A Lady Scientist- Blog

I’ve been given a homework assignment by Contemporary Troubadour , so I’m going to try to get right to it! The assignment is to write about 7 things that I’ve never talked about in my blog. This may be a bit difficult for me because I’ve written about a lot of things. 🙂

1. Taking Contemporary Troubadour’s cue, I’m going to talk about my hair. I have horribly curly hair. Now, I don’t mean that it’s very curly (which it sort of is), but that it’s unruly. It has a mind of its own and will frizz at the slightest hint of humidity. In my circle of friends in Grad School (and now that I think of it In General– with one exception), I am the only person who has curly hair. Despite this everyone has a theory as to how to style my hair to make it behave. They all suggest this, that, or the other thing- and it drives me nuts! As a kid I used to wish for straight hair. Now, I just wear it in a ponytail.

2. I’ve been told that I have a mild form of synesthesia. I associate letters and numbers with being either male or female, personalities, and, in some cases, colors (but I don’t see them in color; it’s more of a feeling). Like the number 2 is female, nice, and usually blue. The number 8 is male, slightly juvenile, and green. The letter L is female, a proper lady, and yellow-orange. I thought that all people did this until my first year of graduate school. I had a course that talked about actual synesthetes and this was mentioned as a subset group. And that’s when I learned that not everyone associates gender/color/personalities with letters and numbers. Funny what one thinks is normal, huh?

3. I’m very bad about not thinking before speaking and I tend to be very emotional. It’s one of the things about myself that I dislike. I’m especially prone to saying things that I don’t mean when I’m angry. It’s led to some funny situations, though. Like my first Journal Club. I was explaining a study about drosophila and, fortunately later (not during my presentation and thereby not in front of the entire department), someone asked me why they should care about fruit flies. All I could think of was, “Well, you see, it’s a vast conspiracy between the left wing and the right wing.” Or during my last committee meeting one of my committee members asked me what my next step was if my last-ditch-effort didn’t pan out and I responded with “I’ve seen these ads for alpaca farming on late night TV…”

4. Also, like Contemporary Troubadour, I seem to do my best thinking in the shower. These leads to a lot of conversations with the words, “And then in the shower it hit me…” I need to remember to strike that phrase from my vocabulary. I don’t have those insights while washing the dishes, though. So, I don’t know if it’s any mundane activity or just the shower.

5. I had a male “Honor Attendant” in my wedding. One of my closest friends is male and it felt strange to have him stand on Dr. Man’s side when he was my friend. This bothered my mother and grandmother to no end. However, this did not bother Dr. Man’s family (or at least they didn’t mention it to either me or Dr. Man). He– the Honor Attendant– was a good sport about things because he put up with a lot of teasing about being on the girl’s side. He also came to my bachelorette party.

6. I hate movies like Saw. Even the previews make me tear up. I feel so bad for the victims in the movies because it has to be terrifying to be in such a helpless situation. It makes me sad and just a tad bit scared. In fact the scariest part of the Scream movies for me was the opening scene of the first one. (It’s the one with Drew Barrymore and she can see her parents coming home.) Anyhow, it’s the one genre of movie that I refuse to see. That’s saying a lot because I like almost all sorts of movies (I love action movies, adventure, video game based movies, etc.).

7. I took ballet for about 8 years (ages 4-13– except for when I was 7). I’m still not all that graceful, though. I started taking ballet on the advice of my pediatrician. I was “pigeon-toed” and the pediatrician said that ballet would help that. So, I started taking lessons. My parents still have all the VHS tapes of my recitals– even though I was never very good. However, I was never much of a girly-girl. And I hated wearing the required make up for dance recitals.

I don’t know who to tag, so I’ll pull a Cath. I’m tagging anyone who has ever taken dance lessons or who has curly hair.

Self-explanatory title there. A crucial experiment seems to have worked. So: Yay.

I still enjoy blogging (and here’s the…) but I don’t have many exciting things to post about. However, it seems that everyone else is in the same boat and I figure no one is forced to read my blog. So, the worst that happens is that no one reads. And, hey, that’s not all that bad of a consequence.

This got me to thinking about consequences in the lab and, then, about roller coasters. Ok, this isn’t as tortured as one might think– so stay with me if you can. Now, I spend a lot of time in the lab. Too much time in the lab some might say (I’m looking at you, Dr. Man). But I’m trying to graduate– not any time too soon, but before December– and lots of time here tends to be a consequence of that. However, now that graduation is on my mind every experiment that doesn’t help me get there (failed or just not the expected result) I get very upset about. Conversely, every positive result makes me elated. (And now you can see where the roller coaster bit comes in.) I feel like I’m on an emotional roller coaster. Up one day and down the next.

Ok, it’s not that far apart. I get something that indicates a good result and a few hours later I start panicking over all the ways that it could just be a false positive. So, it’s more like up for a few hours down for a day. I’m trying to temper that attitude a bit. (I do tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of person.) This is a four-pronged process. (1) I allow myself a bit of excitement. (2) Remind myself of the caveats and that I still have confirming experiments to do. (3) Imagine the worst thing: It is a false positive and that I’m going to be here until December. (4) Remind myself that I have a back up plan (not raising alpacas, I mean, experiment-wise). And it’s Not. The. End. Of. The. World.

Whenever I think about coming back I think of this xkcd comic: The Least Interesting Man Woman In the World

But, alas, I’m not going to close up shop here; it’s just that some unbloggable things have been going on around here.

I’ve been dealing with the usual graduate student frustrations. My protein keeps degrading on me before I can run any experiments on it. The project I was counting on to work out is not working out. (Well, the data is what it is. It’s more of a matter of getting something that will help me out on the post-doc/job market, which is one factor in my ability to graduate.)

I’ve also been having the usual problems for me. Another bout of melancholy– not full-blown depression, but definite melancholy. So, working around that has been a trip. I’ve been employing the usual coping skills and those seem to be working. And Advisor hasn’t said anything to me about being unproductive (and he would); so, I think that I’m doing ok with that respect.

However, I don’t want to give anyone the impression that it’s all doom-and-gloom around casa de Lady Scientist. Our holidays were rather lovely. I took an entire 10 days off and didn’t read a single article over that time. I also met my brother’s Lovely New Girlfriend. She is a lot of fun and she makes my brother happy. Also, BIL-3 is getting married this summer to a wonderful girl. Also there are two and a half weddings going on in our lab (the half is from someone who is in our collaborator’s lab). And that’s a lot of fun. I’m finding that it’s much more fun to be outside-looking-in as far as wedding planning is concerned!

The Dixie Dog is doing well. She’s enjoying the backyard a lot. And sleeping on the couch. Ok, right now, she’s more interested in sleeping on the couch. Dr. Man is done with call (for the most part) and I’m liking having him around more. He’s on a pretty good rotation right now. It’s good hours and he’s learning a lot.

Well, I think that’s about it. Let’s see if I can post more than once every two months.

The title pretty much says it all. I’m boring right now. I’m not really complaining about that at the moment. It just is.

I’ve gotten even more boring over the past week or so. I’ve got a committee meeting tomorrow, so I’ve been spending time getting data to show off for that. That entailed a lot of working late and working weekends. This schedule did not leave time for too much else. (Aside: Unfortunately, that hasn’t really panned out. I’ve got data coming, but it won’t happen until after Monday. I’m not too upset about this. It’s just more data that I get to show them at my next meeting.)

Also, Advisor has now set a hard-ish deadline for me to give him a draft of my introduction to my dissertation. That deadline is the 14th of next month. I don’t think he’ll be too unhappy if I miss it, but I do feel like I need at least something to give him.

So, I don’t think this bout of boringness is going to stop any time soon. That means you’ll keep getting posts like this for a while.

(I’m moving this up here, so people don’t have to read through my entire rant. I’m catching up on blog posts. I’ll try to comment soon. I want to preemptively apologize if I miss people, though. I have about 500 unread posts… and I’m fairly distracted.)

I haven’t been posting. You haven’t really missed much, I’m afraid. I’m very whiny. But to catch you up, here’s my schedule:
Wake up
Go to Lab
Work
More Work
Eat
Yet More Work
Go Home
Eat
Work
Sleep

So, that’s about it. I have all these plans and ideas for balance that almost always get derailed. Take tonight, for instance. Tonight I made plans to go with Dr. Man and friends to Trivia Night. Sounds good, right? Beer, trivia, friends. It sounds like a nice break. Except that the column I packed overnight leaked (yep, someone cracked a leur lock and “fixed” it with teflon tape– so no one else would notice). Then the second column I packed got knocked over (yeah, let’s not go into that one). So, that meant that I didn’t get to run the first of three columns until 3:30pm. Yeah, the first of three. So, Dr. Man gets to go to Trivia Night and I get to be here in the lab.

See what you’ve missed by me not posting?

I’m averaging about once a week with this posting business. I keep vowing to myself to get better about it, but, so far, no dice. On the plus side this means that I’ve been better about managing my time in the lab. On the minus side, I’m going to have to resort to catching up RBOC style.

• Omnifocus = love. I got this program a while back, but just started using it a lot and it’s helped keep me, well, focused. Plus it’s kept me from panicking at the sheer volume of stuff I have to do to graduate.
• I’m trying to write my Intro for my dissertation. Mostly because I don’t think I’ll have a lot of time to write at the end and this section shouldn’t change very much in the next year. However, I’m having a heck of a time finding time to sit down and read/write. Especially after my long working days. I’m open to suggestions.
• My plan of not working too many long days in a row is out the window right now. But just temporarily. I need to have more data to present to my committee in November. So, it’s the mad dash to get it.
• But I’m taking off the entire weekend two weekends from now. I’m going to City near HomeTown to run a 13k. Well, I’m using the term run rather loosely. My training hasn’t gone so well. The oppressive heat around here hasn’t been helping.
• I’m trying to be very zen about this graduation/experiment business. I’m trying to live in the present and just think about my next immediate step/experiment. It’s working out well as far as the keeping-me-from-freaking-out side of things, but not so well in the I-need-to-start-thinking-about-looking-for-a-post-doc side of things. Deep breaths also help.

My life is pretty boring right now. Most of it consists of me waking up going into lab, coming home, and sleeping. So, now that I’ve caught you up on the past two weeks, I’ll tell you the latest news (that you already know if you follow me on twitter). My Advisor didn’t get the grant supplement, so now I have a hard graduation deadline of next summer. Otherwise, you know, no money for my salary and project next fall. That’s the biggest news around these parts. I’ve got a committee meeting next month and at that time I’m going to give them an outline of experiments that I think I can get done in the next four or so months (I’m working with Advisor on this and he’s explaining the reason for this– so he’s advocating for me).

This bugs me on all sorts of levels. Mainly I hate the idea of doing the bare minimum. That isn’t what I want for my thesis. I hate the idea of being just adequate. I want to do everything that I proposed in my quals. All the experiments are interesting and cool and scientifically the right things to do. The thing is that I know this project will eventually get funded, but not in time for me (Advisor is planning on submitting either next cycle or the one after). So, I know that someone will do this stuff, but it won’t be me.

So, I’m going to be honest here (mostly because I have a hard time being honest with myself and this will help), I’m having a hard time right now. It’s just normal run-of-the-mill grad school stuff. Progress has slowed to a crawl and I can feel that having an effect on my psyche. I’m getting this whole I’ll-never-graduate feeling with the associated panic. This feeling is absolutely paralyzing. I fear getting the results from experiments because it might be bad (bad in the sense of ‘It didn’t work,’ not in the ‘This disproves my hypothesis’ sort of way). That leads to me having a hard time starting experiments, concentrating, and getting out of bed in the morning. I’m trying to counteract that behavior. I’m going in to lab every morning and starting experiments right away. I take deep breaths. I walk to the library during experiments (it gets me outside and moving). I’ve also changed my daily affirmation from “Data = Papers = Disseration = Graduation” to “One day at a time. The g-word will happen, when it happens.” Because I’ll graduate one day and there’s no sense in worrying about it. If I continue to put in the effort with experiments, they’ll eventually work and this will lead to the Graduation Central Dogma (see previous affirmation). And everything will be all happy… right?