{"id":2893,"date":"2014-05-07T12:30:27","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T11:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/?p=2893"},"modified":"2014-05-07T10:35:59","modified_gmt":"2014-05-07T09:35:59","slug":"boston-career-expo-journalist-competition-winner-aliyah-weinstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/2014\/05\/07\/boston-career-expo-journalist-competition-winner-aliyah-weinstein\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston Career Expo Journalist competition winner: Aliyah Weinstein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aliyah<\/a>

{credit}Abigail Murray{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Aliyah Weinstein is an alumna of Rutgers University and is currently a first-year PhD student in immunology at the University of Pittsburgh. \u00a0Her scientific interests include cancer immunology and immunotherapy. Outside of science, she speaks French, volunteers with a Pittsburgh-based youth writing initiative, and enjoys baking. \u00a0She writes about life as a grad student on her blog, Isn’t That Grad!<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

You are invited to travel back in time and ask anyone a question. Who would it be and why?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Grandpa, what was it like to be in the war?<\/i> The second-to-last week of March, 2007, was when the question first crossed my mind.<\/p>\n

I was sixteen then, a junior in high school, studying twentieth century U.S. history. We\u2019d started learning about the 1950s, and were assigned a project on the Vietnam War. Any information I would need would be available either in our textbook or on the Internet, but I thought it would be neat to get some first-hand information to include in my report as well.<\/p>\n

I told my mother about my intent. \u201cGrandpa wasn\u2019t in the Vietnam War, though; he fought in Korea,\u201d she replied. I hadn\u2019t known, obviously; Grandpa hadn\u2019t talked about his experiences to me, and, as I later learned, nor to my mother or grandmother. He had fought in a war, but besides that it was as though his years in the Army had disappeared.<\/p>\n

The war was before my mother was born, before my grandparents had even met. By the time he became \u201cGrandpa,\u201d those years were far behind him. I didn\u2019t come across this history until I found a few photographs and an ID card from his military years, stashed away in an old box in his study when I was in middle school.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t call him that week. There was no pressing reason to, and I was busy with schoolwork. Since I knew he wouldn\u2019t be able to help me with my history project, I told myself that I would call him when I had finished the assignment.<\/p>\n

The day he passed away was a Friday, and I\u2019d spent that morning at school filming the last portion of my project on the Vietnam War. Since the project was complete, I knew that I would finally have time to call Grandpa over the weekend. Instead, when I saw my dad in the car to pick me up from school instead of my mom, I knew something was wrong. Only something important could pull him away from his desk before the end of the work day.<\/p>\n

It had been nearly a month since the last time I\u2019d talked to Grandpa, and immediately I realized what a mistake I had made. Because of a school project, I\u2019d inadvertently missed out on the last opportunity to talk to my grandfather. Since then, I\u2019ve realized that there\u2019s no way to know whether what\u2019s around today will be available tomorrow.\u00a0 I\u2019ve tried to jump at every opportunity presented to me as it\u2019s come along, knowing that it\u2019s better to take a chance on something that may turn out to be irrelevant than to never experience it at all.<\/p>\n

Still, given the opportunity to do so, I would travel back to March 29, 2007. I\u2019d pick up the phone and call Grandpa just because he\u2019s my Grandpa, and because I shouldn\u2019t\u00a0need a reason besides that. He would tell so many interesting stories if prompted to, and I would love to hear his voice and feel the smile on his face as he recounted one more to his eager granddaughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrandpa, what was it like to be in the war?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, hon, let me tell you\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Find out more about the conference delegates, exhibitors and workshop sessions at the Naturejobs Career Expo in Boston\u00a0here<\/a>,\u00a0and you can follow the action on Twitter using the\u00a0#NJCEBoston<\/a>\u00a0hashtag.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aliyah Weinstein is an alumna of Rutgers University and is currently a first-year PhD student in immunology at the University of Pittsburgh. \u00a0Her scientific interests include cancer immunology and immunotherapy. Outside of science, she speaks French, volunteers with a Pittsburgh-based youth writing initiative, and enjoys baking. \u00a0She writes about life as a grad student on her blog, Isn\u2019t That Grad!\u00a0  … Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45013,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[535,186,283],"tags":[447,509,521,523],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-njceboston","category-communication-2","category-events","tag-boston-career-expo","tag-journalist-competition","tag-us-history","tag-vietnam-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/naturejobs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}