Am trying out LJ for the next month. All posts are friends-locked but otherwise things should be the same.

Something something patience

So while I'm sick, it seems like the PI has decided that rather than publishing what we have now, he'd want the interaction data after all. This is extremely frustrating and not a little confusing. I am baffled and so are the collaborators. My appointment with the office of grad studies for my exiting paperwork is on the 22nd so I'm going to have to explain this situation as that I doubt my PI will let me go until we get the manuscript accepted for publication. The manuscript that hasn't even been sent out yet.  Augh.

Caught something last Sunday and spent this week taking meds and trying to fight it off before finally succumbing to it sometime Thursday night and arrived at work Friday morning only to be ordered by the PI to take care of my cell culture  (which no one else could do except me) and go home. Which probably says something since he's the one who's been pushing me for new data on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday this week while knowing I'm running five day long experiments. Still feeling kind of achy and gross this morning, but mostly crushingly disappointed since this is the first October in YEARS where I've arrived at a place where I can enjoy myself and now I'm spending my first weekend nursing a cold. I had PLANS dammit.

And in this week...

Collaborator still working on draft, I ran some experiments, the cold room is still leaking so I probably will need to wipe up the water come Monday. Also my cultures a redeveloping a fungal problem. No idea how much of that is an effect of the fact that our new eco-friendly building is both warmer and damper than our previous building. No idea if the fact that for the first time in ever our lab is doing some fungal work (yeast for Y2H assay) played a part. Either way it kind of sucks as I have to repeat a bunch of stuff again and also re-make a bunch of media.

It autumn here yet

Went to Del Mar Fairground last week and spent two hours at the Home and Garden show rather than the ...horse racing that people generally go see (because as one of my high school teacher said: I am an 80 year old in disguise and have zero interest in horse racing). It's basically a convention with booths of construction company, architecture firms, renewable power companies &c, and I mentioned to Lucy, I basically gave people there massive headaches because I insisted on Asking Questions. A lot of which aren't necessarily the sort that a sales person is equipped to answer. (Like for instance: this one guy was trying to sell me this new paint that's supposed to be permanent, or at least he claims it lasts "forever" and it's also insulating as well and doesn't chip -- I wanted to know what kind of chemical / technology's involved so that one layer of paint can be insulating -- whether it's some kind of polymer or clay -- you get the idea.) I ended up collecting a lot of flyers and pamphlets, and got some good research info for a story of mine -- though I do have to figure out what having an architect on site will be like and the logistics of getting a construction crew somewhere remote. Ah well, I do know someone who works for a construction company, so I might ask her at some point.

Badly organized post, you have been warned

Since I sort of have more time on the weekends now, I've decided to go around the city and visit all the famous landmarks that I haven't yet seen before I leave. I've started last Sunday and am currently aiming at one site per week, which should carry me hopefully past the submission & review stage of my manuscript.

Yay it's September

Moving a 15 year old lab and its assorted equipment, samples, and detritus when the lab is down to 2 grad students, 1 lab tech, and 1 undergrad had been most exciting. Of the variety that I shall add to the let's never do that again, ever, list.

Well that was...let's never do that again

So after weeks of not updating I'm starting again with the blog posts. In the weeks of semi-radio-silence, I've gone and successfully defended my dissertation. To the many, many people who have asked me "what's next": a cupcake, a lab migration, and a wedding.

PI still not reading dissertation. Am being pushed even more because we have a competitor but he refuses to consider anything except proof of that particular protein interaction. Because I do have a sense of self-preservation, I refrained from pointing out that this is science and we can't really PROVE anything, only fail to disprove it. I did point out that protein interactions change depending on the pH, the time of day, the salt concentration, the detergent concentration, the cell type, the way the samples are prepared, to which he replied that he knows and it ends, as it tends to end these days, with the two of us staring at each other for a long moment before he tells me "Get it done." and leaving.

It'd be more tolerable if there's less follow up of the "why isn't it done yet. I wanted it done YESTERDAY. I wanted it done TEN YEARS AGO" variety. (I wish I was joking. He literally said the ten years ago thing to which I replied that THAT is a bit beyond my powers. My sense of self-preservation is not perfect.) Then there's the thinly veiled hint that perhaps I should be working harder and I am experiencing guilt at taking the time to practice some kind of self-care.

Basically I'm not sure if I can even meet my August deadline and have spend my hours not working convincing myself that I don't care, because it's the only way I can deal with it. That and murdering fictional people.

Also between stress-induced insomnia and Independence Day (my neighborhood is close to the beach and noisy until well-past midnight) and lab stuff (had to go in yesterday) am very tired.

This week I made the PI so frustrated he threw a pencil. Not at me, but nevertheless. The worst part is that the feeling is mutual but I've been drilled from a young age about propriety and to not make a scene and show respect and what have you, and so I can't throw something too. My self control won't let me.

In other news my parents are apparently dealing with a squirrel problem this week, my main experiment is still not working, and it may be time to murder someone else in my story.

The first time I sent my dissertation to my PI he told me he didn't really read it because it was too short (and I had uncharitable thoughts about the cause behind the academia being too full of people who love the sound of their own voices too much). The second time I sent my dissertation, having now written a lot more speculations and peripherally related information than I am strictly comfortable with I got back nothing and...nothing. Finally I ran out of patience and asked him if he's read it yet. He said no, very matter of fact, and informed me that he would not read it until I finish my experiments. I pointed out to him that my defense date is scheduled for August. He smiled at me and told me I "better get cracking".

Also blogger for reasons unexplained put the old Lunatics blog on top first and I was out of it enough last week that I didn't check which blog my post went to so now I had to go back and delete last week's post and transfer this week's post into this blog that is actually being updated.

Currently: disagreeing with PI on experimental protocol, on data interpretation, on dissertation, on manuscript, and on presentation. Had a minor melt down and contemplated the fact that although I like it when people tell me "you're going to be fine", being told to "relax" actually makes me more and more tense because my mind heads into "yes I know I'm supposed to relax and I am trying to relax but I also know that I'm not but I'm trying why am I not relaxing I'm supposed to relax asdf still not relaxing WHY I NEED TO RELAX alsdhjgoweebngo I'M EVEN MORE TENSE NOW BREATHE" and then, you know, melt down.

Also my shoulder hurts because being on the computer all the time combined with drawing on tablet combined with loading a bunch of experiment plates that have 96 wells that are about 5mm across without touching more than one side of the wells without passing my hand, wrist, or arm over the plate, combined with drills with a wooden practice sword is apparently the limit. There is spasming. I resent it immensely and am reduced to whining on the internet and consoling myself with tea and ice cream.

Still tired, still hanging in there. The dojo instructor's tapped me as being ready to mentor someone (sort of one-on-one tutoring to get someone ready for the exams) so there's now a bit of internal flailing about that as well. I spend a truly disconcerting amount of time feeling under-prepared for everything these days. It's possible I just need to relax and go with it. Though that's kind of anathema to my nature.

PI still operating on the "I want everything done, yesterday" notion, while the collaborators and I side-eye him because we are not sure if he's aware that he's spent 3 hours talking about additional experiments to do in the 10 days left of May and  that, in research, things...usually don't work on the first try.

Other than that, still hanging in there. Parents are coming to visit today, which will be some combination of awesome and exhausting and right now means I need to clean up the worst of the mess before they get here. Also: CA voting -- who on EARTH in Gary Wesley?? I tried to google that name briefly but it turns out it's a fairly common name and I'm...just confused how there's no proper opposition to props this time around.

This week the second heat wave peaked and at one point I was told there were 9 places on fire in the north part of our county, but thankfully it was still pretty far north that we didn't have to deal with evacuation. Thursday ended up being so hot that I, being in a top floor apartment without AC, took to sleeping on the floor with both windows open because the bed (and my clothes, and my bag, and anything that is any good at all at retaining heat) was still radiating heat. The weather's going to be dropping around 30F within the next few days, which is the good news. The bad news is the cycle of temperature and being closeted indoors against the heat means that nearly half of our lab building (or so it sounds like) is sick. The tech in our lab came down the day after I returned to work.

Even worse news this week is that I got partially scooped. For those not in the academia, being "scooped" is sort of like the journalism version -- someone reported what you were about to report before you did. The paper came out in NEURON, which is reassuring in a way since it meant that we were not completely off of our heads when we aimed for NEURON as the place to publish my work. I couldn't help but think that if I had managed to convince my PI to submit my work back in January, as I'd originally proposed, my paper and that paper might've came out back-to-back and I'd be DONE by now ---but trying to win an argument against my PI is.... Well no one in lab has managed to date, including the golden boy a few years back, even though the PI admitted after HIS paper was scooped that the students was right. (Basically it's impossible to convince him he's wrong unless you can prove it, which in this case is too late for me.) Mostly it means that I can't publish my work as it is right now and has to add MORE stuff, which my PI wants done (yesterday but even he can acknowledge that's not going to happen) by the end of May. Though it took him an hour to cover all the things he wants done and we're half way through May already, so I'm not sure his plan is entirely plausible either.

In conclusion: it can get worse. PI's still pushing for more data, all the data, done yesterday to the point where this week I flat out told him that I'm ALREADY doing my best. Because I don't think I can spend any more hours on this without completely destroying my mental and physical health and no, just NO. It's not worth it.

Huh

Just ran into apartment manager-type person (who replaced our landlady) regarding the sink issue (the one I mentioned in April) as I was staggering back in with fresh laundry and groceries. She THINKS, after inspection, that she might be able to get someone here to fix it by next week, and that she can't find my phone number (it's the same number I've been using for the past few years) but I think the sink might finally get fixed. Which means one fewer item to quietly simmer in irritation in the back of my mind, which brings to the obvious-in-hindsight realization that all my stress this past year hasn't been --no that's inaccurate. It's more accurate to say that the majority of my stress is actually from things being out of my control. I mean the work load is intense, but if I take into account the hours I put into studying / working in lab / classes during the last year I had as an undergrad, my hours is only worse because it takes me 2hrs to commute each day and also I do martial arts 4hrs a week. I have experienced nothing this past year that's more harmful than anything I've survived before and I really do think a lot of stress is born out of frustration at being told all the things I can't do -- be given all the thousand and one wrong answers while told there's no one right answer. I'm told directly and indirectly that so much of what happens to me is out of my control -- and even that sentence -- "what happens to me" instead of "what I do next" is a reflex resulting from some kind of passive brain washing. It's a kind of learned helplessness.

Well screw that.

The economy is awful and there's no funding for basic research and I am female and Asian and not-straight and currently getting over a flu. I cannot change any of these things. Some of them, however, will pass on their own, and I am well-read, intelligent, and even more stubborn than I am smart. I am about to graduate from a top-tier program in one of the top countries for research and I will find a way to get what I want out of life, even if it's not via the most direct route.

There is, as "they" have said, no one right answer, after all.

Ugh

Came down with the flu on Thursday (to be accurate I started feeling off Wednesday evening but at first I thought it was just exhaustion or something and I could just sleep it off...but then it kept getting WORSE since Thursday morning) and had to sort of pause three different experiments so I can go home and be feverish and nauseated with saltines and Nyquil. Fever broke on Friday though and I graduated to jello, and then when that stayed down, soup. Had to drag my exhausted self to store for more saltine though and nearly had a melt-down out of exhaustion when I couldn't find them (seriously WHY do stores insist on switching things around?). Still a bit sniffly and slight coughing today despite of being dosed with the cough-suppressant version of Nyquil and Dayquil (am experience enough to know that when I get sick there's over 75% chance I'll end up hacking for months unless I do something early on about it) but otherwise functional, so am going to go and be an functional adult with chores and stuff (and move back to my normal diet! Exciting!) so I can go into lab tomorrow and start catching up on experiments, which will be stressful on so many levels that I'm actually trying not to think about it too much because, well, I've had enough nausea for this month, thanks.

Just checked the weather and realized that after bouncing from 90F to 60F the past week we're heading for 88F on Monday. And then it starts to drop again but I'm not sure how FAR it will drop so ...am just going to hold on to my thicker jackets for now and eat a lot of oranges.

Had to email my committee to push back my defense date today (not sure if it's approved yet or not) because despite of my best effort I haven't submitted my manuscript yet. I feel a little ashamed because there're a bunch of people cheering me on and telling me "you can do it!" and now I feel like I've let them down. I'm also upset because I hate it when I can't meet my own deadline, even when it's for reasons beyond my control because I usually have enough backup plans that even when things get a bit out of control it still gets done, and so the rare instances when it doesn't come through feels even worse.

On one hand, I really am not ready to face down my committee at the original deadline. On the other hand I just asked to drag this out for another two months (at least) and I feel a lot like I'm failing at life.

Let's not do that ever again

For lo and behold I have finished my hellish two weeks and I am still here, with one tentative job offer (provided that I can secure funding for my project prior to joining the lab) and a blue belt. But really, LET US NEVER DO THAT AGAIN because the whole 6 hour+ interview then fly back for a full work day + 2hour of martial arts combination is awful and I doubt I have the stamina to last another week. (I might need to work on stamina, but I am considering this the idle way that I contemplate about working on my pain tolerance -- yes it would be useful, but do I REALLY want to go through the experience?)

So the question regarding whether or not I will get used to the hours of talking required of a job interview has now been answered, and the answer is a resounding "no".

ONE MORE WEEK!

My schedule for the next two week is as follows:

Fly out tomorrow for job interview Monday, fly back Monday evening.
Fly out next Sunday for job interview Monday, fly back Monday evening.
Train 4 hours of aikido per week in preparation for the test the Saturday after that.

In between this I am running experiments full-time, including two batches of behavior tests that I can't really shift around because the animals have to be that exact age. I am also supposed to have finished written my dissertation by next week except I'm afraid it won't happen. (I've written about 50-60 pages of a roughly 100 page monster and I haven't figured out how to get the formatting in yet, so the actual number of pages I have done is only an estimate.) I haven't figured out quite how to keep myself fed on a somewhat healthy diet when I barely have the time to buy food, much less cook, but I suspect a lot of sandwiches and maybe a thing with my slowcooker.

Also the drain-stopper thing in my bathroom broke last night and I haven't found a ride from the airport for my second interview yet (it doesn't get in until 10pm).

Ladies and gentlemen: my life.

Sent off the first part of my dissertation to be proofread by people who may or may not have time for it. It's a bit like that moment right after you stepped out of the room after finishing the calc AP test, except with more "omg I don't know what I'm doing" and existential angst.

In short, 0/10, would not recommend.

Was in a small car accident this morning. I'm fine. The car acquired a few scratches on the back bumper and the license plate got bent but suffers no other damage. My life is otherwise still operating on the default somewhere between tired and stressed.

There's a cold going around in lab lately -- the PI came down with it, the grad student next to me was out sick, and I have been paranoid about hand-washing and eating oranges (vitamin C) especially given that traveling and stress usually makes me more susceptible to viruses. This is not helped by the 20F temperature change in the area but -- well, there's nothing I can do about that. (Except complain about which clothes I should be packing away in the closet and which I should keep out.)

The PI that I interviewed with have not offered me a job interview, nor has she rejected my application. Instead she has said to keep in touch with her and to let her know when I'm done with all the interviews, which means that rather than crossing off one item on my to-do list that I can stop worrying about, I get to circle that item in red and draw "?????" next to it --- immensely frustrating, as you might imagine. Other than that I have nothing new to report. Still frustrated. Still stressed. I have in fact taken to describing my days to people on a scale of how tired I am because at the end of any given day I'm guaranteed to be some level of exhausted.

Possibly am drinking too much tea when left on my own. Going to limit self to no more than three-cup of caffeinated things on any given day.

Interview for a post-doctoral fellowship, I've concluded, is a lot like an oral exam where the only thing you know going in is what class it's for and what grade is considered passing.

The worse part of it is you step in knowing you have to take this same exam again and again and each time the focus will be different, the questions will be different and how the answers are scored will be different, and that according other post-docs the success rate right now for a passing grade is like ...33%.

The worst part of it is that, as an introvert, five hours of talking is way too much.

IDEK

This week I have hit the point where I re-wrote one sentence ten-times and then convinced myself I need to re-organize an entire section because it sounded incoherent, though at that point I actually had very little confidence in my ability to determine what is coherent.

Also the my mice gave me a litter of babies from a test cross that had weird phenotype, which was hair-pulling level of confusion since although it doesn't contradict any of my hypotheses, it doesn't exactly make sense, either. Actually I'm not sure how to interpret it and so spent some time staring blankly at the DNA sequence.

"This is what you have to look forward to," I told the other grad student, dully.

"I don't think I'm gonna look forward to it," he replied.

Skipped two days of drawing this week and ate a lot of ramen. Was making plans about eating healthier next week except I'm flying out Thursday night and Saturday morning and so that's at least two meals of powerbars on top of my utter inability to parse amount of groceries needed for the right amount of days any time the number of days change. Perhaps I will buy frozen meals. Or make a giant vat of soup that I can can freeze in aliquots and thaw out to pair with bread as needed.

Also today I accidentally hit a blackbelt in the face. She was thrilled about it.

On an unrelated note

I didn't have the time to type this up yesterday because this week's post required a bit more thought and will most likely be a bit longer as well.

Novel ways of injury

Unexpected injury during martial arts #2:

Foot accidentally gouged by someone else's toe nail. It broke skin and there's a bit of blood and everything.

Also note to self: be extra diligent in trimming nails on all four appendages from now on.

(In case anyone is wondering, #1 was the time where I somehow managed to sprain my toe.)

I need to stop shopping at 99 Ranch early in the morning. I've ran into too many Chinese PIs there, during that time, including the two from my committee. Also I wonder why people looked surprised to see me with groceries and ask me if I'm cooking for myself. I mean you could ask someone to pick up a few things for you at the store, sure, but for the comprehensive week's worth of food items I usually fill my cart with -- usually the person who cooks does that kind of shopping, don't they? Since they're the one who knows what they need and could change their planned recipe because...oh I don't know, the spinach looked iffy. Possibly I don't seem the time who can cook. To be fair I know a fair number of female classmates who can't.

I don't even know.

Didn't see repairman for incubator on Tuesday. Stepped into room one Wednesday to find alarm going off and CO2 level at zero (v. bad news). Felt like I went around crying about the incubator to everybody on Wednesday (seriously I just need this one thing to work out to get my manuscript done) as we tried to figure out whether the repairman actually came or  not and what's wrong with the incubator. Ended up needing to order a new CO2 tank, which came yesterday. Hopefully everything will equilibrate over the weekend and no fresh alarms will be going off on Monday and I can finally start that set of experiments. Again. Because troubleshooting is hell and this is a week long experiment. (Which yes, makes equipment failure that much more frustrating.)

Yvette likes knives. I wonder if people are keeping track of my internet history somewhere and if all people who attempt to write detective stories are marked somewhere as potential terrorists because of the sort of things we google.

I mentioned that I'm applying for a position at UCSF to someone and they said "Whoa, FANCY!" and then I suffered from what I think was an acute attack of insecurity.

It's the darnest thing.

A moment of blinding "holy f*** what the f*** was I thinking????" coupled with thought paralysis. And then it's gone, leaving behind a deeply bemused wonder at the apparently spontaneity of my brain. But this too, according to my classmates, is part of the ritual of graduation.

Seriously, why do we do this to ourselves? (Yes this is very very rhetorical.)

Current schedule has interview in March, martial arts exam in April (?!), public defense in May. Also, as of next Tuesday, all the cell incubators in our lab will be down and I will need to find a neighboring lab who has space for my cells temporarily.

I'm pretty sure I've said "fuck" more times within the past six months than the entirely of my life up to this point.

Also both of the books I finished recently are of the depressing / paranoia-inducing variety, but THAT, at least, I can do something about. I'm picking up Emma Thompson's SENSE AND SENSIBILITY DAIRIES and Dunnett's GAME OF KINGS from the local library today (have learned how the hold system works and figured out how to work around the delays) so that should be more fun.

I have also started drawing my next comic book / graphic novel this week and will be filing my taxes later today. Never a dull moment. Or something like that.

So new and fascinating source of stress:

Our lab had 2 incubators for cell lines. That's right: HAD. The CO2 regulator broke back in October, along with the fan in one of the incubators and taking out the other in the process, causing us to lose our cell lines. Due to the cost and the fact that this has been a really terrible year in terms of funding, we only fixed 1 of the 2 incubators -- meaning all of our current cells for experiments are in one incubator.

Yesterday the fan of our sole remaining incubator started making weird noises.

If I lose all my cells AGAIN this close to finishing my manuscript I may cry.

Hitting a snag in my experiments and everything is frustrating. (Well not literally everything, no matter how much it may feel like it at the time.) The January lab move date is shifted to either March or April, maybe. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with anything else.

On an unrelated note: happy Lunar New Year!

I can't think of a title so you get this instead

We got another campus police alert this week for sexual assault, which makes this the third police alert in two months (stabbing, stabbing, assault, in that order), which I find worrying. The campus I work at is fairly well known and has a good reputation and is surrounded on one side by villas of people who have way too much money and thinks sculpted topiaries and rococo moldings are a thing (I went for a walk through the area a few years ago, curious about architecture). People have tried to make that area a closed neighborhood for the wealthy and elite back in the day. This -- three incidents either on campus or within fifteen minutes walking distance of campus, should not be happening.

Yet here we are.

Which brought me to the point on Thursday where I realized I might have to stay a lot later than my usual time on campus. I actually had to plan out possible ways to ensure my own safety and had decided that, if I had to stay late for an hour or more, the bus stop was empty, and the street light there broke again (it does that) I was going to text my way through my contact list until I find someone to keep in touch with until the bus arrives.

Consequently I have suddenly become a lot better at remembering to recharge my phone.

On that note, I just want to mention that this week's Thursday was awful. It was awful not in the sense that something horrible and/or tragic happened but the grinding dreariness of hundreds of little things not going my way all within a twenty-four hour time span. The highlights of those hours include but are not limited to: nose-piece on glasses falling off, sudden and inexplicable cramping in my calf muscle, bad enough that I couldn't walk, missing the bus, and somehow switching the electrodes on one of my protein gels -- which is a mistake I have never made in my entire life-- so that I needed to re-do the whole thing. By the time the evening came around I was at the "I hate everybody and everything" stage and ready to declare war on nameless deities and abstract concepts alike, so it was probably a good thing that the day ended.

Friday was much better. I have a new-found appreciation of Fridays, even above and beyond the usual joys of the arrival of the weekend.

And now, I have tea.

Hello, hello

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog -- my current schedule being what it is it just hasn't been possible to do daily posts like I've done, once upon a time. I could make time, it's true -- I can always make time -- but as is the case with everything else, it comes down to priority lists and cost-benefit analyses and at the end of the day, nothing gets written (that's appropriate for posting here, anyway).

That being said though, I do think that it's still good practice for me to write regularly. Tumblr is well and good because it's more informal and there is VERY little low pressure to generate unique content when all I can do is hit "reblog", but it'll be good for me to write something more structured that is NOT related to what I have to do at work, because I have a very (justified) fear that I may forget how to write something that's not a science report.

Still, I'm a bit short on time still, and given that this IS my blog, I've made the executive decision that I'll write one post a week, regardless of the length, and if I'm really short on time I'll just ...not revise / edit it. Editing takes about 2-3x as long for me than writing these stream-of-thought posts, you see. You have been warned: you will get to see my informal writing in all of its grammatically questionable glory and if that's not your thing...well I assume since you are here, you know how to operate a browser.

No seriously, I feel that my academic writing is slowly destroying my ability to write anything else. One of my acquaintances had said that writing an article and writing a short story shouldn't be all that different (she...doesn't write stories) since they're both narratives that need clear writing with beginning and end and  you are essentially telling a story in both cases. Having thought about it, I concluded that yes, there are similarities, but for me, who has written both, the differences are more obvious than the similarities. It's like the different between Monet and Mondrian -- they are both painters and paintings are very similar as an medium of art in that you do need technical skills to apply pigment to a surface in order to convey certain kinds of thought and emotion in the viewer. However, if you will google image Claude Monet and Piet Mondrian, I think you will agree with me that the style is VERY different, the technique to paint each other is most likely different, and the general feelings of looking at a Monet, regarding which one, is very different from what you get from a Mondrian.

Scientific writing is, for me, the Mondrian; fiction writing is the Monet.