beautiful, scary roller-coaster ride through academia so far. It seems fitting that I would end school at this time, and transition to a new phase of life with a new decade.