I climbed up the steps to the lab, boarded the elevator, and got off at the eleventh floor. Then I saw my boss, asked her if she had some time to talk, and told her everything about what’s happened to me these past couple of weeks. I really enjoyed working in the developmental mouse lab. It was worth the extra hours aside from school. There is so much I still want to do, to learn. I’ll find that too in the next lab, but I’ll really miss this one. It was the first time I worked with mammalian tissue, made histology sections, and saw, through the smooth reflective walls of a microscope tube, a mouse embryo beating its tiny little heart. The other day, the lab was closing and I stayed behind. The workers had gone home, and it was quiet and misty in the halls. I looked out the window into the black, shining night of Philadelphia, thinking about what I was leaving behind. The spotlights were searching and somewhere, a helicopter flew off, into the unlit recesses of the night. This is a vital and necessary step, but its never easy saying goodbye to something you loved.