Just a girl

Baby Shower

2010-02-21T14:15:00.002-06:00

Science Girl,
Sorry for being late-traffic you know.

I've been to so many baby showers and I just want to let all the other attendee's know that I win at most games. I've never left a baby shower empty handed :)

I'd spend most of this shower in aw about how you kept running during your pregnancy and hopeful that I could do the same. I'd tell you how tough you are and how great you'll do during labor. We'd laugh about the similarities of grad school and rearing children (even though neither of us has raised a child).

I just want to leave you with one piece of advice. Never forget to be grateful. Life will be difficult but always go back to the joy of your little one-if when they are the one being difficult.

I wish you patience for your long journey ahead into parenthood. Hopeful that you never forget that you can be a mother, a wife, a scientist and many other things all at the same time!

-jennie

Personal opinion

2010-01-22T14:21:00.003-06:00

I was just musing over a comment my boss made and about how much it bothers me that he does this. I wanted to muse out loud and remembered I have this blog that I technically retired from. Still, I'd like to know the thoughts of my internet friends about this-if you still tune in.

Boss commonly likes to tell me his personal opinion of others. I hate that he tries to shape my opinion of colleagues before I've gotten to know them. Some of these comments are positive, but today, like most days it was negative.

I showed him an e-mail I received from someone (SO) I've just barely started working with at another firm, for a project in which they are the prime and we are the sub. It was my understanding that we were going to study Y and figure out what was significant. This e-mail made it sound like they were going to do a study on A through Z (including Y), and tell us what was significant about Y. This is actually a common procedure in the type of document we are writing but wasn't my understanding on what our role was in the project.

Boss says, after talking about the e-mail a bit, "I've never like working with SO, she does bad work and always tries to get others to do her work for her."

I can see how Boss is trying to warn me of some issue that could arise with SO, yet, it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth that he talks about other people in this way. And that he acts like he is an authority on other peoples personalities. I haven't gotten this impression for SO at all, but we have only had three or four encounters.

So what do you think. Is it ok for him to talk this way about others? I feel like the message is just but the delivery is pompous and rude.

MIA

2009-12-18T12:25:00.002-06:00

I've been meaning to post a good bye letter but my lack of motivation to post anything has also including a farewell post.

In short, I want to say my time blogging was very useful and filled a gap in my life that I needed. Thank you so much for being a part of that. Now it seems I don't need it so much. I have to blame facebook, but there are other reasons as well.

I'm still keeping tabs on my favorite bloggers and you might see me comment from time to time.

For now I'm going to take a blogging hiatus. If the urge comes up again I will definitely post, but for now if you are interesting in keeping tabs on me send an e-mail or become my facebook friend.

Best wishes for 2010.

Inspiration or Desperation

2009-09-03T22:30:00.003-05:00

I'm going to tackle the theme, Inspiration or Desperation, for my first submission to Scientiae, hosted this month by Academic.

I thought I'd discuss a few examples in my life that both inspire and cause me to feel desperate:

1) Running.
I started training for a half marathon in July because I needed some inspiration to keep exercising. This was a truly inspiring experience. I clocked my longest training runs ever and the event itself was very inspiring. So many courageous women runners (it was an all women's race which I realized I haven't blogged about yet). So many encouraging faces on the trails. The first and second place finishers were a 25 and 55 aged woman, with the 55 year old only 2 minuets behind the 25 year old. That is awesome.
Two weeks before the race I injured my knee and was very distraught and feeling desperate to keep training but knowing that rest was the best training at that time.
However, this story turned out to be overall inspiring because race day went great-I could have walked a little less but I met all my goals and am inspired to compete in more races and hopefully will stay inspired to keep exercising even though this goal has been met.

2) Rugby.
I have been able to practice with the best team in the nation and these women inspire me beyond belief. However, I'm only able to practice with them sporadically since they are based in the city I commute to once a week and not the city I live in and due to work and other comitments I will only be able to attend 2 or so games this season. So while I'm so inspired to be surround by amazing women rugby athlets it is a bitter sweet feeling to know that I can't dedicate myself to the team, and I get a desperate feeling to know my rugby career is slowly coming to an end.

3) Work.
Work, unfortunately is a story of desperation. I am still struggling to find inspiration in my new job, an inspiration I lost during my last year of graduate school. It fills like my days are full of desperation. I try to get motivated to work, but then I goof off on-line, then a deadline looms and I freak out and desperately meet the deadline. I start to read a document and my mind drifts to how much I don't know about the subject I'm reading about and how it's fruitless to try and learn these new things because I won't remember them anyway. I keep thinking of things to inspire myself to want to work, because the truth is, if I don't want to I'm just not going to.

3) Life.
Goals. I need some goals. I need to be inspired. My husband and I had a desperate discussion recently about how our life is going nowhere. I'm crapping out on my job and he is having trouble finding a permanent job. In March of 2008 we got inspired living in Post-Doc town and decided to leave there and head back home. We knew life wouldn't be easy but figured we'd get a job eventually and all would work out. It is in a sense, we aren't homeless or going hungry, so life is working out, but we don't see a chance to move up. My husband is distraught that he has a Ph.D. and did post doc work but is in a temp job that someone with a high school diploma could do-and he's not getting any full time job offers. I'm part-time and not even working as much as I should be and so where in this equation of part time workers does a house and a family come into play? He's aware of my lack of inspiration at work and so he tries to inspire me by reminding me of these goals-but unfortunately I haven't been inspired yet.

-------------
I feel the main question I have, to myself, to my readers, is "Where does inspiration come from."
I mostly find myself in desperation. As Academic said, Teamwork can equal working together in success, or seen from the other perspective, Teamwork means sharing failures. How to you change your mindset from success to failure, from desperation to inspiration?
Right now I see my professional life as a series of failures-that my husband unfortunately has to share with me. I'm happy with my personal life but as I stated my personal life can only move forward so far if my professional life isn't up to par.

I want to be inspired but should probably realize that inspiration doesn't come from some mystic box and it's not something that one finds deep within one's self during a walkabout. Inspiration is hard, inspiration is something someone finds when they work hard to get out of the desperation that is so easy to fall into.

Speaker

2009-07-29T11:15:00.002-05:00

My company periodically has brown bag seminars. I gave one during my interview process. This week we had an experienced consultant who was maybe late 40's, early 50's and is a women give a talk. She had worked with some of the higher ups in our company on a few projects. During her long introduction, and during her mention in my project ops meeting in the am, my big boss decided to mention that she had taken many years off and worked independently from her home to take care of her mother with alzheimer's. I'm not sure why this information is pertinent. Was big boss trying to say,
she is such a hard worker, she even worked while taking care of her mother,
give her a break since she's been at home taking care of her mother
or I don't know. But this is how big boss is, very personal and into other people's personal business.

I watched the speakers face to see her impression of this type of information being told to a room full of strangers and the only emotion I could pick out was sadness, as her mother passed away about a year ago.

Its frustrating that big boss thinks nothing is wrong with sharing this information or that this type of information is important when formulating a professional opinion of someone. I wish I could get into his head and understand his reasoning.

Running

2009-07-22T11:07:00.002-05:00

On a positive note, I've now clocked in some of my longest runs, a 7 miler, 9 miler and 8 miler*!! I actually felt great. On the 7 miler there was a killer hill from Marine Terrace 3 to Marine Terrace 4 that I had to walk up but that was three weeks ago so I'm itching to get back and try it again. The other runs have also been very hilly because my race is very hilly. Last Sunday we did the second half of the 1/2 marathon course and I'm more confident now about my ability to complete the race. Saturday night I didn't sleep well and had nightmares about getting lost. But we didn't. We did learn that we will cross a stream at least three times during the race and that maybe 50% of the single track portion is very scary! Deadly cliffs on one side, lots of tree roots and some really skinny turns. Now my main goal besides to finish is to not trip.
Maybe not my best choice for my first 1/2 marathon and definitely no PR's will be set but it's going to be a lot of fun and good energy. Five more weeks of training! Next week-end we are running a 6 mile race. That should help with getting into the race mode. The weeks after that are going to be more difficult for training since I'll be traveling. I won't have my long run partner and since I'll be away I won't have my familar trails and being on vacation makes scheduling running time more complicated. I'm just going to have to map out my runs before I travel and then get up early to complete them.
As it stands now I do one sprinty type run and one shortish run alone (or with my husband), then one sprinty type run and the long run with my running partner.

I'm exciting about this new found fun.

*I don't always trust how accurate google maps are, the runs were between 1.5 to 2.0 hours.

Therapy: Part 2

2009-07-21T19:54:00.002-05:00

I've decided the best way to frame this is to just explained what has happened so far in my weekly sessions (4?), this should likely spark some talking points.

I found my therapist through the recommendation of my primary doctor. As I explained I went to her first and she wanted to put me on drugs (which readers have said I shouldn't be adverse to), but I'm not ready to go that route yet. I told her I needed help finding a therapist and she told me to look on my provider page for my insurance. Sure, I had done this already but there are 10's of therapist out there to choose from. Turns out my doctors mom is also a therapist, so I was recommended to her and looked her up on my insurance web site. Therapist (as I'll call her) turned out to be a 5 minuet walk from my house. I took this to be a sign of fate and called to make an appointment.

Although I don't like to talk about my feelings I am a very chatty person-especially when nervous-so in the first couple of sessions my therapist learned a lot about my life. Not deep dark secretes but an outline of my life; my different dads, boyfriends, age of first sexual experience, all about graduate school and the different places I've lived, ect. We also talked a lot about my current job. Two sessions ago I told therapist that I didn't like going to therapy and that I felt silly. She seemed shocked and was very calm and said therapy isn't silly. I told her I didn't think therapy was silly but I felt silly talking to her. I mean I have to set up my whole life for her so she can know where I'm coming from and how is this really helping? I felt like I should just be able to find a good friend, vent about my life and feel better. But I confessed that this hadn't worked, trying to eat healthier and exercise more didn't work. Telling myself that I'm smart and capable hadn't worked. I still have this darkness, this feeling of dread, when I'm trying to do something that is new to me. Like I've written before, I have this fear of failure that prevents me from trying, and when something starts to get difficult I don't feel challenged I feel defeated.

So, after the "I feel silly session," I went back and the therapist decided to tell me her diagnoses. She said I have a mild underlying depression (and gave it a fancy word I can't remember) that probably started when I was a child (I saw my father die from a heart failure and had to call 911). Unfortunately I had to disagree with her. My depression feeling didn't start until I started writing my masters thesis, then got better and then went up and down toward the end of my dissertation, getting really bad while in post doc town. I remember being a happy child and while I've had a lot of hard things happen to me and may have felt sad at times I don't remember feeling depressed. This is not to say that my life up until graduate school didn't create this poor way of dealing with stress that I'm just now having to deal with, I just, didn't think I was depressed as a child.

So I feel a little weary of my therapist and am not sure how much it's helping. She was receptive to my comments and said, well, then we will have to deal with this issue.

I've started two new projects that I'm now the project manager on because-oh yeah didn't I tell you- my supervisor has quit for a new position. So here I am again being given a new project where I'll have little supervision and I'm going to have to learn new things. Yesterday I had that same feeling of trying to do something I don't know anything about and feeling stressed that I don't have the "consulting time" to do it and so instead of just busting some ass and doing things I feel like I shouldn't even give it a try.

I really wish I had a magic wand that could just make this feeling go away.

Therapy

2009-07-15T11:49:00.003-05:00

I should have done a follow up post many weeks ago but have been putting if off. Well I'm going to put it off again. I have another therapy session today and I'll post later this week (hopefully) about how it's going.

In general, I hate talking about my feelings so therapy is pretty lame but I'm sure it will help in the long run and positive it won't help in the short term-these things take time.

The therapist I ended up choosing is well, old, but she seems sweet and nice and I'm comfortable talking with her but I keep wondering if it would be better to get someone who might understand me more-but then I think of all her experience and how that might be helpful, and I think about having to do the start up appointments with an entirely new person and that well, sounds lame.

Imposter project

2009-06-24T10:29:00.003-05:00

A quick update, the internal draft of the final report for the project I've written about the last two post is due on Friday, to my PI. I've worked really hard on it these past two days and am proud of myself but it still has a lot more that needs to be done.
I'm so burnt from Monday and Tuesday 10 hour days that my brain is having trouble starting this morning. It's 830am now so I'm allowing myself to goof off and drink coffee until 9am.

Life has been pretty busy, I'm training for a half marathon and think I overdid it on sunday with my 8 mile run that included hills. We ran for 100 minuets. To date my longest run had been 60 minuets. The training plan called for a 6 mile run but the race is mostly hills so we wanted to include some hills in this run and since we left from my friends house to the hills it turned out our run became 8 miles. Lesson learned my quads are so sore!

I'm also practicing rugby on Tuesdays, going to yoga on Wednesdays and trying to climb at the indoor gym at least one a week, ideally twice. With this project taking over my life climbing is the first activity to get cut.

My mom is buying a manufactured home and we have been waiting for escrow to close for the past month. Now it is scheduled to close on Thursday, which is exciting but my week is already so busy with this project and during the week-end I was hoping to catch up on life and climb and run and Sunday we are going to the near by city for a major wine tasting event . . . . Oh and Saturday was a rugby tournament I wanted to go to . . . looks like I'll be moving my mom instead. Small price to pay to help my mom end her life of renting. She has to be out of her rental by July 12, and next week-end is Forth of July. I'm hoping she will be able to wake up in her new place on Sunday, even if we don't get everything moved in time.

The major news in my life is that I'm going to see a therapist today. I went to my primary doctor (who I had only seen once) and mentioned that I think I might have depression but wasn't sure how to choose a therapist and what the best plan of action would be. This imposter project has brought back a lot of the bad habits I created for myself while writing my dissertation in postdoc town. My husband is finally concerned; all the times I thought I might have depression in postdoc town my husband always shrugged it off and told me just to get stronger, i.e. suck it up. I always thought this would work but I kept gaining weight and kept feeling unhappy and kept watching online TV instead of working.

What kind of suprised me was that I told the doctor I didn't want to take any medicine and she was very pro-meds. Although I see her points I really want to try and aid my mental state first by seeing a therapist and possibly identifiying my issues first. She stated that a really small dose can increase your saratonines and aid in the healing process, she also said my therapist and I might get to the point where they decide a drug is needed. My husband is also anti drugs, I think mostly because his mom is bipolar and he sees how the medication changes her.

This week is really busy but I'll aim to post something next week to keep anyone who is still reading this updated.

All is well that ends well

2009-06-03T15:30:00.002-05:00

Turns out I am not an imposter.

Last Tuesday I had that phone meeting, which I think went well, and it led to another phone meeting that happened yesterday with the same client*. The day before, on Monday, I had a nice meeting with my PI about the project. The client meeting was going to be an update on what had been done on the project and what was still left to do. I organized my thought for this meeting in a power point form. Initially I was writing things down on a notepad but I just love power point. I got to make the font black for things we had finished and blue for aspects needing further work. I color coded slides by task. This was how I would organize my thoughts for many of my meetings with my Ph.D. adviser (those also included plots, this one was just text since the client wasn't going to look at it). It worked nice to have this powerpoint because this is what I showed to my current PI, and he added text and his own thoughts into it while we talked.

The meeting with my PI was so great!! I really needed to be brought back down to Earth on this project. I now feel I have a good list of tasks I can complete and told my PI I'd like to do this again in two weeks-to again organize myself.

Then the client meeting went into a lot less detail than I had thought. We had a nice discussion and I think I impressed him at times, which is good.

Turns out we should have a finished product for the client to review by July 1st. Although it might be tough to meet this deadline I am very excited to have a deadline, I work much better when I have a schedule. Today, however, I'm taking a break from this project but Thursday and Friday I'm going to get a significant portion finished. I'm really excited about the work and happy to be excited again about doing it.

**client might be an improper term here. When I say client I mean the other consulting firm we are subcontracted to work for. The both of us are working for an actual client.

I'm an imposter!

2009-05-24T20:47:00.003-05:00

Friday I was up North helping one of our field offices move. He was in a space too big for just him and my company is trying to save money. They made him find something 1/4 the price. I decided to go there and help since 1) my PI mentioned they were looking for volunteers and 2) it is where I'm from and where my family lives and I was overdue for a visit. This background was just to say that I wasn't in the office Friday but I later saw I had a voice mail from another company we work with and they want to talk about the progress of a particular project that I am now the project manager on.

More background: We recently had an employee quit. He left under good terms for a better job. Him and I were working on this project together, just us, and we hadn't gotten very far by the time he left. I by default have been given this project. It's a rather large project involving no field work. I've only been given little bits and pieces of information about the project and in general when I work on it I feel greatly overwhelmed by the vastness of what needs to be accomplished. I've cut it down into little tasks but all of them are related so when I work on one tasks I read something interesting and get distracted on another tasks. The employee who left has been working in the area for 8 years and did his undergrad and grad work in the area. He was the perfect candidate for this job due to all the knowledge he had about the field area, ect. My role was to aid in his assessment but compiling data, making plots, ect.

As I said I feel very lost but don't even know the right questions to ask to get me on track.

I have a great fear that I am going to sound like an ass on the phone on Tuesday and have been sitting at the computer today trying to piece something together that I can talk about, some kind of update to let this other company know how I am doing. But in all the time I've been sitting here I haven't even opened a file yet about the project.

I fear that my fear of failing is causing me to have a fear of trying.

Sickness

2009-05-19T20:02:00.002-05:00

Wednesday night I came down with a sore throat. It prevented me from going into work on Thursday and then, on Friday, I only worked a few hours. My employer has asked that we don't come into work sick so instead of my long Monday morning commute I stayed home and went to the doctor. I only have a sinus infection, although one that has given me a terrible headache, face-ache and greatly reduced my energy levels, and one that the doctor said is still contagious. Thus I stayed home from work again today. I have work I could be doing from home but it's work I'm not very excited about so I've been using my sickness as an excuse to watch tv. I've caught up on all my favorite shows and even some of my not so favorite shows. I'm home now at 6pm, having an insatiable thirst and wishing I had the motivation to work some of this hated project. I keep telling myself tomorrow will be better but likely it won't. I think tomorrow should be another stay home day and Thursday I will go into the office. Friday I'm scheduled to help one of our other offices move, since he is located near my family and I needed an excuse to go there anyway to visit.

Overall I wrote this post to confess that even though I am really sick I think I've just been using it as an excuse not to work on this project (that doesn't really have a deadline). Wish me luck that tomorrow I'll get a few hours of work accomplished, and maybe even some tonight.

My job as a consultant

2009-05-15T15:52:00.002-05:00

Psych Post Doc's question "why don't you tell us about being a consultant? What are the pros and cons (other than the crazy commute)? Are there any things about the job that surprise you? In a good way or a bad way? Do you think you'd want to do this long term?"

I do not think that being a consultant is my long-term goal. However, I fear that my options are limiting seeing that I'd like to work close to home. In terms of the quality of work done at the consulting firms near my house I’ve been told the one I work with is the best (by outside opinions).

To put being a consultant in context I want to inform you that I did not make a long-term employment goal before going to graduate school. I knew, as an undergrad, that I wanted to help the environment, but did not think about how I would do this. I thought being a soil scientist sounded good. The summer of my junior year I started working for a soil scientist at the US Geological Survey and continued this lab/field tech job for a year after I graduated. I would have likely continued in that group for all eternity, possibly working there and doing grad school part time, had it not been for my obnoxiously charming boyfriend who decided to move to the East Coast for graduate school. During our year apart I decided, "what the hell, I'll move out there and go to grad school." It was this stage that my career goals became esoteric and I just started to study the most interesting thing to me at his department. Turned out I really liked the work so not only did I get a master's degree but a Ph.D. in the process.

Ok, enough digression. I really had little idea of what a consultant did. My interactions with consultants while on the East Coast were people who did groundwater clean ups. My advisor interacted with a lot of consultants, I met many of these at local conferences, and when I was graduating my advisor encouraged me to apply for consulting jobs-stating that I would make much more money in consulting (which is not currently my case). Three of his master’s students that finished during my time there and one that finished shortly afterwards went into consulting, staying close to the University. I wish that while he was pushing consulting so much he would have advised his students to learn more about public policy, which is something I am highly lacking in my current job.

To sum up my job as a consultant I would say this is the process of what we do:
1) Do something marginally representing science, like a quick monitoring program or run some type of fancy model
2) Write a report about all the local, state and federal requirements of this small project you have been awarded and state how the little amount of data we collected fall within (or outside) these requirements
3) Make sure to include in the report all the future work that needs to be done, usually future monitoring or maybe a design to mitigate something, and hope you get awarded to the project to do this monitoring or to work up the design plan
4) Realizes while you are writing the report that you are out of budget and totally stress out and push that stress on to your fellow workers

The pros and cons list doesn’t reflect consulting in general but my specific company and my geographic location.

Pro: A paycheck
Con: We all took a pay-cut a few months back

Pro: I get to learn new things
Con: I have to learn new things in a short little time frame, within a tight budget that didn’t allocate for learning new things (i.e. learning should be done on my own time)

Pro: Everyone is generally friendly
Con: Everyone seems highly anal

Pro: I get to work outside some times
Con: No laboratory work, lots of writing

Pro: The projects we work on are diverse

Con: My boss seems to not realize what personal boundaries are

I just have to saw the honeymoon is over, I don’t seem to like consulting as much as I thought I would. I have to wonder if it’s my particular firm, my mindset or just my general attitude. Working on my Ph.D. taught me that one can spend 6 years dedicated to a project and still not know everything about it. As a consultant I feel like I have three weeks to become an expert on a particular subject. I constantly kick myself in the butt for wasting my time in academia when I could have been gaining work experience. I also feel way behind my co-workers who seem to know so much about the local area and while I grew up here I didn’t study the geology-hydrology-public policy here and fear my knowledge is lacking. If I gained something during my Ph.D. it should have been the process to learn all these new things. However, I became fairly bitter and cynical during my last year and I am just so dam tired of learning new things. I don’t know what my problem is, but I’m not highly motivated at this job.

I should try to get back into blogging more about life/job. This helped me write my dissertation and could possibly aid in balancing my life here. If you know of great blogs written by consultants please pass them along. I keep track of a few already.

Home sick

2009-05-15T15:48:00.003-05:00

I stayed home yesterday with a sore throat and an overall feeling of sickness. I'm a little nauseous as well. Our work has asked us to stay home if we are feeling ill due to the outbreak of swine flu. So, I'm home sick again today. I'm feeling better and think I'll go into work soon. It's almost 2pm here and my office near home has two rooms in it. The other two employees are in the second room so I feel if contagious we won't interact much so hopefully it won't matter. I'm also hoping they will go home early. Since I've only worked about 16 hours this week I'll likely go back into the office tomorrow (saturday). It would be nice to work from home but I can't access our network and can't fill out my time sheet.

I reread my consulting post and will post it next. I didn't change it much so the overall mood of the writing is the same.

Consulting

2009-04-27T22:10:00.001-05:00

I've written a post answering Psych Post Doc's question, however it sounds very depressing, likely because I'm not very happy in my job right now. I will read it again soon and see if I can't cheer it up some.

Side note

2009-04-27T18:23:00.002-05:00

While I appreciate the great job my husband does in cleaning his bathroom (aka the guest bathroom), I am perplexed as to why it takes weeks (yes as in many weeks, almost a month) for him to return the cleaning products from inside the bathtub to their proper location under the kitchen sink. This is very problematic when I come home in a bad mood and want to take a bath. My mood then escalates since the stupid cleaning products are still in the bath. Of course I am not mad at the fact that it takes weeks and many reminders about putting this items away, oh no, the problem is not his inability to finish his chore but my PMS is the problem.

/rant

And now another question

2009-04-24T13:08:00.002-05:00

Sciencegirl asked (a long time ago! she probably forgot about it)
"How is the transition out of the grad student/postdoc stage treating you? Are you still enjoying living back home?"

The short answers are great and yes. I love being near family and old friends again and living in this town is just awesome. We get to bike all around, we are near the beach, the weather is always pleasant and all the wonderful places to hike around are amazing.

While at times I miss the freedom of being a grad student it is nice to be done with that. I think the hardest transition for me is dealing with managing my time. As a grad student it was acceptable to put something off and then deal with it when I was ready because I was working all the time. Now I'm on a more strict schedule and I find that if I feel in a bad mood or don't want to write (like now), I'm still stuck at work. Since my work load isn't very big right now it's hard to say, not want to work on something so I move over to something else-as there isn't something else. I also have to bill all my hours to get paid and there is no line item for "didn't feel like working so I blogged," i.e. I'm not getting paid for sitting here at my work desk writing this post. Which is fair. I shouldn't get paid to sit here and write this, but I've created this bad habit while writing my dissertation of inefficiency, and I can't figure out how to change this bad habit. It wasn't this hard when I first started my job, there was a lot to keep me busy and when I'm out in the field I have a great time. So here I sit, trying to find the motivation to work on a project I know nothing about, hopefully it will come to me soon so I can actually make some money today. . . .

I've been putting off Psych Post Doc's questions "why don't you tell us about being a consultant? What are the pros and cons (other than the crazy commute)? Are there any things about the job that surprise you? In a good way or a bad way? Do you think you'd want to do this long term?" I will answer this soon.

Dissertation Town

2009-03-27T10:42:00.002-05:00

I'm flying back to dissertation town tonight. I haven't blogged about it yet but one of my advisers is hosting a small (50 or so attendants) symposium of four speakers about a particular subject that is my dissertation subject. He invited me around January to be a speaker, all expenses paid. My work is very supportive and have given me the time off.

It's an hour time slot so I'm hoping a 40-45 min talk is plenty. No one wants to hear me talk for an hour! and I'm sure we will need time for questions and to transition to the other speaker. I get to go first, which is my favorite, and the symposium doesn't start until 10am so it's not too early.

I just finished the slides last night and although I have practiced bits a pieces I haven't gone through the entire talk yet. I'm hoping to give it one more go before my 10pm flight. I'm a bit nervous, but feel confident I have a good talk lined up and an interesting subject matter. I just hope new information hasn't come along in this past year that makes my data seem obsolete, or some background information I know about is no longer valid. I just haven't been keeping up on the subject matter that closely anymore.

Well I'm off for a fun week-end with the rugby gals from dissertation town, a day at the symposium, and two days with my best friend from dt and my godson.

Good times.

One small step

2009-03-18T11:07:00.002-05:00

Picture this, three professional women are sitting at a table waiting for the PO (project operations) meeting to get started. A senior principle (the founder of the company) walks in from his office and selects one of these women and says to her, "Women X, you sure are looking good this morning." Women X is very surprised and instead of her usual, oh thanks, brush off she fumbles for a while and says, "What do you mean?" The principle, of course, doesn't really have an answer for this so Women X changes the subject and says, "Oh you must mean that I got some sun this week-end, my mom and I went for a walk, ect." At which point the other two women roll with this and talk more about walking and the sun and such.

After the PO meeting Women X realizes that this principle doesn't know (or wishes to ignore) which statements make her uncomfortable. After he (I realize this is the first time his gender is stated) is finished with another meeting Women X says she'd like to see him in his office. In simple terms she states that his comment this morning was inappropriate, embarrassing and makes her uncomfortable. Of course she sugar coats it by stating that she knows he doesn't have bad motives for these statements but that they need to stop. He is taken aback and states (in summary) that these statements are professional (just wait 30 years and I'll understand), that these statements are important for safety reasons (need to make sure everyone is alert and their home life is good) and three he will do his best but give him slack . . It takes a while for an old dog to learn new tricks (his exact words).

If you have read my previous post you have likely guessed that Women X is me. I feel better now that I have confronted the issue. I feel like my point was taken, although diluted by his responses. I am worried that our relationship might suffer some. I could tell I surprised and maybe even hurt his feelings, thus I made sure to tell HR about our conversation. I don't want our relationship to suffer but the truth is it was already, he just didn't know about it.

These are the days..

2009-03-14T18:28:00.002-05:00

when I love my job

Just a reminder

2009-03-12T22:07:00.002-05:00

I've read a few posts now about Spring Break, and I just wanted to remind all the professors and grad students out there that some people don't get a spring break. So why you are all deciding if you should take any time off from your research or catching up on teaching prep (or lab work or admin work, ect), people like me are realizing this is the first year in almost 10 years since I've even had the option of a spring break. Enjoy as much of it as you can!!

Grad School Advise

2009-02-20T19:38:00.003-06:00

Thanks for the questions. I'm going to start with Amanda@Lady Scientist.

She asks, "Did you finish all the corrections for your Thesis? That's one (odd) question. What's your best tip/trick/idea for getting through grad school?"

I could answer this question with a yes and a no. In July I did mention that I was struggling with the revisions but then, in August, I said that I turned in my dissertation (actually had to mail it a few times) and it was accepted. So, of course I finished the corrections. But I would be lying if I said I made every correction suggested. I focused on the main point, which was to beef up the conclusion section and then did the quick and (what I felt) necessary revisions in the text. Most of the small detailed (time consuming) corrections I left for when I revised the chapters into manuscripts. This might have been cheating but it's my dissertation and I knew no one would look at it again, so, yeah I slacked off a little, but am still happy with the final result.

The next part of the question is more difficult to answer, but it's been something I've been thinking about recently. I don't know that I have a good trick to get through grad school but I'd like those people still in grad school to know that they need to enjoy it while they are there. Sure you are paid next to nothing, required to work long hours and everyone thinks your work is really the work of your adviser but this is still your life you are living. Life doesn't start after grad school. Ecogeofemme had some similar advise from a dissertation coach. I kept waiting for my life to begin and while I have lots of good memories from my life as a grad student I regret all the complaining and depression I felt during my last year. Here I am, in my real life, and I often long for my life as a grad student. This might partially be due to my chosen profession. I've been reflecting some about my current life verses my grad life and I miss the thrill of research, I miss the all consuming nature of the job, I miss the academic culture of the office but I also miss the hobby I had during grad school- playing rugby.

In addition to living your life my only other advise is to conmiserate, which I think if you are reading this blog you are very familar with the concept. The blog community really helped get me through my last year of grad school. It is nice to have a support group.

You will only be a grad student once, revel in the experience as it will change your life and shape who you become as a professional.

UPDATE:And if you don't like my advise, see Alice's post.

**Thanks for the suggestions. I look forward to answering the questions by ScienceGirl and Psych Post Doc soon.

Title Unknown

2009-02-17T11:05:00.002-06:00

I just saw on Amanda's blog this list and, like herself, was surprised to see myself on it. A little hint of guilt hit me, as I have not written very many substantial post since finishing my dissertation and starting my consulting job. With great guilt comes great ideas . . . . so I thought maybe the readers could post ideas in the comment list about what you'd like to hear about. Maybe a question I left unanswered in another post, maybe you have some questions about my job, and maybe, well I have no idea-which is why I'm asking for help.

For now here are a few updates on my home front.

-The day my husband started his job* I found out everyone in my company is taking a 10% pay cut. I'm happy no one in my company was laid off-yet I was under the impression that I would be getting a raise in 6-12 months. *Sigh* Looking on the bright side I am very grateful to have a job.

*My husband's job is as an environmental compliance inspector with the City we live in. It is a temp, part-time position but the full time position is now open to non-city employees. We are crossing our fingers for the full time position for him. His background is in mineral physics, having both a PhD and Post-Doc experience. He had to follow up about this job and when he talked to the hiring manager they said they saw his application and thought it was a mistake, as he is way overqualified for the job. Then during his interview the hiring manager just kept asking him if he really wanted this job.

-I've been able to work in my town these past two weeks and not commute the 1.5 hours each way to the main office. Life has been great.

-The big boss in on vacation in Chile and he keeps checking and responding to e-mails. Enjoy your vacation already!

-Husband and I have been sick. I am much less sick than him and hope to keep my sickness to a minimum.

-I had to work this week-end, despite asking for it off, and had made plans to see my family/friends that I didn't get to see over the holidays. We were suppose to have the storm of the season but it was a big disappointment. Although, much needed rain.

Turned tables

2009-01-17T19:32:00.003-06:00

When I lived in husband's postdoc town I longed for a social life. I was stuck at home all day, writing and writing (really blogging and watching online tv and eating, oh the eating). My husband would get home from a busy days work and be tired and exhausted, while I'd be so ready to leave the house. We would usually have one social outing on the week-end and that would be enough for him.

Now the tables have turned. My husband is now getting really bored at home. He doesn't even have a dissertation to write. He just searches the web for job ads, applies to some. He has taught himself a new operating system and is reading some textbooks about this and that. He is teaching himself to cook Indian food and make Italian sauces (my favorite hobby!). He goes to the climbing gym twice a week, with his friends, and is taking long bike rides and playing Frisbee golf. In short, he has lots of hobbies and is keeping himself entertained but he needs a job and needs more human interaction. His brain is totally bored.

Thus, to feed this human interaction, our week-ends are jammed back with social activities. And I am tired. I'm away from my house two days a week for my job and feel the time I'm here I'm so damn busy but am getting nothing done.

It's funny how I longed for social interactions and now I wish these people would just leave us alone once and a while. I miss my quite time.

So today I opted out of a day trip to a local national park and stayed at home. Sure I met a friend for a run but that was only 1.5 hours of my day. I did some grocery shopping, watched some online tv, organized my pants (still not happy with the organization), called some friends and was looking forward to making Indian sweet potato soup and corn muffins for dinner. Yes looking forward to. Husband comes home and declares we are meeting friends for dinner and tomorrow there is a bbq.

When will the obligations end!

I feel like skipping out on the bbq tomorrow but don't want to be a party poop. I'll just have to wait and see.

Checking In

2009-01-02T16:58:00.002-06:00

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year and a productive, healthy and happy 2009.

I also wanted to let everyone know that even though I haven't been posting I've been reading and keeping up to date on your lives.

Here is a quick update on me

boss has told me I look pretty twice, first one I shruged off due to the holiday party, second one made me uncomfortable (and I wasn't even looking pretty, very frumpy looking), next time I am going to have to speak up.
other than that work is going well, still only working about 25 hours a week. The commute was dragging on me but I was able to not commute during the holiday week and I feel refreshed.
one of the two special journal articles has been completely accepted, no more revisions! Still to hear back on the other article.
still working on manuscript from "long-ass" time ago: we know which journal to resubmit to, I just need to incorporate a co-authors suggestions (hope to finish this week-end)
still working on manuscript from masters thesis: the pregnant student ran my samples (yeah!) but the data doesn't agree with previous analysis (b00) still need to solve this problem before I can finish the revisions (double boo)
I'm going to speak in my sisters class about my career next week. She is in 7th grade. Should be fun, hope I don't embarrass her.
husband still looking for a job, no leads yet
my husband is the happiest I've see him in 7 years
I'm loving being back here on the west coast

December Conference

2008-12-04T08:41:00.003-06:00

While I'm not presenting this year at the big December conference on the west coast my work does have some passes that the employees can share. I hope to be there all day on wed. and could take public transportation to the conference location Monday or Tuesday for dinner.

Let me know if you'd like to meet up!

Retrospect

2008-12-02T23:25:00.003-06:00

I wish I had time for a longer post but to summarize I'm going to say

I think I might look back on the year it took me to write my dissertation (from husband's post doc city) as one of the best years of my life

On my drive home today I was realizing that all the times my husband ignored me and passed up fun trips while working on his dissertation were in vain. He now isn't going to study what was so important to him for 7 years and all he has is a very sad memory of our time in dissertation state, and I have some sad stories about how he never wanted to have fun.

Comme si, comme sa
We just have to live in the now.

5 things meme

2008-11-29T19:06:00.002-06:00

Finally the meme,

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago

1. 2nd yr undergrad
2. moving out with my mom and sister from step dad's house
3. redefining myself
4. playing rugby
5. surfing

5 Things on my to do list today

1. make dinner and watch movie with husband
2. catch up on "some" blog reading
3. go through results section of resubmit (the one due in a week)
4. send e-mail about a different resubmit (likely to get done tomorrow)
5. consume alcohol beverage (leaning towards wine)

5 snacks I love

1. Chocolate peanut m&ms
2. granola and soymilk
3. Kahlua coffee
4. cheese
5. anything chocolate

5 things I would do if I were a millionaire

1. Buy myself a house
2. Buy my mom a house
3. keep working part time
4. donate to charities
5. save most of it (i'm a big saver)

5 places I've lived

1. home city on west coast
2. college (current) city on west coast
3. mountains of college city on west coast
4. Midwest (husband post doc city)
5. East Coast (dissertation city)

5 jobs I've had

1. at Orange Julius
2. at a local bakery in college city
3. physical scientist at federal institute
4. Grad student
5. environmental consultant

Accepted

2008-11-25T20:29:00.002-06:00

One of the manuscripts I submitted to the "special edition" journal was accepted! There are some great comments. This is the first time I've felt good about comments from a manuscript. It feels great and makes me miss academia! I also really loved my research and it's cool after taking time off to go back and read through it, knowing that other people think it's good enough to publish. The catch is that I have two weeks to turn it around. Tomorrow evening I'm going with Mom and Sister to where I grew up for Thanksgiving time until Saturday. Guess my laptop is coming too, and had hoped my running shoes would be the extra luggage. And I have committed to giving priority to manuscript from "long-ass" time ago for Dec 1-5, which includes a day visit to where the coauthors work so we can work together (close drive). And last, I submitted two manuscripts to this "special edition" so I'm curious if the second one is getting accepts (would be great) and when I'll hear back about it since it will also likely have a two week turn around time.
So much for my relaxing work schedule I've had.

I've wanted to write a substantial post about my new job but here are a few points
-I like it
-Sometimes I wish I was working on what I learned in grad school so I don't feel like such a dope
-A male employee high up in the company has made uncomfortable remarks to me and towards me. I don't want to go into too much detail about this now as I'm not sure how anonymous my blog is. I'll just say he has a history of doing this and my supervisor said I should call him on it or bring it up to HR. Last, he is an older male and the comments are really hard to interpret. Like I think he's trying to joke and be cordial but they come off sounding slightly offensive.

Writting

2008-11-09T11:40:00.003-06:00

I'm so happy to be reading about everyone's InaWriMo progress. It reminds me of why I started my blog last November. I was stuck far away from dissertation state writing my dissertation from home all alone and needed a supportive network. Yeah bloggers for providing that for me. Although I wasn't able to participate this year I'll give everyone an update of my "working for free" status.

I submitted two manuscripts from my dissertation to the special journal issue I was invited to submit to. One made the deadline of Nov. 4th and the other was submitted on the 5th (editor said this was ok). I'm very happy with the first one but the second one might need a lot of revisions, but I hope it gets accepted. That data is very tricky because there is a lot of it and the patterns aren't always exactly the same from site to site. I tried not to draw too many antidoctal conclusions and put all of the raw data into supplemental data. I though I'd go the simple route and then could add more interpretation depending on the questions of the reviewers.

The co-authors from "long-ass" time ago manuscript and I have been e-mailing. We have decided to dedicate the first week of December to getting this bad boy out the door again. A month ago I went through the reviewers comments and thought about how to correlate them into the manuscript. I wanted to work with the raw data again but didn't have the program needed. So sometime this month I need to look through my notes again and make a good plan of what should be accomplished (in my mind) and send that to co-authors in preparation for the dedicated week. Then on my day off that week I'll meet them in their office so I can use the program the data is in.

Manuscript "0" is trucking along very slowly. In, maybe, August my Ph.D. adviser decided we needed some more measurements and that another student of his could analyze them as she was going to be learning that piece of equipment for her own samples. I asked him of this status last week and his only comment was that this student is now pregnant-due in Jan/Feb. I don't know this student very well so I haven't decided if I should e-mail and congratulate her and ask the status of the samples. Or if I should just keep going through my Ph.D. adviser. The analysis doesn't require the use of any chemicals and my samples are just soil water, not very comtanimated and surley nothing is volitle in them, so it should be safe for a pregnant women to do. It has been almost a year now since the comments came back on this manuscript. Yes it has gotten a major overhaul but I'm starting to care less and less about it but still have that nagging feeling that I've spent so much damn time on it already I'd like to get it published. If the samples haven't been analyzed by the end of the year I'm either going to have to go with what I have or give up on it.

There are more chapters from my Ph.D. dissertation that I could think about publishing but I'll save that for another time. This week I'm enjoying having few responsibilities.
---------------------------------

I'm enjoying my job a lot. Learning new things, meeting new people. Lots of field days. My first two weeks were about 35 hours each but this past week was only 25. I have two field days this week, which will help with my hours, but I'm hoping to get involved in more projects.

--------------------------------

Well.

2008-10-29T15:54:00.002-05:00

There is a lot to catch up on and little time to do it in.

I need to fill out my absentee ballot and drop it off this week-end at a polling place.

I have two manuscripts to finish by Nov. 4th.

My new jobs is going well. Tracking my hours is going to take some time to get use to. I worked 8.5 hrs on Monday but could only account for 6.5 hours of work. Our work is done in American units!

today is my day off from work .... back to writing

Are you a student?

2008-10-13T15:43:00.003-05:00

In clear avoidance of working on my postdoc proposal I have been reading FSP: The Book. I did initial look into the book for proposal writing information but became distracted and am reading Ch.17, " On being a female science professor." She makes a few references about others assuming she is a student or postdoc or administrator, presumably due to her young looks, but later concludes that it might have to due with her gender.

My experience at a party Saturday is only slightly related to what I have been reading but it made me think about the question I received, more than once, in a different light. So I thought I'd blog and share.

I went with my sister (who is 12) and my mother (who is 20 years older than me) to an apple party up in the mountains. My sister went to preschool with the girl who lived where the party was and my mom works with the girl's mom. I call it an apple party because the house in on an apple orchard and we made apple juice using an old fashion press, but really it was just a normal bbq type party with lots of food and alcohol. But the point is that my mom knew a lot of people there from work. I'm guessing because I went to the party with my mother and didn't bring my husband I was assumed to be yonger than I actually am. My assumed age might also be due to the fact that my sister is 12, so we should be close in age.

But I digress!! I was asked multiple times if I was going to school, by which they mean the local University. As I said earlier, although this question annoyed me I didn't think much about it until reading FSP: The book. And I might be over analyzing the question. I mean the party was close to a good university and since I'm so young and hanging out with my mom I should be going to school. It was somewhat satisfying to say, "I did go to that school and received my B.S. but now have recently finished my Ph.D....." To which one reply was, "oh, you just aged yourself."

Thoughts

2008-10-13T12:56:00.002-05:00

I start my new job a week from today. I have a lot of emotions associated with this job.

I am thankful to have a job in a location I want to live.
I am grateful to be back on a schedule again.
I am nervous about the structure of the job, accounting for all of my billable hours worked and working according to the schedule of someone else.
I am excited about all of the new topics I will learn about.
I am scared to death about all of the new topics I know nothing about.
I am apprehensive about my future.

I have heard a lot about working as a consultant and little of what I've heard is positive. I'm hoping this company will be different, as I have heard praises of this company and am impressed by the scope of work done by the employees. In fact, I went to a seminar at the local University Campus last week and the speaker showed plots made by the company I will be working with. But, because of my nervous, scared and apprehensive feelings I don't want to become 'stuck' in consulting and still ~~think about~~ plan to apply for the postdoc position I wrote about.

I have a decent outline written for the project, have met with two of the project advisers and have talked with two others at the institution about the study location (these are scientist I worked with previously). Yet every time I sit down to write or read more about the topic I get distracted. I'm starting to think that I just don't feel very passionate about the project, and at times I get distraught that the acceptance is 12-20 projects out of 100+ applications. I picked this project mostly due to the location and not based on the science, although the science is interesting. But I feel that I have this duty to apply. I would like to work at this institution again and this, currently, is my only chance at that.

I have decided that if I don't have a decent draft written by the end of the week I should waive my white flag. The application deadline is Nov. 15 and I should have the advisers read at least one draft and give back comments.

I didn't negotiate

2008-10-04T20:56:00.002-05:00

I have a job offer and I am taking it.

Thursday I went back to the consulting company-that I had two interviews with-and we talked about the job description, what I can do and what I will learn to do, and we glossed over the salary part.

This past week I was pulling my hair out about how to negotiate. I don't feel very prepared for this job as a consultant. I'm excited about the company because they take on all sorts of hydrology projects, yet my training and experience is very narrow. This doesn't mean that I don't have the confidence to do the job I just didn't feel like I had very many bargaining chips. In addition, when I went to salary.com and looked up jobs it was difficult to find one job title that best fit the position and the salary ranges varied greatly between job titles. Second, on salary.com, all of these positions I was looking at required a Bachelors degree plus some level of experience with salaries increasing with increasing experience. I was finding it difficult to directly relate my graduate work to work experience. But after much thinking and making excel spreadsheets with my qualifications and the qualifications of the job description I came up with a yearly figure and calculated the hourly wage. The yearly figure was 15K less than what a retired professor told me he thought I was worth, after only looking at my resume, but I felt my figure reflected my lack of real work experience and I figured if I picked up on the job quick I would ask for a raise.

So now you are asking yourself, "Jennie, after all this work you still didn't negotiate." I sadly say yes, but this is because I was offered 3K per year more than I was going to ask for! I never thought about this option and was taken aback and merely replied, "that sounds fair" and the conversation quickly moved on. In once aspect I was happy with the offer but on the other hand I feel that I may have looked weak since I'm guessing they expected me to negotiate. I also feel that I was likely offered less than the company thought I was worth and should have still negotiated. And I know that negotiating my first salary is important along my career path because it will affect my bonuses and raises for the rest of my life. But the conversation leading up to the salary offer talked about all the parts of the job I didn't have experience with, so again I was made to feel that I didn't have a lot of work experience needed for the position.

I still have mixed feelings about how what I should have done.

Thursday when I got back from the consulting company I received an e-mail about the lab manager position stating that someone else was offered the position since they had more biology experience. Thank God. I really didn't want to have to accept the position and I'm glad the group I use to work with found the right person for the position.

In this market I'm happy to have the opportunity to work at the consulting firm. Since I contacted this company even though they weren't hiring they are only able to offer me 30hr weeks to start. Looks like my first day will be around Oct. 20.

I'm also still applying for the Post-doc position, application due Nov.15. I have a good outline written but no actual text yet. Yikes! I've been busy with the special journal articles that are due Nov. 4th. Ph.D. adviser gave back comments on one of them and that day I sent him the other one I was working on. I think this first one is pretty close to completion, just a few loose ends to strengthen. I want to make sure Ph.D. adviser gives me back his comments on the second paper by mid month so I can clean it up by the deadline. Ok, time to kick back into writing mode.

Stop asking

2008-09-29T20:50:00.002-05:00

There is a fine line between people in one's life being interested in their life and just being noisy or pushy. I think the questions of (to an unengaged couple) when are you getting married and the question of when are you having kids can titer on this line most of the time. Sure my friends with kids have asked this, likely because ~~they want to have someone to hang out with that has kids~~ they want to share in the joy of child rearing, but you only have to ask this question once. Why do people ask over and over again?
Maybe I'm just starting to feel judged because I have been married for 5 years and having kids isn't something I think about every day. Sure one day but not today and not tomorrow and likely not this year. And maybe I'm thinking about this issue again because as I discussed my upcoming 30th birthday with my mother she remind me that my eggs were running out. I had to remind her that she was 38 when she got pregnant with my sister.

So please, please stop asking me about babies and making me tell you again and again the reasons why I'm not currently interested in bringing a new life into this world that will be my sole responsibility and focus of my life because pretty soon I'm going to start making shit up.

Also I don't have a job yet. You don't need to keep asking about this either because it will be a joyous day and I will want to call and e-mail everyone I know. I will not hide this fact from you and wait for you to bring it up in conversation.

/end rant

We are all smart people

2008-09-15T15:39:00.003-05:00

I have recently been thinking about my career path. About how much I like science. How much I like research. How much I hate writing. How much I love designing projects. How lazy I am. How hard it is for me to focus. How much I need structure. How much I need money. How much the writing process has improved for me. How maybe I'm not smart enough to learn new techniques.

Then today, I received an e-mail from a list server (which some of you may be on) that mentioned an article entitled,
The importance of stupidity in scientific research
Schwartz J Cell Sci.2008; 121: 1771

This was just the article I needed. I highly recommend reading this one page article.
Some highlights.

The crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn’t know wasn’t merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite. That realization, instead of being discouraging, was liberating. If our ignorance is infinite, the only possible course of action is to muddle through as best we can.

we don’t do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don’t feel stupid it means we’re not really trying.

One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt,
this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help,

I think the feeling of stupidity is something most new scientist struggle with, and some may argue women scientist more than men. Seeing that I no longer consider myself a new scientist, I just wonder when this feeling goes away.

Jobs and Jobs

2008-09-12T13:55:00.002-05:00

I just got off a phone interview and I wore my pajamas like Psych Post Doc.

This was for a lab manager position working with the group I worked with during and for a year after my undergrad. I would love a lab manager position. My only qualm is that half of this position would be learning a new field, one I'm not sure I'd like to work in. Can I say DNA sequencing? The other half would still be different from my graduate work but would be fun and exciting and similar to the work I did with the group before. The lab manager position is two years with likely extension but maybe not a permanent position. The lab manager would be encourage to write their own funding and come up with proposals that include their interests and the interests of the group.
I guess I'll have to wait and see if I'm offered the position.

==Also I'm curious if it was ok that I was asked where I lived (my cv has my address) and what my husband did. The interviewer then assumed I would move closer to the job if offered it. So then we had to talk about commuting and what hours I would be expected to be there. This was something I wanted to wait and talk about if offered the position. The job is about an hour commute, which I have done before and found an ok process with a carpool group.
---------------------------
I completed two interviews with a consulting company who told me they will be sending me a formal offer. I am impressed with their work and would enjoy working with this group of people until . . . . I was told most of my job would be writing. Argh I hate writing. Initially I would be involved in a lot of in field work. As an employees hourly wage increases their time is best spent in the office, verses driving to the field site.
For the first 6 months to a year I would be part time in their main office (75 miles away) and part time in their local office (1 mile away). Then full time in local office. I don't mind working at main office to learn the trade and I can stay with my husband's grandma who lives 3 miles from main office who would enjoy the company. Then I would only drive there and back once a week.
(by the way this company was not advertising a position but I just kept e-mailing until they gave me an interview)
==During the first interview we also talked about my husband and my hobbies. I'm a very open and honest person and I'm not sure what is considered private and personal for an interview. It's only afterward that I think-should I have said that?
----------------------------
So this is exciting two possible jobs to choose from. But wait! There is a local consulting firm that is interested in hiring me part time for a research position but can't interview me until the State Budget passes.
I just got referred to another local consulting company that is a registered women-owned business that does some exciting and interesting work.
I still want to apply for the post-doc position. Deadline Nov. 15th, notification in March, start date of Oct-09 or March-10. I've read that around 100 applications are received and 12-20 are accepted. We aren't all applying for the same position. There are around 45 different projects to apply for.

My husband is telling me to just accept one of these jobs but I'm really interested in learning what else there is out there before I make a decision. Although the other part of me is worried that if I wait too long the jobs will disappear.

Plastic Bags

2008-09-08T13:56:00.003-05:00

I just washed about a dozen plastic bags, most have been reused already. There are ziplocks, bags for veggies, bags from bulk spices and bags from bagels. I feel like I'm swimming in bags and I reuse so many!
I was contemplating during the wash cycle today if the water use outweighs the plastic waste. It probably does not but it was a thought going through my head because I really wanted to say, Oh I'm wasting so much water I should just throw this plastic away! That was lazy Jennie. Smart Jennie knows plastic uses too many resources to make and to recycle.
I opt for paper when ever possible and we bring our own grocery bag, and I usually try to use no bags at all. I find it funny that my four potatoes have to share a bag. But some bags can't be avoided, such as the day old bagels we buy from the local bagel shop. 1/2 price! and the fact that grapes and loose leaf lettuce really needs a bag.

So today I've decided to buy a plastic bag drier.
These seem to be the two types.
1 or 2 or woops one more
Number 2 seems pretty neat. Anyone have experience with these or suggestions?

oh, new blog template

2008-09-04T12:30:00.000-05:00

Working for free

2008-09-04T12:04:00.003-05:00

Why is it that I feel busier now that when I was writing my dissertation?
I'm guessing it is the variety of events/items I am dealing with. When I was writing my dissertation it was one thing-although it had many parts. I was also away from the lab and really, only had to write.

This past month I've grown to understand why so many students before me stayed in their graduate school research groups until they had a new position to go to. There is much to do after your dissertation has been submitted. In addition, you are getting paid to apply for other jobs :)

But this was not the life for me. I had already left dissertation state, decided to move to farther away state and I noticed some positions I was interested in the applicant had to have Ph.D. in hand to apply for.

So here I am now loving my life but feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work I have to do and no structured time to do it in and no paycheck coming in. I'll share with you all, my blogger friends, the life of the unemployed.

Imminent Events
--Second interview at consulting position Sept. 9th, where I give a 40 min talk. I've been asked to include data from my undergrad thesis!! I'm so happy I could find the data but I'm having trouble discussing in the importance of the work.
--I'm volunteering to collect ocean samples for the Surfrider Foundation every Sunday. Since last week was a holiday I haven't actually done this but assume it will take less than an hour. I have four sites I am to sample are close to one another.
--I'm volunteering with CWC (1) sampling storm drains and streams as part of the routine sampling they do. This has been about a weekly event that takes about four hours. (2) participating in their First Flush program, the training is Sept. 16, the dry run is Sept. 20 and then we wait for it to rain and sample once. I think I will be a team leader. (3) Tomorrow I've been asked to help calibrate their instruments, one to help but secondly to meet someone who works for NOAA and is moving soon and then their position will be open (hint, hint).
--I've stupidly decided to review a manuscript. The abstract sounded so interesting but I'm finding the writing really bad. Can one or two sentences be considered a paragraph? Maybe once, but more than a dozen times? I'm also unhappy with the organization. This review is due this week and I just started reading it today. I became frustrated with it and decided to blog instead.
--Stuff my mom needs me to do. Like give my cat a bath because she was skunked last night, at four am. My mom washed her in tomato sauce (that you put on pasta) and put her in the garage. I had to finish the job and clean up the mess.

Near Future
--Special journal article due Nov. 4th. Will call co-author/x-adviser on Monday and see if we should submit the article almost ready for submission to another journal or start preparing a new dissertation chapter I'd like to publish. This would require a lot more work.
--Post-doc application due Nov. 15th.
--Resubmit this pesky journal article that has been in review since last November. When I call on monday about special journal article I will talk about this article as well. On Sept. 2, I sent another draft to co-author-adviser.
--Resubmit journal article from data I worked on before grad school. It was accepted with revisions that didn't sound too bad but first author decided to give up. Another co-author said she'd do the revisions but never did. I thought I would have more time and two weeks ago decided to take in the reins. Um, why did I do this?
--Sept. 24 attend a science symposium near by to network and learn about this particular local issue (that has large scale implications)
--Continue applying for jobs and reminding people I need a job.
--Oh, we are going to my husband's x-girlfriends wedding on Sept. 27. This is strange because they haven't been keeping in touch. More information after the wedding.

Interview update (and extras)

2008-09-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

I feel that both interviews went well.

The post-doc meeting was not what I expected, but as I said I wasn't sure what to expect. I did learn that, for this post doc, the advisers don't make the decision but that it goes to someone higher up in the hierarchy of the organization.
I learned more about the science and think I sounded fairly educated on the subject and made a good impression. I did hope that this meeting would help me hone in on a good research proposal but I left the meeting feeling more confused. The post doc proposal mentioned two potential study sites, so I thought great I'll focus on these two sites. But in our meeting I was told those likely aren't the best sites and a slough of other sites were mentioned. This is what made me feel less focused.
Later that night I went to the public lecture series where the speaker was one of the co-advisers of the post doc position. She presented some on one of the proposed study sites and I was introduced to her after her talk. She mentioned another site that adviser from earlier did not mention. This is a site I helped established as an undergrad and did my undergrad thesis on data collected from this site. Now I feel good that I'll propose the site I worked on (so I can reference my work on that site) and the site that the public lecture talked about. Both of these sites are well studied and will give me a good base for the proposed research, making my proposal highly doable in the 2 year time period of the post doc.

Secondly I met with a consulting company. This job looks like a lot of fun (and a lot of hard work) and the company does interested work. I could tell the two people interviewing me were impressed and I was told I look like a good fit for the company. They have asked me to come back and give a brown bag seminar. Also, one of the interviewers seemed concerned that I would get bored at this job since I have a Ph.D. I tried to explain that in terms of consulting companies their company does more interesting work than the average company, and that I kind of got swept up in the academic world, i.e. getting my Ph.D. wasn't the end goal but the projects I was working on for my master's was interesting enough to keep me in grad school. This person also asked about post doc positions. I had to be honest and mention the above position I'm applying for. I also said that it is very competitive and I'm still not sure if it is what I want to do. Mentioning that it is only a 2 year position and then I'd again be where I am now, looking for a job.
My main concern about this company is that the main office is ~1.5 hours from my house-with no traffic. They have a field office 2 miles from my house that currently employes two guys plus a third guy who will be starting there shortly. I was told in the interview that they'd like me to work out of the main office for the first year. One of the interviewers said full time and the other said it could be part time main office and part time closer office. I was also told the closer office has a high potential for growth. I wouldn't mind working two days a week out of main office since my husband's grandma lives, alone, about 7 mins from this office. She would enjoy the company and I would reduce my driving time.
BUT I have to make sure this would be clearly stated in my offer, that I would only be required to work 2 days a week out of main office and that in no more than a years time I would be concidered for relcation to closer office.

There are a few other options for work closer to my house but both of these companies don't look as interesting and they currently haven't asked me to interview. I'm not good at negotiations and I'm not good at bluffing bit I hope I can have a few more offers before I feel presured into taking the first job offered to me.

On the other hand, the post doc position, if I get it, won't be annonced until spring and likely wouldn't start until next fall. So, maybe taking the first job offered wouldn't be so bad since I may later decide to leave.

OK-sorry for the long post!! I better get back to working (unpaid) on proposals, talks and manucripts. OH-one more thing. I've been asked to contribute to a special edition of a journal. Yeah for getting one more of my chapters published-with a deadline. The manuscript has to be submitted by mid November.

Unprepared!

2008-08-28T11:38:00.003-05:00

At 3pm today I have a meeting with a PI on a postdoc I want to apply for. I was introduced to the PI by a friend two weeks ago. I feel really unprepared for this meeting and don't know what to expect! The postdoc position has a summary of the position but it is still up to me, under the supervision of the PI, to write an 8 page proposal (due in Nov). Hopefully I don't sound too uneducated during our interview. I have an idea of what I'd like to propose but I still not exactly sure how this process works. If applicants write the proposal under the supervision of the PI then it seems likely that the PI will pick only one or two candidates that he wants to work with. And it seems likely that he has an idea of what the proposal should contain. The summary of the position gives a few suggestions on how to solve this particular question, but one can't do all the suggestions. I think that is where the applicant comes in . . to narrow down what method to use to attempt to solve the question at hand.

Hm, I guess all these questions will get answered in the meeting today. Also, if he doesn't think I'm right for the position than that's fine with me. Tomorrow I have an interview for a consulting firm that does interesting science-opposed to most companies I see who only look interested in the cleaning up contaminated sites.

I would really like the post doc position but the applicants are not announced until spring and I'll need a job until then. Part of me also feels that if I get a career job, verses a post doc, I can start making plans about the future. Like buying a house, having a baby.

What's a gal to do?

Blogger's mom

2008-08-22T10:40:00.002-05:00

While I'm on the subject. . . . on my way to meet up with ScienceGirl I actually stopped by a bloggers house and met her mother and father-and I've never met this blogger before!! That was quite awkward but her parents were so warm and friendly the awkwardness quickly faded. She had us inside for juice and zucchini bread and we left with lemons, plums, applies, peaches, tomatoes and fresh bread.
I hope to visit with them again.

Meeting another blogger.

2008-08-22T10:24:00.002-05:00

As ScienceGirl explained we met for dinner last night and brought our husbands along. I really enjoyed our meet up and was happy we were able to coordinate something before she left this area.

As I was heading back to my house I was thinking about how this meeting was quite different from my other blogger meet up, as described by Mad Hatter. When I met up with Mad Hatter, EcoGeoFemme and Academic it was the four of us. All bloggers. Our conversation was about blogging, other bloggers, the general topics we write about on our blogs and we got to know some about each other and like ScienceGirl said, we got to put a face and a voice to a friendship we already had.

On the other hand when I met with ScienceGirl we both had our husbands with us, both of them (to my knowledge) non-bloggers. Not only had we never met each other but we hadn't even e-mailed with each other's husbands. So what did we talk about? We talked about what most friends do when they meet up for dinner, our jobs (or lack of), graduate school, the cost of living, the weather, weddings, family, ect. It was great. The only reason I started to compare the two meetings was that I was planning on coming home and blogging about the experience but thought, hey we didn't talk about if it was ok to mention that we met and in fact we only briefly talked about blogging at all. I mentioned how I tried to explain to my husband's 87 year old grandma that I did know these people we were meeting for dinner and we weren't really meeting strangers. My husband described ScienceGirl as my penpal.

During the drive home I also thought about other items I wanted to discuss with ScienceGirl. For example, How is her running coming along?
So hopefully her and her husband will come back for another internship, fellowship or full time job and we will be able to have many more face to face meet ups.

Wow, for little ol' me..

2008-08-16T17:30:00.006-05:00

Seeking Academia decided I was deserving of two awards (although I can only get one image to upload).1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog.
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog.

And the nominees are . . .
A lady scientist
A mad tea-party
Arduous
Curiosity killed the cat
I love science, really
Janus professor
Journey of an academic
The happy scientist
Unbalanced reaction

It's official

2008-08-15T11:46:00.002-05:00

The Graduate School accepted my dissertation yesterday! I've even paid the $170 fee so they can't change their minds now :)

I mailed my first CD on Aug. 6. It cost $35 to overnight it and I didn't hear back until Aug. 8. Even though I had met with the grad school in June they still found a formatting error. I hate the details! What was most upsetting was that she wanted me to put my references at the end of the work even though the guidelines specifically state that one can choose to put the references at the end of each chapter or at the end of the document. You know what she told me? Oh, those guidelines are old. What! Why the F have guidelines if they don't mean anything. I also came to notice that these guidelines are 40+ pages while my undergrad institution has, oh, about 6. Why is life more complicated on the East Coast? I convinced her to let me leave my references at the end of each chapter plus I added a bibliography (which was a pain). On Aug. 8 I spent $25 and my dissertation arrived on Aug. 12. But it wasn't until yesterday that I was finally told it was accepted. What a stressful time. It's my own fault for waiting so close to the deadline, which is today.

But it's done! and I will never read it again :)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the home front we have a place of our own that we love. It is a 2 bedroom 2 bath plus garage, in a four plex. We have a bottom unit and an awesome desk and small back yard. We pay $1600 plus utilities. Way expensive, but all the less expensive places were in crappy condition or way to small. A one bedroom would have been fine but we didn't see anything we liked. Also this place has a stackable washer/drier.

Now we need jobs so we can afford this place, and of course so we can afford to buy all the local, organic produce we want, and coffee.
---------------------------------------------------------------
We met my USGS friends for lunch this week. The lab I worked in is hiring a lab manager and my old boss encouraged me to apply. I met with the scientist in her group (a guy I never worked with) who is the one actually hiring for this position. I am excited about the projects he is working on and would love to be in charge of a lab and all the college students that come in and out of it. However, he wants someone with a lot more microbiology than I have. What I have is, um, zero. So he would have to train me on mostly everything before I could train the students. Sounds pretty inefficient. What another women in the lab told me was that this guy wants a microbiology person but my old boss wants a soils person and they have been arguing about what type of person to hire, and this is why my old boss wants me to apply. So she can get her way. Alright by me :) However, I am worried that I won't really like this position if I have to use methods to identify microbial communities. Doesn't sound very exciting to me. But I'm applying and what "other women" said was that if I make the first cut I can ask to be shown more about the methods and see if I would enjoy the work.

I am also applying for a USGS postdoc. I met informally with the PI this week and he seems really nice and said encouraging things. We will meet formally at the end of the month after I can read some of his publications and think a little about a proposal for the project he has. I didn't have anything exciting to say our first visit but that, um, I think your project is cool :) and I told him very briefly what I do. It was good that someone I use to work with and that has coauthored with him brought me to his office for the introduction.

I've been sending my resume out to consulting companies and been getting people I know to forward my information around. Everyone I've talked to has been impressed but don't have jobs. So now I'm trying to apply to companies that have job openings, where the first round of resumes where through people I know.

I'm hopeful. There are opportunities around and I'm staying busy searching for jobs and working on manuscripts.

OH, I can't believe I almost forgot. I got a publication accepted. I just need to approve the proofs and it will be complete. I have to admit I wasn't very ethical when I did the revisions. I never let my adviser see the publication. We did talk about the suggested changes and I showed him some plots I made from the model the reviewer suggested we used. Even though I feel a little bad about this, the total time for revision was only 2 weeks and I'm certain it would have been longer had he read the changes. Will my manuscript karma be ruined now?

Food

2008-08-11T16:07:00.002-05:00

I've always really loved food. Once in college I started buying my own food and making educated decisions about what was good to buy, for my body and for the earth.

I'm not good at remembering how much I paid for the local, organic strawberries (for example). I just buy them and love them and feel good about my purchase. I've mostly shopped with my stomach and conscious than my wallet.

I've never had sympathy for people who say they can't afford organic or local products. However, moving back to home state where both my husband and I are unemployed is a very humbling experience and I will never again judge people who say they can't afford this or that.

Fortunately we have a few choices of farmers markets to go to and some great local grocery stores. The choices here for organic and sustainable are vast. But sadly shopping now feels like a chore since I have to try and keep a running tally in my head of how much things cost. Hm, we paid $2.99 for local-ish, organic strawberries at the local grocery store but here at the farmers market they are $4 and look smaller. I HATE doing this. I really miss going shopping and just buying what I love.

We also loved to go out to eat and there are so many great restaurants in this town. It's also a fun social event to go grab a cup of coffee or some beer with friends.
I haven't been drinking coffee! We have so much tea, from my husband's obsession, that I've been drinking tea to save money.

I thought this post would be more reflective on my humbling experience of how hard it is on a fixed budget to buy good food but with that coffee statement it sounds more like whining.
Our main goal is to try to stay with very unprocessed foods and I think we should manage to stay within a small budget for two people.
What is really motivating us to find jobs, besides the desire to work, is our $1600 a month rent price!

Revisions

2008-07-30T21:17:00.002-05:00

The final draft of my dissertation is due on Aug. 15. I was hoping to have it finished by Aug. 1 but minus a miracle I'm guessing that won't happen. So my new goal is Aug. 6. I only have to give it a special name, burn it to a CD and FedEx it overnight to the East Coast. Of course this is once I'm finished with corrections. I talked with the grad school when I was there last and was told a few formatting mistakes I had. I'm guessing that there will be no further formatting mistakes and it will be ready for submission. But I do want to give myself a few days before the deadline in case I need to mail another copy.

So why haven't I finished the revisions yet? Come on, it's been a month since I defended. Well, I've been busy. I resubmitted a manuscript, which seemed more important. I found a place to live, and will move in on Aug. 1. Less importantly I've visited with family and friends, went to a wedding, went camping and have been enjoying the west coast sun with lots of outside activities.

All I need to do is beef up the conclusion sections of my chapters but we all know how much I LOVE to write. So I sit and look at my dissertation and then decide to look at job ads instead.

I think that a conclusion should not just summarize the results but the discussion section ties my research with other studies so then what should go in the conclusions? Something about the big picture or larger implications. Well maybe my studies aren't that exciting because I can't think of what to write.

So . . .
Aug. 1 Move into new place
Aug. 5 Take mom to hospital for back surgery (likely in the hospital for one day)
Aug. 6 Mail away dissertation (cross fingers)
Aug. 15 No longer a student (if I get my dissertation turned in)

Dear Friends

2008-07-19T15:31:00.002-05:00

I really miss the time we use to spend together. I use to sit in my home office in the Midwest and learn about all the good and difficult times in your lives. I related a lot to what was written and somehow started to feel less lonely even though I was all alone in the Midwest. I also told stories of my own and felt comforted by the comments you left.

Being back in my home state I'm now surrounded by people; old friends and family. I'm also overwhelmed by living at my mom's house and with having work to be done but being very busy finding a place to live* and searching for a job and catching up with old friends, again trying to do all of this living in my mom's small house.

I feel like our friendship is getting distance. I know I need to put more effort into it but fear I do not have time, or as much as the "need" for the comfort of sharing stories. I know this need is still here but it is masked by how busy my life currently is.

Please be patient with me. I'm guessing once I move into my own place and get settled I will have more time to upkeep our friendship.

*Looks like we found a really nice place to rent. We are having trouble finding a good time to give the landlord our deposit but hopefully that will happen this evening. She has been super busy. Once we give her money I will feel better. The unit is available Aug. 1st and is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath in a four plex tucked away from the road and the back yard backs into a gulch. It also has a small detached garage and a washer/dryer in the unit. More on all of this once we move in.

Another quick one

2008-07-09T11:26:00.002-05:00

Still homeless and jobless
Going to a conference on Friday, hopefully will make contacts
Made a contact with someone at a local water authority. He suggested I contact someone else and ask to be the speaker and a regional meeting. Waiting to hear back.
Rent prices are expensive
Have a few appointments to look at places tomorrow
Did a brief scan of most of your blog entries
Miss the blogsphere but not a lot of excess time on the internet
Hopefully will finish (new) resubmit today
Goal to finish dissertation revisions by Aug. 1st. Dissertation is due on Aug. 15
Would like to have a house to work in, oh well. My mom's couch is working ok.

Quick Catch Up

2008-07-03T02:00:00.002-05:00

On west coast now.
Husband drove the whole way. We went over 2000 miles in two days, stopping in Wyoming Monday night to sleep from 11pm to 5am.
Feel like I'm on vacation but really would like to find a place to live, resubmit (and submit) manuscripts and finish revised dissertation
Heard back about one manuscript (1-P), had to e-mail and bug the editor, has been accepted with minor revisions that I should be able to accomplish in a day. I'm excited.
Wanted to talk about long awaited resubmit (manuscript 0) with adviser during trip last week but he never got around to reading all of it. He did say that everything up to the result section looks great.
Will likely not be reading 85 entries in google reader
Husband and I should have time tomorrow to call and make appointments to view rentals this week-end or Monday.
Today we visited with family/friends, went to spa for hot tub and sauna and went to farmers' market
I don't feel like a doctor yet, even though everyone is congratulating me.
It was sad to leave dissertation town last week
I'm upset with POD's because there are all these underlying charges, like an admin fee for $200, when I was certain I asked the women on the phone if the price she quoted me was a total/final/tax included price. Of course it's not. Of course I have no written record of this so I don't feel like I can call and complain. We likely would have still went with this option but I'm pissy that what I thought would cost $3500 is going to be $4500.
Internet will be sporadic. I found out Saturday the wireless card in my laptop is not working and we don't know why. Need to get this fixed.
I'm exhausted.
Can't wait to be settled.

Dr. Jennie

2008-06-27T15:36:00.002-05:00

What fun.

My defense talk was around 15 mins. I had timed it at 20 but my normal talking speed exponentially increased. People don't complain about short talks but it would have been nice to include a few slides I left out because my talk was initially 45 mins. 20-30min is a decent length in my department. At my preliminary defense the chair of my committee commended me on my short talk.

A professor came up to me afterwards and said I did a great job explaining everything. He said one always worries about going to a talk that isn't their field and having everything go over their head but my data was well explained. I left out 99% of my methods, which I think it the part that can get confusing, and for my data it wasn't very important how the values were measured.

The closed committee part was great. It was a lot of fun to hear what everyone thought of my work and I feel I had good answers to their questions.

The outside member had a lot of comments that he said may not be necessary for the thesis but will be an issue for publication. In general I need to buff up the conclusion sections of all chapters and better describe the research objectives. I have until Aug. 15th to accomplish this. The final copy will be on a CD and I can directly mail that to the graduate school.

Tonight is a party at my advisers house that pretty much everyone I've talked to can't go to. Fun. Then I fly out early tomorrow and hopefully get on the road west on Monday.

It feels good to have this accomplished although I don't think I'll feel official until I've mailed in the dissertation.

Tomorrow

2008-06-26T12:37:00.003-05:00

I feel nervous that I don't feel more nervous for my defense tomorrow. It will likely hit me when I wake up in the morning. However, I'm picking up my outside committee member in the morning and we are having breakfast at 8am so hopefully that will keep me distracted until 9am and then the talk starts at 10am.

I'm still futzing with the talk but I think that will go ok and I'm pretty excited to hear what the committee members have to say about my research.

Do you see the problem?

2008-06-23T22:17:00.003-05:00

EcoGeoFemme made an interesting post about reading journal articles. The comments linked to a post from Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde.

I'm not going to summarize the post but you can go read them, what I want to point out is, um, let's call it irony. It seems that many scientist don't particularly enjoy the writing process. Some folks love it but I think many see it as a necessary evil. From the posts I've read on writing and now these on reading this is the process of events I see occurring to which I think a revolution needs to occur to change the process.

1. Scientist comes up with great idea* and does field/lab work** and has a lot of fun.
2. Scientist spends grueling hours trying to make an outline and eventually writes a first draft of a manuscript
3. Scientist has to try to incorporate ridiculous comments by co-authors
4. Scientist waits a long time for co-authors to read second draft (repeat steps 3 and 4 as necessary)
5. Scientist submits manuscript and waits a long time for revisions
6. Scientist makes revisions (or submits to new journal) of manuscript
7. Scientist finally gets paper published and feels on top of the world, decides that writing papers is the best part of science.
8. Scientist #2 reads abstract of Scientist's paper and thinks paper is interesting.
9. #2 prints article
10. Article sits on desk, then gets dusty, then gets moved a few places in the office, then gets put in the book bag and taken to coffee shop, then goes back on the desk.
11. #2 decides that there is just no time to read article
12. Enough guilt has ensued that #2 reads article

repeat

So it seems that all this agony and effort is put into a piece of work that no one feels they have the time to read. I find this depressing and think there has to be some way to make journal articles easier to read or the process of writing less labor intensive.

*I understand that one has to read articles to come up with an idea so you can see I don't necessarily start at the beginning
** I know field/lab work isn't always fun but my feeling is that most people enjoy this stage the most

Confession Week 3

2008-06-23T22:00:00.002-05:00

As part of the No Eating Out Challenge I am having weekly confessions. This was week 3.
It's been a bad week.

Husband and I went to dinner Thurs. with friends. This was my allowable eating out. I did, however, have two social food encounters this week that involved eating at a home-these don't count as eating out but they as just as much fun.

Then this week-end went all downhill.
Friday my three friends from dissertation town arrived. We had pizza for lunch and I later realized we never ate dinner but I drank enough alcohol to make up for that. In fact I drank so much Friday that I didn't drink the rest of the week-end. Saturday we had a bbq in the parking lot of the stadium that the rugby tournament was at. I bought a water and gatorade in the stadium because it turned out to be a really hot day and they don't allow you to bring things in. Then we all went out to dinner. Sunday I offered to make eggs but we ended up going out to lunch at Subway and then I ate dinner at the airport. Blah.
So for those counting I ate out FOUR EXTRA TIMES THIS WEEK, plus a few too many beverages, plus an ice cream purchase Monday.

What a failure.

This week I'm in dissertation town and I ate out for lunch already. I didn't have any food to bring to the conference for lunch so I went to a local dinner with my adviser and two of his other students that I know but wouldn't call part of my group/lab. I was able to have oatmeal for breakfast since I still had some in my office and I made a trip to Trader Joes so I had microwave mexican for dinner. I am proud that the people I'm staying with wanted to order pizza and I refused. So they ate their leftovers and I microwaved my dinner. I had the excuses that I was tired of eating out-which was so true. I wonder if this week away from home could be any worse than last week . . . . you will have to wait until next Sunday to see.

Confession Week 2

2008-06-16T10:15:00.004-05:00

As part of the No Eating Out Challenge I am having weekly confessions. Week 2 just ended.

It went well with the eating out part, however my grocery challenge didn't do so well.

Thursday night my husband and I went to dinner with a friend. It was fun. We also found out she got a professor position at a University in Canada she is excited about. The three of us shared a bottle of wine and a tiramisu dessert.
That was my once a week allowable eating out event. I wanted to go to the Indian Buffet on Sunday but my husband didn't want to. He saved me this week because that would have been eating out #2, not allowable.

As for grocery shopping both Tuesday and Wednesday I went to the store and bought a half pint of ice cream, which I promptly ate after purchasing. I have to admit the hardest part of the challenge is resisting the urge to go to the store and buy something sweet to eat. Last week I faltered twice but the craving was there every day of the week.

This week I have two lunch/dinner plans but one is at my house and the other at a friends house, so I won't be eating out.
Friday three of my friends are arriving for a visit. I imagine we may eat out more than once. Friday we are going to the city and it could be that only lunch will be eaten out. Saturday is a huge rugby match near by and we will be having a bbq in the parking lot so I maybe able to go all day without eating out. However, I doubt I'll be sticking to a two drink minimum.

It is Official!

2008-06-13T07:09:00.004-05:00

At 10am Friday the 27th I will be defending my dissertation.

I was sweating a little because my outside committee member needed to book his plane ticket but the chair of the committee was out of town. The outside committee member went ahead and started a dialog about a day and time and my adviser said let's go with this day and time even though the chair had never responded to the e-mails. Well the chair e-mailed this morning (or last night) and said sorry she hadn't responded and that the time worked for her. Yeah!!
Now, as long as I pass I can go to the West Coast a happy person.

------------------------------------
Again, thanks for the comments. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks the co-authors need to approve a manuscript before submission (silly husband).

I do think part of my funk is working from home in the Midwest. I don't think all of it is due to being away from the department. I think department activities would suck up time and possible make me take longer. However, I do miss social interactions. So I think missing the department would be ok if I had more friends in this area to hang out with. This is why I talk EcoGeoFemme's ear off every time we meet for lunch.

And I should get more excited about new projects. Good idea. I don't know what I'll be doing when we move and there are no positions right now I'm excited about but I should just dive back into the literature and see what's hot. Maybe read the -ology of where I will be living.

Update

2008-06-11T18:36:00.002-05:00

Thanks for all the comments on the last post. What started as a surprising result to an internet quiz turned into me lamenting again about writing. It is easy to do, I guess.

To answer unbalanced reaction's question. I have one publication in an obscure and local journal. It's nothing I feel very proud of. It got rejected from two other journals before we gave up and submitted to the local journal. The letter said it was peer reviewed but I didn't get any comments from reviewers about it. I have a lot of non peer reviewed items on my CV, a few government reports of which I'm first author on one of them and about one and a half pages of conference proceedings and I'm first author on 90% of them. I didn't do any collaborating as a graduate student so I didn't get a change to "share" publications with people (including my adviser who does none of his own research anymore).

I also wanted to clarify that I mostly enjoy the beginning stages of a manuscript. The organizing and coming up with what to plot and what to talk about. I dislike the review stage and not so much the journal review stage (since not many of my papers have even made it this far I don't have a good idea of this stage) but the adviser review stage. It's long and drawn out and I don't always agree with my adviser. I just want to get the papers submitted so they get to go through the "real" review.

What has inspired me to write today is my husband. He has been telling me that I need to get into a better mood. That I have nothing to complain about. It's like what Candid Engineer said in the comments, I need to have a good attitude (to paraphrase).

I've been in a funk for the past couple of months (maybe counting nine now) and I don't know how to get out. I've always been that person who looks at the brighter side of life. The go getter. The happy girl.
Maybe I put on that persona for too long now I can't hold it up any longer?
Maybe I truly just don't feel that way anymore?
Maybe I'm just being lazy?

I think it's the lazy part. I think my adviser has taught me that things take forever so why rush them. But maybe that is me being lazy again and blaming my laziness on someone else.

I've been doing this food challenge in hopes of helping me loose weight by not buying junk food. Well, both Wed. and Thus. I went to the grocery store and bought a pint of ice cream and ate the whole pint in one sitting. *Sigh*
I need to loose 20 lbs and just can't seem to do it. Even when I think I'm having a great week the scale doesn't show any difference. *Sigh* Ok this post is getting depressing.

What I want to say is that I need to have a better attitude on everything not only for my own mental sanity but for the sanity of my marriage. My husband also has a lot he is going through but he stays strong and it doesn't help for him to come home to a gloomy household.

He also keeps telling me that I need to submit manuscripts without worrying about my coauthors. This seems unethical to me.

My feelings of depression this week come from lack of direction. I have two talks I'm working on: conference talk and dissertation talk. Other that this I don't know what I should be doing!! I sent my adviser, what I feel is a final draft of our resubmit and then what. Should I be working on making the chapters into manuscripts? If so how? The chapters are in pretty good shape from my end I feel I need the coauthors (or committee) to give me comments for improvement. Or should I just prepare and submit one without any one knowing?

[thanks for reading this long post, which I feel likely lacks a theme or direction]

Holy Crap

2008-06-09T18:43:00.002-05:00

I was going to write a post about how I'm bored with my research when I saw this Quiz at Propter Doc and decided to give it a go.

You Should Get a PhD in Science (like chemistry, math, or engineering)

You're both smart and innovative when it comes to ideas.

Maybe you'll find a cure for cancer - or develop the latest underground drug.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

This is just scary. So much over the past year I've thought that maybe a Ph.D. was a waste of my time, that maybe I'm only cut out to do other peoples research and that I'm so bored of sitting at my desk and thinking and writing.

I'm still working on the resubmit. I'm going to discuss it with my adviser tomorrow but I don't think it needs anything more. I'm sure he will disagree. It is this paper that I'm mostly bored with.

I still have a letter in review. We submitted it as a letter because those are suppose to have quick turnaround time. We submitted it in early February.

There are two chapters of my dissertation (besides the letter) that I believe are important to the scientific community and would like to submit. There is another chapter that is exciting but I'm not sure I have enough data to warrant a manuscript. Then there are two other chapters that I could give a crap about. This makes me sad. I also feel that the two chapter worthy of publication (in my eyes) will take too much time and thus frustration to polish up for journals. One of them I've been trying to submit since December but there has been so many revisions we decided to just call it quits until the defense.

I've spent so much time with this data. Designing the projects. Executing the field work and lab work. Thinking about the data. Collecting more data. Presenting it at conferences.
I HAVE LOVED ALL OF THESE STEPS.
Then I got to sit in my house all alone for 10 months and write, and write some more, and have my adviser tell me we need more data, or that we need to reinterpret the data.

Argh. During this process I've become less and less in love with my research. It is more like the red headed step child (sorry if you are red headed, but you get the analogy). I just want to ship it off to boarding school and move on with my life.

But I've discussed this before. Is this process of writing the same for everyone? with all advisers? am I just a horrible writer? am I not a dedicated scientist? I don't know. What I do know is that I hate this feeling of boredom. This lack of focus. It makes me unhappy. This makes me then eat and drink more than I should, which makes me fat, which makes me lazy and then, yes, more unhappy.

*Sigh*

Week 1-Confessions

2008-06-08T10:31:00.002-05:00

As part of the No Eating Out Challenge I am having weekly confessions. Today is the last day of the first week so if I falter between now and falling asleep I'll have to amend my confession.

I did very well with the eating out rule.
1. We are allowed to eat out once a week as a social outing. This means that it has to include more than just yourself or yourself and your significant other.

My husband and I went out to dinner only once this week, on Friday, with the couple that we hang out with here. We celebrated that I turned in my dissertation on Monday. I stuck with my two drink minimum for dinner and my husband and I shared some bread pudding. Yum! Then the four of us walked around the town. There was a car show and a band playing. We then decided to hit up the wine bar and we shared a bottle of wine. So, technically I exceeded by two drink minimum. :(

I almost broke the challenge by going out to eat on Saturday with my husband to celebrate our 5-yr anniversary. We had gone grocery shopping that day and I thought it would be nice to stay home and eat. So we did. And it was so much fun. We watched a Hitchcock movie, made Phai Tai, drank the bottle of sparkle wine we got a local winery last month, and we got to stay in our comfy clothes and just chill out. My husband and I are true homebodies.

My last confession is at the grocery store. It was Tuesday or Wed. and I bought a chocolate muffin and a donut. I really desired the yummy chocolate and the carbs. *Sigh* So that broke my Rule B, but I'm not that disappointed about it because it was only once. In previous months I would do this multiple times a week.

I'm going to Trader Joes today so hopefully I'll stick to my list and not have to confess anything more.

How did you do this week?

Give away

2008-06-06T11:58:00.002-05:00

A women just left my house. She took my Target bookshelf, office swivel chair (i'm now sitting on my balance ball), office supplies, random kitchen things, a magnetic dart board (cheesy kind) and my box full of goodwill clothes (mens and women). When she was leaving she was talking about eating on styrofoam plates which reminded me that I still have plastic plates, cups, bowls and silverware that we used/reused when we first moved here. I gave those to her as well. After she left I was sad I didn't offer her all of my half used bathroom items such like aspirin, Mylanta, some lotions, ect.

You maybe saying, Jennie she isn't your dumping ground I'm sure she wouldn't take half used bathroom supplies.
And you would say that because you don't know the background of this women. We met via craigslist because I posted about my bookshelf and chair. It seems in the 30 mins we were together I learned her entire life history, the abridged version.

Recently her apartment caught on fire. It was electrical and she had been complaining to the land (slum) lord about the problem for months. Her microwave caught on fire which wasn't enough to get the landlord to fix the issue. Then, one night when she and her family were home sleeping the entire complex caught on fire and after she tried to put it out and couldn't she had to get her <6yr old son and daughter out of the place then carry her husband who is in a wheelchair down the stairs.

Her husband is in a wheelchair because a few years ago on their sons birthday he was outside fixing the tire on their car and heard another car pull up. As he stood up to see what was happening he got in between a fight that ended with a gunshot in his spine. Paralyzed for life.

She told me that she moved around a lot as a kid because her dad was a good for nothing alcoholic and that she isn't very close to her mother and that she is the black sheep of the family because she is really the only one that turned out half way decent.

She had such a positive outlook on life. She now lives in a decent neighborhood where a pastor runs the apartment complex and gave her the position of apartment manager which takes off money from her rent check. She just has an empty apartment.

I was sad I gave away my books already because she said her and her son love to read.

She also keep saying how much God has blessed her. She asked if I believe in God and I had to say most of the time. So we talked a little about our faith.

I don't have a lot of reflection about this post. I mostly wanted to share my experience.

I still can't help looking around at my things wondering what else I should have given her.

Woot!!

2008-06-02T12:07:00.002-05:00

Step 1) Give dissertation to committee members. CHECK

Yes, I just e-mailed my dissertation, all 136 pages and 7 chapters to my five committee members. It was so nerve racking. I kept thinking, “I should read through it one more time.” However, I don’t think my brain could pick up any more grammar or editing errors. The dissertation needs fresh eyes. I’m very happy with the content but I’m extremely nervous about careless errors. I don’t want my committee to think I’m careless.

But it’s in the past, now I need to focus on the future.

Step 2) Make power point presentation. Needs to be 20-30 mins long. I love this part and am not too worried about it.

Step 3a) Cross fingers and hope committee is on top of things and will chose June 26 or 27 like we previously discussed. Otherwise I will have to fly to dissertation town after I move out west.

Step 3b) Fly to dissertation town.

Step 4a) Defend dissertation.

Step 4b) Hopefully pass and celebrate.

Step 5a) Make suggested revisions.

Step 5b) Turn in dissertation to graduate school by Aug. 15^th. I’ll need to double check with the graduate school about all the requirements since I won’t be handing in my final copy but my adviser will. I will need to make a folder with all such paperwork and tack it up to advisers wall so he won’t loose it. My school now does electronic submission so I’ll probably burn the CD’s myself and FedEx them to adviser.

Step 6) Pass out.

I know list are boring but I need to get all of this out of my head.

Additionally this month I need to

WORK RELATED

1) Make power point for conference in dissertation area June 23/24^th. I’ve given a similar talk elsewhere so I’m not worried about this. P.S. if my defense date isn’t June 26/27 I am withdrawing from the conference since I don’t want to pay to fly to dissertation town twice this summer. My adviser could just give the talk.

2) I’d like to sort out all the references in my dissertation and make sure I’m fully acquainted with them.

3) Apply for a few internships, job stuff***

MOVE RELATED

4) We need boxes. This was a worry but I think this is covered now. I’m not too stressed about packing because we have sorted through our belongs pretty well.

5) Sell my desk. It hasn’t been very popular on craigslist and I’m attached enough to it that I don’t want to give it away to someone unknown. I’m still posting ads and if it comes down to it not fitting in our POD I guess donation will have to work. No one has been interested in our guest bed. I even posted an ad at my husbands job. So we are moving that to give to my sister. She sleeps on a twin and this is a full size and the frame has four drawers for storage.

6) Do change/forward of addresses and transfer of utilities. I should start that today.

There maybe more but I’m going to try not to worry.

*** Husband has a temp. job where we are moving to. A friend of a friend of a friend (that's all) owns a consulting company there. My husband has been e-mailing with him and it turns out the company got a new piece of equipment that they'd like help on. The company knows my husband will likely be going back to school and that this might not be a long term position so it's great they are willing to invest time training my husband despite this.

I'm also happy that it means we will have some type of income when we moved, plus I'm still paid as a student until Aug. 15th.

June-no eating out challenge

2008-05-20T12:22:00.005-05:00

Inspired by the April Buy Nothing Challenge Amanda from A Lady Scientist and I have decided to declare June as our no eating out contest.

I noticed during April that I didn't really desire to purchase goods, except the birthday present for my sister. I did buy a whole lot of food! Part of eating out that month was that I traveled to home state and dissertation state. But I notice, as I track my monthly spending, that a large portion of my income goes to food, roughly 13-20% of our total monthly income. This includes grocery, alcohol and eating out. On average 8% is just from eating out.

The goals of this challenge is to spend less and to hopefully eat less calorie-rich foods. I often leave the house only to purchase a muffin, ice cream or chocolate and recently I've been craving cheese. I call these my Ph.D. foods.

All challenges must have rules and this is what Amanda and I decided (she'll comment if I get something wrong or leave something out)

1. We are allowed to eat out once a week as a social outing. This means that it has to include more than just yourself or yourself and your significant other. June begins on a Sunday so the week will be Sunday to Saturday. Eating out counts even if you don't have to pay for it.

Actually that's it. That is the main rule. I've added some personal rules for myself, see below, and I encourage you to do the same. Also, let me know if you plan on participating. I like that Crunchy Chicken did weekly confessions. I'll do those as well.

My Rules.
A. When I eat out I'm only allowed two drinks and NO dessert. However, I can sneak a bite of someone else's dessert.

B. When at the grocery store I'm only allowed to purchase fruits, vegetables, milk (soy/rice) and juice. The grocery store was my supplier of ice cream and chocolate. Also I'm moving in a month so I need to empty my cupboards of grains. Once the pasta is eaten I'll finally have to finish that box of quinoa.

June is a difficult month for me and Amanda. I'm traveling to dissertation state the last week in June. Amanda's Dr. Man is moving. However, we laugh in the face of the challenge and say bring it on difficult task.
(At least we say that now, wait for the confessions)

Significant Figures

2008-05-19T14:20:00.002-05:00

I just tried on some of my summer capri pants and none of them fit over my butt, and if they did I'm certain they won't button. *Sigh* But those aren't the significant figures I wanted to discuss today.

I'm just going to do as my adviser suggest but I wanted to see what everyone's opinion was on significant figures.

I'm going to run through some thought experiments. Hope they make sense.

I measure a sample and get the value 10 with an error of 10%. This is 10 (+/-) 1. Significant figures all well and good. Then I measure another sample and get 5 with the same error. This is 5 +/- 0.5. But with sig figs it's 5.3 +/- 0.5. All good and agreeable.
Now say I want to put these two numbers in a table
10 +/- 1
5.3 +/- 0.5

I hate this. I want all my numbers to have the same amount of numbers after the decimal. Am I just being neurotic or does anyone else have this need for constancy?

Next, I analyze 25 samples and the average value is 10 but the standard deviation (or standard error) is 0.3 but the error of each analysis is 10%. I wouldn't want to round my standard deviation, so shouldn't my average value be allowed one more decimal place? My adviser says no but my organized self says YES I want all my numbers to have the same amount of decimal places.

Letter about a post-doc

2008-05-17T13:33:00.002-05:00

I'm hoping for some advice here. I've read posts about improperly worded and/or misinformed e-mails from students wanting to do graduate work with Sciencewomen or Female Science Professor but I can't recall reading anything about a post doc inquiry.

There are a few professors in the area I'll be moving near that I'd like to work with, however what I do now and what I'd like to do with them is not completely related. Since I feel pressed for time I'm curious how much I should know about their subject material before I send an e-mail. What if I never hear back from them, what if they don't want a post-doc or what if they don't want me? Should I spend a week reading all their manuscripts before the e-mail just to be shot down? Or can I do some quick searches, read abstracts, and get a basic understanding in a day or two and then I can learn more if they are interested.

Should my e-mail be basic such as,

Dr. Last Name,

I am interesting in the research you perform doing X and would like to discuss any opportunity you may have for a post-doctoral position. I would also be willing to collaborate on a proposal for this project. (and maybe something about how I found their research, if applicable)

I'm studying contaminants of perfectionism in my thesis adviser at Dissertation University working with Dr. Old Slow, and will be completing my Ph.D. this August. These are my skills that I think would be useful to your research.

Thank you for your time,
hopeful student

OR do I need to be more specific about project X

There was a women I wanted to e-mail last week but then I noticed that her current grad student has more publications than me :(

I would rather not solicit like this but I'm in between a lot of the major fellowship opportunities right now. Although most of the ads I see that I'm interested in are not near where I'll be living.

I got an e-mail last week about a fellowship opportunity but the deadline is June 6th, the day I'd like to turn in my dissertation. I'm not sure that in three weeks I can find a sponsor and come up with a 12 page proposal.

So even though I'd like to get some e-mails out there I think my best best is to try to find a part-time teaching gig for the fall so that I can also spend time finishing my publications from my dissertation and writing fellowship proposals.

But this is today, maybe tomorrow I'll be interesting in a consulting position again.

Studying contaminants of perfectionism in my thesis adviser.

2008-05-13T14:05:00.002-05:00

I love Janus Professor's idea for my dissertation title. I wanted to share it with everyone, i.e. the title of this post. I laughed out loud.

I also wanted to thank everyone who commented on my last two posts. It helps to have a support system out there on the internets'.

Also, re: JP's comment. My adviser does care a lot about my research. At times when I get depressed I think, well, at least one more person cares about this data, a lot!

My adviser has been very supportive this past week. Sunday night we e-mailed back and forth. To summarize, I told him more of my despair and that I was wondering how much of all this was worth it.
He said that working away from the department must be more difficult that we initially suspected.
No, I said, it's the lack of knowing where the end is that's depressing.

After threatening (in so many words) to quit I get two manuscript back this week!! Yeah!
We just finished our weekly meeting, via Skype, and only had time to talk about one of the manuscripts until he had to go to another meeting. I wanted to discuss more about our e-mails and talk about meeting my deadline again but we didn't get to that. I may call him later this week.

The first thing I said in our meeting was, "wow you have been busy. Thank you for reading so much."
At the end of the meeting I asked what he was going to read next. He is afraid to go back to the manuscript that I freaked out about (that set off the sunday e-mails), so he's reading another chapter that he hasn't read yet. Once he's read this he will actually have read all my chapters. This is great.
I'm feeling more confident about meeting my June 6th deadline of submitting to my committee. I think my adviser might not be satisfied with all my chapters by then but seeing that he can give me more comments after the defense I'll feel confident putting something together for the committee.

I also feel like I have a good list of things to do now. Previously I would have one or two things and mostly be waiting for comments from him.

Today is a good day.

Dissertation links, ect.

2008-05-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

I found this cool dissertation calculator. It's too late for me to use it as it maps out a schedule from start to finish but someone else may find it useful. Each step also has helpful advice and links for further information. I wish I had one four years ago.

I read this page and it was uplifting and motivating. Some of highlights:

I love how it suggests reading your advisers dissertation so you can see how much it sucks (paraphrase).

This paragraph was liberating
"Many, many people lead happy, fulfilling lives, build lucrative and rewarding careers, make important contributions to knowledge, share interesting ideas with others, and generally get along just fine without three letters after their names. Deciding not to continue with a Ph.D. does not mean that you have "quit" or that others who remain in the program are smarter, more driven, or more virtuous than you are. It also does not mean that you have wasted the time and money that you invested in the degree up to the ABD (all but dissertation) stage. It may simply mean that after considering your own personal motivations and goals, you decided this career choice wasn't for you—and that you plan to use the skills you honed as a graduate student in other ways that are more suited to you."

This paragraph makes me feel less guilty about taking a day trip tomorrow and makes me want to work out more.
"Be reasonable. A lot of people beat themselves up with expectations to work 10 or 12 hours a day—many people recommend a max. of 4 or 5 hours. You simply can't write productively all day long and trying will just burn you out. Schedule in breaks and time for procrastination. Your brain needs a rest every now and then—better to schedule one than to have your brain mutiny on you and take one anyway."
Mutiny!!
___________________________________________________________
Technically my dissertation is written. I have six chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion chapter plus an Appendix that list all my data for anyone interested in looking at it in a different way later. All of these sections now have a completed draft. Each of these chapters has been read by someone else. So, my dissertation is more than just at draft phase . . . . I’m pretty happy with all my chapters. However, my adviser has only read two of these chapters. One of them we have submitted and the other one he made revisions and suggestions, which I took two days to fix and send back . . . with no further reading on his part. He is currently working on a third chapter and, via e-mail has told me that it has a lot that needs to be fixed, even though this same chapter came back from the co-author with minimal revisions. The co-author, by the way, has published and co-authors dozens of manuscripts on this particular contaminant.

The months of revisions I feel that is ahead of me makes me depressed and not excited that all chapters have been written. I went through 12 iterations of my master’s thesis with this adviser, and as previously mentioned we have been working on one manuscript for four years. By the way he’s requested I do more lab analysis for that never ending manuscript. The reviewers didn’t suggest more lab work. *Sigh*

-------Although I contemplate quitting because getting a Ph.D. may just not be in my life plan I have come up with what I think is a better solution . . . cutting out chapters of my Ph.D.

The title of my dissertation is, in essence, "Studying contaminants X and Y in an important environment in a specific study area." I worked on X for my master's thesis and have continued as part of my dissertation but focused mostly on Y for my dissertation. If I cut X out of the title then I can cut out two chapters of my dissertation. Granted these chapters have already been written but not including them in my dissertation means that my adviser won't have to read them before I defend.

One of the “cut” chapters will be best as a report to our funding agency. The other chapter was a bonus use of my data that was never part of my initial plan but seemed like a cool thing to do as I read through the literature. It would be the first analysis of this type of data for my study area. Possibly publishable but it’s also possible that I could care less.

To summarize I want my life back. I feel like I’m under some evil spell of my adviser. I also wonder why he hasn’t published on this type of information with his previous students. I use to think it was because they were master’s students but now I just think he is unreasonable. But maybe it’s me, maybe I’m lazy and not the type of person who can publish.

I'm hungry

2008-04-30T13:34:00.002-05:00

Some of you may have remembered that my adviser once told me that writing a manuscript is like making fine wine . . . . it needs to age.

Well today he sent me a very cute e-mail

I have been trying to think of a good analogy for a manuscript to make you feel better about the last stages.

Try this,
The most fun of making a wedding cake is probably the decoration at the end to make it look really nice. Up to now you have been making and baking the cake. In the end one wants a great tasting and great looking cake*.

So wine and cake, I'm ready for a party!

*in my response to him I said, among other things, that we have changed the recipe for this cake a lot since we started four years ago.

Books

2008-04-30T13:31:00.001-05:00

Since I’m moving I’ve been trying to weed through the items I truly need and those which are dispensable. Pretty much everything I own can be replaced but should it? I had a conversation last night that convinced my husband that some items aren’t worth the cost of moving. Although after discussing the two tall lamps we have in the living room, we decided to keep them. One issue we have is that we don’t have jobs yet and don’t feel we will have a disposable income to repurchased everything. What if we will need light in the new house :)

The second issue is that we don’t know where we will be living. Will there be room for both futons and our new, huge, sectional couch? Should I keep my two desks? They are great now for my home office but will I have a home office at new location? I have to give back my desktop to my department and will only have my laptop so do I need two desks? One desk was a gift for my high school graduation, it’s had lots of drawers but it is big and bulky although not very roomy. The second desk was $60 at Ikea with no drawers but is so roomy, one can really spread out and work on it, even with my printer and desktop taking up space.

To address the title of the post; I have books that I keep meaning to reread that I’ve had since high school and college. How does one decided to keep a book or not? My husband and I have decided to get rid of our textbooks from undergrad. We use the internet to look up items more than these books and if we were to ever teach a course in them we would just get the newest book (I’m keeping all my notes and assignments from college). In addition, I’m keeping all my graduate school text books.

I have a lot of social studies, women studies and humanity text books from my undergrad education that I loved and were thought provoking. In addition I have this great environmental ethics book and a science theory book, not written by scientists but by theologians. I also have books that were given to me as gifts, it seems wrong to get rid of them.

Did you know that I own four bibles! Four! One was given to me by my grandma haphazardly. She said she bought it for my cousin but bought her a different one instead. So I took it, and it was right when I started going back to church in college. I have a one a day bible. It divides the bible into short passages that if one reads a passage everyday you can read the whole bible in a year. I have a marriage devotional bible that my husband’s uncle gave us (never read). I also have a living bible that has commentaries and historical information about most passages. It has been at least one year since I’ve read any of these. Do I need four bibles? NO! but I just can’t seem to part with any of these.

What I’m looking for here is some support. Why should I or shouldn’t I keep a book?

Perspective

2008-04-29T18:52:00.003-05:00

How have your career goals changed in the past year? 5 years? 10 years?
How has your perception of self changed in the past year? 5 years? 10 years?
How is where you are now different from what you imagined for yourself as you worked toward this point?
How much of a role have things outside of science had on your changing career goals?

These are the questions Flicka Mawa proposed for this months’ Scientiae carnival. If you removed “How . . . ” from all of those questions I would have to answer YES!

This morning I wrote a depressing post about my emotional breakdown yesterday. Then today I had my weekly meeting with my adviser and I feel much better (luckily I thought enough to save the post until after my meeting). I think a lot of growing as a person is perspective. Yesterday my world was ending because I thought I had to redo the analysis on a manuscript we have been working on for the past four years. Today after better understanding the e-mail my adviser sent me and having spoke with my adviser I am not going to redo the analysis, but the manuscript needs work. But my adviser also said that it was a great manuscript and it’s written so clearly now that he’s able to nitpick on the science.

So in answer to the first proposed question my career goals have changed over the course of a day. Yesterday, during my breakdown, I was looking for administrative assistant and receptionist jobs while today I’ve renewed my idea to be a professor. However, I think my stability as a scientist can’t be broken by one insignificant e-mail. I need to become a stronger person before I can mentor the next generation. Which brings me to the second proposed question. After 6 years of graduate school I feel that I am no better off than I was when I left undergrad, in fact, I feel worse off. I often feel like a failure, and this upsets me because as an undergrad I was a strong, athletic women who laughed in the face of adversity. I managed a 30-hr a week job, a full course load-which I did well in, I was captain of my rugby team and never felt burnt or overworked. I started graduate school enthusiastic, ready to learn and feeling like I knew what I was doing. How has graduate school broke me? Where is the hard working student that I was four, six years ago? Dammit where are you!!

I often think I don’t have the patience and discipline it takes to be a scientist. My adviser and I have been working on one manuscript for the past four years. I need to move on. I wonder, does this make me a bad scientist? Am I lazy to not want to analyze the data again? Would my life be different with another adviser? Did I need to have this experience to understand that I am not designed for academic science? I need structure, I need goals, I need support.

My long term goals have never been definite, I’ve just been cruising along going which ever direction my life takes me (re: question four, my husband has determined where I lived, am living and will live so that has shaped a lot of what I study/do). I enjoyed my undergraduate educational experience, my undergrad research project and my technician-type job at a government agency. I’ve wanted to be a scientist since I can remember. When I was in elementary school I wanted nothing more than to wear a white lab coat and make discoveries.

My goals have waiver from going into consulting (but then why did I get a Ph.D.), to government work to still the possibility of being a professor. But then I read articles that say things like this:

"Why did I wait so long to leave? Why did I do that second or third postdoc?" By and large, he says, the students are doing pretty well but are behind their peers in terms of
establishing careers and families.

and I have to admit that I'm not where I imagined myself to be when I'll be turning 30 this year. I see that Science Women will also be 30 this year, yet she has a beautiful daughter and a tenure-track job. I'm not saying that SW doesn't work her ass off and deserve where she is today or that I desire a tenure-track job but although I didn't have defined goals I did think that by 30 I would have a child, own a home and have an established career.

Am I crazy? I’d like to have a post-doctoral position, to ~~torture~~ test myself. I need to know if my painful experience at graduate school was a function of my adviser or myself. But as I said before I feel broken. I’ve gotten lazy working for my adviser, the one who could care less if I ever leave graduate school, the one who could spent another four years on this manuscript, the one who thinks I’m doing a great job.

Buy Nothing Challenge

2008-04-27T20:15:00.003-05:00

Only three days left with the Buy Nothing Challenge and I have to admit that it wasn't very exceptional, uplifting, rewarding or thought provoking. This is mainly because I sometimes forgot about it and didn't take it very seriously. I don't buy very much as it is.
My non-food purchases for the entire month have been
-a used video game for my sister's bday present
-a new silver pillow for my sister's bday present
-a 50cent used book from the public library (I forgot to mention this one in previous posts)

I haven't felt deprived. I haven't sacrificed anything because there was nothing else I wanted during the month, and I "caved" in and bought those three items even though I was taking the challenge. When I bought the first two items I knew I was breaking the challenge but when I purchased the third item I had completely forgot about the challenge. I like to buy these mystery novels from the used section of the library when I travel so that once finished I can leave it there, i.e. my dept., a hotel, ect. So the purchase didn't require thought, it was just something I did.

As for this week the major non essential food purchase was five bottles of wine from a local winery. A) We didn't have any wine in the house B) it was a local winery and C) it was reasonably priced.
We drove about 45 mins west of our house on saturday with the only couple here we hang out with and went for a half day hike. We then hit up the local winery for some tastings. The wines were so unique it was hard to just pick one red and one white, we also needed some of the unique flavors, such as cranberry white, a port and a blackberry-blueberry wine.
After the winery we drove to the little two block downtown and looked at this organic shop. They gave us free cookies, since it was our first visit, and the man who gave us the cookies said his band was playing at the winery down the street. So, we walked to the winery shared two bottles of wine among four of us, plus three of these wine slurpies and enjoyed the sunshine and the cool music. The band did like a jam session and gave the audience (only a few other people besides us) drums and shakers to participate. It was so much fun! and we got really drunk.
We then walked across the street and ate at an Irish Pub* and had some more to drink.

What this challenge has gotten me to think about is my food purchases. I love food. I eat as a way to avoid working and to make me feel happy. I've been thinking that a good challenge for May would be to not purchase food products except for grocery visits. I will often walk to the grocery store and just purchase m&m's or ice cream. Or I will walk to the Dunking Donut for coffee and donuts. I always knew that most of my budget was spent on food but it never really bothered me before now. By creating a boycott against these purchases not only will I save money but I will also, hopefully, eat less calories. I still want to give this some thought and possible include some clauses because as you read above my fun includes eating and drinking. I thought maybe I would make an exception of once a week for eating out and that the event would have to include more than just myself and my husband (we rarely eat out together without company) and that I would put myself on a two drink minimum. But then this seems like it won't be much of a challenge but I guess one never knows until they challenge them self.

*On the menu of this pub was TURTLE. I was appalled and wanted to leave the pub but my friends didn't agree. Thankfully no one ordered the turtle. I later inquired to the waitress how popular it was. She said it wasn't but they had a special last week so everyone was ordering it. I guess it comes from a farm in a near by state. Very interesting. The waitress said she often tells customers that they are all out because she doesn't want to serve it. I tried to look up more about the farm but Google wasn't much help. How humane are these farms? I'm just curious.

P.S.

2008-04-24T15:28:00.002-05:00

I'm afraid the ants will take over the kitchen

I'm afraid I won't loose these extra 20 lbs I've gained writing my dissertation

I'm scared!

2008-04-24T13:16:00.000-05:00

I’m afraid of never finishing my dissertation

I’m afraid of not getting a job

I’m afraid that once I get a job I will be no good at it

I’m afraid the move will stress me out

Now that I got that off my chest I feel better.

DISSERTATION

I finished revisions on resubmit (ahead of planned schedule!) and have already started making figures for last chapter.

JOBS

I was met enthusiastically by my previous boss at dream job in home state via e-mail but when I followed up by phone yesterday she sounded less excited and mentioned that I’d have to apply like everyone else and make it in the top 3 by answering questions that HR judges and awards points to. It’s all for the best, I don’t study what she does. I often feel resentful towards my husband for leaving this “dream job” but all is in the past. I could have made different choices besides moving to dissertation state to be with him. If I was smart I should have kept studying the research I worked on with old boss, but the university I went to (his university) didn’t do this type of work. Also, I am happy with my line of research now. Old boss also said it was “interesting” that we were moving before we had positions.

I’ve been applying for jobs like mad and need to get more organized. My adviser said he got an e-mail for a referral for one position and I couldn’t remember what the job was. I was able to look it up through the online application portal but I should keep an excel spreadsheet of job title, location, application date, contact info, ect. This way I can better follow up on these applications. Like I said I’ve just been applying for all types of jobs, some I don’t really want. I need to be more selective and work harder on the applications. Also, I’m upset at husband for being very inflexible of where we can live. Ok, home state is great, but within 100 miles from where we went to undergrad doesn’t give a whole lot of options, especially since I don’t want to change my focus very much. The job I spoke about above is about 400 miles from where we were undergrads.

I’m upset at myself for not applying to positions (post doc and faculty) this past fall and I’m upset at my adviser for not giving me advice about it. I’m upset at the PhD process for it’s lack of structure and deadlines. Last fall I had no clue when I was going to graduate so I didn’t see the need to apply for positions. I also felt like my publication record wasn’t ready for a faculty position. All of my dissertation research will be published this year or next. I only have one publication from my masters thesis as the other one is the “resubmit” I’ve been refereeing to. As most of you know, some positions take up to a year from date of application to hear about so I should have been applying for fellowships, ect. this past fall.

I strongly believe that a year after one’s prelim defense there should be a mandatory follow-up meeting where it is laid out how much needs to be completed before graduation, i.e. we’d like you to submit x manuscripts or we’d like you to finish x experiments. I know so many students who haven’t a clue what is required for graduation and besides having very different standards between labs there are different standards between students. I think this happens to be unfair (*whine*). While I think there should be flexibility to cater to an individuals’ project, there needs to be a better understanding of what is required. Sure x papers or x experiments still doesn’t tell you exactly how long it will take but a student will have a better gauge on the progress. I have a friend here in physics and she said that after her prelim her adviser said you will graduate on this date, no matter what she gets accomplished. But for the most part, students are strung along as cheap labor until funding runs low, new students enter, or for one student in my dept. the university says “he has been here too long, get rid of him!” What does it say about a dept. that keeps a student so long that the university has to step in?

For lack of better options I’m going to push for this consulting position (within 50 miles of undergrad location) since they offered me a job here in Midwest. I figure I can work with them and hopefully have time to apply for post-docs and/or faculty positions (as my publication record will be better this fall). As I stated before, this work should be rewarding and much more fun that sitting at my desk 8+ hours a day.

MOVING

I told my husband that I don’t trust him to take care of the moving arrangements and that I’m worry about it. I feel some reassurance by his response. I also feel better that we have decided to go with the PODS, even if they are more expensive than a U-Haul. The POD can be delivered to our house the week before I go back to dissertation town so we can start to pack things up in there, and he can do some moving into the POD while I am away. In addition we won’t have to find somewhere to live before we drive back the first week in July. The POD can be stored until we need it and then delivered to our new place. We will stay at my husband’s grandma’s house and be able to drive around and check out rentals in person. Also, if I do get the consulting job, mentioned above, we could live in grandma’s rental-as it’s a nice commute via public transit to the job. Otherwise from her place it’s not a nice car commute towards where we’d like to be working. It’s a really nice place, we could get my cat back to live with us, and we would be a block from grandma and could help her with errands and upkeep on her house.

So my husband is in charge of the POD scheduling, of acquiring boxes, helping to pack and donating our 86 Mazda station wagon. Husband bought it for $250 in dissertation town from a professor but it is on it’s way out so we bought a 2000 Honda Civic this year.

I’m in charge of changing all the utilities out of our name and in charge of making address changes for magazines, ect. In addition, I’m in charge of selling our guest bed (anyone in the Midwest interested in a full bed with a nice wooden base w/drawers), possibly selling our little futon couch and getting rid (donating) of my office bookshelf and office chair and possibly one of my office desks (selling). Hm, still sounds like I’m in charge of doing more than husband.

We got rid of a lot of excess stuff when we moved from dissertation town to Midwest but there is still some to donate. We already have a box filling up with clothes and we need to go through my husbands unpacked boxes with books and DVD’s to donate to the library. Yes we have lived here since July and my husband didn’t unpack all his boxes. *Sign*

We did bring more here than we would have if husband’s company wasn’t paying for the move. Also, we bought a nice big couch and a CA king bed since living here. Those will be fun to move.

I noticed when I was in dissertation town that I miss having someone to talk to and discuss these boring, mundane tasks so thanks for reading!

Tentative Dissertation Defense Date

2008-04-18T15:13:00.004-05:00

I took the suggestions from my blog readers (you all) and my co-adviser and e-mailed my committee members asking for their out of town schedules for May and June. This was met with opposition from my primary adviser. He states again and again that people don't set up defense dates until the draft is in the committees hand. This is what my husband did and he ended up graduating later than needed because one of his committee members was out of town for three weeks. I wouldn't mind doing this if I didn't feel like my schedule was so tight. We want to move the first week in July and I'd like to defend before then. In addition, I don't live in dissertation town anymore so I'd like to buy a flight when the flights are cheap and not two weeks before the defense date.

I just got back from my advisers office and he reluctantly agreed that I could ask my committee members to keep free the dates of June 25, 26 and 27. This means that by the end of the first week in June my draft must be to my committee, which is less than two months away!!

I should feel good, right? I don't. I feel like my adviser won't care to meet this deadline and will keep pushing back my defense date. I also feel like I wasn't strong enough when we just met. I pushed the stress onto my husband stating that I didn't want to move the first week in July but my husband wants to (needs to). I shouldn't have said that. I also said that although our lease ends on July 9th we could likely extend it for a week or so. I stated that we'd like to get to home state because it will be easier to find positions once we are there. My husband isn't getting good responses, I mean ANY responses from the people he'd like to work with. I also said that I could probably fly out here to defend from home state but that is not ideal I shouldn't have offered up that scenario. I felt like I went in strong and said this is what needs to be done and when my adviser didn't seem happy about it I waivers and came up with excuses for my strong opinion.

Even though my adviser may not try hard for me to complete a final dissertation draft by June 6th, I will. I can only control my own actions. I also will e-mail my adviser every day just to keep him on track.

I'll post some goals here to keep myself accountable.
-I progressed a lot while here in dissertation town on manuscript "0" from masters thesis. I now have everything I need to resubmit. I will give my resubmission to adviser on April 25th. A week from today.
-I finished collecting some data while in dissertation town for my final chapter (3-S) of my dissertation. I will have all the figures made and a good outline by April 30th.

I'll revisit chapter 3-S once the figures are made but hopefully it can be fully written by May 5th. Then all my chapters will have been written and I'll have five weeks to make revisions, write the abstract and conclusions (think I'm doing kinda a list form of significant conclusions, as each chapter has a detailed conclusion) and reformat.

Buy nothing challenge

2008-04-17T17:15:00.002-05:00

I had almost forgotten about my buy nothing challenge.

However, all I have bought since arriving in dissertation town is food. Some has been on campus food, which is packaged in way too much plastic (they put your hot food in plastic containers! I e-mailed the enviro club on campus to complain and I guess they are focusing their current efforts on removing plastic drink bottles), but a nice friend drove me to the grocery store and I got to buy real food. My lab has a full fridge, microwave, toaster and a plug in stove. I've been making a lot of pasta w/veggies. All of my consumed coffee has been in my own cup, even at the dept. seminar where the coffee is free and everyone uses a disposable cup. In fact, I passed up going to Starbucks this morning since I didn't bring my cup and because I spent too much money on beer this Tuesday.

I'm going to spend the week-end with my godson's family. My friend really likes to shop so hopefully she won't want to go to the outlets or anything, although I'm up for the challenge. She just went to this huge special baby sale. I want to call it a baby conference but I can't think of the word, hm. It's like a once a year kind of thing in a big auditorium. I'm pretty sure she got all she needed from the sale and won't want to shop this week-end.

It will be nice to have a real bed with a shower near by for Fri, Sat. and Sun night. I leave Monday evening. I'll be working some at her place as well but I have so much to do! I can't believe my trip is almost over.

Clarification

2008-04-15T07:06:00.004-05:00

Pyschgrad had a question,
"Must admit, I'm having a bit of a hard time following your travels. You live in City A (State A). Your home state is different from where you live. So, State B. Your dissertation town is in State B, but far from town where your family is. You're planning to move to State C? Why are you in your dissertation town?"

Since I had the same question for Seeking Academia recently I though I would summarize all the states my life is involved in here. It can get confusing to follow someone else's life.

I live in State A-Midwest. I grew up in State B-West Coast. I plan to move back to State B this July. Dissertation town is State C-East Coast. I am actually very close to the oceans in both dissertation town and home state. For a different perspective, from where I live (in State A) dissertation town is a 2 hour plan ride each way, and my home town area is a 4-5 hour plane ride each way.

I had a conference on Saturday here in dissertation town and I've been trying to come back every two months for up to two weeks just to remind my adviser I am still alive and I usually end up doing some lab work.

Hope this helps.

Dissertation town update

2008-04-14T20:04:00.002-05:00

Sure enough, right after I wrote my last post co-author sent comments on manuscript. There weren't very many and I'll revisit it after I analyze some of the samples in that manuscript on wed. A few were over detection for a certain analyte and I kept thinking it didn't matter but I've decided this is an important enough analyte to have absolute concentrations.

I gave one of my chapters to one of the master's student I mentioned. I haven't approached the other student yet.

I spoke with co-adviser today and he was like "I told you so" when I mentioned that adviser and I determined I wasn't going to graduate this May. He was friendly enough about it but it pissed me off, so I asked when he was going to read the chapter I gave him. By this week, he says. It's the same chapter that I gave to the masters student.

I have my weekly meeting with adviser tomorrow and I've decided to print out a copy of my dissertation outline. He has seen an electronic copy but I think posting an outline next to his computer would be a good idea, as I mentioned he though he read one of my chapters and gave me comments even though he hadn't.

Overall the visit is going well there are three things I want to share
1) my social life
2) my sleeping arrangements
3) the move and job hunt (to keep this post from getting to long I'll make this a separate post)

1) Saturday I went and watched my old rugby team play here on campus. The lost in the last play of the game!! How sad. Then I did what most rugby players do. I got drunk. Boy it was fun to be with the gals again. I got so stoked and said I was going to both practices this week and would even travel to their away game on saturday. Um, yeah, right. I missed practice today and don't plan on practicing or playing this week. It would be fun but I think I really, really should be working as much as possible. I'm also pretty bitter since one of the new players I've never played with decided it would be a great idea to throw beer on me. On me! On my only sweatshirt and jeans I brought. I was pretty pissed but civil about it and explained it would have not been a big deal except that I don't have any other clothes to wear.
I also decided that cheap beer creates worse hangovers than good beer. Or now that I think about it maybe it was the sips of scotch I had. Have you ever drank scotch and ginger ale? It's my new favorite drink.
The hangover wasn't very disruptive since I spent Sunday with my friend and godchild and didn't plan on working. That was a lot of fun. I also did laundry at her place.

2) This is where I am sleeping

That the is corner of my office desk and those weights and boxes belong to my office mate. It's actually not a bad deal. After my previous visit staying with friends near by who had moldy rooms or staying far away with mother of godchild I decided that the best place for me is in my office. During my other visits I would spend a night or two here but this trip I'm spending the entire time except for the last week-end where I will stay with mother of godchild.
We have a shower in the building. It's pretty pathetic but it drizzles water out. Unfortunately this week-end the building was without hot water so I had two very cold showers. The one Sunday morning was good for my hangover. Today I went to the gym which is one building over and exercised for 30 mins and took a nice, long, hot shower. I feel much better. My lab has a fridge and a plug in stove and I have an electric tea pot, so I'm set on food and coffee without having to rely on overpriced campus food for every meal.
My office is one of three offices created with temporary walls in a larger room. This is good because I have two lockable doors between me and the hallway. I'm on the third floor and the building should be locked after 10 pm. A women in the office next to me likes to work from mid afternoon to late night or early morning. This is nice because I don't feel so alone but it's not so nice because she likes to chat with people online or listen to loud music. I have my head phones on so I can't hear her too much but once I want to go to sleep I really want her to shut up. If she's still loud at 11pm I'm going to have to ask her to be quite. We are friendly, we go out to dinner and I use to watch her cat so I don't feel bad telling her how I feel. Last night I had to tell her that I could hear everything her and her male friend were saying and that I felt she needed to know because her conversation was about private matters.

Ok-enough news for now. I have 40 mins of work time before bed.

When has it been too long?

2008-04-10T21:07:00.002-05:00

I may have complained in the past about how long my adviser takes to read my drafts, i.e. three months on occasion, but when can I throw in the towel and be extremely upset? But more importantly what can I do besides be really upset and besides calling him everyday to remind him-which I haven't done yet?

My adviser and I met for our weekly Skype meeting this past Tuesday and after I found out he hasn't read the four chapters I've given him I asked if he thought I would make the May 20th deadline. He said "no, everyone is busy in the spring."
Well, I guess it's good to at least know I won't make the May deadline but it really pisses me off.

I have a dissertation outline where I keep track of what needs to be done on each chapter. I gave adviser my intro chapter on 3/12 and reminded him on 3/25.
Chapter 4 he read and gave revisions; it's a really short chapter. I sent it back with a better analysis for the conclusion, and overall a much better chapter on 3/25. I also sent him chapter 6 on 3/25. I gave him chapter 5, which is in publication form (my highest priority for proof reading) on 2/26. When I asked about this chapter he said he thought he read it already. Um, no.
Chapter 2b is ready to give to him but I just keep reading it and making revisions or else I won't have anything to do once he has it. I have one more chapter to write but need to double check some analysis (I think lab tech had a blank problem) on Monday before I get back to writing that chapter. *Did I mention I'm back in dissertation town?

What is really annoying is that everyone is ignoring me. Co-author also has had Chapter 5 since 2/26 and I gave co-adviser Chapter 6 on 3/16. Co-author's wife gave birth to a baby in March so I figure he is pretty busy and when I reminded him of the manuscript he said he'd have it back to me last Friday but, nope. Co-adviser also gave similar excuse, very busy-so sorry. Primary adviser has been planning a conference that will be held on Saturday. I figured after the conference I would be more aggressive in bugging him.

My husband said I should just give my committee my dissertation since they will have revisions anyway. My problem is my confidence in writing. I'm horrible at it and really need someone to proof read it before I'm comfortable letting my committee butcher it. Isn't this what my adviser is for??

When I talk like this I feel like I'm blaming my adviser for not finishing yet when there is no doubt that I could be working harder than I do and I can work more hours than I do. The trouble is that I get discouraged, why finish these last two chapters if I'll have nothing to do once they are done. It depresses me and a depressed Jennie never feels like working. I try to stay positive and tell myself, just work as hard as you can but work hard at what? All I have left to do is write this dissertation and I'd like to submit some of the chapters as manuscript.

PLEASE, PLEASE WILL SOMEONE READ MY WORK.

Week 1-Buy Nothing-visit to home state

2008-04-08T09:38:00.003-05:00

Crunchy Chicken requested that we make Sunday confessionals. Mine is late because I was traveling this week-end.
CONFESSION: I bought, at a Game Stop in a mall, a video game for my sister that she picked out. It was a used game so I feel ok about that. She also picked out a silver pillow at JC Penny for her new bed set. I had thought about not buying her stuff and teaching her a lesson but she will be turning 12 and I don't see her often so I just wanted to spoil her.
I do feel good that I wanted some more hemp lotion from Body Works and passed it up.
Note: I didn't purchase anything from April1-3

Crunchy Chicken commented on the stance of eating out for the challenge so I'll post my eating out as well. Crunchy commented that there was no specific rule but it should depend on if your goals are to buy less to reduce waste or save money. I didn't have a goal, I just thought this would be a neat challenge. I always try my best to reduce the amount of waste when eating out. I usually travel with my own coffee mug but this was a Fri-Mon trip and I didn't want to bring too much stuff.

Friday I flew into Home State and City for my Grandma's 70th Birthday Party.
Friday morning I purchased a muffin-no bag just tissue-, and a coffee at the airport. In fact I brought my own coffee cup to this shop before and the women said they weren't allowed to use a customers cup. I should write the management. Bloody Mary on airplane. I have these free coupons for Southwest and well, I was going to visit my family. I also indulged in some free crackers. I didn't take any more drinks. On the flight back I had coffee twice, but I asked and they reused my cup. Yeah! but she gave me a new stir stick. I didn't have any plane snacks on the way back.

When arriving in home state my other grandma came to pick me up. I was a little upset because I had told her ahead of time that my plan was to go to her house and work, that I didn't have a lot of time to visit. But, in the car she told my grandpa to call my uncle to see if they were home so we could visit. I told them I had a lot of work to do and didn't want to stay long, and we didn't. Then we stopped by a Quizno's for lunch. Grandma bought and we ate there. THEN my grandma tells me that her sister is having a bday party and asks if we could go there for dinner tonight. I reluctantly say ok because her sister is less than half a mile down the road from my grandma's house but when we get to my grandma's house I learn the party is somewhere else, about 30 mins away. Oh well. I get a few hours of work done at grandma's and I actually was pretty productive on the plane. The party was fun I don't usually see this side of the family. We got home too late for me to work anymore.

Saturday I woke up at 7am and went for a short walk with Grandma. She lives on about 5 acres of land and all the homes near by have a similar amount of property. The neighbors have mules, sheep and an emu. Then I got a few more hours of work done and grandma made her famous blueberry pancakes. They have become more healthy over the years. When I was young we use to put blueberry pie mix and whip cream on top of pancakes. Now she puts fresh or frozen blueberries in the pancakes and I pass up on the whip cream. I get a little more work done until my mom and sister pick me up at noon.
They take me to where the party will be and I helped decorate and set up. I had a little bit of down time so I worked some, but I forgot to recharge my laptop so I only had half a battery on my flight home-which made me sad.
My mom, sister and I drove down to a grocery store and bought lunch. We got a salad for my aunt, my mom and sister got Chinese food in a Styrofoam looking container and I got a sandwich from the deli. My mom bought and we didn't get a plastic bag when we checked out.
I had a lot of fun at the party. It was good to see family.

Sunday was the day we went to the mall, in addition to my confession I bought grandma (who turned 70), mom, sister and myself Starbucks. For lunch we went to a restaurant, my mom and grandma split the bill. We all too home leftovers. The boxes had recycle 7's (or 6's) on the bottoms so I'm not sure what the material was.
Then I we went to my cousins house who has a one year old. I stayed with him for the rest of the day and my mom and sister drove back to their town, about 150 miles away. My cousins little girl walked for the first time that day. My cousin didn't know what to do about telling the baby's mom. Mom stays home during the week and is a EMT driver on sat/sun. What are the odds that her baby would take her first steps when she is at work. I told my cousin that he had to tell her when she got home, so he did, he showed her. They are such a great family.

Ok-so that's my confession and a synopsis of my trip. I leave this Thursday for dissertation town so I'm sure I'll be eating out a bit but I don't plan on any other purchases. I'd like to buy something for my godson but he is pretty spoiled and his mom told me that we should stop buying gifts for each other on bdays and xmas so we can save money to fly around and visit each other.

Finally the Meme

2008-04-03T08:49:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I was tagged to do this meme by Amanda and someone else I can't remember (sorry) and I am too lazy to go back through and find out. I just read one of Amanda's post and was reminded again.

Rules:
1. Write your own 6 word memoir
2. Post on your blog with a visual illustration.
3. Include the link of the person who tagged you.
4. Tag 5 others.

I've had trouble choosing this one. Hope I don't sound too conceited. I don't always feel like I fit this description but I know most of my friends and family see this in me, or this is the persona I give off.

I am a strong, smart women*

*Is it cheating to use little words like I am a?

There are a few of you out there who haven't done this meme yet, so you, Do It!

I'm too honest

2008-04-02T14:55:00.003-05:00

I'm sure a busy blogger recently.

I GOT A JOB OFFER. Yeah, I'm smart and impressive. I was feeling like the interview with the consulting company didn't go well since I was told two weeks but hadn't heard back, but I just got a call. The job I applied for was entry level field assistant and that sounded like fun. Good exercise, get out of the office/house and stop staring at my computer screen. Yet I was told that the company decided they didn't want me as a field assistant they wanted to put me on the fast track and start me higher up in the company.

My initial plan was that if they called me I would play it cool and not mentioned that we wanted to leave this area but his first question to me was if I was still interested in the job or if I had taken a position already. I told him yes I was interested and no I didn't take another job, and that I wanted to be up front an honest and told him that my husband and I were considering leaving the area and that we would decide within the next few weeks, which I guess is a lie since we are DEFINITELY leaving the area. As soon as I said that I felt dumb like I dropped all my cards on the table, but I guess I'm so good it doesn't matter.

I wish I would have also said that at the time of my interview I didn't know we would be leaving. I hope the person on the phone didn't think that I wasted their time. I said that I was thankful for the opportunity to interview with them and am interesting in their company, ect. I mentioned the office they have where my husband and I want to move to and the person on the phone said that they would like to keep me in the company and he would be happy to try to set up an interview with that office for me. Yeah! That is promising. I wish my husband was coming home tonight so we could talk about. I told him we would decide about our relocation in the next couple of weeks.

Hopefully this will help my focus. See I am smart, people do want to hire me. I think I'll take a bath and then get my ass in gear and finish this damn chapter.

Focus

2008-04-02T11:52:00.002-05:00

My mom and sister came to visit when I was in a highly productive mode. I was a little distraught about perfecting the intro and discussion sections of the chapter I was finishing up but I was sitting at my desk and working, i.e. trying, hard. However, mom and sister, broke up this focus. Their first full day of visiting I woke up early and got some work done in the morning and then later around lunch I made them sit and watch a movie so I could work another two hours. Then for the rest of the week (Thurs-Sat) I didn't get any work done. There were a few evening when we would sit around and read our respective books (we dont' own a TV-movie was watched on huge computer screen) and I thought hey I should get some work done now, but the work I needed to do (finish chapter) wasn't easy and I felt it needed full focus and I was tired from the days activities. If I had some data processing to do, or maybe grading, I can spend hour chunks of time doing that, or evening writing a methods or results section would be ok for a short period of time, but a discussion section tacks my brain so much more. I feel I need a lot of time to first, refresh myself with what I have written and usually dive back into the literature-all that would take at least an hour and then I would need to actually write more. It was at these points, sitting and reading and not wanting to work for a short period of time, I thought-hell, my life is going to be difficult once I have children and if I stay in academics, to get work done efficiently if I can't work for short chunks of time.

But now my family have left, which brings me to the main topic of this post, and I still can't focus. I may have written about this before, how I tend to go in waves, like a sin function, in terms of productivity and focus. When ever I settle down to evaluate why I haven't been productive I always notice that I am coming to the end of my "women" cycle and the blood should start flowing soon. This always pisses me off. I get so made at myself that my hormones get the best of me. During this time of the month all I want to do is eat bad food and watch online TV. I don't remember this being a huge problem when I had an office to go to, but I think working from home doesn't have that extra incentive to be productive when my body and mind refuse to be.

To top it off my husband has "lab" time again so he won't be home until Thursday after 8pm, and then I have a flight back to home state Friday at 9am for my mom's mom's 70's bday party.

It's so much easier to be depressed when one is alone.

Buy Nothing Challenge

2008-04-01T14:08:00.003-05:00

I'm going to participate, through arduous, in the Crunchy Chicken: Buy Nothing Challenge.

I don't think I buy very much as it is but it will be nice to be more conscious of my purchases so I look forward to the challenge. Also, I bought a new coffee mug and a bday card for my grandma, one that plants a tree in a national forest, last week-getting a little bit of my spending urge gone. I also decided some time ago that I didn't want to buy new clothes until I lost my dissertation belly, and I'm hoping not to add more items to the pile of stuff we have to move-hopefully this year.
I'll be traveling twice this month, which may make it hard not to purchase periphery items. Wish me luck.

I broke up with you!

2008-04-01T12:38:00.003-05:00

Since I'm having trouble focusing today, I'll make another post.
Have you ever broke up with someone you were dating? probably. What about a friend?

I met this women at Earth Day a few years ago. I was running a table for my department at the university Earth Day in dissertation town. The women is about 10-20 years older than me and we were in dissertation town because our husbands brought us there and we were both from the same state. She got really excited and we talked about how much we miss home state and how sucky dissertation state is. She said we should get together and she wanted my phone number. I think she could tell I was apprehensive so she said something and I offered up my e-mail address.

She was a lot of fun. We would go for walks, go to movies, go to breakfast, ect and it was nice to have another friend. I soon noticed that it was always a pain to organize an event with her and that she never seemed happy to have an hour or two with me but that we had to spend the whole day together. She was unemployed and had few friends in town. Then we were out to lunch and I was talking about finding a rugby team in the new town my husband and I were planning on moving to. I mentioned that it was going to be tough to find one near by and it upset me. She didn't understand this and said there were more important things than rugby. Sure this sounds like a logical statement yet if you knew me at all you would know this statement does not describe who I am. So combine the facts that my new friend did not understand me and how difficult and sensitive she was I decided I didn't want to be her friend anymore*. Being the direct person I am I didn't want to be passive aggressive (?) and just ignore her so I decided to write her an e-mail (passive aggressive?). E-mail seemed good since I could sit down and fully explain myself. All I remember stating was that I had a lot of fun with her but was too busy for new friends, i.e. it's not you it's me. Of course she was offensive and said that I should learn how to balance my life better. Um, have you been a graduate student before? and I did balance work with fun-fun with my husband and fun playing rugby and hanging out with my rugby friends, plus I had friends in the dept. I hung out with and exercised with. Anyway a few e-mails back and forth and we went our separate ways, on pretty good terms I though.

I still get lots of e-mails that are mass forwards from her and have thought about blocking her but didn't want to be rude.
Then, this week I got a voice mail from her. She said she was curious how I was doing and told me some about her life and said she wanted to chat and catch up. A few days later I got another mass e-mail from her and sent a short reply about her voice message. I was polite and said thanks for calling and that yes I've moved. GET THIS. She replies back saying she wants to come visit me! visit me, the x-friend. I haven't responded and don't plan to. But is this women dense? or did I lead her on by e-mailing her?

*I don't go around dumping friends. This was my first time. I swear, I'm faithful.
It is also ironic that I feel like I'm in her footsteps now. It's hard to meet people when you don't work outside of the home. I understand her loneliness. Do I have no friends now, in the midwest (except EcoGeoFemme) because I dumped this other friend. Have I no heart?

My Family

2008-04-01T08:28:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned, my mother and sister came to visit last week. They flew in late Tuesday night and left early Sunday morning. My sister is 11 and we share a different father. For parts of my life my mother has been my only family. My biological father passed away while I was in womb. I don't remember much of my mom and I being alone in my early years as she remarried when I was around 5. This man was, in my eyes, my father. I loved him very much. He was born with a heart defect and died when I was in 3rd grade. My mother didn't remarried until I was in 7th grade. My mother is also fairly young, giving birth to me when she was just shy of 20. I've always felt like we have had a close relationship, more like friends than like a mother. Although I think I turned out really good so she must have been mothering me along the way.

I've been thinking about what to write about my mother. I've decided to talk about what annoys me about her, since being in such close quarters will remind one of that. I can't wait until I move back to home state and we see each in moderation again.

As with some people it can be that their best quality is also what you hate most about them. My mother is a very kind, selfless person. She is always putting other peoples needs above her own and thinking of others before herself. This a great quality but it also means she is very aware of what others think of her. I feel she is always self conscious and worried that others don't like her, or that strangers are judging her. Growing up she'd always ask me if her hair looked funny or their was something in her teeth, because, people were staring. She can also be smothering trying to take care of you when you don't want or don't need to be taken care of. She is passive aggressive, which I just realized this past visit. Instead of telling my sister to put her hat on because it's cold she will ask her 10 times in 30 mins if she wants her hat. This frustrates me and I say, "my sister knows you have her hat, if she wants it she will ask." In reality my mom wants to say, "it's cold put your hat on." But she doesn't say that because they she maybe hated or judged. I wish I didn't react so much to my mother's behaviors because she becomes sensitive to it and will actually say, "you don't love me," when in response to her shuffling my jacket around on the chair I ask if it is in the way and if I should move it. As I was sitting on the couch, reading, next to the huge window that let in sunlight and right next to a lamp which I could have easily turned on she asks if I need the light on. Grr. If I wanted it on I would turn it on, but again it's her way of saying-you really need more reading light, you could go blind! I won't bore you with more examples.

My mother is a very fun person. She likes to get out of the house and do things. We went to a museum, aquarium and arboretum. We hung out around my neighborhood one day, walking to the grocery store and walking downtown. We played tennis in my driveway and we watched movies. I love her very much and am grateful for all the support she has given me. I know I can't change who she is. I just hope I can become more tolerant in my old age.

My sister, is great, and still developing her character. She is in 6th grade, which is middle school where she lives. She has never been athletic but tried out for the school softball team. She didn't make the team but wants to try to play in a rec league. I played softball competitively for a few years so this is exciting for me. She is not overly girly, worrying about makeup or boys yet. She is not getting good grades in math or science, which saddens me. She told us she wants to go to the local junior college. She told my mom that she wants to work a beauty salon, BUT that she wants to own the mall that the beauty salon is in. I think she'll need math skills to accomplish this goal.

That's my family. Thanks for reading.

Comments

2008-03-29T08:38:00.001-05:00

Thanks everyone for the comments on my secret and my religious story. It really helps to have this network of friends on-line.
My mom and sister are here visiting and leave tomorrow. They arrived late last Tuesday. There will be lots to blog about once I catch up with work, and all your posts.

Secret

2008-03-25T17:05:00.002-05:00

I'm not suppose to share this information with anyone so I thought I'd blab it on my blog where people don't really know me.

My husband had "lab" time from 8am Friday until 8am Monday, this holiday week-end. He came home Saturday night around 7pm so he could sleep during the night. He said he got his first experiment done and that was the important one. The work he was doing needed to be baby sat and constantly adjusted.

He hadn't done this type of research for a while and I think it put him over the edge in terms of deciding that this not the type of work he wants to do anymore. He had been leaning that way for a few months now. He doesn't like the competition in his research area and he feels the work he does is not really important, with no broad social implications. And he hates living here in the Midwest. He said if this job was near friends and family and in a warm climate he may have a different opinion of the position. Also, he does not want to go into academics.

Last night he told me that he wants to move back to the West Coast within a few hours drive of where we went to college and where we consider home. He didn't choose anywhere specific just some where near home. He wants to do this even if he doesn't get a job offer*. He doesn't want his Post-Doc to be renewed.

WOW I say. I also say sure. We have about 10 months of a graduate students salary saved in the bank. My salary has been paying for all the bills, he salary has been for fluff and fun (and to save). We also have money in an off shore account. NO Just kidding but we have some money in a money market and another account with money left over from his college fund (from grandma). So we can afford to not work for a couple of months (although there goes our savings to buy a house soon).
So that's it. We are moving. His appointment is up the first week in July. So by August 1st we should be in a warm state, near our good friends and family. I'm hoping to get a one month or 1/2 month extension on our current lease so we have time to be relaxed about packing and getting rid of some stuff (unlike our last move).
I told him, though, that he has to apply for more jobs. That we have to be more active in our search. He found a few others online to apply for and I'm going to send some follow up e-mails to the applications I sent for consulting positions in that area. It feels good for me to know where we will be living so I can actively search for a job.

We are not telling this information about us moving to our family and friends. Maybe so we can opt out and decide to stay here one more year for the money. Maybe so people don't get excited, so we don't get exciting talking and thinking about it. I mean, I still have to graduate. I have a conference to attend the last week in June (in dissertation state). We need to find a place to live. Hopefully we can find jobs.

It's scary and exciting at the same time.
I'm happy we made the choice that where we live is more important than what we do. It will be nice to finally be "home."
But first I must graduate!!!!!!!

*the company e-mailed that they wanted his transcripts so it sounds like he made the first cut. Hopefully he will get an interview.

My religious background (long post)

2008-03-24T13:28:00.001-05:00

With all the news about the documentary Expelled I thought this would be a good time to let my readers know about my religious background, as I’ve learned a little about your religious beliefs from some of your posts.

It starts with a death, which I imagine is often why people turn to religion. This death, however, occurred before I was born, but after I was conceived-as during this time my father died in a motorcycle accident. After my birth, my father’s parents wanted to help my mother out and so I went to their house every other week-end until I was in 6^th grade. I didn’t know until later but my grandma said she offered this because she felt bad that my mom was a single parent. I would go to the grandparents and I would attend church on Sunday mornings. My uncle, who lived with them, would take me in the morning to Sunday school and then we would meet up with my grandma and grandpa in the church service. He attended a youth service. He must have been in his early 20’s. My mom was 19 when I was born and I’m pretty sure this uncle was younger than my birth father. Although not related to my religious story I should mention that my uncle, Chuck, later committed suicide. It’s hard to write about him and not think about this. I was in kindergarten or 1^st grade. I really missed him. He would always play games with me, even Barbies. My grandpa didn’t attend church for at least a decade after this incident. He later told me that he was mad at God.

What I remember from church is singing and eating and coloring in pictures of Jesus. I don’t remember much about religion, but I tend to think that attending church and spending so much time with my grandparents helped give me a good moral background. This is not something one has to learn at a church, but for me, that is where I learned it. I’m sure my mom was a good influence as well.

I stopped spending so much time with my grandparents once I joined a traveling softball league, around 5^th grade. That was it, no more church except for holidays.

My mom never attended church with us, I later learned she didn’t like church because it reminded her of funerals.

Fast forward to 2^nd year of college. I’m living with my mom, step father and sister in a town about 4 hours from where I grew up. We had been living with my step father since I was in 7^th grade. But moving to this new town, only a year before, and my sister’s birth about two years prior and me attending college put a lot of stress on my mom and step-father’s marriage. My step father decides we are all going to church. I didn’t have a problem with this, I had attended church before and while I never really considered myself a Christian it wasn’t something I ever had to think about and people never asked me about it.

I really enjoyed going back to church. We went to this huge, progressive church and I found the sermons intellectually stimulating, it really got me thinking. . . just about life and values. I joined a bible study and made some really good friends and enjoyed the conversations we had during the study. The older couple that led the study are awesome. I still keep in touch with them. Everyone was open, never judgemental, and at the first meeting we went around and introduced ourselves and I had to go first. I opened with “I am not a Christian, but I am here to learn about the bible, ect.” I stopped going to church with my parents and went to the evening service, where their was a rock band and a young pastor and a younger audience. I never felt like the services were preachy, it was more about being spiritual and yes, believing in one God and trying to follow what the bible says, but it was also about exploring the bible and the struggle with the different feelings one has in their heart about what is right and wrong. I never felt preached to but it was always more of this is how I, the pastor, interpret this passage, ect.

I eventually started calling myself a Christian and excepted him in my life. Making this decision was mostly about the spirituality I felt. It’s been eight years since I “became” a Christian and I’m constantly doubting God’s existence but I believe that there is something out there that can’t and shouldn’t be explained by science. Maybe it’s not real, but maybe it is. Have you never felt that feeling that something supernatural is controlling things? I’ve had some many experiences that seem to be more than chance. And I’ve just “felt” a presence in my life at times, helping me along-I guess.

So during the time I starting calling myself a Christian my parents got divorced. At one point my step dad said I wasn’t a Christian because I didn’t want to pray in front of him and that my mom wasn’t one because she didn’t read the entire bible. Life at home, sucked. By the end of my 2^nd year of college my mom, sister and I moved out.

When I moved to dissertation town I found a church to attend. My husband and I even hosted a bible study at our house for a few months. But after a while I just decided I didn’t like this church. The people seemed fake. In addition, my husband didn’t want to attend and I didn’t like going by myself. It’s likely been 3 years since I’ve regularly attended church. I went to one here in the Midwest. I read that they have a women pastor, but she hadn’t started when I went there. I felt like the church was really ritualistic. They had these passages they would read at certain points in the service. It was just a weird vibe I got there, like it wasn’t about God but it was about “doing” these certain things.

And now, I’m not sure what I believe or how I feel. I’m certain there is more to this life than what we have here, and if not-even if we turn back into dirt-I believe there are spirits or outside forces that help us along. And if I’m wrong, I’m ok with that. I’m not trying to teach my beliefs in a classroom as science because what I believe is not science and I would never want it to be, because then it could be proved or more likely disproved.

Updated

2008-03-22T14:03:00.002-05:00

I finally got around to updating the "Blogs I Read" sidebar. I'm sorry for not publicly acknowledging so many of you for so long. You all are great and I want to share your greatness. So please, check out my side bar and visit some of the blogs you don't already visit.

Under Attack

2008-03-22T13:49:00.002-05:00

I recently read the article “Wack Attack: giving the digital finger to blog bandits” by Jaclyn Friedman in Bitch* Magazine, Issue.39, and wanted to share a little about it. I was appalled by the threats and hate e-mails women (read feminist) bloggers were receiving. It is scary, but this article is not about being scared-because that is the desired outcome from those who harass. No, this article is about being prepared and about creating a network.

These are the four principles that the article ended on

1. Don’t silence yourself
The more women who insist on being heard online, the better place the web will be for feminist voices.
2. We must change the culture together
Hold offending sites accountable for the culture they create. Report the identities of attackers to authorities whenever possible and shame them online whenever practical. Call on the men who claim to be our allies to do this work alongside us.
3. The best defense is good tech
For example, host your photos separate from your blog.
4. Better together
Blog as a group

Most of the blogs I read and the bloggers that come to my site aren’t positing seriously controversial material, yet, I though it prudent to make my readers aware that harassment can happen on the internet; although I’m sure most of you are aware of this, it’s good to be reminded.

*On a side note, if you aren’t familiar with this magazine I suggest you pick up a copy and see how you like it. I found their book, BITCHfest, when I needed reading material for a train ride about a year ago and promptly signed up to get their quarterly magazine. Most of the articles resonate with how I feel as a feminist but it’s also interesting to read feminist views/issues which aren’t on my radar screen. I also like at the end of each issue they review music and books. I’ve found some really good reads this way.

Dissertation Update

2008-03-16T19:34:00.002-05:00

I sent a chapter to my co-adviser, the money man, today! I thought this would be a good time to post an update of my progress.

My primary adviser has, in his inbox, my Introduction Chapter (1) and Chapter 4. He also has Chapter 5, which the other coauthor for that manuscript is reviewing.

The first part of Chapter 2 is submitted to a journal.

Chapter 6 is the one I sent to my co-adviser, as stated above.

I have a huge appendix that I've formatted and finished.

This only leaves, the second part of Chapter 2 and all of Chapter 3. Plus of course the abstract and conclusions and all the stupid formatting of the tables and figures and TOC, ect.

I'm pretty confident I can finish the second part of Chapter 2 by the end of the month. I initially though by the 23rd but it includes working in a program I'm not familiar with to do some statical analysis that all the papers I read on this subject tend to do. So to be realistic I'll hope to finish it by the 31st. My mom and sister are here from the 25-29 (four full days) so I'm not sure how much work will get done that week anyway-hopefully some.

A technician at my university was suppose to analyze the last of my samples on wed. but he hasn't sent me the data yet. This is for Chapter 3. I will re-visit that chapter in April. A lot of it has been written but I'm curious about these last samples so a full analysis of the data isn't complete yet. I'm hoping it will take less than two weeks to finish that Chapter.

I fly to dissertation town on April 10th. Hopefully all I've mentioned above will be completed by then. This visit is for a conference there on April 12th, my adviser puts it together. I don't think I'll need much preparation for the talk, although I could get a poster for my topic which might take longer to prepare.

My university has a policy that one must file a defense date 6 weeks in advance. When I meet with my adviser on Tuesday I'm going to suggest we set up this paperwork so I can defend on May 1st. My dept. secretary said it's really easy to change the date once the paperwork is finished, but if I don't submit something by the end of this week I won't have enough time to defend and give myself the week or two needed to make changes and meet the May 20th deadline to submit my thesis.

I figure I can't discuss a date with my committee until I give them my dissertation. By my calculations my committee should have my dissertation in hand around April 21st.

My fingers are crossed but since my adviser is going to be busy this next month preparing for the conference he puts together I'm not sure how much feedback I'll get from him to get my dissertation in order for my committee. I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

When I was finishing my master's thesis I realized that my adviser is always really busy in the spring and that a spring graduation for my PhD was likely not in my future.

I guess all I can do is work my ass off and wait to see what he can do. This is also why I've decided to send chapters to my co-adviser.

Spring

2008-03-13T18:28:00.002-05:00

I've gone for a run/jog/walk three times this week! I was determined to go independent of the weather but it turned out to be in the 50's and 60's this week. I even opened the windows in the house today to get some fresh air.

Say good-bye fat stomach.

Interview and my fat stomach

2008-03-07T18:21:00.000-06:00

I had an interview yesterday with a consulting company, here in the Midwest. It is a large international company and I met one of their –ologist at a conference in dissertation town last April. He was there recruiting students and gave me a card. We have e-mailed some. He encouraged me to e-mail the company’s’ office when I moved here in July. I waited until last month and specifically applied to two of the positions as advertised on their website.

Yesterday morning I had to run down to the big box store because I could not button any of my dress pants, which I needed for the interview. Where did my flat stomach go? I miss you, come back. I know I’ve been neglecting you over the past three years and have seen the slow decline in your definition. I’m aware that when I don’t run and I eat yummy pastries and chocolate and drink lots of beer you can not fulfill your part of the bargain. I’m sure once my dissertation is finished I’ll be able to focus more on you, in the mean time please feel free to distribute your weight more evenly through my body.

I hate that I spent $25 on a pair of pants. They are cute, and they fit, but $25, darn. And they are 2-3 sizes bigger than my ideal.

Back to the interview. The office was about a 40 min drive from my house (leaving at 11am) and an hour drive back (5pm). I will have to take the train to the office because there is no parking and at times I will be taking a field truck home with me. My train is about an hour plus a 20 min walk to the office, and the latest train to go back home is a 6:12pm, which might be a problem for late nights.

I went into the interview thinking that I don’t want to be a consultant but that it will be good to learn about the company. Most of my opinions about the differences between consulting and academics and government jobs has not changed but a few have. One is the hours. I will be working 8-12 hour days when doing field work and was told most employees work 45-50 hours a week. My thought was that consulting would be a 40hr job. I guess it’s not, but still, it’s likely not as demanding as academics and def. not as competitive.

Second, I think this job sounds really interesting and I’ll take it if offered. I think I’m starving for structure and deadlines and field work. I’ve been in front of my computer for so long now. But I also worry how long I can take that type of rigorous scheduling before I hate it. One needs to bill all of their time worked, in 15min increments. This won’t be hard at first since 70-80% of my job will be field work. All of the people I interviewed with (4 male employees) told me that I would likely move up quickly with my background. I asked one of them what the demographics were in the office. Seems there are about 30% women (his made up number) in an office of around 40 employees. One of the women was on the top tier for that office.

Also, this job would round out my education. What I studied for my dissertation and during graduate courses is complementary to this job but most of what I’ll be doing I know nothing about. So I’ll get to learn an entire new set of skills and another aspect of my -ology.

So, I’ve decided the deciding factor in taking this job or not is my husbands work. If he gets the position in home state then I won’t take this job but if he stays at his post-doc this will be the perfect in between job for me. Of course the timing is going to be completely wrong and if offered the job I’m going to have to think of the proper wording to let them know I don’t want to decided until I know about my husband. I don’t want to screw them over by taking the position and then quitting before I can even start. I told them my earliest start date would be June 1^st and at that time I’d could work part time (2-3 day/week) so I can be certain to finish my dissertation. My husband should hear back from his job application in home state 30-45 days after March 4^th. Which should be by the end of April. During the part time work discussion I was told about a young mother who works 30 hr/week and another person who works from home one day a week due to a young child. Good to hear they are flexible on work hours, I wonder if these employees are equally compensated to their full time counterparts.

In terms of home state jobs for me. I’ve applied for two consulting companies, that I likely need to do a follow up e-mail with, and I contacted someone about doing a post-doc. He said he would like to work with me but has no funding. I know of one fellowship for a July deadline and of course there are many fellowships to apply for in the fall. I haven’t e-mailed him back yet because I want to have a better grasp of these funding opportunities. My husband mentioned that I could volunteer in his lab-also something I’d like to mention to the scientist I contacted. I’ve decided to apply to teach part-time at two different community colleges in the home-state-area with the hopes that I can also start volunteering until funding can kick in. I need to get these teaching applications out!

So life is moving quickly right now. Hopefully it will slow down so unbalanced reaction, myself and many others can finish their dissertations this spring!

Gender again

2008-03-05T19:16:00.003-06:00

My mind must be focused on the subject but I over heard a man (assuming father) speaking to his younger son, maybe 6yrs old, today while I was walking to the grocery store and I started to think about gender-typing. The statement he says isn't anything profound but got me thinking about what the situation was that got this dad all upset and if his statement was warranted or sexist.

Two young boys, the 6 yr old and maybe a 9 year old, and their dad come out of karate class, as the boys were wearing karate uniforms (maybe another marshal art) and the dad says to the youngest, I don't ever want to see you push a girl again. You could tell the man was angry. He first got pissy about the little boys coat not being properly worn (it was warm today). I know I get pissy about dumb things when something else is bothering me. Then he says the above statement and then something about how it wasn't even a test.

My first thought is, hey they are in karate class they are suppose to be pushing, ect. It shouldn't matter what the gender is of his classmates they are all equals. I felt like this statement was pushing the stereo type that women are a weaker gender. I hate this stereotype and challenge anyone who says it to a dual.

Then I thought maybe this boy pushed a girl because he was upset/mad and it was not part of his training. I thought the dad should have address this better by stating, "I don't ever want you pushing one of your classmates out of anger. That is not how we deal with aggression."

Guess I'll never know the true story. I can only hope that I'll try to push past the identities society have given the men and women and boys and girls of our society and teach my children that we are all just people.

On another note, we got the list of prospective students to my dept. today-six students, five are women. I'm sad I can't be a part of the festivities, which always includes free food and coffee.

Comments

2008-03-05T08:22:00.002-06:00

Now I know that if I want lots of comments all I have to do is talk about the injustice of women! We went back last night to complete our taxes and again he forgot I was the taxpayer. He kinda laughed and said oh right. He apologized in that cynical kind of way so I asked again why he always put the male first. "Does it make a difference?" I ask. He said that they are trained to do it that way and that if I had a female tax preparer they would also put the male as taxpayer. Hm, sounds like I need to do some armchair activism and write H&R Block a letter.

My husband and I discussed the event later and he said I should give the guy 4's when HR calls about the service. Our tax preparer, Jay, said we should get a phone call about how his service was and that the only number that did him any good was a 4. A four out of four on multiple choice questions. I told my husband that I would evaluate each question accurately. Then he mumbled something about how I was letting this taxpayer business get the best of my and he called me a bitch. OH-smack! I was pretty pissed about that and had to point out that I was the one getting the phone call because it was I who made the appointment and without me my husband likely wouldn't do his taxes at all. And I don't see how being honest makes me a bitch.
It was a bad night for us.

Work Hours

2008-03-05T08:03:00.002-06:00

Science girl made an interesting comment on my last post
“I've always imagined the people with actual jobs being productive starting at 8am, and then be done and guilt free at 5pm.”

It got me thinking about my schedule and how, during graduate school, it has mostly been decided by my husband and how my attitude towards working hours has changed progressively over the past six years.

When I first arrived in dissertation town my husband had been a graduate student for 15 months. He wasn’t the working machine he is now and we would commonly go home after seminar, around 6pm. The exception was on days when I had class until 8 pm or so. Most of my classes were hydrology classes and since my dept. offered a hydrology masters which was course work plus a “report” we had a lot of hydrology masters’ students who also worked full-time jobs (how tough!). For this reason my hydrology classes were never offered during regular business hours.
During the first two years I would be the wake-up-police. I tried to get us to the dept. by 8am, or earlier. This stemmed from my previous work schedule which included waking before 6am to meet with my carpool and arrive to work 40-60 mins later. I like this because we missed a lot of traffic and I was back in beautiful beach town by 5pm (leaving my work at work and ready to enjoy life, *sigh*). So, I use to be a morning person. I also felt like I had to set a precedent and impress the department, thus I must get to work early and work a lot. It didn’t take long to notice that my adviser, and most professors, didn’t get in before 9am and mostly not before 10am. However I still worked a lot those first two years. I would bring homework and literature back home and work most evenings and week-ends.

Then one day the switch happened. I’m not sure exactly when or why but it likely had to do with writing. My husband became more focused when he wrote and I became more distance. He became the wake-up-police. We would commonly work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. At first I enjoyed the new separation of work and home, since I no longer took work home. But then the line started to blur between work at home. We would call our dept. home and our home work. I started not working so well in my office since I felt trapped there. Last winter I rearranged the furniture in my office to get a fresh start. It helped some.

So here I am, working from home where there is only a small set of stair separating my office from the rest of my home. This line between work and home is very blurry.

As you’ve read I’ve struggled with coming up with my own work schedule and have again decided to let me husband dictate it. This is how my workdays have become more like a 9-5 day. I find when my husband gets home I want to stop working and hang out with him. So waking before 7am and really getting into my work by 8am is best for me since I want to stop by 6pm when he gets home. This is, however, a 10 hour day, although it likely works into a nice 9-5 slot once I’ve subtracted the time I spend eating, exercising, reading blogs and doing household errands such as phone calls and laundry or a walk to the grocery store.

I am still working on the week-ends, but not 10 hour days. A girls gotta sleep in sometimes.

Also check out the Happy Scientist on a related post.

Can’t have a rainbow without rain

2008-02-29T12:34:00.001-06:00

What I mean by this is that I’ve found out that the pain of waking up early has rewards, and in particular one reward: increased productivity.

Every day this week I’ve woken up before 7am, usually between 630-7. This means that I haven’t had internet time every morning but all mornings I at least had time to check my e-mail.

My routine has been wake up, throw on robe and surf the web until 7am. Then I make coffee/breakfast and put on some actual¹ clothes. After eating I try to organize what I plan to do for the day. All of this means that I’m at top productivity by 8am and I have been working nonstop² until around noon.

This week I’ve been working on a chapter of my dissertation that I don’t plan to publish. Its likely only of local interest and specifically the interest of my funding agency. It may, however, find it’s way to a low-tier journal if I’m happy with the quality of the chapter or find something of greater interest than what I see now. The work I did of this nature for my master’s thesis made it’s way to a local journal which I’m certain is not peer-reviewed but I’ve been meaning to double check this. The journal does not come up in web of science searches and the manuscript was accepted without comments or changes. I was rejected from two other journals before we went to the local journal. The main thrust of the rejections said that my study was nothing new or exciting, just new data in a different area. I now think that I could have made a better argument in the manuscript that it is of broader interest, so maybe the Ph.D. me can actually publish this chapter but it’s not a goal I have to graduate. I was upset at the time of rejection because I’d read articles that are interesting but are really only presenting site specific data. Guess I should submit to the journals I read those articles in.

My productivity greatly decreases after lunch. I’ve been having lunch then exercising or vice versa. I ran outside yesterday!! My internet time has been increased and is now 1230-230. Ironically, I think I goof off less now that my internet time is longer. I guess I’ve just had a lot of work and personal chores to get done during this time this week. For example; I applied for financial aid, submitted a manuscript, e-mailed another manuscript to coauthors, did reference searches, dealt with tax issues and deal with the warrantee of our mattress³. Today, however, I plan to watch last nights episode of Lost and probably do another reference search. Tomorrow I’ll print the references I need.

But you know what? My productivity after lunch has been equal to my general productivity over the past few months, so I’m o.k. that its not as good as the morning time because the morning time is kicking ass. I also don’t feel very guilty for getting only a little done in the afternoons because, again, the morning kicked ass. I think this is all a mental game. I think that I am productive in the morning because, a) I get to check my e-mail and goof off (wake up) a little and so am not thinking about goofing off in the morning when I should be working, b) I have this inherent feeling that I’m just being lazy when I sleep in, so when I wake up late morning I have this bad feeling about myself before the day even begins and c) my husband wakes up early so it’s nice to see him in the morning and feel like we are on the same schedule.

1. Actual doesn’t always mean clothing I would leave the house in. What I wear depends on my mood and my exercise plan for the day. If I’m going to exercise before lunch why bother putting on real clothes to just change into exercise clothes later. I’ve read that your clothing can affect your attitude so I try not to be in “lazy” clothes if I’m feeling lazy.

2. Nonstop includes refreshing my coffee cup, getting water, relieving myself and sometimes making a mid morning snack.

3. This is an insane issue that I should blog on once it has been resolved.

Patriarchal Arrangement

2008-02-27T13:50:00.004-06:00

Husband and I went to H&R Block last night to get our taxes done. We lived in two states last year plus I'm still a resident of dissertation state, and husband was a student part of the year. Long story short our taxes were going to be more complicated than usual so instead of doing them myself (not ourselves but myself) I decided to get a professional to do them.

The nice man helping us was going to put my husband as taxpayer and me as spouse. I decided to ask him why he was doing it this way. He said, "I always put the man first." I asked why and he didn't have an answer. All he said was, "I always do it this way."I told him to change it and put me first, since really I'm the head of the household-what ever the hell that means.
What really pissed me off is that initially he put in the first two numbers of my social since my W-2 was the top form of our pile and made a conscious decision to change. If my husbands W-2 was on top and he just started that way I may not have asked the question. If he would have answered my question with, "it's best if the taxpayer is the higher income earner," I would have agreed. My husband is no longer a student and so, for the first time in our living together he is making more than me.

So I was pissy last night about how the tax forms are biased. Why aren't there spots for taxpayer X and taxpayer Y? We are both a spouse and are both a taxpayer.

In retrospect I wish I would have asked him what he does when he gets two men.

In the end he couldn't even get our dissertation state tax form figured out, since my husband was a partial resident of that state and I am a full time resident. We have to go back next week...

Semantics

2008-02-26T12:58:00.002-06:00

One frustration I have with the writing process is the revisions I get back from my adviser. It is difficult for me to discern if he has made a change based on preference or based on clarity. At times I have trouble believing what he has written is better, especially when he decides to change something he wrote in the first place. I understand that writing is a dynamic process and a manuscript, or any written work, can never truly be finished-a sentiment shared by Ecogeofemme. There is always a different way to present your ideas, plot your data, ect. However, as a graduate student and someone who has always struggled with writing I have trouble learning from this process. How can I become a better writer if I don’t know what my adviser really thinks is good? I tend to feel that everything I do is wrong because I have struggled with writing for so long and have deemed myself no good at it. I’ve gotten to the point where I wish he wouldn’t change sentences that are clear and only change sentences which make no sense. This I feel would help my confidence, i.e. knowing that what I wrote wasn’t “wrong” and help me become a better writer by helping me identify what I’m doing correct and what really needs changing.

I think that lab work is manageable because you know what needs to be done to feel finished, even though things can go wrong and you may have to redo experiments, lab work is always a fixed goal. Unlike writing, which can go on forever and seems to be doing so. I long ago decided I am more of a doer than a thinker. I love to do tasks like lab and field work. I do love making plots, analyzing data and making presentations. I feel those are tasks, even writing an abstract feels like a task, i.e. it has a limit and a deadline. But sitting down to write a paper feels like more than my personality can take.

On a ~~positive~~ another note I submitted a short letter to big name journal this week-end. It is the data that I was known for at the December conference. ~~I’m guessing it will get rejected but at least it should be quick and painless and~~ It got rejected and I know who I’ll turn around and resubmit to. I was amazed that my coauthors had very little comments, except adviser-of course- and I ~~think~~ thought my cover letter was convincing that this data is of interest to a larger reader base.

I also finished manuscript 2 today and sent it to my coauthors. I debated if I should send it to adviser first or to both coauthors at the same time. I’ve completely changed it due to coauthors suggestions but I have this feeling that I don’t mind looking “dumb” in front of my adviser but would hate to send a sub par manuscript to coauthor from another university. It can also be confusing to get contradictory comments from your coauthors. However I decided to take my husbands advise, which is, THIS IS MY MANUSCRIPT. So I’ll see what the coauthors think of it and if the comments aren’t major I’ll fix it up and submit it without them looking at it again.

What I want to be when I grow up

2008-02-17T12:36:00.003-06:00

This post is inspired by something my husband said last week. He met a new post-doc at the non-academic lab he works at and this post-doc asked my husband, who is also a post-doc, “what number post-doc is this for you?” When he got home he told me that he wasn’t interested in having multiple post-doc positions and moving around the country (world) any more than we already have. He is now sitting in his home office learning a computer programming program so he can apply for a job in our dream location on the west coast. What he studies now is very theoretical, this job he is applying for is about studying earthquakes working for the government. The ad states that many days maybe spent doing field work in remote wilderness areas. This sounded so much more interesting to my husband than his many days/nights he spends on the beamline doing lab work. He also commented about how he is having trouble doing a new experiment at his current job because while he has a fellowship he has little money for research and no one (not the guy in the lab next door or a fellow researcher in another state) will collaborate him and let him use the apparatus he needs for his experiment.

I found this conversation with my husband interesting. I get the feeling that we are both ready to “nest.” You know, settle down, start our “real” lives. Buy a house, have a child, all of those “normal” things people do. I’ve been trying to tell myself for this past year that all will come in due time and just because we are 30-ish and haven’t achieved the “American dream” yet doesn’t mean we aren’t normal people. (I apologize for my over use of ~~parenthesis~~ quotations).

So this brings me to the title of this post, What I want to be when I grow up. My mom told me that the first job I wanted was to be a bath-tub-filler-upper. Cute? I guess my 5 year old brain noticed that I, myself, could not fill up my own bath. My mom had to do it. Hell, maybe she couldn’t even fill up her own bath. Imagine the market, all these people across the world needing their baths filled up. . . . .

My brain was easily influenced in elementary school. I remember an assembly where they showed a shriveled up lung, caused by smoking cigarettes and to this day I have never smoked one. We had a safety assembly and I came home and put buckle up stickers in my parents cars and was the buckle-up police well into high school. In addition, “I gave a hoot and didn’t pollute.” I conserved water and sometime around 3^rd grade I decided I wanted to save the earth. I remember we watched something on a TV in class about the environment. All I can remember now was at the end there were a bunch of actors stating ways to save the earth. I remember Chevy Chase stating that one should shower with a friend. And so began my quest as an environmentalist.

Some years later I heard about a big oil spill. At this point I decided that I wanted to be the person who went to the spill and cleaned up the soil.

Every summer I went with my mom and her family to this beautiful beach town for a week or two. This town happen to have a good university. My great grandma would drive me up there and give me tours of the campus. So, I put my desire to be an environmentalist together with these summer vacations and decided to go to that university to study environmental studies. It was here that I was told that I could not double major in ES and chemistry. So I switched to a geology major (I saw a flyer that stated geology is environmental studies and one of the careers it listed was soil scientist), where the requirements included chemistry and math, unlike the ES major (where they encouraged doubling in biology or politics). I had a one point decided I wanted to be an environmental lawyer but it only took one policy and politics class for me to decide that I’d rather be the person who did the science that policy was based on (hopefully in the next administration this will be true).

So for the next four years I studied to be a geologist. In my fourth year I landed a student position working with the USGS for a soil scientist. This position was great, I worked closely with three positive female role models, one was the chief scientist. We studied carbon budgets in the boreal forest and I got to do field work in Alaska and Canada and work with soil! I wasn’t cleaning it like I thought in elementary school but this was pretty much my dream job. They hired me as a technician after I graduate college. But I did more than just lab and field work. I also wrote reports, analyze data, they took me to meetings and I could propose my own research.

So how did it come to be that I left this job? A man. . . . my now husband took me away. We actually spent 15 months apart because there was no way in hell I was leaving the west coast and leaving my awesome job for some man. But then, I missed him, and I thought about it. Was a job really more important than this man I love? I decided not. So I applied to get my master’s degree where he was in dissertation town on the east coast. I got accepted and really love my research. In reality I may have never gone to graduate school if it wasn’t for my husband. I expected to quit at my master’s degree but I really loved the project and it was starting to get interesting so I stayed . .. . and now I’m struggling to finish.

Sorry this story is getting so long.
Now that I’m getting ready to graduate and find a job I have to ask myself, what do I want to do. If you go back a few paragraphs the answer would be save the earth, clean up soil, so why is it that I’m looking at job descriptions for faculty positions. My only answer to this is that it seems this is what someone does with a Ph.D. I had a conversation, about two years ago, at a laundry mat with someone from the humanities department and when I told him I didn’t want to be professor he gave me this look of discuss. When I look at positions with consulting companies I think to myself that I’ve just wasted the last four years of my life getting a Ph.D. I guess I could save the earth as a faculty member, you know in between teaching classes and administrative duties. I just know that there are so many of you out there who have dreamed of being a professor, that wasn’t my dream, so how can I compete with you all.

I think this idea of being a faculty member was also instilled in me at a meeting last spring. My adviser had a special session for him, for his 70^th bday, and the convener mentioned that something like 70% of his former students were now faculty. I thought, hey I could do that do. Two summers ago I mentored a young women in high school. I thought, hey this was cool, I like to mentor students in research. Can I mentor students if I work at a consulting firm? A few months ago I mentioned an old TA of mine came to stay with us. He is now at a university with no graduate students and his responsibilities are 75% teaching, 25% research. That sounded like a nice job. But how do I save the earth if I’m teaching 75% of the time.

*Sigh* I should stop now before this post gets abusively long. I had hoped by writing this all out I would get an epiphany and decide what to do with my life after graduation, but I feel just as confused now as I did when I started. I guess like I stated in my theme I just need to live in the moment and focus on my manuscripts and dissertation.