I learnt today that Belgium is half the size of Tasmania, which explains why I could make a day trip to Luxembourg, which required travelling across and back two thirds of Belgium. Still, the four hour train trip each way was very relaxing, with time to nap, eat, write postcards, and watch the landscape alternate between delightful towns with their church spires and cows relaxing on green pastures.

After disembarking, I bought a Luxembourg card which entitled me to free public transport and free entry to all the museums. A great deal I thought, until I discovered that the Old Town was an easy ten minute walk away, the museums were closed on Mondays, and I had missed the guided tour. Determined to get my euro’s worth, I caught the bus in, which took twenty minutes, due to all the traffic.

The streets were all packed with people, as it was market day, which in Luxembourg seems to consist more of leather handbags and fur coats than of fruits and vegetables. I started my explorations down in the UNESCO World Heritage Casemates. After the Treaty of London, most Count Seigfried’s 963 CE fortifications were razed, but the underground passages remain. Surprisingly, they are full of sunlight, as they often open up into the cliffs that surround the city, giving spectacular views of the Grund in the valley below.

I then walked across the Chemin dela Coniche, which is called Europe’s most beautiful balcony, as it winds along the edge of the cliff tops above Petrusse Valley. The black spires of the Cathedrale Notre Dame dominate the skyline of the old town, and I found the inside also very beautiful, even if the Lonely Planet calls it “an ugly hotchpotch of progressive renovations”. The stained-glass windows are bright and intricate, the columns decorated with delicate carvings, and the ceiling filled with grand arches.

My recent explorations of Europe have emboldened me to be able to enter church buildings, and not feel too intimidated as a non-believer. I now realise that these churches were designed to be overpowering and intimidating to everyone, and now I am able to enter them, while still respecting their status as an important monument of history, art, and architecture. Just outside the church, a congregation of gargoyles seemed to mock those passing by.

My last stop was a visit at the free museum of the headquarters of Luxembourg’s oldest bank – the Banque et Caisse d’pargne de l’Etat. It was an interesting look behinds the scenes of money in the Grand Duchy – I could walk inside a bank vault, and see the original sketches for some of the bank notes in the early 1900’s. My favourite was one proudly depicting dozens of factory chimneys energetically pumping huge clouds of smoke into the sky, as a symbol of the countries growing industrial power.

Here are the people with whom I have been working with for the past 18 months. I especially admire the grad students. Here in the US, people generally work as technicians for a few years before starting grad school, a process that takes 5 – 7 years. So I am actually younger than all the PhD candidates in the lab. Still, they keep at it every day, and don’t seem to be in any rush to leave. They always have time to listen to my stories or look at my data, and work at their science with a smile.

And this is the view from our lab:

Ph.D.

It is my pleasure to advise you that on 26 November 2007 the Dean of the relevant College has approved the award of your degree of Doctor of Philosophy. I congratulate you most warmly on this achievement.

The paperwork has finally gone through, and now I am officially a doctor!

I am am very proud of all my work over the years. Glad that I never quit, I kept on going, and it was all worthwhile in the end.

I shall come back to Australia to graduate in December 2008, but will celebrate this weekend in San Francisco, and this December on a cruise through the Southern Caribbean.

I am happy happy happy.

Often I look around at the scientists around me, at one of the best public research institutions in the nation. While one or two of them seem happy, so many of them seem stressed and anxious. What does it take to feel like a successful scientist? I see Primary Investigators that push their graduate students and post-docs past breaking point for the next Nature paper. I see researchers stay late in the lab when they have partners and children at home. I see people in tears over yet another experimental failure.

I myself feel like I am just keeping my head above water. I can see some ahead of me swimming with sure easy strokes, but so often it feels like a struggle just to get through the day. I feel like I’ve studied my whole life for this job and I’m still not good at it. Failed experiments, slow data, rejected fellowship applications. I just never feel like I’m any good at what I do. I look around me, and I don’t think that I’m the only one who feels that way.

Next month I am starting a Masters in Public Health, part-time by correspondence. One day I want to have a job that I enjoy, in which I feel competent and successful.