Amazing Ancestry Agreement

Here's something crazy: we have some undergrads who were accepted into an honors society, and usually they have to pay their own fee and we reimburse them, but I was hoping we could just pay it directly considering the circumstances. Nope, we have to do it the same old way, but of course I couldn't have them send the checks to my office because even I'm not allowed to go there right now, so I gave the faculty member in charge my home address for the students to mail the checks. Can you believe one of them showed up at my doorstep last night?? And then another one this afternoon!! This would be weird enough behavior even if we weren't under Shelter at Home orders! College kids: endangering everyone needlessly with going on Spring Break trips and then spending $5 in gas instead of 50 cents in postage to hand-deliver their germ-laden checks to me. If I get sick, now you'll know why.

Here's something exciting: I got my second set of DNA results back! Travalon had given me an Ancestry test, since I had already done 23 and Me, and they are scarily accurate. First the health results came in yesterday, and I am not at risk for anything in particular, but I am a carrier for some disorder in which too much iron collects in the blood (which seems ironic, considering that I'm always a bit anemic), and I consume much more caffeine than the average person. (That checks out.) So far, same results as 23 and Me. Today the ethnicity results came in, and they were freakishly similar, right down to the 1% Nigerian. My ancestors came from the south and west of Ireland, Cornwall, and the Hebrides for the most part. The big difference? While Ancestry did acknowledge that I had some Bavarian ancestry, it said that was only 3% of my genetic makeup, while 23 and Me said it was up to a quarter of it. They did both agree that I am a tiny percentage Eastern European (and 23 and Me specified that it was Croatian). Ancestry already is linking me up with people I am related to, and I recognized one name as my mother's first cousin, a woman who in her youth was runner-up for Miss Illinois. (I certainly do not share any genes for beauty with her!) Then some guy messaged me and said we were third cousins, he was related to people named Hegerty and Walsh. I am not aware of anyone by either name in my family tree, but we must have someone in common. I wonder if this mystery will ever be solved?

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