Jay Lofstead is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, with extensive experience in storage technologies, High Performance Computing, and reproducibile practices. In this episode, we talk about the challenges of navigating the graduate school and career space, because the decisions you make can be very strategic, and they often need to be customized on the level of the individual. You also might be taken with Jay’s love of ice cream, how he chooses a flavor, and how he has created community around HPC and getting ice cream. Here’s a cool hint - “Try the gray stuff, it’s delicious!” And if you are a member of the HPC community, you are invited to come too. This episode is immensely useful for early career folks looking to make a next step, mid- to later- career folks that want to help, and anyone that likes to eat ice cream.