Fri, 15 May 2020

Let’s celebrate Anna!

Today is graduation at Washington University, and just like many other places, the ceremonies are a lot more virtual and surreal that in other years. For Anna today marks the graduation from Biomedical Engineering with a BSc. The McKelvey School of Engineering put a Zoom meeting together yesterday which was nice, and there is something more virtual here. Hopefully a real-life commencenment can take place in a year—the May 30, 2021, date has been set. The university also sent out a little commencement site/video which was cute. But at end of the day online-only still falls short of the real deal as we all know too well by now.

During those years, just about the only thing really I ever tweeted about appears to be soccer related. As it should because ball is life, as we all know. Here is one from 1 1/2 years ago when her Club Team three-peated in their NIRSA division:

And that opens what may be the best venue for mocking Anna: this year, which her a senior and co-captain, the team actually managed to loose a league game (a shocking first in these years) and to drop the final. I presume they anticipated that all we would all talk about around now is The Last Dance and three-peats, and left it at that. Probably wise.

Now just this week, and hence days before graduating with her B.Sc., also marks the first time Anna was addressed as Dr Eddelbuettel. A little prematurely I may say, but not too shabby to be in print already!

But on the topic of gratulations and what comes next, this tweet was very sweet:

As was this, which marked another impressive score:

So big thanks from all of us to WashU for being such a superb environment for Anna for those four years, and especially everybody at the Pappu Lab for giving Anna a home and base to start a research career.

And deepest and most sincere congratulations to Anna before the next adventure starts….

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