Morgan Faist (C ’25) walked into her lab on Monday, March 31. Since last fall, Morgan had been discussing a job offer with her research lab to join them after graduation in a full–time position as a lab technician. A pre–medical student studying health and societies, she was enamored by the work of her lab and excited for the opportunity to further explore academic research—though it was a pivot from her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. That prior Friday, she had spoken with her boss about the Penn hiring freeze, but he assured her they would be able to figure things out. “I was so excited. I had the best weekend ever. I was over the moon that I had a job,” Morgan says.
That Monday, however, her principal investigator asked her to step into his office. “He just kind of shook his head and was like, ‘I’m so sorry,’” she says. “He almost looked like he was going to cry.” Between funding cuts and the Penn hiring freeze, her lab was no longer able to offer Morgan the position it had previously promised her.
“Like, what am I supposed to do now? I didn’t apply to any med schools. I don’t even know if I want to go to med school,” she says. “How am I supposed to figure it out?”
The first time Morgan stepped on Penn’s campus happened to be the first time she had heard of the school—and the Ivy League. In middle school, she visited Penn for her brother’s ice hockey tournament at the Class of 1923 Ice Rink. It was a far cry from her hometown of Factoryville, Pa., a rural town two hours away from Penn’s campus with a population of around 1,000, but Morgan immediately decided that this was where she wanted to be.
“I was like, ‘I’m getting out of town. I’m going to go to Penn and I’m going to go to medical school,’ and that was always my trajectory.” She worked as hard as she could, graduating as valedictorian of her class of 70 and becoming the first person in her high school’s history to go to an Ivy League school. Now, her once straightforward plans have been thrown awry. “This is definitely one of the first times that I do not have a plan, and it is so frightening, but also I just need to look at it in a way that frames it as being exciting, because I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I’m sure I’ll make the most of it.”
Morgan joined her research lab at the beginning of junior year while looking for a work–study job on the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships website. She was drawn to its work on substance use disorder and the neurogenetics of alcoholism. When she emailed the PI, however, he told her that they weren’t hiring at the moment. “I emailed him again, and I was like, ‘Wait, that’s OK. Can I still come in and talk to you? Like, I don’t care that you’re not hiring, because I just think your project is so cool,’” she says.
Morgan visited the lab under no presumption of future job prospects, openly acknowledging that she had no prior experience in wet lab research, but her PI took note of her interest in addiction research and offered to create a position.
“It ended up being my favorite thing I’ve done at Penn because it was something new and unexpected,” Morgan says. “I’m really passionate about it, and I’m really sad that I have to leave my lab. I don’t want to leave. My postdoc and I were both so sad.”
Despite coming in with no previous experience in neuroscience research, Morgan’s lab trained her and included her in discussions on research design and implementation. On occasion, she would even spend up to 20 hours a week in the lab—more time than she spent in her classes. Morgan worked at her lab through the summer of her junior year while studying for the MCAT. At the end of the summer, she took the long–awaited medical entrance exam—the gateway to her childhood dream of becoming a doctor. But ever since she joined her lab, she had begun to rethink whether medicine was her chosen path.
“I probably would have studied harder for the MCAT the first time,” she says. “But I think in the back of my head, I started having doubts when I realized how much I hated studying for this test and how much I loved going to work all summer when I was studying.”
Her original plan at the beginning of senior year was to retake the MCAT for a second time in January. But, she began discussing the possibility of continuing with her lab after she graduated. The lab was more than excited to keep her on for another year.
“When I decided not to take the MCAT again, it made the decision easier, because I was like, ‘Well, I can work in this lab and really take that year and figure it out,’” Morgan says. “But now, I can’t even think about the MCAT or medical school because I don’t even know what I’m going to do next week.”
Morgan stayed at work for the rest of the day after being told that she would no longer be able to stay on that next year. That night, she went home to her friends, who were all in a similar boat. After spending the night ranting and sharing their anxieties, she and her friends went to a coffee shop the next morning and mass–applied to jobs. “The only good thing about the situation is everyone’s plans seem very tentative right now, so it feels like we’re not alone in this, which is very comforting,” Morgan notes. “It’s the forefront of all our conversations and on all our minds all the time.”
For the most part, Morgan has been applying to other wet–lab jobs. “They’re all things I never thought I would do,” she admits. “I don’t feel qualified for anything that I’m applying for. This lab really took a chance on me and now that I’m applying to other labs, I’m almost reverting to my old small–town self where I don’t know if I can do anything.”
As she weighs the possibility of pursuing a Ph.D. to continue working in academic research, she’s been approaching this setback as a potential learning opportunity to gain a wider perspective on wet–lab research. “My thought is kind of like, I love [this job] so much, but do I love it just because of what we study and the people and what they have to do? But maybe I don’t like research as a whole,” she says.
“That being said, I’m also looking at restaurant jobs, because I need something,” Morgan adds. “Every time a prospect of a plan comes through, I find myself thinking, ‘Okay, but is it actually going to work out?’” She considered moving back home to continue her high school job as a pharmacy tech at Wegmans—however, those plans were complicated by the fact that she had already signed a lease in Philadelphia.
Still, as Morgan discusses her postgrad plans, she qualifies each statement with the fact that she recognizes how privileged she feels compared to the stories she’s heard from her friends. “It's very stressful and just like discouraging, but I know that everything happens for a reason, and it will work out in the end. It will be okay. I am so self–aware that my problems are not all that,” she says. “I’m very lucky these are the problems that I have, but it still is very, very stressful, and something I’m still trying to figure out how to emotionally navigate.”
Her new plan is to take two years before applying to graduate school. The first year will be to regain her footing and the second to figure out what comes next. “I don’t know if it’ll be medical school, a masters, Ph.D. At this point, I’m not really sure, which is scary because I used to know, but I feel like no one really knows.”
Still, one thing is for sure—Morgan remains committed as ever to the research she has been doing at her lab. Even after she learned she wouldn’t be able to continue working with the lab after graduating, she’s continued to be as committed as ever to her work. “I feel like it’s possible to make a huge impact if we can figure out the exact neural pathways that contribute to addiction,” she says. “I don’t have to go in the rest of the semester, but I’m still going in like 20 hours a week because it gives me a sense of purpose—and now, I’m kind of losing that.”
