You are currently viewing My PhD Journey in the U.S. | Week 111 | 09/27/2026 โ€“ 10/03/2026

My PhD Journey in the U.S. | Week 111 | 09/27/2026 โ€“ 10/03/2026

Already October๐Ÿ˜‡

Sunday, September 27

๋ชธ์ด ๋งŽ์ด ๋‚˜์•„์ ธ์„œ ๊ฐ„๋‹จํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋ฐ–์— ๋‚˜๊ฐ€ ์ƒˆ๋กœ ์˜คํ”ˆํ•œ ์น˜ํด๋ ˆ์— ๋‹ค๋…€์™”๋‹ค. ์—ฌ๊ธฐ ๊ทผ๋ฐฉ์— ์™ธ์‹๋ฌผ๊ฐ€์น˜๊ณ ๋Š” ์ฐธ ์ข‹์€๋ฐ ์ด๊ฒƒ๋„ ์ด๊ฒƒ์ €๊ฒƒ ๋„ฃ์„ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” ๊ฒŒ ๋งŽ์€๋ฐ ์ „๋ถ€๋‹ค ๋งํ•˜๊ธฐ๊ฐ€ ์‰ฝ์ง€์•Š์•„์„œ ใ…‹ใ…‹… ์ฃผ๋ฌธํ•ด์„œ ๋จน๋Š”๊ฒŒ ๋‚˜์„ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™๊ธฐ๋„ ํ•˜๋‹ค. ๋ธ”๋กœ๊ทธ๋ฅผ ์“ฐ๊ณ  ์ง‘์•ˆ์ผ ํ•˜๊ณ .. ๋ณ„ ์ผ ์—†์ด ๋‚ ์”จ ์ข‹์€ ์ผ์š”์ผ์ด์—ˆ๋‹ค.

I was feeling much better, so I headed out for a bit and tried the newly opened Chipotle. It’s a pretty good deal compared with the cost of eating out around here, but there are so many things you can add that getting all of them across isn’t easy haha… Maybe ordering ahead would be better. I worked on the blog and did some chores.. A sunny Sunday without much else going on.



Monday, September 28

์˜ค์ „ ๋žฉ๋ฏธํŒ…๋ถ€ํ„ฐ ์„œ๋ธŒ๊ทธ๋ฃน๋ฏธํŒ…๊นŒ์ง€ ๋„ค ์‹œ์ฏค ๋๋‚˜๋Š” ์ผ์ •์ด๋ผ, ๋๋‚˜์ž๋งˆ์ž ํ‡ด๊ทผํ•ด์„œ ์—ฌ์ž์นœ๊ตฌ์™€ ๋ณด์Œˆ์„ ๋งŒ๋“ค๊ณ  (๋‚ด๊ฑด ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๊ณ ์ถง๊ฐ€๋ฃจ๋ฅผ ๋งŽ์ด ๋„ฃ์—ˆ๋‚˜.. ๋ง›์€ ์žˆ์—ˆ๋Š”๋ฐ ์ƒ‰์ด ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ๋นจ๊ฐ›๋‹ค๐Ÿฅต) ์ผ€์ดํฌ๋„ ์ค€๋น„ํ•ด์„œ, ์กฐ๊ธˆ ๋Šฆ์—ˆ์ง€๋งŒ ๊ธฐ๋…์ผ์„ ์ถ•ํ•˜ํ–ˆ๋‹ค!

With lab meeting in the morning and subgroup meeting afterward, my schedule ran until around four. As soon as it ended, I went home and made bossam with my girlfriend (did I put too much red pepper powder in mine.. It tasted good, but the color was so red๐Ÿฅต). We also got a cake ready and celebrated our anniversary, a little late!



Tuesday, September 29

์˜ค๋Š˜์€ ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ์ผ์ฐ ๋ˆˆ์ด ๋– ์ ธ์„œ ์šด๋™๋„ ์ผ์ฐ ๋‹ค๋…€์˜ค๋ ค๊ณ  ํ–ˆ๋‹ค. ์–ด์ œ Bill ๊ต์ˆ˜๋‹˜๊ป˜ ๋ช‡์ฃผ๋งŒ์— ์—…๋ฐ์ดํŠธ๋ฅผ ๋ณด๋‚ด๋ฉด์„œ ๋ญ˜ ์—ฌ์ญค๋ดค๋Š”๋ฐ, ์˜ˆ์ƒํ•˜์ง€ ๋ชปํ•œ ๋‹ต๋ณ€์ด ์™€์„œ ์ด๊ฒƒ์ €๊ฒƒ ์ƒ๊ฐํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋‹ค. ์—ฐ๊ตฌ ์ชฝ์œผ๋กœ๋Š” Rodrigo์—๊ฒŒ ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ์ฐพ์€ ๋…ผ๋ฌธ๋“ค์„ ์ •๋ฆฌํ•ด์„œ ๋ณด๋‚ด์ฃผ๊ณ , ๋‚ด์ผ DeGrado Lab journal club์„ ์ค€๋น„ํ–ˆ๋‹ค. ์ด๋ฒˆ์— ์ฝ์„ ๊ฑด LUCI-tag ๊ด€๋ จ ๋…ผ๋ฌธ(๋ธ”๋กœ๊ทธ์—๋„ ์—…๋กœ๋“œํ–ˆ๋‹ค!). ๋“œ๋””์–ด E.coli 1L protein prep.์—์„œ cleared lysate๋ฅผ ๋ฐ”๋กœ loadingํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” superloop์ด ์™€์„œ ์ด์ œ ์ƒˆ๋กœ์šด workflow๋ฅผ ํ…Œ์ŠคํŠธํ•ด๋ณผ ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๊ฒŒ ๋๋‹ค ์„ค๋ Œ๋‹ค.

I woke up way too early today, so I was going to get my workout in early too. Yesterday, I sent Professor Bill an update for the first time in a few weeks and asked him something, but his unexpected reply has given me a lot to think about. On the research side, I organized the papers I’d found and sent them to Rodrigo, then prepared for tomorrow’s DeGrado Lab journal club. This time, it’s a paper about LUCI-tag (I posted it on the blog too!). The Superloop that lets me load cleared lysate directly from a 1 L E. coli protein prep finally arrived, so I can now test a new workflow. Exciting.



Wednesday, September 30

๋“œ๋””์–ด ๋ณธ์…‹ ๋ ˆ๊ทธํ”„๋ ˆ์Šค ํ•€์„ ๋๊นŒ์ง€ ๊ฝ‚์€๋‚ !! ์ผ๋…„ ์ „์— ๋น„ํ•ด์„œ ์ •๋ง ๋งŽ์ด ๋Š˜์–ด์„œ ๋ฟŒ๋“ฏํ•˜๋‹ค ใ…Žใ…Ž ์ƒ์ฒด๋„ ์ข€ ์ด๋ ‡๊ฒŒ ํŒํŒ ๋Š˜์—ˆ์œผ๋ฉด.. ์ผ์„ ์—ด์‹ฌํžˆ ํ•˜๋‹ค๊ฐ€ Journal club ๋ฐœํ‘œ์™€ ๋žฉ๋ฏธํŒ…์ด ๋๋‚˜๊ณ  ์ €๋…์—๋Š” competition ๊ด€๋ จ discussion๊นŒ์ง€.. ์•„์ฃผ ์ •์‹ ์—†์ด ๊ฝ‰์ฐจ๊ฒŒ ๋ณด๋‚ธ ํ•˜๋ฃจ์˜€๋‹ค.

Finally, the day I put the pin all the way down the weight stack for my working sets on the leg press!! I’ve improved so much compared with a year ago, and I’m proud of that haha. If only my upper body would make big jumps like this too.. I worked away, then had my journal club presentation and lab meeting, followed by a discussion about the competition in the evening.. Such a packed, hectic day.



Thursday, October 1

์•„๋‹ˆ ๋ฒŒ์จ 10์›”์ด๋ผ๋‹ˆ.. ํ•œ๊ตญ ๊ฐ€๊ธฐ์ „๊นŒ์ง€๋Š” ๋ฐ˜๋“œ์‹œ ํ•ต์‹ฌ ์‹คํ—˜์€ ๋๋‚ด๊ณ  ๊ฐ€์•ผํ•œ๋‹ค!!์˜ค๋Š˜์€ ์‹คํ—˜๊ณผ modeling ์ชฝ์œผ๋กœ ์ด๊ฒƒ์ €๊ฒƒ ์ญ‰ ์ •๋ฆฌํ•ด๋’€๋‹ค. ์žฅ๋น„ ์กฐ๊ฑด์„ ๋‹ค์‹œ ๋น„๊ตํ•ด๋ณผ ๊ณ„ํš๋„ ์žˆ๊ณ , Patrick์—๊ฒŒ ๋ฌผ์–ด๋ณผ ์•„์ด๋””์–ด์™€ ๊ฒฌ์  ํ™•์ธ ๋“ฑ ์ด๊ฒƒ์ €๊ฒƒ ํ•  ์ผ์ด ๊ฝค ์žˆ์—ˆ๋‹ค. ์žฅํ•™๊ธˆ ์‹ ์ฒญ๋„ ์ฑ™๊ฒจ์•ผ ํ•˜๊ณ .. ์—ฐ๊ตฌ ์ด์™ธ์—๋„ ํ•  ์ผ์ด ๊ณ„์† ์žˆ๋‹ค ใ…Žใ…Ž ์˜ค๋Š˜๋„ ์˜ค๋žœ๋งŒ์— ์—ด์‹œ๊ฐ€ ๋„˜์–ด์„œ ํ‡ด๊ทผํ–ˆ๋Š”๋ฐ ๊ทธ๋ž˜๋„ ๋“œ๋””์–ด superloop ์„ค์น˜ํ•˜๊ณ  ์ž‘๋™ํ™•์ธ๊นŒ์ง€ ๋งˆ์ณค๋‹ค๐Ÿฅน

How is it already October.. I absolutely have to finish the key experiments before going to Korea!! Today, I organized a bunch of things on both the experimental and modeling sides. I have plans to compare equipment conditions again, ideas to ask Patrick about, quotes to check, and quite a few other things to do. There’s the scholarship application to take care of too.. The to-do list keeps growing outside research as well haha. I ended up leaving after ten for the first time in a while, but I finally installed the Superloop and checked that it works๐Ÿฅน



Friday, October 2

๊ธˆ์š”์ผ์ด๋ผ ์ˆ˜์—… ๋“ฃ๊ณ  ์˜ค๋žœ๋งŒ์— ์นœ๊ตฌ๋“ค์ด๋ž‘ ์ ์‹ฌ! ์ด์ œ ์ž๊ฒฉ์‹œํ—˜๋„ ๋๋‚˜๊ณ  ๋‹ค๋“ค ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์— ์—ด์„ ์˜ฌ๋ฆด๋•Œ๋ผ ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์–˜๊ธฐ๋ฐ–์— ์•ˆํ•œ๋‹ค ใ…‹ใ…‹ ์˜คํ›„์—๋Š” ์˜ค๋žœ๋งŒ์— ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์‹ค์—์„œ ์ƒ์ผ์ž ๊ธฐ๋…์œผ๋กœ ์ผ€์žŒ์„ ํ–ˆ๊ณ , ์˜ค๋Š˜์€ ํฐ ์ผ ์—†์ด ํ•˜๋ฃจ๋ฅผ ์ž˜ ๋งˆ๋ฌด๋ฆฌํ–ˆ๋‹ค. ๊ทธ๋Ÿฐ๋ฐ ์ง‘์—์„œ ์—ด์‹ฌํžˆ ์ผ์„ ํ•˜๊ณ  ์žˆ๋Š”๋ฐ ๋ฐค ์—ดํ•œ ์‹œ์ฏค ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์‹ค ๋ƒ‰๋™๊ณ  ์•Œ๋žŒ์ด ์šธ๋ ธ๋‹ค๋Š” Slack ๋ฉ”์‹œ์ง€๊ฐ€ ์™”๋‹ค. ๊ฐ€๊นŒ์ด ์‚ฌ๋Š” ์‚ฌ๋žŒ๋“ค์—๊ฒŒ ํ™•์ธ์„ ๋ถ€ํƒํ–ˆ๋Š”๋ฐ ๋‹ค๋“ค ๋‹ต์ด ์—†์–ด์„œ ์œผ์—‘ ๊ฒฐ๊ตญ ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ์—ฐ๊ตฌ์‹ค์— ๋‹ค๋…€์™”๋‹ค ใ…‹ใ…‹.. ๊ทธ๋Ÿฌ๋‹ค ๋ณด๋‹ˆ ์ž ์€ ๋‘ ์‹œ์ฏค์—์•ผ ์žค๋‹ค.

Friday meant class and lunch with friends for the first time in a while! Now that everyone’s qualifying exams are over and they’re throwing themselves into research, it’s all we talk about haha. In the afternoon, we had cake in the lab to celebrate birthdays, which we hadn’t done in a while, and I wrapped up the day without anything major happening. But while I was working away at home, a Slack message came in around eleven saying that the lab freezer alarm had gone off. I asked people who live nearby to check, but nobody replied, so ugh, I ended up going to the lab myself haha.. By the time all that was over, I didn’t get to sleep until around two.



Saturday, October 3

์˜ค๋Š˜์€ ์ผ๋…„์— ํ•œ ๋ฒˆ ์žˆ๋Š” UCSF ํ–‰์‚ฌ?์ธ ๋ฐ•์‚ฌ๊ณผ์ • ํ•™์ƒ๋“ค ์ €๋… ์‹์‚ฌ์— ๋‹ค๋…€์™”๋‹ค. ๋ณดํ†ต ์ƒˆ๋กœ ๋“ค์–ด์˜ค๋Š” ๋ถ„๋“ค์ด ์žˆ๊ธดํ•ด์„œ ํ•™๊ธฐ์‹œ์ž‘ํ•˜๊ณ  ์–ผ๋งˆ ๋˜์ง€์•Š์•„ ๋‚˜๋ฆ„์˜ ํ™˜์˜ํšŒ ๊ฒธ.. ์ด๋ ‡๊ฒŒ ์‹์‚ฌ๋ฅผ ํ•˜๋Š”๋ฐ ๋‚ด๊ฐ€ ์ฒ˜์Œ ๋“ค์–ด์™”๋˜ 2๋…„์ „, ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ  2ํ•™๋…„์ด ๋˜๋Š” 1๋…„ ์ „์—๋„ ๊ฐ„๋‹จํ•˜๊ฒŒ ๋งŒ๋‚˜๊ธด ํ–ˆ์—ˆ๋‹ค. ๋†€๋ž๋„๋ก ๊ทธ ์‚ฌ์ด๋Š” ๋ˆ„๊ตฌ๋„ ๋”ฐ๋กœ ๊ฑฐ์˜ ๋งŒ๋‚˜์ง„ ์•Š์ง€๋งŒ ใ…Žใ…Ž.. Bay Pocha (2642 Ocean Ave, San Francisco, CA 94132)์— ๊ฐ€์„œ ๊ฑฐ์˜ ์ƒ๊ฐํ•  ์ˆ˜ ์žˆ๋Š” ํ•œ์‹์„ ๋‹ค ๋จน์€ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™๋‹ค. ๋–ก๋ณถ์ด, ๋‹ญ๋ณถ์Œํƒ•, ๊ฐˆ๋น„, ๊ฐ์žํƒ•.. ์ „์ฒด์ ์œผ๋กœ ์Œ์‹์ด ๊ดœ์ฐฎ์•˜๋Š”๋ฐ ์•„ ๊ฐ์žํƒ•์€ ์ข€ ์•„์‰ฌ์› ๋‹ค. ์†”์งํžˆ ๋งํ•˜์ž๋ฉด ํ•œ๊ตญ์— 15๋…„์ด ๋„˜๋„๋ก ๋‹จ๊ณจ์ธ ์šฐ๋ฆฌ ๊ฐ€์กฑ ์ตœ์• ์ธ ๊ฐ์žํƒ•์ง‘์ด ์žˆ์–ด์„œ ์•„๋งˆ ๊ฐ์žํƒ•์ด๋ผ๋Š” ์Œ์‹ ์ž์ฒด์— ๋Œ€ํ•œ ๋„ˆ๋ฌด๋‚˜๋„ ๋†’์€ ๊ธฐ์ค€์„ ๊ฐ€์ง€๊ณ  ์žˆ์–ด์„œ ์ธ ๊ฒƒ ๊ฐ™๊ธฐ๋„ํ•˜๋‹ค ใ…‹ใ…‹ ๋‹ฌ๋ฉด ๊ฐ์žํƒ•์œผ๋กœ ์ทจ๊ธ‰ํ•˜์ง€ ์•Š๋Š”๋‹ค. ์–ด์จŒ๋“  ์ƒˆ๋กœ๋“ค์–ด์˜จ ๋ถ„๋“ค์˜ ์–˜๊ธฐ๋„ ์˜ค๋žœ๋งŒ์— ์žฌ๋ฐŒ๊ฒŒ ๋“ฃ๊ณ  ์‹œ๊ฐ„์„ ๋ณด๋ƒˆ๋‹ค. ๋‹ค๋“ค ์ ์‘ ์ž˜ ํ•ด์„œ ์›ํ•˜๋Š” ๊ฒƒ ์ž˜ ์ด๋ฃจ๊ณ  ๊ฐ€์…จ์œผ๋ฉด ์ข‹๊ฒ ๋‹ค.

Today, I went to the annual UCSF event? Dinner for PhD students. There are usually some new arrivals, so we have a meal not long after the semester starts as a sort of welcome gathering.. We also met up briefly when I first arrived two years ago and when I started my second year a year ago. Surprisingly, we hardly see each other separately in between haha.. We went to Bay Pocha and ate just about every Korean dish I could think of. Tteokbokki, dakbokkeumtang, galbi, gamjatang.. The food was good overall, but ah, the gamjatang was a bit disappointing. Honestly, my family has a favorite gamjatang place in Korea that we’ve been going to for over 15 years, so I may just have ridiculously high standards for the dish itself haha. If it’s sweet, I don’t count it as gamjatang. Anyway, I had fun hearing from the new arrivals and spending time together. I hope everyone settles in well and accomplishes what they came here to do.