Harsh

In the world of research publications, you submit your study, all written up, and people critique it. You don't know who they are, but they see your name. They write up what they think, give some suggestions, and it is up to the editor to determine if the manuscript is rejected, needs revisions, or is accepted. After the decision has been made, you can see what other reviewers submitted for feedback.

I received the second version of a manuscript I had reviewed previously. I gave very thorough feedback the first time and recommended accepting after major revisions. The other two reviewers gave minimal feedback, but were critical of the overall study, and suggested minor revisions the first time around. It appears the authors just did some rewriting according to my feedback.

This particular journal has you highlight your changes so they are apparent. It occurred to me that most of the new text was a little too natural sounding for these non-native speakers from a country in which I have lots of experience. I dug further into this text. Turns out it is almost exactly copied from the other studies they cite. Friends, this is what we call plagiarism. Because I am familiar with their culture, I understand why they do it and how difficult it is to rewrite something in your own words when it is not your native language. However, this is unacceptable.

My response to the manuscript:

I appreciate the thorough response of the authors to feedback on the previous draft of this manuscript. I think the additions have incorporated the literature into their manuscript well.

However, large portions of the text are plagiarized from previously published studies, and I cannot recommend publishing the manuscript as it is currently written. I am happy to review this manuscript again when the authors have rewritten the text.

On the plus side, I no longer felt like I needed to go through and proof-read it, so reviewing the paper was a lot faster than it could have been. One more thing crossed off my list for the weekend...

Fingers crossed

I have all these *things* swimming around in my head. While I should be finishing up revisions of a research manuscript, I want to just write these down so I can let them go (for now). After the manuscript, it is on to job applications this weekend. That makes me think about life, and what I want out of it. If the job search goes well, I will be moving next summer. That is crazy and exciting.

A while back I was reflecting on why the holidays were difficult for me last year.  Those things are all still true. I spend a lot more time thinking about them than I should. The funny thing is, that every time one of my good friends has a baby, gets married, or gets engaged, I am not sad at all. I am excited. And happy. And wish I lived closer to them. In fact, after my trip back to Boston this summer, my friend/the grad student in the lab told me he thought I had gotten funnier. I think I just happened to be happier than I usually am after seeing so many people who I miss! Oddly, when people I am not close with, or with whom I was once closer, I get sad when any of these things happen. Give me a while, and I can let it go.

What I am having more difficult containing is hope. This sounds silly. Who tries to contain hope? When I think about getting my next job though, I hope that life will finally click. There are quite a few jobs that fit my area of research quite well. They range from small liberal arts colleges to larger universities. A couple of them are larger schools than I *think* I want, but you never know until you get a chance to visit them. Many (maybe I am up to 10 on the list) are from D.C. to Boston. This is prime friend and family land. 10 may not sound like many, but when I was watching the job listings last year, the ones to which I applied were not good research/interest fits. I think this is promising. My CV is better than last round, particularly if I get this paper submitted the end of the month. I have hope that one of these will work out.

I have basically decided that when I get a job, I will get a car. Mine is dying a slow death, but I have a hard time thinking about taking on a car loan right now. The engine seems great, it is all the other extras, like the air conditioning, that make me worried something else is going on. Much to my sister's chagrin, at the moment that ugly Prius is high on the list. I have hope that I can get a great hybrid car. If I get a job at some of these schools, I may need an AWD vehicle though.

I am reaching with the submission of this paper to a high impact journal. Nothing related to this aspect of my research topic has been published, so the story our data make is that much more exciting. The grad student's project that we have always planned to include is starting to work, and that will make this journal less of a reach. He works hard and has been working A LOT to get it done. I have hope that he can get it done, and this journal will like the story.

Maybe this weekend I will give y'all an update on what I have actually been *doing* if you are interested. Off to uncross my fingers and get those manuscript revisions done.

Check! The Manuscript Version

I am pretty good at procrastinating. Many of those things needed to be done; some did not. BUT, I finally drafted, edited, updated, referenced, pdf'ed, and emailed a draft of my paper to my boss and another co-author. My boss is out of town, so I do not know when she will get to reading it.

I finished a draft of the paper on Tuesday and then got a great break with my sister, niece, and nephew visiting. It was good to not think about the paper and go back and revise some before emailing it out.

For now, it is on to another training walk, maybe some baking because it is in the 70s (F, obviously), and job applications.  That's right - more writing and applying. A year from now, I might be living in a city/town near you.

Just do it.

I MUST FINISH MY RESEARCH PAPER.

Here's the deal. I need to apply to jobs, and the academic hiring process starts in August for the following school year (2013). I have found really relevant jobs in VT, PA, and WI so far, and it is early in the job posting season. One of my friends in academia thinks there may be one at school near Boston because she has some insider info too.

Since last year I: Got a fellowship, mentored two undergrads, took a short-course on teaching, and gave a talk at a meeting, among other smaller stuff. This is all good for my CV

The icing on the cake will be a paper. I had hoped that I would have a draft done in May before my undergrads started for the summer, but that did not happen. Putting together the data in the figures/pictures is almost done. Most of it is at least outlined. I am in a good position to finish it SOON.

Today my boss and I talked to the grad student with whom I overlapped briefly. I had emailed her twice about her data that we wanted to include in my paper - it makes it stronger, and more would have to be done on her project to publish it and she works on something different now. When she emailed back about her data, she emailed my boss and did not copy me. I worried that it would be an awkward conversation.

But, it was not! She had looked at the data, thought about my figures, and said it was a very thorough analysis and a good story. She is a very intelligent and hard-working woman. That was a relief.

And now I must finish my paper. And I hate starting sentences with 'and'.

Sometimes I get into the groove at home and get work done. Tomorrow is the one-monthiversary of my car's AC dying, and it is supposed to be in the 90s, so I think hitting the town's coffee shop will be the best bet to GIT 'ER DONE, as they say.

Check!

Laundry - Check!
Training walk - Check!
Weeding - Check!
Brew iced tea - Check!
Shower - Check!
Clean bathroom - Check!
Eat lunch - Check!
Rearrange furniture a bit - Check!
Have the Olympics on TV - Check!
Go to the post office - Check!


Now wasn't I supposed to spend the day working on writing a paper for work?


Oops!

Step it up

My research has gone well enough over the past year that I should be able to put together a decent manuscript of my work. This is great for many reasons: disseminating your research is important to your funding source, your career, your ability to get funding/jobs. Plus, it is exciting to have enough data to put together a story about what you think it all means.

I still have some stuff to do in lab, but my boss would like to start revisiting the beginnings of a manuscript I started last summer/fall. I had two analyses I intended to finish this week on Wednesday and Thursday that I did not do.

I had a dream last night that I was sitting in a seminar, and my boss and her colleague (a nice man who gave me great feedback on my grant application that was funded) were sitting behind me. I heard the colleague say to my boss that I had really good ideas and my research was headed in a good direction (YAY! even if it my brain making up the dream conversation). Then his voice hushed a bit as he said something to the effect of, "But she hit this peak of productivity and isn't getting as much done now," as he made a dramatic up and down motion with his hand. The only thing missing was some sound effects.

I guess my subconscience thinks I need to start working harder, or at least having more evidence of my productivity. Admittedly, my conscience agrees.

Writing?

So I have a million things to write (for work) and got little done tonight except going through some job postings I had flagged.

-- The University where I work there are several labs who work on topics similar to the lab in which I work. One in particular is actually a "rival". This is sad because we are at the same school and collaboration should make all of our research progress, right? Due to previous transgressions within the rival lab, the PIs no longer speak. The rival lab just came out with another paper. I need to get my butt in gear on my paper! I have a good start, but it is not nearly ready to submit to a science journal yet! Today I wrote two sentences and changed another paragraph*. This can hardly be called progress.

-- My PI can support my salary until next summer. In about four weeks, I will hear back about a grant that would cover my salary for two years. This is AFTER many application deadlines for tenure-track faculty positions that I have seen online. I have been looking at job postings, but am not feeling the pressure to find THE job yet. However, a high school friend called tonight and asked if I had found anything closer to them...so I checked at specific schools instead of looking at a central site...and found a job at the University where I had really wanted to apply for grad school but then missed the deadline. (I have been frustrated in the past few years when I get spacey and mess something up, but clearly this is nothing new.) AND the deadline isn't until later in October. WOOHOO! Just because of the location and size of the school, I think it would be a great job, and I have more time to get my materials together!!

One might wonder how my teaching and research statements are going for said job applications. (Luckily I keep my CV up-to-date, so that is just a matter of tweaking for a job application.) In a moment of inspiration last night, while reading "How to write your teaching statement", I wrote a chunk of that but then did not finish it. The research statement explaining my immediate and long-term ideas for a research program is still a blank page. AHHHHH!!! I do think about these things when I am not actually writing them, so I like to think that when I do write them I get a lot done at once. Wish me luck.

*I did not ONLY do that today. I also did some experiments and figured out what an undergrad left me with, and fixed an old piece of equipment and figured out some new stuff to order and...

And I wait

I resubmitted an application for a training grant this past spring. The original reviews were generally quite positive about my research plan, and the negative comments were about either research that I have now completed or my mediocre undergraduate grades from ten years ago.

My supervisor is optimistic about the resubmission because of the new data I have and the changes in the proposed research.

I am cautiously optimistic.

The grant applications were reviewed last week, so of course I am obsessively checking the status to get the score and feedback to have an idea about whether they felt the application was improved, and hopefully fundable. Every time I log in, my stomach does a little somersault.

It would be nice to know this before I head out for a long weekend Thursday morning so I can stop worrying.

Who dat?

These song lyrics illustrate nicely one of my writing pet peeves. Is it obvious to you?

Song #1

Consider me a memory.
Consider me the past.
Consider me a smile in an old photograph, someone who used to make you laugh.

Song #2

And a part of you might hate me
But son, please don’t mistake me
For a man that didn’t care at all

Getting defensive

I submitted a grant proposal back in August that would provide my salary if funded. The review of applications and funding decisions are made over the course of months. I already knew my scores from the committee review and that they generally meant "solid proposal with several minor concerns" and are borderline to what gets funded in general. Apparently after the committee meeting though, the individual agency has some subjective/objective ability to decide to whom they give their money, and my PI suggested I contact the program officer (PO) after I got comments back, particularly because I have additional preliminary data.

Only the comments I received, for the most part, are nothing I can address without sounding defensive (I think). There were a few main concerns that came through the critiques.

1. Reviewers wondered whether I was the person who generated the preliminary data in my grant. I suppose I could have stated in there that I generated the data (although a grad student did collect the samples I used for some of the experiments). I think I used "we", and maybe that was a red flag? Writing conventions in the sciences are in flux though, and many people still use "we" even if they really mean "I". Although I recognize that in some labs data might be handed over to increase funding and not all post-docs are competent and sometimes research hits serious snags that limit the amount of data, I had been in the lab 8 months. I would hope I had generated some data. So yes, the data are mine. And yes I had other data I did not squeeze in. I could easily let the PO know this by telling him I have generated additional promising preliminary data on top of the data I had generated for the proposal.

This also made me think about how I should present data when I resubmit my proposal. After all, some of the data will then be data generated by the students who I have been supervising. That requires quite a bit of time in and of itself. I developed working protocols and gathered reagents for techniques that had not been done in over 10 years in the lab (and which I had never done myself). I consult with them on a daily basis and try things when they do not work for the students. While I also do my "own" research, the project I am specifically working on is, in fact, a collaboration that is currently coordinated by yours truly.

2. Of big concern were my mediocre grades in college, particularly in science courses, that were not consistent with my excellent letters of reference. The details of my defense would be irrelevant to the PO, but here they are: I went to an Ivy League school and took 3 to 4 science classes (with a couple of labs) each semester for my first two years. Neither my faculty nor my peer advisor suggested I take it easy to adjust to college, something that likely would have resulted in better science grades. But heck, I even got a B in a physiology class my first year when a bunch of other bio majors were taking introductory biology?! Whatever. I was a B student. At an Ivy League school. FYI to anyone out there giving advice to high school college applicants: Apparently a B average at a more prestigious school is not likely to be the same as an A average at a less prestigious school.

Oh. And did I mention that I graduated almost 10 years ago so all but a couple of those classes were taken 10 to 14 years ago? My references were scientists who have known me since college - mentored, trained, and taught me, and value the research I have done. I think they would know how well I am able to apply knowledge to research. Since receiving mediocre grades in college, I have taught English abroad, was a research tech getting lots of research experience and a publication, was a grad student with all As (or higher!) and finished in 5 1/2 school years while TAing the entire time and being involved in two other activities on campus and getting 3 publications and I just completely switched research areas and would really like a training grant. Thanks.

3. The third concern was just about the lack of specificity in my PI's training plan for me. I am not so concerned about that one.

Of course, these reviews have discouraged me because no one had any problems with my proposed research (aside from questions about who generated the preliminary data) but other details that could be easily explained. While I like writing papers and grants, reading publications and coming up with questions and experiments, and working at the bench, I question whether I want to do all of that all at once as a post-doc and junior faculty. It will be many years before I would likely have a group to do the brunt of the benchwork. I also do not want to write grants incessantly and not get funding. Because funding is so tight, even strong research proposals do not get funded.

Since I read through the feedback earlier in the day, I am once again wondering how I want to use my PhD, how much research I really want to do, how much teaching I really want to do, if running a lab is really what I want to do, if just teaching or just research would be a smarter route to take. So many questions to answer before I can figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

Désolée

I just discovered that my RSS feeds I have set up in Outlook have not been updating. The weird thing is, if I visit a blog and then go back to Outlook, then it updates. I use Firefox. Why would there be some weird cross-talk between it and Outlook? Anyhoo. I'll catch up on all y'alls blogs eventually.

In the meantime I still have some grant writing to do. I read about 12 scientific publications today. My brain is dead, but I want to do through the edits my PI gave me before bed so I can just write tomorrow. I thought I would finish all my revisions today, but alas.

Seriously though, I do not know how people can just work on a grant 16 hours a day. What about laundry? Meals? Dishes? Maybe if I had a dishwasher it would be easier, but I read for about 9 hours today. That's tiring.

Hope you enjoyed this meaningless post. It was faster than baking, which I felt like doing but know that it takes too much time and there is this grant hanging over my head....

Gettin' stuff done (sorta)

I am submitting a training grant in three and a half weeks and originally intended to have a draft done by now. My PI is not too worried about it, as I bring it up when we meet and she says, "Oh, there's plenty of time." I take this to mean the things that I have written so far lead her to not worry about major revisions; she is also really good about turning things around. Today I managed to get two more parts (1-2 pages each) done. Because it is a training grant, they have your write little bits about all sorts of stuff like your research experience, any instruction in responsible conduct of research, your career goals, a training plan, etc. Although the research plan is about half the length of a real PI grant, so I guess that makes up for it.

Anyhoo. While two more parts drafted is great, I still have not started to tackle the 6-page research plan, and I did only start working on this new-to-me research topic 7 months ago. I should have read a lot more in the past few weeks to get ready for writing. Instead I procrastinate.

This morning I made rhubarb yogurt muffins (delicious...I don't really have a recipe...I combined a couple plus just added rhubarb instead of berries), went for a run (you know I am seriously procrastinating if I run), did a load of laundry, made out the cars for weddings this month, bought stuff for my car, took a time point at lab, listened to the World Cup game while I "wrote", went shopping (Ann Taylor Loft is having a great sale, FYI), and came home and made a squash and chicken enchilada casserole (another recipe combination that turned out well). When I stopped at the grocery store, I even checked to see if there were any red box movies I wanted to rent, but alas. And the TV stinks tonight. So you get a blog post. :-)

Now it is 10:00 and I want to go to bed so I can get up early to start my day: a run, farmer's market, cherry farm if there aren't any at the market, Sunday paper, another load of laundry, take a time point at lab, listen to the World Cup game, convince myself I have enough left-overs in the fridge and do not need to cook, and WRITE. I think I should work on one more part so I do not have bad dreams about it and get a good night's sleep.

If I owe you an email and/or a phone call, am supposed to get plane tickets/a wet suit/make plans with you/set up skype and let you know the details of any of that, or something else, I have it on my list and just might get to it before I finish my draft of my grant bits.

Also, if you have a blog that I read. Do post. It will give me something to do. :-)

Brainstorming

I am the student speaker at my grad school's hooding ceremony. I was very honored when the Dean asked me! I am more nervous about this than I was about my PhD defense though?! I mean you work on something for 4 to a million years to get your PhD, so it makes sense that putting together a defense presentation should not be too overwhelming. Especially when you have spent a few months writing, you are so into your research that it seemed natural for me to put it all together. (That's not to say it was not time consuming to put together my PhD defense!) Also, in the sciences, I am used to putting together a powerpoint with pretty pictures with which to distract the audience...

Talking to all the PhD recipients, their family and friends, and the faculty, administration, and guests of the grad school though? That is intimidating. My goal for this weekend was to brainstorm and start a draft. So far? Nothing. In my defense I am all stuffed up and CF and I wandered around my town for a couple hours and went for a hike yesterday, but still. This is important?!

I have a phone appointment with a tutor of sorts at my grad institution on Tuesday. I really want to get her something by tomorrow so she can see how desperately I need help. :-)

I don't know if I should search for some cheesy quote to use? Should I make it sciencey at all? How can I say something generally applicable without being boring??? I am thinking about starting off pointing out how much more nerve wracking it is to come up with something meaningful and/or inspirational for such a diverse, intelligent, and themselves inspiring group of fellow newly minted PhDs. At least maybe then they'll all give me a break.

ACK!

Sources

When teaching intro science labs, TAs were expected to really focus on scientific writing. This is probably good because the labs we led had not changed in a bazillion years and were generally pretty dry. Writing seemed like a good thing to try to teach the young'uns, even though they all (incorrectly) think they are awesome at it. Plagiarism is HUGE deal in academia, from the teaching and research perspectives. Just as important as citing your sources and not copying what they say word-for-word though is choosing reliable and accurate sources. Google has academic resources (though not as complete as other indexes I have found) and there are other public, private, for profit, not for profit, opinions, blogs, and whatever else out there you could happen upon. You really need to learn how to evaluate a source and determine if it is accurate for your purpose, otherwise it is easy to perpetuate a non-truth.

For my graduate work, one of the publications I regularly cited had a concentration we used to base our initial experiments on. The authors stated this concentration and cited their source. About a year and a half (6 months of which I was rotating in another lab on a different project, so really after about a year of working on my dissertation research), I was finally able to track down their source*. And they had cited it wrong. By a factor of 1000. I think I know how this happened because they had changed the units the original source used and probably got it mixed up. It ended up making life difficult. (Who cares because I am finished with that research project now, right?)

As a result of how difficult it is to navigate a citation train*, I was really conscientious about including details and original sources of that information in my final publication, for example the actual name for a particular body part or protein size, and the reviewers said it was too "jargony". How can the actual name of something be jargony? But I digress.

I think determining the validity and truth of your sources is important for everyone though, not just "academics". This hits me the most when I listen to politicians and read the news. I do not know if politics have become more political, if issues the government is now tackling are more controversial, if Americans have forgotten how to compromise to improve the overall state of our nation (and similarly in other countries), or if as I have gotten a bit older and with the training I have had as a scientist, I just am more aware of the contradictions, irrationality, and lack of source citing in statements that are made.

I had a couple of examples in real life that I was going to post, but I will just say, if you forward an email you received or believe everything you see on TV, do yourself a favor and pause next time to at least check it out on google and decide for yourself if the source is reliable or if there is something else to consider. If you do not have facts that might back up something you believe strongly in, that is fine, but do not make stuff up!

* By “citation train” I mean when you look something up and they cite the point, then you look that up and they have cited it too. Then you look that up and they have cited it too…until maybe, eventually, you will find the original source that “proved” something. A patent lawyer friend of mine once asked that I not do that - it is time consuming to sort this stuff out!

Writing

A lot of people say that people who are trained scientists, or I suppose more importantly how to write scientifically, do well in law. Science writing is a bit habitual for me know, although I certainly still need to work on aspects such as organization of the content. However, I think this science writing versus legal writing stems from the idea that both are supposed to be clear and concise. That is not to say that someone writing a thesis or dissertation in the humanities cannot write clearly, it is just that they use a lot more words than a scientist would. In fact, when I was a writing tutor in grad school, I worked with an English grad student and half of our sessions resulted in her shortening whatever she had written.

My PhD advisor was not known for being concise. I frequently cut a lot out of what she wrote. Still, after trying to make my last paper shorter, in the end I cut another FIVE pages out of the original twenty-ish before it was accepted. That is a lot of ideas or connections I tried to make in the original manuscript just gone! But the feedback I got from reviewers will be really helpful as I continue on in this crazy career and try to approach my writing objectively to avoid redundancy. (And of course getting those ideas out on paper helps you think about your work and generates other avenues to explore.)

In the legal field, from what I can tell, you write a lot of briefs. I think the name is self-explanatory. I also feel like politics and the law are related. The government writes the laws; many politicians are trained in the legal field; the judicial branch of the government is crucial to maintain our domestic safety and rights. By extrapolation, one might assume that government writing is therefore legal writing is therefore clear and concise. [insert laugh track]

So what is big in politics right now? Healthcare. I am sick of hearing politicians just throwing out random crap about what is or is not in the bill. Rather than prefacing my opinion with "I have not looked this up, but I think that...", I figured I would go back to the documents that were just released and are supposed to be voted on tomorrow. (Do reps get any extra pay for voting on a Sunday?) I thought I could figure out answers to questions about whether abortion would be funded by federal dollars, whether this would suck tax dollars to pay for health care for the poor, and whether the federal government is trying to take over the health care system in this country.

I started with the letter from the Congressional Budget Office because, well, it is 1/5 the length of the other document. My conclusion:

Government policy, although you may think it is related to the legal field and in theory legal and science writing are similar, is not comprehensible to the general public.

It started off great - three bulletted points about the figures and financial analysis to come. As far as I can tell, the next couple of pages repeat this in more detail. Pages 6 through 25 have the data. I will have to look at that later.

The other file is essentially edits of the health care bill the Senate passed, I believe. Does the government not have 'track changes'? Is producing a 153-page document with detailed modifications of a bill really the most efficient way to proceed with policy? Also, when I say it is 153 pages, it is important to note that this is a large font double spaced with margins a couple inches wide. These guys and gals pull out all the tricks you ever tried to meed a page requirement. Only they do not have page requirements and when you hear there are 153 pages of changes, you think OH MY GOD why didn't they just do it right the first time. I suspect the 153 pages is more like 50 of what you would expect.

Anyway. CNN has this breakdown of what the bill means to your average person and highlights of the bill. That seems like a good place to start for people. Congressmen may "work for us" and "vote according to their constituents' opinions", but when there are big controversial issues like this, they just seem to throw the rhetoric around that will make them look good, making the two main parties seem like they have different goals that we are supposed to think converge on doing what is best for the country. They also seem to do and say what will get them re-elected and get the party opposite them not reelected. That is what bothers me the most. That politics are political and a lot of congressmen act as though they are not working towards a common good. Listening to it makes me change the radio station.

Back to the document...If you know what this means, do let me know:

in clause (i), by striking ‘‘with respect
11 to any taxpayer’’ and all that follows up to the
12 end period and inserting ‘‘for any taxable year
13 shall be the percentage such that the applicable
14 percentage for any taxpayer whose household
15 income is within an income tier specified in the
16 following table shall increase, on a sliding scale
17 in a linear manner, from the initial premium
18 percentage to the final premium percentage
19 specified in such table for such income tier:

In the future, congress should release a document with all changes accepted for the general public to be able to read through. When this is all over, I also want to know if there will be any Medicare or Social Security when I am old. We are all putting money into those public programs, after all....

A new leaf

It has been a while since I posted (a day shy of a month to be exact), and I am doing quite well! During that time I have walked around thinking about all the things I could and should post, and what I will post about now that I am officially no longer a miserable graduate student.

That's right, it's Dr. Jenski to you now! I moved closer to CF, then flew back for a long weekend for my defense, followed by printing my dissertation and dropping it off for binding. My PhD advisor now requires a receipt that she is getting two bound copies before she will submit the paperwork to the graduate school stating I have fulfilled my degree requirements. BUT, that was all finished as of last Friday! In the meantime, I'm sitting at my desk in my post-doc lab drafting this mediocre post (to be posted from home, I'm trying to set some boundaries), looking out the window (that's right, a big window next to my desk), with a temporary appointment (read: I'm on payroll), before the rest of my training grant paperwork goes through for my post-doc fellowship.

A while back my friend with whom I frequently walked and I talked about writing a book. She was in her first year as a post-doc; I was getting the ball rolling to finish. We had a "business dinner" and outlined ideas about which to write and a few ways to organize the book. It was looking to be a whole bunch of unsolicited advice for grad students. Problem is, then she got another appointment and started running her own lab and my ball started rolling faster and we never actually started writing. I got to stay with her a couple nights when I was back for my defense, and the book came up in conversation. She thinks she's too far removed from grad school now to do it. I think I totally feel like she did at the time when we started talking about it though. I have been pretty reflective about graduate school since I got in the car to drive 12 hours with my cat to move. The feelings of misery disappearred pretty quickly (thankfully), but it has made me think about what to use from my graduate experience and how to start developing my work habits and mentoring style. Be forwarned, in upcoming posts, you may hear about that. Now that I am basically settled in here physically, I also need to get my life going. I haven't exercised in a month, and I need to find activities outside of lab to meet people and socialize. Not that CF and his friends aren't great, but I'm a little too independent to rely on that. I've thought about trying out some churches and maybe a sewing class, but wonder if these are recipes for meeting older motherly types? We'll see - stay tuned.

The good, the bad, and in the meantime

If ever my life is or will be like a roller coaster, I think right now would put those past and future rides to shame. I mean seriously. I think in lieu of a wordy, and thus surely annoying, explanation, I will go with (partial) lists.

The Good

• I love CF, my friends, and of course my family. They constantly check in with me and offer an ear or support or help (mostly because they know I am unlikely to ask) :-)
• Visited CF over Labor Day in the midwest full of several nights at the county fair and his friend's wedding
• I have been cooking and baking more
• I had a nice visit with my grandfather, in spite of recent events.
• So many friends getting married, buying houses, and making babies - it is very exciting!!!
  
• Tutoring Fulbright applicants on their essays - they are so excited about their proposals and motivated!
• The undergrad who worked with me over the summer is back for work study: she's sweet, nice, kind, and any other word you would use to describe a good person
• I have a social week! Old roommates over for dinner, dinner with other friends tomorrow, drinks with fellow tutors Wednesday, dinner with two OTHER friends Thursday, off for a weekend with the family on Friday!
• I am almost done with revisions on my dissertation
• My post-doc advisor has funding she could have used to pay me, BUT I got on a University training grant, so I'll be a funded post-doc (does not change the money or responsibilities, but is a good thing)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• I looked into cost-of-living calculators and where I live now housing is 243% MORE expensive than where I will be living, plus I will be making a tad more money...I will feel like a millionaire (only make less money than an actual millionaire)
  

The Bad

• I will sum up one of the bads with one word: advisor. I do not even care to try to explain. I just wish she was more forthcoming and less of a beeeee-atch
• Reviews on one paper came back today. I actually do not need to do any more experiments I think (GOOD!), but extensive rewriting...and the word limit is 2500 so I might as well just rewrite from scratch
• Still waiting on reviews on THE paper that "has to be accepted for publication in order to defend"...My outside member thought the manuscript had interesting data but was premature. If she had liked it, my committee would have "been more comfortable scheduling a defense date" soon
• I still don't have a defense date
• I feel stuck. I cannot tell my landlord when I will move out. I cannot figure out where I will live. I cannot schedule a moving truck or PODS. I cannot decide if I will go on a family vacation at the end of October.
• I have to get my cat's teeth cleaned. I blame her bad oral hygiene on her previous owners
• I have a 60,000 mile check and brakes to do on my car
• I made my grandfather cry by telling him not to say mean things about my Mom and to call her instead of making stuff up about what he thinks she is doing with his money. (I made a joke and amde him laugh before I left)
  

In the Meantime

• I am trying to reclaim my life
• A long overdue and quite nice haircut
• An 80-degree day tomorrow that I believe calls for one last pedicure
• Dinner parties at home with different groups of friends
• Cleaning my apartment from top to bottom (I rather enjoy this)
• Cleaning out my office and filling the recycle bin several times with stuff I do not need to keep
• Cleaning out at home to make moving easier when I get to actually move (i.e.purging)

Lemons?

When summer hands you a cool day, bake.
This is not so much a life hands you lemons you make lemonade thing, but I did not know what the corollary would be.

And these are delicious. I am getting into moving mode - i.e. use up stuff and go through stuff and reduce the amount of stuff you have or will need to find a way to get rid of before you move. These bars were a regular old blondie recipe, but I modified them a bit. I found another cookie recipe in one of my cookbooks that had candied ginger and ground nutmeg in it. So I added about 1/4 cup of dried ginger and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg. I highly recommend it.

For the record, I have also been reading papers and writing bits and pieces of my dissertation intro all day too.