So I started trying to write posts, but I'm writing them on the train, and there's no internet, so for now, you'll end up with two days in a row.
I never said this shizzle was interesting!
03.04.10
There was a suggestion that writing 750 (or so) words/day is good for you. Mental health, communication skills, etc. With that as my motivation, I’m trying for 750 words a day. Some of it may go on a blog, but a lot of it won’t.
Lately, mostly all I have to say is negative, and it’s all about how my science is going. The term is “not well”. My project feels like it’s become a war of attrition. I’m too far into it and too close to the end to give up. However, between catching mistakes I made earlier, and the idiosyncrasies (of which there are many) with this project, it feels like I’m back at step one. When I started this project, I didn’t know what the answer to my question was. Now, I think, I do. But I’m having so much trouble getting consistent data that I can’t prove it. Given that I’m two years into this project, that’s not ok. Which I knew, but I was dealing with it. It turns out there’s a difference between knowing something, and then having someone else tell you. Last week my committee told me it wasn’t ok, and since then I’ve been torn between working like a mad lady, desperate for their approval, and total despair. I wonder why I went to grad school, I laugh that I ever thought I could be a successful scientist.
I need feedback. I got feedback on how my project is going, but I didn’t get feedback on me. In truth, how could my committee give me feedback on me as a scientist? They saw the sum of a year’s frustration, a “straightforward” project that has zigzagged across hell. I think grad students need job reviews, where you talk not about your progress in your research, but instead about your progress as a scientist. I should be able to talk to my advisor about this. But maybe not right now, because if it’s negative, I don’t think I can finish grad school. I’m (definitely) over halfway through, and not finishing would make the last four years even more of a waste of time than they would be otherwise.
The one thing that’s been keeping me upbeat the last couple of weeks (other than the wonderful Boy and the wonderfully sweet and evil cats) is the trips being planned. In a month (!!!!), my cousins are coming to visit. They’re staying half a week, and we’re going to explore the City, take in what I’m sure will be some fine weather, and generally force myself to relax. I like playing host to guests who are as wonderful as they are. Not only am I helping them start to plan what they’ll do here, but I’m also using this to think of all the ways I want to spruce up our condo. Most of the time, I don’t really care about having a pretty place to live in (although I do! It’s lovely!), and so the cosmetic improvements tend to take the back burner. But, with guests coming, I’m thinking about pictures I’d like to hang, walls I’d like to paint, plants I’d like to grow, etc. etc.
Trip #2 is both science and family. In May, I’m heading to the major scientific conference for my field. Most of my lab is going, and it will be FUN. I’m working on increasing my alcohol tolerance, because there will be much going out. (When I mentioned that I was proud because my boyfriend and I had, together, finished off a bottle of wine in two days, I was almost laughed out of the room). AND (I’ve become quite the fan of words in capital letters) I’m going to start scouting for labs in the area I live that I might want to do postdoc work in. Which, I don’t know if I’m going to do a postdoc, and I don’t know what the chance is that I’ll find something I like, but the idea of moving on is really exciting. No more project of death, no more commuting. The two banes of my existence wiped off the face of the planet.
Trip #2 will continue with Family Christmas (in May). I’m going straight there from my conference, which means my trip home is being subsidized! (I’m NOT doing anything questionable here. However, the cost of a roundtrip ticket to the conference + roundtrip ticket to home >> cost of combined ticket to conference and home, and I’ll get reimbursed for the cost of a roundtrip ticket to the conference.)
Oh, my 750 words are up! Come back for more about my planned trips! The exciting details of travel reimbursement! Oh, and maybe I’ll even talk about my budget!
Day #2 – 03.05.10
Oh my, two days in a row! How exciting!
I just had a good moment, when the person who knows what they’re doing sat down and looked at some science I’ve been having trouble getting good data on, and said that both a) yes, that is difficult, you don’t suck; and b) that being said, there definitely IS a difference, I haven’t been imaging it.
But, today I was going to not talk about science/grad school. I was going to talk about the happy trips I’m looking forward to.
I realized that I forgot (I can’t believe I forgot!) that trip #2 is not only a jot to warm, sunny California, paid for by someone else, where I will hopefully get to have lots of fun, AND not only a family Christmas, but ALSO a wedding reception for one of my good friends from high school. She’s already married (on Valentine’s Day!), but the reception is in May, which means I get to go. It’s gonna be a great trip.
Trip #3 might end up being Trip #3 and Trip #4, it’s still uncertain. It started as giant family cruise, with me and the Boy, the sister and her husband (haha, at first I typed husbands. My sister is totally into polygamy), and both my and the boys parents. On a cruise! To someplace warm and sunny! Except this turned out to be prohibitively expensive, and so instead it’s maybe a cruise! with me and the Boy and his parents, and then a trip! that doesn’t require airfare with me and the Boy and the sister and the husband and my parents. In a lot of ways, this is the a trip I’m looking forward to mucho mucho, because although I get to visit my parents in Texas, where we get uninterrupted time, pretty much the only time I get to see my sister and her husband is when I go to visit them. And since they live where I grew up, and where most of our extended family is, every time I go to see them it’s a hectic mess, and there’s not a ton of just hang out time.
To expand hang out time, I’m looking into renting a house instead of renting hotel rooms. It’s hard, when you’re all in different hotel rooms, to just hang out. What if someone wants to sleep? There are a lot of us, so going to a museum or something would make an expensive outing, not really good for just hanging out. We can all go to a bar or restaurant, but having been a waitress I feel guilty spending three hours sitting at dinner if I’m not eating a ton of food, and thus pricey. I’m already paying a price to get to see them (plane tickets), I don’t want to have to pay to hang out and chat! So, renting a house seems like a great solution. We can go grocery shopping, do cooking at home OR eat out, while still all having our own room to sleep in. The rates seem totally reasonable, although there are fewer houses available for that number of people. It’s also probably less of an awesome location, but again, this is more about getting to spend time together, less about doing cool stuff. Although, I’m mostly looking at bigger cities, and I certainly don’t expect us to spend the whole time sitting at home. I feel like this “home” idea also means that we can spend more time doing different stuff during the day if we want, because we’ll all have time to relax together at night. So if the Sister wants to go to the art museum (bleck!), while I want to go to the zoo, we can share pictures at night! Have I mentioned that I’ve gotten really excited about this?
So, that’s most of the excitement regarding trips. I’m not sure if the Boy and I are going to go anywhere alone. We normally do, but I think I’d prefer making a list of happy home renovations, and going after those with a vengeance. Maybe a weekend at the ocean, something small.
I have 60 words left (I’m taking this 750 word thing pretty seriously), but what can I say in 60 words? Or perhaps, what can I say that’s not whining in 60 words?
OH! It’s supposed to be OVER 50 DEGREES tomorrow. I am very excited. It’s been a stressful few weeks, and the weather’s been bad, so I’ve gotten outside very little. There are two full days with sunny skies over 50 degrees, and I intend on spending some significant amount of time outside, even if it’s just walking the streets. That’s right folks, I’m a street walker!
I’m over 750!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Home
"Home is where the heart is, so your real home's in your chest"
- Captain Hammer
We moved almost a month ago, and I've been spending my time enjoying the shiny new condo, which is bigger, more colorful, and has PATIOS. But the place we moved from was awesome, and it deserves its own little memorial.
When we graduated, my SO and I had been dating for three years. We're both overly ambitious people, and were faced with making a difficult decision. SO wanted to be in one place for work (really almost had to be), and I wanted to be in many places, but not where he wanted to be. And so we ended up about two hours apart, and tried to do long distance, and it SUCKED. We both have to work somewhat regularly on weekends, and that made seeing each other ever really hard, and led to a lot of hurt feelings when weekend plans were scrapped because of work.
So after almost a year, we decided to try and move in together. This involves a one way commute that's an hour on two different trains for him, and about an hour and a half on two different trains for me. We both work a lot - ten to twelve hours a day. So we were really really nervous about both our jobs and us surviving the commute, and a lot of that nervousness fell into finding a place to live. The city we chose as our intermediate location is not such a nice place. We only have one car, and there's not much parking at the train station, so we needed to find someplace that was within walking distance. We weren't sure how this was going to work, so of course we were looking at renting. But after a month or so of searching on craigslist, and a little bit of reading the classifieds, and we hadn't really found a decent place within close walking distance. The best we had found was probably about a 20 minute walk, and we weren't sure if we would feel safe walking home at night.
And then we found our (now) "old" apartment complex. It was pricey, but it was NICE, and it was close to the train station. There was a doorman and a security guard, which made our parents, who were perhaps more nervous than us about our choice of city, feel so much better. There was a gym IN the apartment complex, which excited me to no ends. And then there was our apartment, the first place that was officially "ours". We'd always technically maintained separate dorms in college, so this was our first time truly living together. And it was in a nice, happy place, that was always a pleasure to come home to. There were wood floors, and ridiculously tall ceilings, and GIANT windows. It was brightly lit even on cloudy days. There was a washer and dryer in the unit, so we could do laundry without having to get dressed. There was enough hot water to take a long, steaming shower, even in the middle of winter. We had a blast furnishing (from Ikea) and decorating. After just a couple of months of commuting, it was obvious to us that after a 12+ hour day, coming home to an apartment that was shiny and happy and not crappy and run down was essential to our well being. For almost the first year after we moved in, we would eschew making weekend plans, because nothing was better than cozying up in our dear apartment. And it was this combination of living together and loving our apartment that led the SO's parents to bring out his cat Wesley, and their other cat Evil Kitty, and that was the second best choice of our life (behind moving in together). This apartment was an enabler for our future.
So, one last toast to our first apartment. We're ready to move on now, but we couldn't have done it without you.
- Captain Hammer
We moved almost a month ago, and I've been spending my time enjoying the shiny new condo, which is bigger, more colorful, and has PATIOS. But the place we moved from was awesome, and it deserves its own little memorial.
When we graduated, my SO and I had been dating for three years. We're both overly ambitious people, and were faced with making a difficult decision. SO wanted to be in one place for work (really almost had to be), and I wanted to be in many places, but not where he wanted to be. And so we ended up about two hours apart, and tried to do long distance, and it SUCKED. We both have to work somewhat regularly on weekends, and that made seeing each other ever really hard, and led to a lot of hurt feelings when weekend plans were scrapped because of work.
So after almost a year, we decided to try and move in together. This involves a one way commute that's an hour on two different trains for him, and about an hour and a half on two different trains for me. We both work a lot - ten to twelve hours a day. So we were really really nervous about both our jobs and us surviving the commute, and a lot of that nervousness fell into finding a place to live. The city we chose as our intermediate location is not such a nice place. We only have one car, and there's not much parking at the train station, so we needed to find someplace that was within walking distance. We weren't sure how this was going to work, so of course we were looking at renting. But after a month or so of searching on craigslist, and a little bit of reading the classifieds, and we hadn't really found a decent place within close walking distance. The best we had found was probably about a 20 minute walk, and we weren't sure if we would feel safe walking home at night.
And then we found our (now) "old" apartment complex. It was pricey, but it was NICE, and it was close to the train station. There was a doorman and a security guard, which made our parents, who were perhaps more nervous than us about our choice of city, feel so much better. There was a gym IN the apartment complex, which excited me to no ends. And then there was our apartment, the first place that was officially "ours". We'd always technically maintained separate dorms in college, so this was our first time truly living together. And it was in a nice, happy place, that was always a pleasure to come home to. There were wood floors, and ridiculously tall ceilings, and GIANT windows. It was brightly lit even on cloudy days. There was a washer and dryer in the unit, so we could do laundry without having to get dressed. There was enough hot water to take a long, steaming shower, even in the middle of winter. We had a blast furnishing (from Ikea) and decorating. After just a couple of months of commuting, it was obvious to us that after a 12+ hour day, coming home to an apartment that was shiny and happy and not crappy and run down was essential to our well being. For almost the first year after we moved in, we would eschew making weekend plans, because nothing was better than cozying up in our dear apartment. And it was this combination of living together and loving our apartment that led the SO's parents to bring out his cat Wesley, and their other cat Evil Kitty, and that was the second best choice of our life (behind moving in together). This apartment was an enabler for our future.
So, one last toast to our first apartment. We're ready to move on now, but we couldn't have done it without you.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Welcome!
I think I need a new blog start. Not that a new blog will actually get me to write regularly, but my old blog has fallen into being a place for whining, and I think that's not so good for me, and not so interesting for you. So, fresh start!
A bit about me. I'm a graduate student in biology at an Evil University. (Evil is certainly overstating it, but it's fun). I'm just starting my fourth year, and I'm struggling a lot with the "what am I going to do with my life" question. I spend my days in lab, a ridiculously long time on the train, and all my free time with my cats (Wesley and Evil Cat) and my boyfriend (from now on, SO).
I like to cook and bake, and to eat what I bake (not so much what I cook, because cake is just better than food). I read so very much, and would love any book recommendations that you may send my way. I like to hike, but am lazy. I love to travel, and to plan travel, so if you want a vacation planned, ask me! I'm trying to like to sew, but its a work in progress.
I have goals for self improvement, but I'm generally slow as making them. I'm trying to be more outgoing. It doesn't come naturally. I'm trying to keep my Chinese up and going. I took four semesters of it in college, but three years later, it's all melting away. (This is particularly bad because my SO's family speaks mainly in Chinese). I'm trying to get in better shape. I'm trying (off and on) to take a bit more care with my appearance. I'm trying to be a better drinker, because right now I have a beer and go to sleep, and that's just not much fun for anyone but me. I'm trying to be more organized and on top of things at work, so that I spend less time in lab but get more done. I'm trying to be less stressed, because it makes me do stupid things. I'm trying to start a blog that I will write in regularly.
I think that's me! How would you describe yourself?
A bit about me. I'm a graduate student in biology at an Evil University. (Evil is certainly overstating it, but it's fun). I'm just starting my fourth year, and I'm struggling a lot with the "what am I going to do with my life" question. I spend my days in lab, a ridiculously long time on the train, and all my free time with my cats (Wesley and Evil Cat) and my boyfriend (from now on, SO).
I like to cook and bake, and to eat what I bake (not so much what I cook, because cake is just better than food). I read so very much, and would love any book recommendations that you may send my way. I like to hike, but am lazy. I love to travel, and to plan travel, so if you want a vacation planned, ask me! I'm trying to like to sew, but its a work in progress.
I have goals for self improvement, but I'm generally slow as making them. I'm trying to be more outgoing. It doesn't come naturally. I'm trying to keep my Chinese up and going. I took four semesters of it in college, but three years later, it's all melting away. (This is particularly bad because my SO's family speaks mainly in Chinese). I'm trying to get in better shape. I'm trying (off and on) to take a bit more care with my appearance. I'm trying to be a better drinker, because right now I have a beer and go to sleep, and that's just not much fun for anyone but me. I'm trying to be more organized and on top of things at work, so that I spend less time in lab but get more done. I'm trying to be less stressed, because it makes me do stupid things. I'm trying to start a blog that I will write in regularly.
I think that's me! How would you describe yourself?
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