Leaving labs and losing labmates

I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to the effects of a peripatetic scientific lifestyle on friendships. I spent my undergrad, postgrad and postdoctoral years in different countries, and in each place there was a constant reshuffling of my group of friends as some people moved on to new positions, and new recruits arrived to take their place. These days though I’m firmly settled in Vancouver, working in the same building in which I did my postdoctoral research. The company that employed me for the two years in between is about a three minute walk away. A new job no longer means a new location and a new group of friends.

This is great in that I’ve finally got a group of friends that will stay relatively stable over time; many of my former colleagues, especially from my industry position, have no intention of leaving Vancouver. I have regular coffee, lunch and beer dates with friends from both of my previous Vancouver jobs, and I can’t go anywhere within a three block radius of my office without meeting people I know. On Thursday I was having a working lunch with a colleague in a sushi place around the corner from work, and I met three groups of people from my industry job, and one from my postdoctoral department.
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Sometimes you need to talk shop and you don’t wanna go where everybody knows your name.
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Vancouver’s life science industry is still quite small, and I realised last week (on a different lunch outing) that many of the people I’ve worked with in the past will be a constant and recurring feature of my career here. A friend from my new job had invited me to have lunch with a group of her former colleagues. I didn’t think I knew anyone else who’d worked at that institute, but as it turns out, I knew three of them from my last job, and one from my postdoc! It’s a very very small world we live in, and wherever my career takes me in Vancouver I will keep meeting these people again and again. I’d better watch my behaviour at those beer-infused outings.
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A couple of days later I was having drinks with some friends from my postdoc years. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of the department’s new recruits through those of the original crowd who are still there, and it’s a really great group of people. I started chatting to a British postdoc who started a couple of years after me, and who’s coming to the end of his time in the lab. He’s thinking of either going back to the UK or on to Australia. A student who I don’t know quite as well is almost certainly going to Stanford. Other students are about 18 months away from finishing, and are already starting to talk about living abroad for a while.
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It’s happening again.
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It’s always sad when people move on. There’s something about a lab environment that fosters close friendships, and I’ve always been in very social and close-knit labs. I miss working with lots of my old friends, who are now scattered across the world.
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And, of course, that’s the upside. I’ve met up with old labmates in Boston, Washington DC and San Diego, and have others in Montreal, Portland, Sydney, various locations in the UK, and (new and exciting!) Crete. Several of my old friends have made their way to Vancouver on various conferences and interviews. But it’s just not the same.
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Hmmm. I’ll have to try to persuade some of my closest friends to stay a little longer. The Olympics are going to be great, guys…