Good Riddance

A few weeks ago Tiff (of dissertation date fame) asked if I missed Tucson at all, and while I do miss somethings about Tucson, I DO NOT AT ALL miss grad school.  She was pretty surprised that I felt that way.  Another friend from grad school has said the traumatic grad school memories faded really quickly, and while I don't completely cringe when I recall grad school at this point (not quite 6 months out), I still don't miss being a grad student.  Not even the tiniest bit.

Friends who finished a few year ahead of me said I'd miss the flexible schedule and the ability to do work of my choosing.  Honestly I haven't had this problem.  This probably depends upon one's actual job, but I have enough flexibility that things like getting to the post office or the doctor's isn't a problem.  As far as being able to do whatever work interests you, I think this may only be an issue if you actually enjoy research in the first place.  By the end of grad school, I HATED research.  So much of it is so obscure that its only significance is in the mind of the researcher, and I absolutely despised the never-ending nature of research.  I hate that a project is never actually done, even after years - there is always something else to do, some other direction in which to take the research.  I am so glad to have work with a much shorter time frame for completion, and the ability to work on something different often!  If I don't actually like that project, it really doesn't matter, because it's short-lived.  I've written plenty about the crappy aspects of grad school, and frankly the perks (flexibility, ability to work on what you like - which is actually not entirely true) don't come close to making up for them.

The biggest thing I miss about Tucson and grad school are the people.  I miss cooking with E, hiking with Dallas, procrastinating/chit chatting with people in the group downstairs.  I was very lucky to already know a couple of people in/near Baltimore when I moved here, so there are a few people to go explore and hang out and celebrate stuff with, but I still miss my friends from Tucson.  There are a few other, relatively trivial things I miss, but the biggest thing is the people I spent the past 5 years with.  My co-workers at my actual employer are great, I like almost all of them a lot, and the people at BFU are mostly nice though totally insane.  (Seriously, getting out of academia = good decision.)  Anyways, I mostly like the people I work with, but they're not friends the way my grad school classmates were/are, and probably won't be even with time.


Aside from missing friends, the short-term nature of my job (both the actual work and the fact that it's only a 2 year position), the normal hours, and significantly improved salary all contribute to my not missing grad school in the slightest.

Making even harder to miss grad school is actually being able to see Boyfriend more than every 6-8 weeks.  I see him almost every weekend now, and it doesn't involve hundreds of dollars or spending all day on a plane!  It's wonderful.  It (and he) makes me incredibly happy.  That alone makes it hard to miss grad school.

Jury Duty

The day after getting back from the Grand Canyon I had to go to jury duty.  Like I mentioned before, this is the fifth time I've been summoned for jury duty.  Random my ass.

Anyways, I get in there, and what do you know?  I actually get pulled for jury selection.  The last time I went I just sat there in the room until they dismissed us all at noon.  They took twenty of us over to Tucson City Court for selection for a DUI case.

A couple funny notes about jury selection:

• One of the prospective jurors worked for the city - she knew just about every cop, clerk, bailiff, judge, and prosecutor in the county. She wasn't put on the jury.
• At one point they asked us (the prospective jurors) if we knew anybody in the room - defendant, either attorney, other jurors etc.  One prospective juror said that she knew defense council professionally - he had represented her on another matter.  Another DUI case.  Where she was found guilty.  Hilarious, and needless to say she wasn't placed on the jury.
• They have a set list of questions that they ask each juror, the last of which is what tv shows do you watch and what magazines do you read.  This seems like a silly question, and most people answered with types of shows or types of magazines.  One guy actually said that he reads Playboy and Maxim.  Dude, I'm pretty sure nobody needed to know that...
• Now you would think that in a DUI case defense council would see an analytical chemist as an undesirable juror, especially when the main defense is that the breathalyzer can not accurately represent the defendant's BAC.  Given that this girl was so obviously guilty (so obvious to me as soon as opening statements were done - I'm sure the attorneys knew this going into it), I'm sure the prosecutor thought yes please! put the analytical chemist on the jury!  However the defense attorney was a fool to agree to let me sit on that jury...although...he was a fool in all sorts of other ways too.

The defendant took the stand and after half an hour of listening to her life story (irrelevant), education (irrelevant), and plans to marry in November (again, irrelevant), she sat there and swore that she was completely sober and not at all impaired after 3 beers within an hour on an empty stomach while weighing only 120 lbs.  Sure.  I significantly outweigh this girl, and I couldn't drink that much in an hour even with a meal and be ok to drive.

Her lawyer was awful.  Absolutely awful.  I don't know if all DUI attorneys are sleezebags, or if he's worse than the average, but wow.  The entire thing was like a stage show.  I think approximately 5% of what he told us was actually relevant to the case.  When he wasn't waxing poetic about nothing he was waving 4 fingers around while telling us she only had 3 drinks and calling is client by the wrong name.  I felt really bad that she wasted her money on this scumbag.

The whole thing took a day and a half.  The first day wasn't so bad, and some parts were pretty interesting.  The second day was brutally painful.  The paid expert witness brought in by the defense in an attempt to convince us that the breathalyzer is going to give a falsely high result depending on how long after drinking the test is performed was incredibly garbled and confusing.  It didn't help that the defense attorney is an idiot and had him talking in circles.  So painful and aggravating to listen to all morning.

The most baffling thing about this whole trail/experience, was that the incident took place over 4 years ago.  FOUR YEARS for a DUI to come to trail.  That just seems beyond absurd.  Unfortunately we never had an opportunity to as if that's normal, or what the hell made this case take so long.  Seriously, if she had pled out when this happened it would be over and no longer a part of her life.  Yeah, it's gonna be on her record, and I'm sure affects her insurance, but the tangible consequences would have been ancient history by now.

Once we were released to deliberate it thankfully only took us about 30 seconds to realize we all already agreed that the girl was guilty.  She seems like a nice girl, but nice people show poor judgment too.

A couple days later I got a cute little form letter from the judge thanking me for my service.  Let's see how long it is til I get summoned again...

How to Kill Time Between Spectra Late at Night, Volume 3

Back by popular demand, and because I'm working super late again, here's a running list of how I've kept myself "busy" tonight.

• Take out recycling
• Get dinner with E (who is also working late)
• Gchat and Facebook chat
• Write blog posts
• Contemplate my future, panic a bit
  
• Read some papers
  
• Research Crater Lake National Park (Did you know that all the boats on the lake were delivered by helicopter??)
  
• Think about how to organize results into publishable units
• Ponder why my office and lab are so cold. Go stand outside briefly to warm up.
• Obtain caffeine from vending machine
• Inform E that her faithful readers are waiting for more fashion advice
• Tidy desk
• Make packing list
  
• Watch Blue Crush on Netflix to try to stay awake during last spectrum (Yes, I'm judging me, too.)
  

Uncomfortable.

So the news outlets (understandably so) aren't talking about anything except the death of Osama bin Laden. It's huge that he's dead, and while it's impossible to know what will happen now, hopefully it'll be a huge blow to al Qaeda and a step towards a less violent world.

I understand that he was a horrible, horrible man. Really. I get it. It really isn't possible to comprehend fully the suffering that he has directly or indirectly caused countless people. But at the same time, the rejoicing at his death bothers me. I wouldn't say I'm sorry that he's dead, but it makes me really, really uncomfortable that the collective reaction to a man's death is joy.

Future Goals

I just wrote a personal statement for a small scholarship where the instructions said, "include current research interests and future goals."

Too bad I can't include things like

• get over this cold
  
• catch up on laundry
  
• get said scholarship
• graduate
• get a job
• read the entire Bible
  
• have a family
• travel to every continent
• lose 5 lbs
• run a half marathon
• take better photos
  

I have all sorts of future goals. Too bad they only care about my (somewhat uncertain) career goals. Reading umpteen statements that only discuss future career goals sounds boring. Little goals are important too - sometimes they're what get me through the day.

Grown Up?

Today is my 26th birthday. There was a time (not really terribly long ago either) when I thought a 26-year-old was an adult. My parents got married at 24, and had me at 27. And considering I've always thought of them as adults with their $h!t mostly together, and now I'm around the same age, so I feel like I somehow should feel like a responsible adult who knows what she's doing. However, I most certainly don't feel like a "grown up." Which begs the question, when exactly, does one feel like a grown up?

It most definitely wasn't upon turning 18, or graduating from high school. It wasn't after the last time I lived with my parents (the summer after freshman year of college). It wasn't even when I graduated from college and started supporting myself.

At this point I feel a little more "grown up." I pay all my own bills (ok, not my cell phone, but we're all on a family plan together since it's cheaper), I decide where I'm living. I travel without always telling my parents or always checking in when I arrive at a destination (or back home). (I still tell them about the big trips overseas, but really because I'm too excited not to!) I change flat tires and set (although not empty!!) mouse traps on my own. Heck I can even rent a car now without paying an arm and a leg (just an arm).

Even though I've been on my own for a few years now, there are still semi-regular phone calls home to ask questions about things I haven't done before. Like when I transferred my car from my grandpa's name to mine. Or bought car insurance for the first time. Or temporary health insurance when I got booted from Dad's company benefits but couldn't enroll in student health insurance until the new semester. Or when I hosted Easter for the first time and had to figure out how much ham to get for 14 people. While it's exciting (and sometimes a bit scary) to be figuring out how to do stuff on my own, those phone calls home don't exactly further the "I feel like an adult now" feeling.

So when do you feel like an adult? When my life stops revolving around semesters? Somehow I don't think finishing my PhD is going to be the mysterious switch that does it. Is it when I get my first "real" job? When I have benefits and retirement savings? Or when I buy a house? Get married? Or have a baby? When my hair turns gray? When I hit menopause? Or when I have to take care of my parent(s)? Do you ever feel like an adult?

Hm. What next? Part II

So in thinking more about what I want to do "when I grow up," and in seeking advice/information on various options, I've decided it could be helpful to think about what I want in a job.

Based on my last post on this subject, it's fairly clear that I want a job where:

• I generally like my co-workers. I realize there's always going to be the one (or more) person I absolutely can't stand, or drives me up the wall, but it's important to me that for the most part, I like my co-workers and enjoy working with them. It would be the pits to loathe the people with whom I spend 40+ hours a week.
• It is feasible to have balance between work and family/private/home life. As I said before, my career is important to me, but so is family - the family I already have and the family I someday hope to have. Both my parents have advanced degrees and have/had high-level, demanding jobs. Granted Dad's job has always been considerably more flexible and "9-5" than Mom's (night and weekend call is certainly an obstacle to flexibility), but I never felt neglected, or like I didn't see my parents enough, or like they weren't there for important things. So I guess my point is I know it's possible to have a successful career in science and still have a family, therefore I won't take (or stay in) a job that doesn't leave room for other priorities.
• I never become completely removed from the lab that my expectations are ridiculous. A lot of PhDs get sort of pushed into a management track, where it seems all too easy to lose understanding of what it takes to make something actually happen in lab. On one hand I like to be in charge because I like to be sure things are going to get done right (um yes, I can be somewhat bossy at times). Although the older I get the less I care because less and less often do I think the stress and pressure are worth it. Maybe someday management will be more appealing than it is now. I guess it's a good recent grads wouldn't start out in a position like that anyways. I also discovered during grad school that I really like to tinker. I enjoy disassembling, trouble-shooting, replacing parts, and reassembling the instrument. For now at least I want to be able to continue getting my hands dirty.
  

I think those factors will go a long way towards me being happy in my job. There are some other things to think about too.

• Travel. If you know me or have been reading this blog for a while, you've probably figured out that I'm a wee bit addicted. I love going to and experiencing new places. Most business trips likely wouldn't really allow time for sightseeing, but you still get the chance to meet and interact with people from somewhere different - something I almost always find interesting and valuable. And maybe I'm weird, but I always get this thrill just walking through the airport looking at all the gates as pass thinking, "Oo! I could go to Seattle! Or Memphis! Or Montreal! Or Tokyo! Or Cairo!" And the list goes on, and on, and on. Dad commutes to DC (from Boston) almost once a week. I don't think I really want to do that; it just seems draining. He takes a 6 or 7 am flight down and then gets home between 9 and 11 pm. And then goes to work at his normal 6 or 7 am the next morning! Besides, who wants to go to the same place over and over and over again? :P
• Benefits. Growing up we were very fortunate that we always had great health insurance as part of one parent or the others' benefits package. Now in grad school, paying too much for pretty mediocre insurance makes me really, really appreciate the value of good benefits. I'm really looking forward to having better health insurance, hopefully with vision, dental, and prescription included!! While we're at it, let's admit that money is nice, my travel addiction is expensive, and I'd like to think I will have toiled through let's not think about how many years of graduate school to make more than $30,000/year. Oh, and a decent amount of vacation time would be appreciated.
• Mass spec vs "other" analytical chemistry vs "other" chemistry. I'm pretty sure that I want to stay in mass spec. Most chemists seem to wind up in positions drastically different from their dissertation work. That's not necessarily a bad thing - I most definitely don't want to do the same thing forever. That said, I really like the wide variety of applications, instrumentation, and problems encountered in mass spectrometry. Which brings me to my next point,
• Variety. I absolutely do not want to do the same thing everyday for the next year, let alone the rest of my life.
• Learning opportunities. Whether that's in the form of in-house seminars and classes as very-BC talked about at lunch, attending conferences, training from instrument companies, and who knows what else. I certainly don't know everything I'll ever need to know, nor will I when I've actually finished this stupid degree.
• Interaction. As much as other people drive me crazy sometimes, I ultimately do want to interact with lots of people in my job. Working by myself all the time would get really boring really quickly. Fortunately science doesn't happen in a bubble.
• Application. I like coming to specific results or conclusions that can be of use to other scientists or people in the near-ish future. I loathe strictly theoretical or computational work. As an analytical chemist this isn't likely to be a problem. After all, the whole point of analytical chemistry is to measure stuff. I'm also really not attached to doing true research. I'm ok with more application-oriented problem-solving.
  

I'm sure there are other things I'm not thinking of now, and probably things I won't realize I care about or should have been thinking about until after I've had a "real, grown up" job for a while. This is a pretty extensive list though, and hopefully thinking about what I want from a job will help me decide what will be a good choice for me.

Eventually I'll get around to musing over various options...

Hm. What next?

I got an email this morning telling me that representatives from a Very Big Company (Very-BC) want to take me and a few other grad students out for lunch tomorrow. Two PhD alums and Very-BC employees have been on campus all week conducting interviews. They've been doing on-campus interviews for several years, though this year they seem to be "recruiting" particularly hard because unlike in past years they have permission to hire 25 PhD-level scientists over the next year. So they've been interviewing grad students who've applied, and requesting resumes from other almost-ready-to-graduate students who didn't. It seems they do quite a bit of asking around as to whom they should be scouting/recruiting, because they've also assembled a list of slightly younger, not-quite-ready-to-graduate students to start talking to now. (This is the group I'm in - sadly, and at the same time thank goodness, I'm not that close to graduating.)

Even if I'm not terribly close to graduating, I'm close enough that it's not unreasonable for this company to be feeling me out while they're here, which begs the question, what do I want to do after grad school????

Last month when I was in StL for my college roommate's wedding, her brother asked what I wanted to do with my PhD. My response (literally): Um, do I need to know the answer to that? He laughed and replied that at some point I probably do. It's starting to look like that point is sooner rather than later. Crap.

For most of grad school, and during ungrad too honestly, I've given fairly glib responses to that question. Especially because people always seem to ask it insanely early, like asking what I want to do with my PhD before I'd even moved to Tucson. Especially since opinions and ideas are so likely to change with experience, I've never really seen a reason to have a big Master Plan. (Seriously, sometime I should write about applying to graduate school.) I kind of figured I could figure the next step out when I actually got there, and so far that's worked out pretty well for me. I'm not sure how well that approach would go over in an actual job interview. (Yes, the grad school admission process is sort of interview-ish, but uncertainty is much more tolerated in a culture where the liberals/wanderers/philosophers/curious seek shelter rather than a company with a bottom line and a product to get out the door.)

At this point you may be thinking I pulled a Peter Pan move and went to grad school to avoid growing up (or making any "real" decisions). Honestly there may be some truth to that, but it's certainly not the whole truth. In my undergrad research lab, there were some undergrads who were quite competent and worked independently on their own projects, and there were other undergrads who were, shall we say, less competent, and did monkey-work under the direct supervision of a grad student. I was well aware that I enjoyed being in the former category, and did NOT want to be an HPLC-monkey for the rest of my life (where many bachelor's level chemists end up). I'm sufficiently intelligent and opinionated that I want to be figuring out stuff myself.

So far, I've mostly narrowed the post-graduation options down to "not academia." I don't want to be an academic PI. Yes, academia totally has its advantages - among them being able research/study (almost) anything you want and a lot of flexibility in terms of schedule (which hours, not how many). But the cons...

• The longer I'm in academia, the crazier I think everybody here is, and the more certain I am that I don't want to be here forever. There's an absurd amount of politics, game-play, back-stabbing, and trash-talking. And I'm in a department with a really good reputation for how collegial, friendly, and collaborative it is. I'm sure "not academia" doesn't avoid this pitfall entirely, but in my 8th year at a university, I'm tired of all the crap. I guess I'm hoping different crap will annoy me less in its novelty.
  
• Despite a fair amount of progress, academia, especially in physical sciences, is still an incredibly difficult option for women who might like to have children someday. Like me. I know women who have had babies during graduate school, during a post-doc, or after making tenure. It seems like there is no "good" time to have a baby, but that these are the "less impossible" times. At this point, I'm unlikely to find myself otherwise situated to have children before finishing a post-doc, so that means I should wait until I can be classified as AMA to start trying to have children? Maybe I'm projecting too far and considering too many really big "ifs," but someday I do want to get married and have kids. I know that even in "not academia" that still puts me at a disadvantage career-wise, but at least it doesn't mean not making tenure and losing my job. (For reference, there are currently 6 female professors in my department of approximately 40 faculty. My advisor is the only one with a child. A child as in one child, that she had the same year she made tenure. Maybe this also reflects the "kind of person" it takes to survive in academia and not just the incompatibility of tenure and biological clocks.)
• For the most part, I enjoy lab work. I most certainly enjoy it more than reading and writing (as necessary as those parts are). There are relatively few professors, especially as they advance through the ranks, who spend any significant amount of time actually in the lab, doing experiments, and analyzing their own data. It drives me crazy sometimes how out of touch my advisor seems sometimes. Because she hasn't done these experiments in so many years, or in some cases, ever, she can have ridiculously skewed ideas about how long something takes, how difficult it is, or occasionally whether its even feasible. It's not that she's deliberately being difficult, I really think she's just forgotten what it's actually like. I don't want to spend all my time reading, writing, going to meetings, and telling other people how to do their science.
  
• The final big drawback is I see how insanely hard many of the professors work, only to never seem caught up. It's one thing to get the 11pm email from your advisor, or maybe the 5am email. But sometimes we get both (plus who knows how many one-line emails between meetings during the day). We're constantly pestering her to read something for us. We're the ones actually doing the labwork, data analysis, and even much of the writing, and yet she still never seems to have the time to stop working for a bit and just enjoy life. I don't want that. The assistant professor down the hall from me is here more than I am. And I'm here a lot. It's really, really rare that I'm at school and he's not. The sad part? He probably won't make tenure next year. And to sound not entirely naive, I know industry jobs are hard work, too. My dad (with a PhD in physics) has worked in industry my entire life, and he's worked hard my entire life, and sometimes had stuff to read or work on in the evenings or on weekends. But it never seemed all-consuming and soul-crushing like academia does (to me).
  

That more or less sums up why I don't want to work in academia. The sad thing is, if somebody asked me on an interview why I wanted to work in _____ ("not academia"), none of the reasons I described above are acceptable interview answers. It's not ok to say, because I'm tired of the petty bitches/assholes in academia, I want to have babies, and/or I don't want my job to take over my life. Having a career I enjoy and care about is important to me, but it's far from the be-all-end-all or how I want to look back on my life.

Part of why I think I'm so uncertain about what I want to do is I have no direct experience with chemistry or research outside of academia. I know why I don't want to be an academic, but I don't know why I do want to do ______. At this point I have are observations of my dad's job from growing up, and the data collected from the 118356 million questions I ask of almost everybody I can in various jobs. My mentor from when I started grad school (the senior student who trained me and whose project I took over) is now working for a pharmaceutical company, and I regularly quiz him about what he actually does, and what he likes and doesn't like about it. I'm not sure how to remedy this - other than to keep asking all sorts of people about their jobs (I really wish there were more appropriate and candid situations in which to do this!!) and trial and error (making the best decision I can, and possibly hating my job and having to figure it out all over again (with one more data point!)).

Ok, this is getting really long. I'll come back to this rambling another day.

Editing

So I've been working on this paper since, oh, about June. I know that sounds completely ridiculous, and it is, but most of the comments I've had from my advisor and collaborator have been only minimally painful. For the most part they haven't meant large amounts of additional work or rewriting. The most painful part of the whole process has been waiting weeks on end to get a round of comments back from them.

I've been working on the latest round of corrections this weekend, and it's got me thinking about editing.

Most of the comments from my collaborator were adding additional words that I found unnecessary for the clarity of the paper. If I weren't hard up for space already, they'd be fine. They're not ridiculously wordy additions. But in a 2-page communication, there is absolutely no room for words that are anything less than 110% necessary, so I ignored a fairly high percentage of his "corrections."

As I was getting ready to send the latest version to my advisor, I found myself worrying that my collaborator would be annoyed at me "ignoring" so many of his comments. (I really didn't ignore them, I considered all of them, weighing them for importance vs length added.) I know that when my labmates ask me to read/edit something, and then I see a later draft where a number of my corrections have been ignored, I know I tend to be irritated. But thinking about this further, I decided that most of the instances where I'm annoyed is when the author is a non-native English speaker.

Now I'm really not trying to rip on international students, some of them work very hard at improving their English, and have reasonably good grammar. I'm fairly sympathetic to constant corrections that are clearly a result of different syntax/language construction. For example, Sri Lankan students almost always omit articles (a/an, the), so I assume this is such an issue. But I get annoyed when I'm correcting things like subject/verb agreement over and over and over again I get annoyed. I've learned enough of a foreign language to know that you most definitely learn this sort of thing whenever you learn a language. Occasional slips, sure, but every second sentence? Good grief! Anyways, I know this sounds snobby, if you've specifically asked me to read/edit for correct English, you really shouldn't be ignoring so many of my comments/corrections!

Editing is particularly painful when the English is so jumbled that I have a hard time figuring out what you're trying to say. Really. Even in graduate school, it happens. (I have serious doubts about the TOEFL.) In this case I correct based on my best guess at their point/the correct science, and make a note that they should make sure it still says what they want. (Even worse is the occasional instance when you think the author is mostly an idiot and suspect that they don't know what they're trying to say/what's correct either.)

Anyways, hopefully my collaborator won't be offended that I omitted so many of his suggestions, and please please please please please let them both read this round soon and be done making changes!

9-11

I was just starting my junior year of high school on September 11, 2001. While I don't remember what class I was in when the towers were struck, or when they collapsed, I do remember that I was in American History when we found out. It was still morning, but after both towers had collapsed.

I can't quite explain why, but somehow it strikes me as funny (not ha-ha funny certainly) that I was in American History when I found out about 9-11. I also remember thinking it was really strange that by the end of the school year, the events of 9-11 had already been included in the latest edition of history books that my teacher was sampling for the following year.

9-11 was the second "world event" or terrible tragedy to actually strike home for me (the first was the shootings at Columbine when I was in 8th grade - I remember watching the news coverage thinking holy cow, that was in a high school, I'm going to high school in a few months). The planes the struck the towers originated in Boston, only half a hour from where I grew up, the airport I did and still regularly use. One of the pilots was from the town my parents moved to last summer. I was lucky enough not to know anybody who died, but I knew lots of people who did, making it eerily "real".

Please pray for all of the families affected by 9-11, especially the children who lost parents. Please pray for all of the troops overseas, and that some day sooner rather than later, there may be peace in the Middle East and understanding and tolerance between Christians and Muslims world wide.

Level Up

I think I finally have to give in and admit that I'm a 4th year grad student now. I even went so far as to change it in my description. The new 1st years are starting to show up - the international students this week, the domestic students next week. Not that I'm taking any (woohoo!!), but classes will start in less than 3 weeks, and then I'll really have no excuse for not calling myself a 4th year.

The most recent 1st years (now 2nd years) were eager to promote themselves, so by default in their mind I'd logically be promoted too. I'm not sure why they were so eager to officially be 2nd years, but I'm pretty adamant about not being the next year older until I really have to be. So I've always defined what year I am relative to the newest cohort of grad students around. So the coming academic year's 1st years are arriving? I guess that makes me a 4th year. When do you consider yourself the next year/grade/rank up?

I haven't been particularly eager to "level up" since high school, because it seems that the older I get, the faster time goes by, not to mention the farther you get through whatever tier of education the more responsibility you have. And after being the oldest child in my family, I eventually realized that it's nice to not always be responsible. The farther you get in grad school, the more responsibility you have, not just for yourself, but for lab equipment and younger students. Because of my fellowship situation, I was independent in the lab a lot sooner than most younger grad students, which was actually awesome for a little while, because I could do my own experiments without feeling like I was pestering anybody, but I didn't yet have to fix all the $h!t other people break. At this point in grad school I sometimes feels like all I ever do is trouble shoot instrument problems, fix said instrument problems, help people find things, clean up messes, and restock supplies (that everybody else uses). Most of time I don't mind (too much), especially with first years. Somebody has to teach them, and I was really lucky to have an awesome mentor when I was a 1st year, and the 1st years (well, most of them) deserve to have an awesome mentor too (not saying I'm an awesome mentor, besides I've been teaching/guiding the first years more generally - I'm not so far along that I need to line up somebody to more directly take over my project). What actually bugs me is non-1st year students who didn't take the initiative to learn what they should have when they were 1st years, and now they're taking up my time because they suddenly realize they need to get their $h!t together.

The additional responsibility is an annoyance, but not a freak-out factor. What's freaky about being a 4th year is that means there are relatively few people senior to me in the lab (i.e. relatively few people who can help when I need it). I have three-four labmates that are a year ahead of me, at least 2 of them will graduate next May or August. Those that may not graduate then aren't exactly the most functional, contributing members of the lab. That pretty much leaves me as the senior student in the lab. Which is just plain scary. I have two labmates who are my year, but one of them is a joint student and spends almost all her time in her other lab and the other, while productive and very bright, doesn't really take on any leadership responsibility.

What's even scarier is that being a 4th year means I'm only a year away from being a 5th year, which puts me only 2 years away from graduating and having to figure out what I'm doing next. Lately I've been feeling the itch to move again, to live somewhere new, but I'm the idea of having to figure that out actually being reality is weird.

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?

Conundrum of the Day

If I were independently wealthy and didn't have to work - would I be fatter because I'd have lots of time to cook and eat? Or would I be thinner because I'd have lots of time to work out?

Rant

So my roommate, and not that it should matter, but my kind, beautiful, fun, funny, smart, interesting, overall-awesome roommate, just sent me the following text message:

Ok I just had a coworker say, "I can't believe you're not married, what's wrong with you?"

Now before you tell me that you're sure this person meant well, let me tell you that comments like this NEVER, EVER leave you feeling good. Worst case scenario, they leave you wanting to jump off a cliff. Best case scenario, they leave you thinking, "What's wrong with me?! What the hell is wrong with YOU???"

I was at a wedding a couple of months ago when my friend's mom asked me if I had a boyfriend back in Arizona. When I said no, she asked why not. And not even as a rhetorical question, she actually looked at me waiting for an answer. I've never been on the ball enough to actually give a response beyond mumbling "I don't know" and sitting there awkwardly. While I'm fuming afterwards I mull over various inappropriate responses along lines such as, "Well my girlfriend and I..." or "I prefer to sleep with as many men as possible..." Maybe someday I'll come up with a polite response that still effectively puts people in their place.

I really, really wish people would think before saying crap like this. It's just so thoughtless and rude. There's no reason why she (or me, or any of the other 20-something single women who have heard this) should be married! Maybe she just hasn't met the right guy yet, or maybe she doesn't want to get married. There's nothing wrong with being single! Or maybe she was married, and widowed young - wouldn't you feel like schmuck then?? Yes, I would personally like to be in a relationship, and if/when I find the right guy, get married and have a family. But not every woman wants that or should want that. I know I'm not perfect, but just because it hasn't happened yet for me, or maybe won't happen, doesn't mean something is wrong with me.

Ugh. I really wish people would get over the idea that women should be in a relationship, should want to be in a relationship, and must be seriously flawed if they aren't. And if what they're really thinking is, "This girl is really cool, some guy would be really lucky to be with her," then they need to find a better, non-offensive way to say it!! I know I'm really defensive about this, and I probably shouldn't let this bother me so much. But it really irritates me when people say crap like that.

Alternate post titles:

WTF?!
Think Before You Speak!!
What is wrong with people?!
People Suck
Ugh

"Knowledge, like scar tissue, accumulates with experience."

That title was a gem from the student speaker at this morning's departmental awards brunch. His speech wasn't awesome, but it certainly wasn't terrible. And more importantly, it was brief.

Well the semester is winding up; commencement activities started today. Although since I'm done with classes, all this really means for me is that very soon it will be miserably hot, the lines to get food in the student union will be significantly shorter, and it will be easier to jaywalk a busy street to get to school.

While summer is a great time to be productive and get lots of research done (especially since it's way too hot to be outside during daylight hours), I miss summer vacation... I suppose I really miss vacation period - because when I do take time off from school/work (another point to ponder sometime, is it school? or is it work?) I never take a vacation vacation. I'm either traveling to see people, or I'm all-out globe trotting. Which is awesome, but not exactly relaxing.

Despite being miserably hot more often than not, summer in Tucson is fun. Because it's so hot, pretty much every apartment complex worth living in has a pool, so lots of time is spent hanging out at the pool. Thirsty Thursdays are lots of fun - who doesn't love a cheap baseball ticket combined with $1 beers? And once monsoon season rolls around we can get some pretty spectacular thunderstorms.

Even though I'm past classes, the school year is still significantly busier than summer. Over the summer there are no seminars and no committee meetings - nothing to do at work/school but research. There's definitely some pressure to have a produce summer research-wise, but the overall atmosphere and attitude around the department is still much more laidback. I've known for a while that I'm much less stressed with only one "thing" to work on rather than dividing my time between several things. So yay summer! As soon as this conference is over anyways...

Comics & Publishing

PHD Comics is one of the many wonderful little things that makes gradual school more bearable. While at first glance PHD might logically stand for Doctor of Philosophy, it technically stands for Piled Higher & Deeper in this case. A pretty accurate description of grad school I must say... The strip is written by a fellow who did his PhD in engineering at Stamford, and what makes it so brilliant is how frighteningly true many of the comics are.

Today's comic is brilliant. It's essentially a list of phrases you'll never see published, but one or more of which could be honestly applied to probably just about ever paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal. Which brings me to another point. Why does nobody publish negative results? While understandably lots of negative results are crap, there are also lots of negative results that would be useful for people to know about before they go off to be the 123857th person to attempt and fail at _____ experiment.

For your enjoyment, here are a few of my favorite PHD comics that particularly hit home.

Exclusive Focus

If TV Science Was More Like Real Science

Seminar Bingo - This is possibly the best ever. One of the comic's readers made a little algorithm that will shuffle the squares, so you can have variations of the board so each player's is different. One of my classmates printed and laminated several copies, so now we can play seminar bingo whenever we want. :) Several times during seminars we've made lists of bingo items specific to our department - Dr. Hruby falls asleep, Dr. Brown arrives as the seminar is ending, etc.

Whining and Dining

It's recruiting weekend again. Twice a year my department brings in 30-35 prospective grad students for a weekend of wining and dining. It's a chance for them to meet faculty they might want to work for, and try to get a good feel for whether or not this is the right graduate program for them. Generally it's a lot of fun, albeit tiring. Most of the department comes out, puts on their happy faces, and enjoys a weekend of free food. Since I love lists, here are the ups and downs of recruiting weekend in list form. :)

Ups

- Free food. Yes, I make plenty of money to feed myself, but I'm still a grad student. Free food is always appreciated.
- A legit excuse to be unproductive for a couple of days.
- Most of the recruits are cool people. They come from all over the country from a lot of different backgrounds.
- Kids say the darndest things. Example: One recruit, who's originally from Ghana, on the ride to the hotel from the airport exclaimed, "Tucson looks just like Ghana!"
- Chance to socialize with lots of people from the department that you may not see that often.
- The chance to drive 15 passenger vans. I'm not sure why, but I LOVE driving big vehicles. I'm also amused by the look of astonishment on a few of the bigger guys' faces when a 5'2" woman hops out of a giant van.
- Blue House Catering. I realize this is an extension of free food, but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the food from these people, and many grad students look forward to this one meal all year long.
- Meeting more nerds. It's super fun to meet cool people who are just as geeky as my friends and I. Seriously. Last month, I was at a dinner table with a handful of recruits who were laughing hysterically at the brilliance of whoever first invented symbols for numbers. Like 1 for one item. Or 4 for four items.

Downs

- Recruiting weekend is exhausting. As a driver for recruiting weekend, there are a lot of late nights and early mornings.
- If you're driving a university vehicle, you can't drink until after you're done driving for the day. So if you drive an evening social activity? Forget it. No booze for you.
- You lose a few days when you could be getting stuff done. Slightly problematic when you have plans to go out of town for part of spring break, and Easter, and give a talk at a national conference at the end of May...
- Whiny prospectives. You'd think that college students that are essentially receiving a free long weekend trip with everything paid for would be excited and appreciative. A lot of them are, but an appalling handful of them aren't.
- Creepy prospectives. Both this year and last year we've had one prosective in particular that was creepy as all get out. Like no concept of personal space and aggressively hitting on every woman in sight creepy.
- @$$hole perspectives. In addition to the whiny or creepy perspectives, there's also the occasional kid who's dissatisfied with everything, thinks he's the $h!t (sorry, so far it's always been a he), and that our department is worthless. a. That's not the case. We're a ranked and respected department. And not that it compares us to other schools, but just this week we won an award for best department on campus. b. Then why did you apply here in the first place if you think you're so much better than us?!
- Slacker grad students. My classmate and I are in charge of coordinating all the students drivers. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the slacker grad student who signs up to drive stuff before he has his HOV permit, and then bails on the one other thing he signed up for because he "doesn't feel like it," and the jerk grad student who makes sexist comments to the female drivers...

Anyways, recruiting weekend is going well so far. Almost halfway through it...

My brain might explode.

One of my officemates is sick. Like there's an open bottle of Robitussin sitting on his desk. If you're that sick, GO HOME! I do not want you here. Nor do any of the other dozen or so people who work in our lab. The Queen (aka VW, our advisor) will be the first person to tell you to get the hell out of here (in much more polite, motherly words and tone of course). I don't want whatever you've got, nor do I have time to get whatever you've got. LEAVE.

I went to a graduate student speed dating tonight. I wasn't really expecting to legitimately meet anybody interesting, but I was absolutely expecting a good story or two. I was sorely disappointed. There were a couple of undergrads who had the balls to show up. If you're 22, and nowhere near done with your bachelors, and you don't have a particularly good reason for that, I'm not interested. Call me a snob, but I'm not. Especially when I see that your pants are belted around your @$$ and I can see 6" of your underwear. The only other guy of note was from the same department as one of my former roommates. He was very nice, but had I met him on the street, I would have SWORN he was gay. That's totally fine if you're gay, but as a heterosexual woman, if I'm wondering whether or not you might be gay, I don't want to date you either. Sorry.

The talk I'm giving to my entire department is just over a week away now. I'm starting to be rather stressed about it. Hopefully that won't be a lasting feeling of stress and just a passing, come-and-go feeling of stress. This will be the first talk I've given in graduate school on my research (other than group meetings, which are a totally different ballgame). It's good and bad that it's to a VERY broad chemistry audience. So one major challenge is making what I do comprehensible to people who have no idea what I do without dumbing it down (too much). So as I dig through my data to put this presentation together, I'm discovering that my results are even more interesting that I initially realized (yay!), but I'm also discovering a lot more work to be done (what else is new?) and some questions/results that we can't fully explain. On one hand, it's not really a problem because there's always more to be done. Good research leads to more research. And my biggest irksome question doesn't detract from the big picture of what I'm trying to do (thankfully). If it's an issue next week, it'll be because there are people in the department that are hugely skeptical of how valid gas phase protein measurements are. That at least is an argument I encounter regularly (after all, life happens in solution). What scares me more is the more nit-picky (although possibly valid) argument I KNOW I'm going to face at the national conference at the end of May. I know I have some time before the end of May, but I'm pretty sure this particular question isn't going to be resolved by then. I could be wrong. If I get a poster for that conference, odds are I'll go unnoticed. But because I work on something that nobody else in the world works on, and because people have been waiting for results to follow up my group's initial results in this area, odds are also quite good that my abstract will be selected for a talk. I know I should be excited about that prospect - after all, it's good if people are excited about what I work on, and a talk is a lot more prominent and puts me on people's radar for when I start looking for post-docs/jobs. It's just a heck of a lot more stressful. End rambling.

I'll leave you with this. I'm paranoid about a lot of random things. One of them is locking myself out of my office/lab when I'm here alone late at night. Let's hope that paranoia keeps me from actually doing it. :P