Seven

Make that seven jury duty summons in 10 years.  I got another jury duty summons in the mail yesterday, for the same week as Friday's summons!  This one was for federal court in Tucson.  (Friday's was for Baltimore City County court.)  Obviously I'll be excused from the latest summons as I've moved out of state, but what I don't understand, is how they mailed the summons directly to my Baltimore address, but still think I'm a resident of Pima County in Arizona.  We're not talking mail forwarding by the postal service, this was actually directly addressed to me in Baltimore.  The logic amazes me.  What also amazes (and irritates) me is that even after filling out the juror questionnaire online and responding in about 4 places that I've moved out of state, the system still told me to call in on my assigned date to see if I'm needed.  Totally absurd.

Wait, you mean ME?!

I've got a pretty big meeting tomorrow at Big Fancy University with a bunch of people I haven't met before.  It's going to take a concerted effort not to giggle when somebody refers to me as Dr. [My Last Name].  I'm pretty sure the only people who have called me Dr. [My Last Name] are friends or family who are mostly joking.  It doesn't help that Dr. [My Last Name] could also refer to my mother, father, or grandfather.  Which is ridiculous, I know, but you can probably understand now how I grew up thinking it was totally normal to go to graduate school.  Anyways, giggling when somebody addresses me as Dr. (as they should damnit!) probably doesn't do much for my credibility...

Wedding Cake!

Pretty much as soon as I got back from the job interview we hit the ground running on E & J's wedding cake.  I have never made a wedding cake before.  I'm not sure that I ever will again.  To say it was a project would be an understatement, though I will say it was the best wedding cake I've ever tasted.  Most commercial wedding cakes are made at least a week in advance of the wedding and stashed in a fridge.  I'm sorry, week-old cake can only taste so good.


E's mom made the wedding cake layers and meringue layers on Wednesday.  She literally spent the entire day baking.  Thursday morning E and I made the layers for the groom's cake.  Thursday afternoon and evening were spent assembling the each tier of the wedding cake, assembling the groom's cake, and crumb coating everything.  Friday morning and afternoon everything got frosted and the groom's cake was decorated.  Friday evening after the rehearsal dinner the tiers of the wedding cake got stacked and decorated.


The wedding cake had three square tiers - 16", 12", and 8".  Each tier had 2 layers of almond cake, with a layer of either raspberry or apricot preserves, almond meringue, and another layer of preserves between the cake layers.  Frosting was a butter rum flavored swiss meringue buttercream.  The fruit decorations were made from marzipan.


The groom's cake was a 12" square lemon cake, 2 layers, filled with lemon curd, frosted with lemon cream cheese frosting, and decorated with candied lemon slices.  


At one point I carried the fully assembled and decorated groom's cake from E's apartment to J's (they live in the same complex, but different apartments) to store in his fridge, and my arms were TIRED by time I got over there.  That cake was HEAVY.  Considering the groom's cake was the same size as the middle tier of the wedding cake, I can only imagine how heavy the fully assembled wedding cake was.  The almond cake was really dense, and between both cakes we used 132 eggs and 21 pounds of butter.  I'm sure Paula Deen would be proud.


A couple of our bigger/stronger guy friends actually came over to E's Saturday afternoon to move the wedding cake from her fridge in her second floor apartment to the car for transport across town to the wedding venue.  Miraculously transportation was entirely uneventful with no trauma to the cakes or people's nerves.


The wedding was lots of fun, E looked gorgeous, and they're finally married!  Yay!

Lemon cake batter.  Lots of it.

How many brides make their own wedding cake?

One layer of the medium tier, with the layer of raspberry preserves being added  on top of the almond meringue

The medium tier - cake, preserves (you can only see the frosting dam holding them in), meringue, more preserves, the second cake layer, and blobs of frosting for crumb coating

Crumb coated bottom layer

All the wedding cake layers setting up in E's fridge

The finished groom's cake

The finished wedding cake

It's done!

As J mentioned, I finished my dissertation this week!  YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!  I can't tell you what an enormous relief this is.  Sunday afternoon I finished writing my last chapter.  Yesterday I wrote and revised the abstract.  Today I made my labmates' corrections on the last two chapters.  I emailed The Queen this afternoon and told her that all my chapters are in the drop box folder, and reminded her that the deadline to distribute my dissertation to my committee is July 9th (two weeks before my defense).  It's in her court now.  Anybody want to bet that she'll read it?

So I know posting has been sparse, but for good reason.  That dissertation HAD to get done, and the past six weeks or so have been utterly insane even aside from the dissertation writing.

The "normal" post I wrote was about that awesome chocolate cake (that Grandpa is still raving about, no joke) just after everybody came out for commencement.  Around that weekend I did a series of phone interviews with the company looking for "tactful assertive interpersonal skills."  Then less than a week after everybody left Tucson, I flew home for Little Sister's high school graduation.  That was a Friday.  At 5:45 am on Monday I flew to Vancouver for another ASMS.  During the conference I spent a lot of time chatting with the NJ post doc guy, and did a face-to-face interview for a government post doc.  Again on Friday I flew back to Tucson, only to leave four days later for an on-site interview in Delaware with the people I did phone interviews with earlier in the month.  That was a one night travel nightmare of a trip.   Immediately after the interview trip "pre-wedding combat" began, followed by E & J's wedding.  After the wedding I did a phone interview with another company, and then Friday of that week I got an offer from the DE interview. Phew.

I will blog about all of these things in near future.  I've certainly still got work to do while I wait for edits (that I don't think are coming) from The Queen, but it shouldn't be so all-consuming.

Dragging

The week hasn't even technically started and my feet are already dragging.  It's Sunday, I've been in lab for 10 hours, and I'm really not at all close to done with this dumb experiment...  So tired.  Where I was freaking out a couple weeks ago, now I'm just super tired.  Tired because I've been working all day, and even more tired thinking about the next four weeks.  It's going to be a giant blur of poster making, dissertation writing, my graduation, more poster making and dissertation writing, my dad's birthday, my sister's graduation, a conference, job hunting, more dissertation writing, dress fittings, bachelorette party, more dissertation writing, wedding cake making, and wedding.  When all that is done, I'll have about one more week to finish my dissertation.

This experiment took a while to get going, then was going ok, and then my capillary ran dry, so I refilled it, and of course the charge state I'd been working with is gone.  And then I couldn't get protein to spray to save my life.  GAH.  While I'm sitting here waiting on spectra I feel like I should be writing or doing something useful, but I'm just too tired.  I did revisions on a chapter earlier, and opened a new document for the next chapter I've got to write.  But I just can't do it anymore.  I almost wish these were hour long spectra rather than 10 minute spectra so I could nap.

Sleepless Ramblings

I can't sleep. It's quarter past 3 and I've been wide awake for the past hour and a half.

Aside from the predicted high of only 80 on Thursday, summer has hit in Tucson. We had a record high of 101 on Sunday. Overnight lows are in the 60s, so I suppose at least we're not to the worst of it when it stops cooling off overnight (lows in the 80s, which is still insane to think about after 5 years). But it's mid April, so the swamp cooler isn't on for the summer yet, I'm cold without my sheet, but hot with it, and not yet reacclimated to sleeping with a fan on me.

I've been dieting for the past 2 1/2 months with the help of an app on my iPad. It's actually been going quite well, except Saturday I got fit for my bridesmaid's dress for E's wedding in June, so I can't lose anymore weight before then of the dress won't stay up (the tailor is already taking it in 2+ inches on both sides...whoops...). So I switched the app settings to maintain my current weight, and after working out this morning and playing softball tonight I finished today 775 calories under "goal." After really not eating particularly healthy or skimpy today. I don't want to not work out between now and the wedding because that isn't healthy either and I don't want to lose all my muscle! This is going to take some getting used to... 

The anxiety in the office surrounding the move seems to have at least temporarily calmed as people are over the shock and looking into their various options, but my anxiety just seems to be getting worse. I'm getting more and more worried about my last experiments not working and not having enough (good) data to put on my poster for ASMS or the last chapter of my dissertation. ASMS is going to be a huge time suck between now and May 25th. I kind of wish I weren't going, but I argued my way into going because I was worried I wouldn't have a job by then and then I worked hard to gather more than enough outside travel funding, and got a poster abstract accepted and then had to convince the organizers to reschedule it for another day when it conflicted with Little Sister's high school graduation. So I have to go, and yes this means I'm taking the 5 am flight from Boston to Vancouver the day after graduation.

The whole not having a job yet thing is also a major source of anxiety. There's a potential post doc in northern NJ that looks promising - they've submitted an internal proposal for the project and if they get funded (they think their odds are good) I will have an offer. But the project would be a collaboration with The Queen, and the more the move situation unfolds the more I want to just cut ties and move on completely, and the outskirts of NYC/Newark is really pretty high on my list of places I've never wanted to live. I found a post doc opening actually in Lancaster last week that I am unbelievably perfectly qualified for and obviously applied right away, but I'm nervous I won't hear anything at all back from them (like most of the other jobs I've applied for) or that the salary will be garbage or that it will be another case of a company trying to save themselves $30k by listing a "real" PhD-level job as a post doc (yet another thing I've discovered I have to be wary of when looking at job postings). But speaking of "real job" vs post doc, I'd much rather have a real job than a post doc, but very few people seem to be hiring new grads and most want proteomics expereience, which I don't have and really hate anyways.

Then there's this weird pain in the lower right corner of my mouth. If it's actually something real I'm sure it would be super expensive to fix, and surprise surprise, the student health plan doesn't include dental coverage, and the thought of thousand(s) of dollars of dental expenses when I'm trying to save for a cross-country move and potential unemployment makes me nauseous. Not to mention I HATE the dental practice I've been going to and don't remotely trust 95% of what they tell me. And dental work = through the roof anxiety. Just listening to somebody in the next room getting a filling sets me on edge. I leave every dentist visit drenched in sweat and with achy back and shoulders from clenching my muscles so hard. God I hope my wisdom teeth haven't finally decided to make their presence known.

I'm terrified that between ASMS, mine and Little Sister's graduation schenanigans, and E's wedding (crap, have to figure out bachelorette stuff still) that I'll never finish my dissertation in time. Our group admin is trying to schedule my final seminar and defense for some time in July, because The Queen leaves in early August and I'm not sure I can be done any sooner, but The Queen is going to be out of town for like half of July (and who knows about the rest of my committee members...). On top of worrying that I won't finish in time, my best guess at the moment is that my dissertation will be about 200 pages, which looking at past dissertations out of my group seems inadequate. A friend commented today that she's at 236 pages and not even close to done. I keep telling myself that nobody wants to read even 200 pages of dissertation, never mind 300+ pages, but 200 pages just doesn't seem like it could possibly be representative of 5 years of grad school misery. And I'm quite sure I'd cry on the spot if they told me at my defense that it wasn't going to cut it (never mind that I'm not at all convinced that anybody - including The Queen - will read it and I've never heard of anybody failing their defense here, and my committee seemed satisfied at my 6 month meeting in December).

Great. Now it's 4. You can probably why see I'm having a hard time sleeping. Tomorrow/today is going to be a mess.

So grad school sucks you say? Part II

What?  The "advice" I was given didn't really help?  Grad school still sucks?  Sorry.  Most of Chris' advice was rather tongue-in-cheek, but grad school will probably continue to suck no matter how good the advice is.  It's kind of the nature of the beast.  Some days are fine and a few are fun, but there will always be days that suck.  Whenever I complain about grad school my non-grad-school friends tell me there are crappy days in whatever they're doing, too.  Bummer.

While there are definitely days when I think I made the wrong decision to go to grad school, and I wonder how anybody ever finishes, there are definitely things you can do to make these +/-5 years less terrible.  Here are my suggestions.  A lot of them are rather interrelated.  Depending on your personality, some of them may not apply to you.

• DO STUFF OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL.  Go to the gym, go to church, go to the miscellaneous local fairs and festivals.  Anything. Something.  I don't care how much you love whatever field you're in, you can't possibly do only that and come out of graduate school with your mental health and social skills intact.  Find a hobby.  It doesn't matter what, anything will do.  Read the entire Master and Commander series.  Take a pottery class.  I don't care.  This is probably the biggest, best piece of advice I can give you.
• Some people might disagree with me, like all the Chinese students in my lab who alternate between Burger King and Chick-Fil-A, but I think eating fairly healthy (most of the time - I promise I understand the value of a bowl of ice cream) and working out regularly go a long way.  One of the reasons I live within walking distance of campus is so that when I'm too busy/stressed/tired to get up early to work out I still get at least a bit of exercise walking 15 minutes each way to school.
• Along with doing stuff outside of school, make friends outside of your program/department.  Get involved in activities.  For me this wound up happened by living with random people I met via Craigslist and working with the high school youth group at my parish (bonus, community service is good for fellowship applications).  I'll admit I got really lucky on the roommate front - many of the girls I've lived with in Tucson have become great friends that I've gone on crazy backpacking trips and on road trips in foreign countries with, and now it seems we're taking turns going to each others weddings.  When you exclusively hang out with people from your program, you wind up "talking shop" more often than not, which doesn't give you that much needed break.
• At the same time though, friends in your program/department/grad school are a good thing.  They're the people you'll grab coffee or lunch with, or celebrate with when you have a good data day or pass your oral.  They're also the people who can totally understand when you just have to vent about whatever sucks.
• Speaking of which, I'm all for some amount of venting/bitching about whatever it is that sucks.  You've seen me do plenty of it here.  Watch it with this one though, because too much and you're just a Negative Nancy who's never happy with anything.  After all, there's always somebody who's got it worse.  But there really is something to be said for a good bitch and/or cry fest.  When it's really that bad you really do feel better afterwards.
• On the other hand, celebrate everything.  My first year a lot of us would head to the bar after a cume.  Even if you think you blew it, hell, you took it.  Finished a class?  Had a good day in lab?  Finally got an experiment to work after trying it 14 times?  Gave a talk without making a fool of yourself?  Finally got revisions back from your advisor?  Won the battle with the 3rd reviewer?  Passed your oral?  Got an abstract accepted?  Opened a word document and wrote exactly 17 words of your dissertation?  All these things are worthy of a beer, or a celebration of some sort.  (Passing your oral is worthy of several beers.  Or 2 long islands and a half dozen shots.  Including a Harry Potter shot.  As is your defense.)  My research group has a tradition of popping a bottle of champagne after successful orals and defenses.  Even if it's 10 am we're pouring bubbly into incredibly silly Bruker champagne flutes.
• Make lists.  I love them.  Short term and long term lists.  They help me focus and get more done (which makes me happy), and crossing stuff off them feels so good.
• Be proactive about your own happiness.   Can you change something about whatever it is that sucks?  Yeah, you have to take and pass classes, and cumes, and your oral, and jump through a million hoops.  Is that class that sucks required?  Can you drop it?  (I really should have dropped one of my classes my first semester.  It was an awful, miserable experience with a terrible teacher and I learned absolutely nothing.)  Do you hate your teaching assignment?  Before the next semester go ask the lab coordinator about teaching the course you are interested in.  Hate your research project?  Talk to your advisor.  Maybe you can work on what does interest you on a part time basis.  Or maybe you're willing to teach in order to work on a project you do like.  Doesn't always work out, but sometimes it does.  Is your advisor a crazy slave-driver?  Or verbally abusive and unethical?  Switch groups.  In chemistry at least it happens.  The earlier in your grad school career the better, but people switch groups, and as long as you're polite and professional about it (yes, even if your advisor is a horrible person) it generally works out just fine.  Maybe it takes you a semester or a year longer to graduate, but better that than utterly miserable and maybe not getting a degree at all.  Not everything can be changed or is in your power to change, but at least nothing is permanent.
• This goes hand and hand with the last point, but learn to say no.  Seriously.  No, you can't go to that oral practice.  No, you can't drive around recruits on both Friday and Saturday night.  No, you don't have time to proofread your labmate's entire dissertation.  No, you won't do this set of experiments for your lazy labmate who should have graduated already.  No, you won't take on a new project in your fifth year.  I'm not that good at this point, but I've gotten better the older I've gotten.  Or maybe I'm just getting crotchety in my old age.
• Go to students' final seminars/defenses. Throughout grad school, I have found these the most encouraging and interesting seminars.  A research seminar is always more interesting coming from somebody you know.  And a final seminar, a nice, tidy presentation of a dissertation project is the most encouraging, obvious sign I can think of that yes, people do graduate.  It's also good to get an idea of how a project can come together when you're stuck in the unending, seemingly hopeless middle part.  Bonus: free caffeine and snacks to accompany your hour out of lab.
• Step away from the lab bench.  Sometimes you need to take half an hour and go for a walk.  Get some fresh air.  Maybe a coffee.  Heck, you're a grad student.  This isn't a real job.  Get lunch beers. The time you spend clearing your head will be at least partly made up for by less time banging your head against the wall and less time wasted when you mess something up in your frustration.  Sometimes you just have to call it a day and GO HOME.  Better than hurting yourself because you were a little too aggressive cleaning glassware or breaking something really expensive because you were a little too rough with that $10,000 printed circuit board.
• Take advantage of the flexibility of being a graduate student.  Unless your advisor is brand new and/or crazy, there's rarely a reason why you have to work specific hours.  Outside of some set meetings or designated instrument time, there's no reason I have to be here between certain hours.  You will most likely work more than 40 hrs/week, but there's no reason that the first 40 of those hours have to be between 9 am and 5 pm.  You were in lab really late?  Sleep in the next morning.  Have a couple errands to run to businesses that are only open 9-5?  Run them.  Not a morning person?  Work out in the middle of the day and work a bit later.  Heck, maybe you can time it so an experiment is running while you head to the gym.  It's nice to be around for some part of "business hours" so you can find people you need and people who need you can find you, but it's nice to sleep in every now and then or stay home to wait for the repairman without it being a problem.  You may be more productive working "off hours" - I know for me at least it's a heck of a lot easier to get stuff done without people around to pester me.

Some days (and sometimes a LOT of days in a row) will still suck, and not everything is something you can change/influence.  But a lot of stuff is, and there are a lot of little things you can do to make things bearable and sometimes even fun.

That's all I've got.  Anybody else have suggestions?

So grad school sucks you say? Part I

After noticing that blogger tracks how people find your site, I went and looked again.  And what do you know, I've got two more visits as a result of googling "graduate school worst decision" and "going to grad school worst decision."  So I think maybe it's time I take a few posts to address directly grad school's suckage factor and how (or if) to survive it.

Academia is kind of like a family.  A really twisted, not-so-loving, really effed up, and emotionally scarring family.  My advisor is like my academic "mom," making her PhD advisor my academic "grandfather."  Along these lines, Chris, the grad student who primarily trained me when I joined the lab, and whose project I "inherited" is my academic "big brother."  I'm going to start this series of surviving grad school posts with an email I got from Chris my first semester.

I got lucky by the mere fact of having this sort of mentor.  Students who join new/newish labs, or pick up a temporarily shelved project don't have that advantage.  I got really lucky having the senior student mentor that I did.  He was super patient and helpful when it came to showing me the ropes in lab (I'd never done mass spec or worked with proteins), in grad school, and now that he's a real grown up with a real job, after grad school.

Below is the email I received from him during a super stressful and distressing period in 528 - this hellish lab course that analytical students have to take their 2nd semester here.  I learned a ton in the course, but it was an enormously time-consuming (in a take-over-your-life kind of way) and stressful semester.  He sent this mostly smart ass message shortly after listening to a "get-me-the-hell-out-of-here-anything-has-to-be-better-than-this" freak out.

Dear Abby:

Why does grad school suck so hard it could pull a taxi-cab driver through
immigration?  Is it really worth going through this?  If I quit now is there
still hope for me?  Will I ever discover my purpose in life?  And will I need
anodic stripping voltammetry to discover it?

Sincerely,
Bunsen Burnout


Dear Bunsen:

I found a few articles that I thought might address your concerns.  Skim through
the ones that seem interesting and see if it doesn't help some sunlight break
through those chemistry rain clouds.  And by the way, that's "Dear DR. Abby" to
you - I finished MY Ph.D.


I did a Ph.D. and did not go mad - The truth about the next five years of your
life (you don't have to read the others, but this one's kind of funny):

http://public.randomnotes.org/richard/PhDtalk.html


Dr. Dropout - so that you know your not alone in wanting to quit (these next two
are kind of boring): [need journal access for these next two, let me know if you want them in full]

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i19/19a01001.htm


Feeling no regrets - an article that (falsely) leads you to believe it's ok to
quit (it's not by the way):

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v50/i19/19a01101.htm


How to become a trophy wife - just in case you find none of the above
particularly inspirational

http://www.ehow.com/how_2063647_be-trophy-wife.html 

And finally, if none of these convince you to stay, know that when you finally
finish you'll have this pretty little bundle of joy - 300 pages neatly bound in
a hardback black cover that you've birthed, raised, and watched grow.  You'll be
so proud of what your little dissertation has accomplished, and best of all when
it comes time to pass that tike on to a young graduate student and they threaten
to destroy everything you've worked so hard for by saying they want to quit you
will have every right to make them suck it up or personally come kick their
A**!  So you see Anne, you might as well give up on giving up because you have
no choice.  I will make you stay whether you want to or not - SO SUCK IT UP!
And have a wonderful evening. :)

Signs of a Good Boyfriend

I had a bit of a rough time in the Grand Canyon.  I mean it was a good trip, and I'm glad I did it (not to mention proud of surviving it!), but between puking the first night and the worst/most blisters I've ever had in my entire life I wasn't always a happy camper.

The night before we hiked in, we were wandering around the South Rim, and I noticed this rather funny warning image:

Now the joke was totally on me, because after a super long day of hiking, with the last few miles/hours of it in full-blown 100+ degree desert sun, I totally puked not even 5 minutes after we got into camp.  In my defense, I found this image funny for the super realistic, waterfall like stream of puke - not so much the fact that the guy is puking.  The NPS's signage could use some updating in general, but whatever, joke's clearly on me.

Anyways, you may be wondering how all this is relevant to the title of the post, but I'm getting to that.  While I was puking up everything I'd eaten the previous approximately 24 hours, Boyfriend very kindly rubbed my back (my hair was already up), and when I was finished, fetched a bucket of water to wash it all away.  As if that wasn't awesome enough, it didn't even occur to him until after I'd finished barfing that a picture would have been funny.  Sweet, no? :)

The other source of major brownie points earned on this trip relates to those awful blisters.  I swear I got more blisters on this trip than I've had in my entire life put together.  Really.  We hiked out Sunday morning and my toes still hurt too much to wear actual shoes.  Every night/morning and occasionally along the trail required a fairly lengthy process of popping blisters and covering various parts of my feet and toes in moleskin, bandaids, and tape.  Unfortunately the blisters on the backs of my heels were hard to both see and reach at the same time.  The last night Boyfriend was kind enough to perform some minor surgery on the parts of my feet that I couldn't reach:

Cute, no?

Grand Canyon

Last week Boyfriend flew back out here and we tackled one of the biggest items off my bucket list.  We backpacked the Grand Canyon along with my friend Dallas (my labmate Slim was supposed to come, but bailed too last minute for us to find a replacement).  We drove up to the South Rim Wednesday and camped there before hiking in on Thursday.  We did rim-to-rim-to-rim (45 miles) in 4 days, hiking out on Sunday.

For those who care about the hiking details: we hiked in using the South Kaibab trail.  While the least pretty in my opinion, this trail has the most stereotypically "Grand Canyon" views, and it's certainly not ugly.  At the Colorado River (i.e. the bottom) we picked up the North Kaibab trail to Cottonwood where we camped the first night.  That was a 14 mile day.  WARNING: the 3 or so miles south of Cottonwood are at low elevation and consist of extremely hot, dry, and exposed desert with essentially zero shade.  Hitting this stretch mid-late afternoon in 100+ degrees with 35 lb packs was brutal.  Plan better than this!  The second day we continued on North Kaibab trail 7 miles up to the North Rim where we spent the night.  The stretch 2-3 miles from the top was the steepest part of the entire trip.  On day three we hiked the entire length of the North Kaibab trail back down to Bright Angel campground.  The entire 14 miles were downhill, the first 7 or so of them really quite steep.  I was on the verge of tears over how badly my toes hurt by the end of this.  On the last day we hiked 10 miles up Bright Angel trail to the South Rim.  Bright Angel is far less steep than South Kaibab and we make remarkably good time.  This is the prettiest of the corridor trails in my opinion (unfortunately it's also the most popular - the couple of miles closest to the rim were crowded and annoying, not to mention my entire body hurt by that point).

Some people I talked to before we left thought we were crazy going with this itinerary - and there were some points during the trip when I thought we were too - but we met a ton of people with far crazier plans.  An astonishing number of people attempt to hike rim-to-rim in a single day.  Granted this is a lot easier to do with a 10 lb day pack rather than a 35 lb multi-day pack, but still insane.  We even met 2 guys who were attempting to do rim-to-rim-to rim in 24 hours.  They did crazy things like put a packet of ramen noodles in a ziplock of water and then strap it to the outside of their packs to "cook" in the heat and sun while they hiked.  The majority of people who get med-evac-ed out of the canyon are young, healthy people who try to do too much.  We saw one such guy being loaded into a helicopter on a stretcher as we were getting into Bright Angel.

Anyways, enough of the depressing/scary talk.  It was a great trip, and I'm immensely proud of accomplishing that hike.  Time for a photo recap:

Plus food made about 35 lbs...Roughly 10 of which were water.  Such a shame that it really was necessary to carry that much for some parts of the hike.

From the South Rim, just before sunset

The NPS has some pretty awesome signage.

Looking west from South Kaibab trail

From South Kaibab trail

South Kaibab trail

Switchbacks on South Kaibab Trail

Bridge over the Colorado River

Supai Tunnel, North Kaibab trail

View from North Kaibab trail

Rainbow rocks on the North Kaibab trail.  The zoom on this shot makes that rim look so much closer than it was...still about 3 miles away at this point...

Colorado River

More awesome signage.  Don't feed the squirrels!

Bright Angel trail

Bright Angel trail

Why Graduate School Was the Worst Decision Ever

I've worked 56 hours in the past 4 days alone (Weds-Sat...well, now Sun am). Probably for nothing.

That ridiculous talk situation? It got even more ridiculous, but I'll spare you the details and just say that I finally got "official" notice Friday that I am indeed presenting. I'd been thinking all along that this presentation is next Friday afternoon. Wrong. I realized Friday evening that it's actually Thursday.

The whole "go for broke" idea and lack of currently working instruments means I've been running mostly overnight to get as much instrument time as possible. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't also have stuff to do during the day. I'd actually been considering trying to switch over "night shift," in order to get as much instrument time as I wanted, but hadn't due to all the daytime meetings and such, ignoring the fact that I'm so not a night owl, and think 10 pm is a perfectly reasonable time to go to bed on a regular basis.

I went into lab when it was dark out, came out to discover it was light out.

I ate breakfast in my office (well, in the lab...shhh). From stuff I had in my office. We're not talking about a day where I had to be at school early, and grabbed breakfast on my way in. We're talking worked all night, was hungry at 5:30 am, went into office, found oatmeal and tea in a drawer and called it breakfast.

Unfortunately a lot more has to go into this than collecting an enormous amount of data for one week. The data has to be analyzed, literature searched, figures made, calculations done, presentation assembled. I can do stuff like lit searches and outline/gather/make the trivial stuff for the actual presentation while collecting data. Between the nature of the data, what I need to do with it, and the way my brain processes this data, I can't really get much analysis done while collecting more data. The best I can really do is quick checks here and there to try to catch problems and decide the next best step on the fly.

I have a bad habit of blogging (and pursuing other internet-driven-time-sucks) more just when I have less time to do so. We're going to call it mental health preservation. If it makes it sound like a slightly less terrible waste of my time, I have had a spectrum acquiring the entire time I've been writing this.

The better experiments are going, the harder it is to leave. Which is the trap I'm currently stuck in. I'm really hoping that my labmate who signed up for the instrument today shows up a whole lot earlier than I think he's likely to.

At this point you must think I've completely lost my mind, and maybe I have. Any normal person probably would have said f@&# that days ago. (Normal people are smarter than people who go to graduate school.) The seminar announcement has already gone out to the entire department, so there's definitely no backing out of presenting. I'd really like to win this stupid thing, especially because part of me feels like I got jipped last year. And I'd really, really like that prize money. There are plane tickets to be bought and student loans to pay down. Even though at this point I'm not remotely sure that it's even possible to get this done for Thursday, I'm too stubborn to give up and tell my advisor I just can't do this. It would be so humiliating.

Whatever happens it'll be over in 5 days, then I can sleep for a couple of days before getting back to the (less crazy) grind for ASMS. Maybe if I get lucky the data I'm killing myself for this week will be useful for that talk... Pretty sure a PhD isn't worth it.

Take 2

I ran yesterday's half marathon in 2:22. That's 10 minutes off last year's time. :) Things were going really well until about miles 9-10 or so - I was actually on pace for 2:15. But then my hips and back decided they'd had enough. At the end of the race I felt so much worse than last year, but shockingly enough, I'm entirely pain free today! Woohoo! Let's hope the soreness isn't yet to come...

You're Fired!!

One of my classmate and I are in charge of recruiting, scheduling, and coordinating all the driving for recruiting weekends. We use 15 passenger vans to shuttle the recruits where they need to go as well as out for social activities. The grad program coordinator give us a fair amount of authority in all this, including some say in who can and can't drive. For whatever reason, it's not uncommon to have people volunteer who are either supremely creepy or have a track record of being irresponsible. Since we depend upon them pretty heavily to show up where and when they're supposed to and we don't want them making the recruits uncomfortable, we've started being a bit more selective about who we allow to drive over the past year or so.

Apparently now we have to add terrible driving and general jack@$$-ness to the list of things to watch out for. There was one driver in particular who a track record for being a creep and a jack@$$, but he's a 3rd year and had never been a problem around recruits before, so we let it slide. However, Friday night I started hearing all sorts of complaints about what a terrible driver he is. Later that night he and Dallas took some of the recruits out to a bar. Dallas (having heard and witnessed the terrible driving) left him an easy parking spot when they got to the bar. What does Captain Dumb@$$ do? He decides it would be funny to pull his van around the other side of Dallas' already parked van so closely that the students in Dallas' van wouldn't be able to get out. Yes, hilarious, and oh so mature. Except he freaking sideswiped Dallas' van, leaving visible damage to both vehicles. What an idiot!! FIRED!!!

Let's say I took the keys from him when I got to the bar and removed him of his driving duties for the next day. Fortunately the students laughed about it and made fun of his stupidity for the rest of the weekend, although they were understandably reluctant to ride with him again.

Why You Should Not Bring Your Parent with You to Visit Graduate Schools

Bottom line: because it make you look bad. Sometimes, really, really bad.

Our first of two recruiting weekends was this past weekend, and we had not one, but two students show up with their fathers. Along with getting obliterated the night before and being visibly hungover at faculty interviews, being blatantly racist or homophobic, or being whiny and demanding, bringing your parent(s) with you on grad school recruiting visits is a giant "no-no." (I'm not the only one out there who thinks so.)

Every now and then we've had students come with a parent, but the parents have never before actually attended all the weekend's events with their child. For example, last year we had the crazy case of a 17 year old being admitted. I get that his mom came with him, he wouldn't have been able to check into the hotel room by himself. (Not that the understandable reason stopped us from mocking him behind his back.) Most of the time a parent comes with their kid to Tucson they come to maybe the first and last dinner of the weekend, but otherwise spend the weekend playing golf or something - not going to poster sessions and department tours!

The guy that came this weekend - he and his dad were actually ok. He was polite, interested in talking to grad students, and seemed to be able to function with out his father. His dad was friendly, and even though he wanted to attend all sorts of events, he made sure we knew that he didn't want to intrude, and had no expectation of attending the interviews with faculty Saturday morning. I think he just wanted an excuse to leave the cold, snowy weather and hang out with his son.

The girl and her dad however? Ho. Ly. Crap. I'll find out next week, but I'm 99% sure she's not going to get a financial offer. The students that we invite for recruiting weekend have already been admitted, however their financial offer is not determined until after we meet them. Not making a financial offer is (almost always) an effective way to discourage socially inept and/or terrible people from coming - basically to correct for the shortcomings that weren't evident on paper.

Her dad was the epitome of overbearing, controlling parent. When given the chance to chat with current grad students and ask questions (something at least as important as talking to the professors) she passed and sat in the corner with her dad. He actually got ANGRY when he was told (and he had to be told!) that he could not attend his daughter's individual meetings with faculty. Really dude? Are you going to attend her job interviews, too? Perhaps come to the lecture hall with her the first Thursday night of every month for the cume?

She was a stuck up little brat, too, for lack of a better description. Friday there's a poster session, after which all the recruits are supposed to list 6 faculty with whom they'd like to talk further the next morning. She only listed 2. As usually happens when students don't list 6 (but they're almost always close at least, sheesh), we fill in the rest of their schedule with other faculty from their division of interest. Saturday morning, she AND her dad both threw fits when they discovered that she had been assigned additional meetings! (Her dad still came to campus with her even after being told he couldn't attend the meetings. The guy's dad was smart enough to hang out at the hotel for the morning.) At that point our grad program coordinator had had it with them and said fine, don't go, but perhaps you should realize that these are the people that will be teaching your classes, writing and grading your cumes, and sitting on your dissertation committee. (i.e. It would be in your best interest to be polite and professional!!!)

At that point both she and her father tried to backtrack and hem and haw like "oh we didn't know that..." Like that's any excuse. First, if you don't at least realize that you will be taking classes from these professors, you're a moron and/or had crappy advisors in undergrad. And second, at the very least you should show some shred of professionalism!!! What is wrong with these people!? I'm guessing that this girl is sufficiently dysfunctional to have wound up without a financial offer even if she had come on her own, but bringing her overbearing, pushy, and rude father with her was shooting herself in the foot.

When prospective grad students come to campus, we (and by "we" I mean faculty, relevant staff, current grad students, and particularly the people from each category on the admissions committee) want to see that the recruits are interested and engaged in the science that goes on here, have the communication and social skills to explain what they currently do and/or are interested in doing, and are reasonably polite and professional in their interactions. Getting a PhD is all about becoming an independent researcher and scientist. If you can't get through this weekend without your parent half a step behind to beat up anybody who doesn't give you your way, you're not going to fare well in grad school. Do you think the professors are going to respond well to an angry phone call from daddy when you fail a cume? Even if you did beat the extremely low odds and manage function on your own, everybody around you will make fun of you mercilessly behind your back for being unable to make your own decision about this at age 20-something. This girl will forever be known as the brat with the overbearing father.

This rant doesn't mean that your parents can't be involved in your decision-making process. I included my parents, but by "included" I mean I called home a day or two after each trip I made to tell them about what I liked or didn't like and to hash-out general impressions. Once my parents realized I wasn't moving any closer to them, they didn't care where I went beyond my relative happiness there. When I had narrowed it down and was debating between two schools I discussed pros/cons with both of my parents over a few more phone calls. They both have advanced degrees, so they offered input where relevant, but other than declaring that a dry heat can't possibly be all its cracked up to be, never pushed me one way or another. Actually to this day I don't know if they secretly had a preference which school I chose.

After this ridiculous encounter with these people I actually wrote my parents an email thanking them for letting me do $h!t on my own and figure things out for myself. Thanks to their not holding my hand every bit of the way I came out of the grad school application process with a far better offer than I ever would have if they had.

Maybe next time...

Maybe the next time I fly will be a nice, normal, on-time, uneventful trip. Maybe.

I flew back to Tucson today - this is my rescheduled trip back to Tucson after last week's Europe fiasco. It wasn't really a bad trip back - I mean, I travel a fair amount. Certainly enough to have had way, way worse travel days.

The first weird thing was an announcement that the flight was oversold (that's not the weird part), and they were offering $650 vouchers to give up your seat! Their rerouting offer really wasn't that bad either. If I'd been sitting closer to the podium I probably would have taken them up on that, because wow that's a lot of money. I really don't think I've ever heard an airline offer more than $300 or so. Alas, people thought as I did, and jumped on it.

Time to board. I had an earlier boarding group than normal (when I get to pick my seat I'm usually in the last or 2nd to last group to board - I use a combination of closer-to-the-front and research done at seatguru.com to choose a seat) - but I thought hey sweet, there will be plenty of overhead space still, and goodness knows that after Christmas break I could use it. So there was still plenty of overhead space, but as I'm walking back and looking at the row numbers, I realize that I'm seated in an aisle seat in the dead last row of the plane. You know, the really awesome seat immediately next to the bathroom (with so much traffic and elbow bumping that there's no chance of sleep) that doesn't recline. It's a 6+ hour flight from Boston to Phoenix. Sweet. Then my seatmate arrives, and instantly gives me this speech about how great the back of the plane is - the safest place in the plane, and right next to the bathrooms! Bonus!

Once we were settled in and waiting to push back from the gate, I closed my eyes since I had a headache (that lasted all day of course). I wasn't really aware what was going on around me, other than that we'd been sitting at the gate for way too long to leave anywhere close to on time. Eventually the pilot came on and said that with the bit of bad weather we were going to go through, the plane was overweight, so we had to wait for them to remove some of the mail that had been loaded. Then a while after that, the pilot came back on and apologized for the delay, that there had been a "passenger issue" that he was sure many of us were aware of, and we were finally ready to leave the gate in Boston. Between sitting in the last row and attempting to sleep, I had no idea what he was talking about, but being in the last row, I could hear the flight attendants conversations. Apparently some jerk in first class pitched a fit when they told him he'd have to check his (oversized) bag, and when he got belligerent the air marshal came and removed the guy from the flight! Definitely one of the more interesting reasons for a flight delay!

Now I really want to know what happens to you when you're removed from a flight. Did he get arrested? Surely they don't just let him take the next flight. Does anybody know??

My seatmate proved to be annoying and a total nutjob. He'd brought about 10 lbs worth of newspapers with him, and even though he wasn't a big guy, he spent about half the flight occupying half of my seat space with his elbows as he read the paper. He also spent a good portion of the flight clipping coupons. You know, like grocery coupons out of the Sunday ads. Who does that on an airplane?!?! Honestly I think it's one of the stranger things I've seen someone do on a plane.

Anyways, between the excess mail and the unruly passenger, my flight landed in Phoenix at exactly 2:30...and my flight to Tucson left at 2:36, while I was most definitely still on the first plane. Fortunately there's a flight to Tucson like every hour, so I didn't get back too much later than planned.

Let's hope the next travel day is less ridiculous...

Lightning Round!

A while ago several of us started going to trivia night at Sky Bar, pretty much the nerdiest bar in town. There's a periodic table hung on the wall, they occasionally show the live feed off one of the telescopes in the area, and it's not unusual to walk in and find a group of people sitting around playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Generally speaking, we're really not good at trivia. A couple weeks we've done quite respectably, but definitely no where near winning. Most of the time our goal is just to beat the math department because honestly, it's just embarrassing to lose to them.

While we're not good at trivia in general, what we are AWESOME at is the Lightning Round! It's a separate round, with a separate prize, and your score doesn't count towards your overall score for the night. They give you a category, and you have to list as many items as you can in that category in 1 minute.

Almost a month ago was the first time won the Lightning Round! The category was elements of the periodic table. I'd say 90% of the people that regularly play on our team are chemists. It would have been mortifying to lose this question - and as it was we only beat the geologists by a few. The prize is the killer part of this story. Each player on the team won a free ticket to a charity cocktails/h'oer d'oeuvres followed by a fashion show where the models were the contestants of the Mrs. America pageant. We were super psyched because it's just too ridiculous sounding not to be awesome, and we knew it would be a fun chance to dress up (something that doesn't happen very often in Tucson, the most casual "city" on the planet). And it was being held at a super swanky resort in the foothills. The next morning I googled this event just to see what I could find out about it, only to discover that the tickets were being sold for $125 each. That means we won $1000 "worth" of tickets for listing the most elements of the periodic table. Who says this stuff doesn't pay off??

The second time we won, the category was countries who have placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the world cup since some random (as far as we could tell) year a long time ago. The prize that time was an admit 2 pass to the classic film series at the Fox Theater downtown - certainly not so valuable, but still cool and something I'll definitely use. And then this past Monday we won for the third time, the category being European countries. We listed 30, and we forgot Ukraine and Romania. The this time the prize was completely and utterly lame. :( $1 off coupons for a smoothie. Seriously? We go from $125/head fashion show tickets to $1 off smoothie coupons? WTF. Lame, trivia night, lame.

Anyways, the Mrs. America fashion show was every bit as through-the-roof ridiculous as we'd hoped. The free food could have been more extensive (just veggies and cheese and crackers, although much nicer cheeses than normally fall within a graduate student budget), but there was more than enough free alcohol. The pageant was emcee'd by one of the local weathermen (hilarious, but even funnier was his inability to pronounce the word "bodice"), and there was an auction in the middle and at the end. The last auctioned "item", was the opportunity to be a judge for the costume portion of the actual Mrs. America pageant! Priceless! We were totally out of our element, surrounded by super rich people who could afford to spend $125 for this thing, not to mention bid thousands (literally!!!) on some of the auction items. When the resort donated the tickets for the Lightning Round! prize I'm sure they were just looking to get bodies in seats to make the event seem more successful, and not looking for poor graduate students who would make fun of everything they saw that night. During the auction our jaws kept dropping further as we calculated what percentage of our annual salary people were bidding!

I'll finish this post with some of the more amazing costumes from the night. The first 25 contestants walked in evening gowns, while the second half walked in their "state costumes."

Mrs. Maine - the only contestant I really couldn't make fun of - she's a doctor and a mother of 4, and she made her own dress in the color of her favorite charity, the American Heart Association...


Mrs. WOW-Could-That-Leg-Be-Any-Higher-Cut?

Oh, say can you see Mrs. Maryland?

Mrs. I-Have-No-Idea-But-WOW-Her-Bra-Cups-Are-Bigger-Than-Her-Head


Mrs. Oklahoma


Mrs. Your-Costume-Reminds-Me-of-Romy-and-Michelle's-High-School-Reunion













Mrs. Colorado

U of A continues to amaze me...

While getting our monthly Eegee on Friday, Dallas and I came across this on our way back to Chemistry:


Bike valet parking?! Really?? It seems that if you're sufficiently active/unlazy to bike to campus, that you could manage to walk a bit from wherever you locked your bike to your destination...

Question of the Day

Do we think that if I trained, I could do a marathon? As in 26.2 miles. I did decently in a the half marathon in March without really properly training (2:32, without feeling like dying), but I really think a full would kill me. Like I'd literally die. I most definitely do NOT have the body type of a runner. At all. Thoughts?