13 September 2012
ROAR, part II
Two and a half weeks to go on the grant, and I have bronchitis. Progressed from sore throat to strained rib muscles in four days. This is not surprising, as I have never had any sort of major academic or professional hurdle without being deathly ill- I was sick (several times with bronchitis, so this is a familiar feeling!) or on crutches for every single exam period in college. ALL EIGHT OF THEM. I missed an Organic chemisry midterm because I was in the hospital with kidney infection. I had the flu for my qualifying exam. I think my thesis defense was the only time I have ever been healthy for a test. I thought that was a sign I was over this particular quirk, but alas, just a fluke.
02 September 2012
ROAR
Here is a great time for your home internet to go out, possibly because your terrible asshole neighbors have been stealing internet from you for a year, and no, Verizon can't come out sooner than next tuesday: A week before you have to send a draft of a grant to your boss before you leave for five poorly timed days in California!
Now I get to not only spend 95% of my waking time writing, but I get to do it in the lab! Yay!
Now I get to not only spend 95% of my waking time writing, but I get to do it in the lab! Yay!
15 July 2012
yiiiiiikes
1. Summer in Providence is perfect. There is the bay and the beach and endless drinks on restaurant patios. It is blissful and I have such great friends to spend it with.
2. The lab is so busy this summer! We have FOUR undergrads and a high schooler. Only one is officially assigned to me, but the other postdocs in the lab are preoccupied getting themselves off to new jobs, and the grad student is a little unaware ("so when she comes and sits by my rig, I am supposed to teach her things? "), so I am generally their point person for ordering/borrowing keys/experiment planning/freaking out when they don't get fields. They are fun to have around and as pretty much everyone who has met me knows, I can be a bit of a mama bear, and love teaching anyone anything. But...my productivity is definitely down.
2a. Things my out-of-this world undergrad can do on her own after a month: stereotaxic injections (into the VTA of pups no less: not an easy target!), tissue collection, ELISAs, genotyping, a few different behavioral tasks. She is almost done with her first figure's worth of data. When I'm still a post-doc in ten years, I'm pretty sure I'll be working for her.
2b.An incomplete list of things our super-eager high schooler thinks are "the coolest ever": PCR, the thermocycler, the electrode puller, me, the vibratome, the paper flowers I hung above the rig, fluorescent cells. When she sits and watches me patch, she gives me feedback on every cell "Oh, that one has a huge opening. Super good job...why did the line fall off the screen?"
3. I made all my travel arrangements to go to the big easy for SFN in October. Super excited to see everyone!
4. I am writing big huge grant which is due to the grants office in 76 days. It would fund me for two more years in my current lab and then three years of my own lab (!) I am estimating I have an approximately 2.8% chance of actually getting it.
4a. I have exactly one paragraph written. And an outline for rest of it, most of which is in my head.
4b. I think I decided to completely change direction of the second half of it? But I need to talk to my boss about it and I won't see her again until a week from tomorrow, by which time there will be 68 days left to write. Or 67. COUNTING IS HARD, even for an Abbacus.
5. Three weeks before the grant is due, my cousin is getting married in LA. So, a trip to california, which may or may not be spent in a hotel room, writing, depending on how far I am.
6. The first two weeks in August, I am teaching a course in my school's summer pre-college program. I am doing this because a) it pays ludicrously well and b) my coworker got a lot of positive feedback over teaching these courses when he was on the market for a faculty job. SO. Two weeks, three hours a day, me and 26 high schoolers, talkin' about brains
5a. 26 is the current registration. It will probably go up. They are going to eat me alive.
7. The weekend before I teach, that is, a little less than two weeks from now, I go to Buffalo to see the lovely Johanna get married, and to visit my friend Allison and her babies!
8. And this week, starting in a few hours, I go to Philadelphia to do some science. Crucial experiments that are the only big thing reviewers asked for when we submitted this paper. Technically challenging recordings from animals other people have been working on for months. With a coworker I sometimes clash with. NO PRESSURE.
8a. I am sort of excited to live in a hotel for a week because it is going to be a billion degrees on the east coast and hotels have spectacular A/C. My apartment, on the other hand, has no A/C.
So, that's what's happening. None of it is bad, per se, it's just a lot of stuff, in a short time. And while it's a short time to get everything I need to do done, it's also sort of a long time to be under so much pressure. I feel like once I step on the train, I'm on some unstoppable track, and there's no getting off. My life goes completely out of my control for a while.
All of this is long way to say that a) I might be a total hermit for a while and b) come October, i'm getting really drunk
2. The lab is so busy this summer! We have FOUR undergrads and a high schooler. Only one is officially assigned to me, but the other postdocs in the lab are preoccupied getting themselves off to new jobs, and the grad student is a little unaware ("so when she comes and sits by my rig, I am supposed to teach her things? "), so I am generally their point person for ordering/borrowing keys/experiment planning/freaking out when they don't get fields. They are fun to have around and as pretty much everyone who has met me knows, I can be a bit of a mama bear, and love teaching anyone anything. But...my productivity is definitely down.
2a. Things my out-of-this world undergrad can do on her own after a month: stereotaxic injections (into the VTA of pups no less: not an easy target!), tissue collection, ELISAs, genotyping, a few different behavioral tasks. She is almost done with her first figure's worth of data. When I'm still a post-doc in ten years, I'm pretty sure I'll be working for her.
2b.An incomplete list of things our super-eager high schooler thinks are "the coolest ever": PCR, the thermocycler, the electrode puller, me, the vibratome, the paper flowers I hung above the rig, fluorescent cells. When she sits and watches me patch, she gives me feedback on every cell "Oh, that one has a huge opening. Super good job...why did the line fall off the screen?"
3. I made all my travel arrangements to go to the big easy for SFN in October. Super excited to see everyone!
4. I am writing big huge grant which is due to the grants office in 76 days. It would fund me for two more years in my current lab and then three years of my own lab (!) I am estimating I have an approximately 2.8% chance of actually getting it.
4a. I have exactly one paragraph written. And an outline for rest of it, most of which is in my head.
4b. I think I decided to completely change direction of the second half of it? But I need to talk to my boss about it and I won't see her again until a week from tomorrow, by which time there will be 68 days left to write. Or 67. COUNTING IS HARD, even for an Abbacus.
5. Three weeks before the grant is due, my cousin is getting married in LA. So, a trip to california, which may or may not be spent in a hotel room, writing, depending on how far I am.
6. The first two weeks in August, I am teaching a course in my school's summer pre-college program. I am doing this because a) it pays ludicrously well and b) my coworker got a lot of positive feedback over teaching these courses when he was on the market for a faculty job. SO. Two weeks, three hours a day, me and 26 high schoolers, talkin' about brains
5a. 26 is the current registration. It will probably go up. They are going to eat me alive.
7. The weekend before I teach, that is, a little less than two weeks from now, I go to Buffalo to see the lovely Johanna get married, and to visit my friend Allison and her babies!
8. And this week, starting in a few hours, I go to Philadelphia to do some science. Crucial experiments that are the only big thing reviewers asked for when we submitted this paper. Technically challenging recordings from animals other people have been working on for months. With a coworker I sometimes clash with. NO PRESSURE.
8a. I am sort of excited to live in a hotel for a week because it is going to be a billion degrees on the east coast and hotels have spectacular A/C. My apartment, on the other hand, has no A/C.
So, that's what's happening. None of it is bad, per se, it's just a lot of stuff, in a short time. And while it's a short time to get everything I need to do done, it's also sort of a long time to be under so much pressure. I feel like once I step on the train, I'm on some unstoppable track, and there's no getting off. My life goes completely out of my control for a while.
All of this is long way to say that a) I might be a total hermit for a while and b) come October, i'm getting really drunk
09 June 2012
Hypotheticals
How many days in a row does one have to skip lunch and eat nachos for dinner before it stops being an indulgence after a busy day and becomes a habit? How many grown-up points would one lose if this did become a habit?
Is it better if the nacho dinner is accompanied by a gin and tonic?
no?
Is it better if the nacho dinner is accompanied by a gin and tonic?
no?
07 May 2012
30 March 2012
27 March 2012
Catch up time
Ok, catch up time. I've done lots of cool stuff lately! Travels, parties, teaching, science! Adventures abound and sleep is on the minimal side of adequate!
Most of what keeps me busy is working. I will say this: Being a postdoc is definitely better than being a grad student. But it is not easier. Don't get me wrong-I'm much happier than I was for most of grad school, and a big part of that is that I now work for a reasonable person and have time to do things like exercise and socialize and visit my family and take daytrips to wineries with my friends on weekends. But day-to-day, the responsibilities are greater and more complex. Administrative tasks grow, there's more supervising and training others, there is more writing and thinking things up on your own, and when opportunities come along to teach a course, or guest lecture or give a talk, of course you take them because it's a competitive business and early on you need all the opportunities and goodwill you can get. All of this while still producing data! Good data and lots of it! It can be exhilarating, but also completely overwhelming.
Science chugs along-a paper I'm second author on goes out whenever our collaborators get back to us with final changes. I'm getting some solid data for my own paper. This one isn't terrible exciting-nuts and bolts and mechanisms of things. Once it is done, I will be starting some flashy new things-a little riskier, but I am super excited about it! I'm finishing up my first of three (3) (!!!!!) grants this year-this one is for little internal pilot funds, the second is for a somewhat bigger one or two year project, the third is a huge career-defining make-or-break NIH grant that looms like a monster in my mind. I love thinking it through-I'm starting to see a niche for me, where I might fit with a lab of my own, what direction those first few years of independence will take It's scary though, to put so much effort into planning for a career that is such a long shot-I'm happy to call myself above average as a scientist, but "above average" is nowhere close to a guarantee in the current climate.
I'm teaching this semester in the continuing ed program. I proposed a class on stress and the brain, it was accepted into the catalog, and the minimum number of students signed up, so the class went forward. I'm having a blast with it-my students are very diverse in their background, but without an exception they are incredibly bright and engaged. I think this is a great way to get teaching experience, and I am (hopefully!) improving a lot as a teacher over the semester. Plus I think running my own course from the ground up-designing the syllabus and picking out the materials myself-has been much more valuable to me that TAing someone else's course would be. I have a pre-college course on schedule this summer. We'll see how that goes-I can see myself having much more trouble with 25 teenagers than with 8 adults.
Of course, I am also keeping very busy outside of work and teaching and science. I've got great friends here. I think I spend more time at the bar in any given week here than I did in all of grad school. That's a good thing :) I'll (maybe?) have some updates with pictures in the next few days on my recent adventures and travels with my sister.
I hope to update the blog more-to keep in touch, keep record of what I do, and to practice writing in a non-sciency form. I'm always promising that, though...
Most of what keeps me busy is working. I will say this: Being a postdoc is definitely better than being a grad student. But it is not easier. Don't get me wrong-I'm much happier than I was for most of grad school, and a big part of that is that I now work for a reasonable person and have time to do things like exercise and socialize and visit my family and take daytrips to wineries with my friends on weekends. But day-to-day, the responsibilities are greater and more complex. Administrative tasks grow, there's more supervising and training others, there is more writing and thinking things up on your own, and when opportunities come along to teach a course, or guest lecture or give a talk, of course you take them because it's a competitive business and early on you need all the opportunities and goodwill you can get. All of this while still producing data! Good data and lots of it! It can be exhilarating, but also completely overwhelming.
Science chugs along-a paper I'm second author on goes out whenever our collaborators get back to us with final changes. I'm getting some solid data for my own paper. This one isn't terrible exciting-nuts and bolts and mechanisms of things. Once it is done, I will be starting some flashy new things-a little riskier, but I am super excited about it! I'm finishing up my first of three (3) (!!!!!) grants this year-this one is for little internal pilot funds, the second is for a somewhat bigger one or two year project, the third is a huge career-defining make-or-break NIH grant that looms like a monster in my mind. I love thinking it through-I'm starting to see a niche for me, where I might fit with a lab of my own, what direction those first few years of independence will take It's scary though, to put so much effort into planning for a career that is such a long shot-I'm happy to call myself above average as a scientist, but "above average" is nowhere close to a guarantee in the current climate.
I'm teaching this semester in the continuing ed program. I proposed a class on stress and the brain, it was accepted into the catalog, and the minimum number of students signed up, so the class went forward. I'm having a blast with it-my students are very diverse in their background, but without an exception they are incredibly bright and engaged. I think this is a great way to get teaching experience, and I am (hopefully!) improving a lot as a teacher over the semester. Plus I think running my own course from the ground up-designing the syllabus and picking out the materials myself-has been much more valuable to me that TAing someone else's course would be. I have a pre-college course on schedule this summer. We'll see how that goes-I can see myself having much more trouble with 25 teenagers than with 8 adults.
Of course, I am also keeping very busy outside of work and teaching and science. I've got great friends here. I think I spend more time at the bar in any given week here than I did in all of grad school. That's a good thing :) I'll (maybe?) have some updates with pictures in the next few days on my recent adventures and travels with my sister.
I hope to update the blog more-to keep in touch, keep record of what I do, and to practice writing in a non-sciency form. I'm always promising that, though...
10 March 2012
In which my sister and I discuss casseroles
12:29 PM
12:29 PM
12:29 PM
12:30 PM
12:30 PM
12:30 PM
12:30 PM
12:31 PM
12:31 PM
12:31 PM
13 February 2012
29: analysis
SO I am 29 today! Life is super crazy, or has been for a few weeks and is now calming down? Maybe? Probably not. Anyways, it's my birthday, things are good, I am happy. Just a little too crazy for a real update at the moment.
At this point in my life, I would say I am mediocre at being an adult, an adequate scientist, a terrible cat keeper, and shit at updating this blog. But y'all, I am really good at cake.
*made them for a friend's graduation party. Not for my own birthday!
At this point in my life, I would say I am mediocre at being an adult, an adequate scientist, a terrible cat keeper, and shit at updating this blog. But y'all, I am really good at cake.
*made them for a friend's graduation party. Not for my own birthday!
07 January 2012
I'll take it
Last year at this time, I was suffering through the first of approximately eighty seven blizzards to hit Rhode Island in January.
This year, it is 61 degrees and sunny as hell. We've only had a brief wet dusting of snow. I like this version of winter much better.
And with that, I'm going outside:)
This year, it is 61 degrees and sunny as hell. We've only had a brief wet dusting of snow. I like this version of winter much better.
And with that, I'm going outside:)
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