This post was updated Nov. 20 at 8:23 p.m.
In physics, the three-body problem describes how three planets tugging on one another with gravity slip into chaotic motion. With only two planets, the math is clean – planets orbit in harmony. Add a third, and order dissolves into instability.
Naively, I entered my first year of graduate school in the chemistry and biochemistry department at UCLA thinking I was one planet and science was the second. We would orbit in balance.
If getting in was supposed to be the hard part, why would things wobble once I arrived?
The answer came quickly: a third body – an unexpected funding crisis – disrupted my imagined trajectory.
Doctoral students rotate through three labs, searching for where the gravitational pull feels strongest. We look for where the research fulfills us and we, in turn, can offer something meaningful in return.
But this year, the question shifted. Could the research even afford to take us in?
Higher education is a storm of passion, circumstance and opportunity. A love of science may ignite the journey, but it cannot sustain a five-to-seven-year commitment alone. The biggest lesson I learned in my first year was to lean on the communities these programs are built upon. Maybe a fourth entity – community – is what steadies the chaos.
Doctoral cohorts are niche in nature, quilted from diverse personalities, interests and perspectives. Yet, those in my cohort and I were strikingly similar in our insecurities. In the fall, the questions were light: What do I put on my TA slides? How do I survive my first journal club? Can I still join intramural volleyball on Tuesday nights?
By winter, they grew heavier: What electives are you taking? Is that lab still accepting students?
By spring, the reality of funding cuts set in: Should I prepare for a fourth rotation?
By April 2025, when the first government funding pause hit national universities, we were still reeling from the Los Angeles County fires. The uncertainty felt suffocating. Yet it was during this season that my community crystallized most clearly. Every week, we gathered for dinner-and-watch nights for The White Lotus – even throwing a “beans on toast” dinner for our British friends.
Those evenings became an anchor. Between bites and laughter, we swapped updates on our labs, work and mental states. Community was not just background support; it was the strongest force in my orbit.
My call to fellow graduate students is this: When your system feels unstable – when that third body enters your orbit – remember your community.
We came for our degrees, yes. But it’s the communities we build that carry us through the chaos and remind us why we stay.
Marcella Mirabelli is a doctoral student studying biochemistry, molecular and structural biology at UCLA.
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