As We Scatter to the Winds

To remind readers that I am still your loyal wildlife columnist: A juvenile ring-billed gull (me) salutes its juvenile conspecific (you) that is soaring high with food in its beak (whatever you are up to next). (Photo: Jieyu Zheng)

May 27, 2026, marked my fifth anniversary of my arrival at Caltech, when I was freshly off the boat – or rather, off the plane. Here in Southern California, the weather seems almost unchanged from one day to the next, and the lack of dramatic seasonal shifts can create the illusion that time is stagnant (unless you are a birder paying close attention to migrants). But as we approach this year’s commencement, I cannot help but reflect on how quickly time has passed.

Out of more than 8 billion people on Earth, a few hundred of us spent the past few years together on this tiny campus. For many of us, those years amount to more than ten percent of our lives so far — perhaps more than 20% for some of you Caltech prodigies. Isn’t life a strange encounter built on coincidences?

The feeling of coincidence, of repeatedly crossing paths with brilliant people, comes to me almost every day, especially given how small Caltech is. As a graduate student, I have spent nearly every workday with my lab mates (except for a few night owls who seem determined to arrive only after sunset), and we have become almost as close as siblings — close enough to know exactly how to annoy one another. Even though graduate students and undergraduates often live in different worlds, our paths still intersect. We meet in the crowded cafeterias, on the walk between buildings, or at opportunistic club events with free food. At those moments, when your eyes recognize a familiar figure, your little concept neurons fire and trigger a cascade of memories: “Ah, that senior from my elementary Spanish class said she was moving to Seattle.” “She helped me catch a mouse when it ran away.” “That person always sat in the front row and somehow always asked the best questions.”

Even if it feels as though the same people appear in your life over and over again, we are not the same people who entered this river a few years ago. It is not just about the knowledge we accumulated, the courses listed on our transcripts, or the papers we published.

It is about all the experiences that made us members of this community. You may remember a lecture where, instead of drifting to sleep after staying up all night finishing a problem set, you suddenly became captivated by a question in your field and realized that it was something you wanted to pursue for the rest of your life. You may remember a late-night discussion in a dorm lounge that made you laugh hard. You may remember in your first year, introverted and isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic, you tried to make some connections by sending rainbow-colored memes on Discord. You may remember under a smoky, vermilion night sky lit up by wildfires, you and your friends drove out of the town to escape. Events like these are personal and communal at the same time, and they wove our years together.

It is also about the qualities we acquired here. Many of us arrived carrying the pride of being near the top of our classes, drawn from schools and communities around the world. Then we sat down next to people who seemed impossibly talented — “How could they know everything already in high school while I was still playing with mud?” The initial excitement was then followed by bewilderment and a deep entanglement of impostor syndrome. After years of struggling with impostor and panic attacks over failing at any given minute, you eventually reach a quieter realization: we are all just ordinary humans trying to do difficult things.

More importantly, it is about the connections we built — and sometimes lost. Some of us found the loves of our lives here, and to those celebrating engagements or marriages, I offer my warmest congratulations. Others accumulated a collection of exes whom we carefully try to avoid at department events. Such is campus life. Yet alongside the heartbreaks, I will always remember the friendships during the most stoic moments. The phone calls that were picked up after just a few rings. The food that was ordered when experiments failed. The texts from my readers who appreciated my nerdy wildlife column. Those moments of humanity are among the things I value most from my years here.

And ultimately, it is simply about the time we shared. The changes are written into every part of us: in millions of altered synapses, in new habits of thought and behaviors, perhaps even in a few extra wrinkles. No single article can summarize them. Years from now, you may not consciously think much about your time at Caltech. But every so often, some fragment of it will return unexpectedly: a familiar hallway appearing in a dream, a phrase that could have come from your PI, a little turtle in a souvenir shop that brings back a memory of the Turtle Pond, or a light scent of burned food that recalls the Mongolian stir-fry. A small piece of this place will continue traveling with you. And I hope those memories are mostly happy ones.

Having spent five years here, I have witnessed many commencements and inaugurations. I have a particular fondness for them because I have served as a graduate orientation leader nearly every year I have been here, and because my lab is located right next to Beckman Mall where the commencement ceremony happens. Universities like Caltech renew themselves continuously. The ceremonies remain mostly the same each year (and so does the orientation food, if you were wondering), and the incoming students are always roughly the same age. Yet every year is different because the people are different. For you and me, this has been a unique journey because of all the experiences, qualities, connections, and time we shared.

The people leaving this year — us — will pass our roles in the story to those who come next. They will inherit the lab work, the house traditions, the subsidized apartments; the opportunities, the frustrations, the friendships; and the responsibility of shaping this community in turn.

I simply wanted to say that it has been a great pleasure to meet all of you here. And now, as we scatter to the winds, may you soar as high as you wish.

(Note: This is not a farewell. I am still working on my manuscript and thesis… Such is life.)