Perhaps the most enticing aspect of this masters, for me, was the getting opportunity to travel. In late September, after a few weeks of lectures in NUI Galway, I headed off to Virginia (USA, not Cavan) to study for 3 months in the lab of Dr. Aureliano Bombarely, in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences in Virginia Tech.
The university is located in a town called Blacksburg, in the eastern part of the state. To get there, I flew from Dublin to Washington Dulles, and from there a short 35-minute flight to Roanoke airport, where Tomas, a PhD student from Aure’s lab very kindly picked me up and dropped me to my Air BnB. Little did I know that the next three weeks would be spent hopping from one air BnB to another as I quickly learned of the shortage of short-term housing in Blacksburg – it’s much more common in the US for students to live in on-campus dorms or take up a 12-month lease in student apartment complexes. I eventually found a lovely room in a house on a bus route from campus. The university is very much the centre point of Blacksburg, and also the end-point for all buses. The campus physically taking up a large proportion of the town, and most local businesses functioning as support services for the students and staff. An hourly bus service known as the ‘Two Town Trolly’ connects Blacksburg to neighbouring Christiansburg, where larger known department stores such as Walmart, Target would provide many of my essentials and grocery shopping for the following three months.
The university is huge by Irish standards; 11 km-1 in area, and over 33,400 students. My HQ for the next three months would be Latham hall, a large three-storey building (not including split level basements), situated in the centre of the campus, a short walk from the drill field. I was given a desk in an office shared with the members of two lab groups who also shared the wet lab down the corridor. The masters and PhD students with whom I shared the office were extremely helpful and welcoming – I’m extremely fortunate to have made friends for life there.
