February Feature: Love in the Time of Graduate School
Another UKCOP love story from Chandra Patel (PhD ‘06) who married Joanna Koziara (PhD ‘05). We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we did.
We joined the Pharmaceutical Sciences graduate program the same year, entering in 2000. Our entering graduate student class quickly formed bonds of friendship. We tackled the challenging class load together during those first 2 years of grad school and into our qualifying exams. We remain friends and in contact with many of our classmates and faculty still today.
During those first years, I was attracted to Joanna early on but it took time for me to grow on her (I think). We competed for president of the local student AAPS chapter in our second year, I lost by *one* vote but the upside of the campaign was we started to flirt more. During that year of school, we realized the attraction was mutual and begin to date. After that, our bond grew stronger and we have been together ever since. Now married and with 2 kids and a dog, we are the classic nuclear family. We both work in pharma and constantly learn from the other’s experience, which has also helped us to be good partners in marriage, sharing the ups and downs of our careers and family life.
We wish to remember and honor those who inhabited this Commonwealth before the arrival of the Europeans. Briefly occupying these lands were the Osage, Wyndott tribe, and Miami peoples. The Adena and Hopewell peoples, who are recognized by the naming of the time period in which they resided here, were here more permanently. Some of their mounds remain in the Lexington area, including at UK’s Adena Park.
In more recent years, the Cherokee occupied southeast Kentucky, the Yuchi southwest Kentucky, the Chickasaw extreme western Kentucky and the Shawnee central Kentucky including what is now the city of Lexington. The Shawnee left when colonization pushed through the Appalachian Mountains. Lower Shawnee Town ceremonial grounds are still visible in Greenup County.
We honor the first inhabitants who were here, respect their culture, and acknowledge the presence of their descendants who are here today in all walks of life including fellow pharmacists and healthcare professionals.