Secrets

The secret to running on the treadmill without irreparably damaging my knee appears to be running at a slower pace so I'm forced to take smaller steps.  I ran 5 miles yesterday and today, and as of yet have suffered no ill effects!

The secret to troubleshooting is that fixing one problem will likely leave another one untouched and reveal a third.  (The IL-10 production is back on the scale we had anticipated, and the LPS is working!  But the IL-12 production is still essentially 0, and now my non-tolerogenic cells are acting tolerogenic.)

The secret to getting me to like a movie is to include lots of heavy campy makeup and dramatic singing.  Gothic costumes don't hurt either.

The secret to eating normally appears to be putting off lunch as long as possible.  Not sure why this works.

According to a cooking blog I read, the secret to ideal banana bread appears to be marzipan.  I'll be trying this out tomorrow or Sunday.  Another cooking blog revealed that the secret to gnocchi is that it doesn't need to be smothered in cream or browned butter--a light tomato broth is sufficient.  I also intend to try this out over the weekend.

The secret that I've kept from my PI is that I really need to start working in the hospital again.  We're supposed to do 1/2 a day a week for 10 weeks per semester, and my clinical skills have become ridiculously rusty.  Making it easier: It is required.  I can just wave my hands in the air and shrug.  Making it harder: She's expressed confidence that I will be fine if I devote all my time and energy to research, and that my good nature will carry the day when I go back to medical school.  Um.

The secret every single doctor thus far who has observed me has told me: A good nature is great, but ability to make eye contact is key.

The secret I keep to myself when I smile and nod and thank them for their insight: parents, friends, teachers, and mentors have been trying to teach me to make eye contact since I was 2 and it was clear I wanted nothing to do with it.

Relatedly: I still want nothing to do with it.  I can snap into interview mode and make eye contact and smile broadly when needed.  I can make eye contact with my partners easily, but it's my version of the Naked Rights (Coupling, British version, the only one that matters): the instant the relationship ends, my desire/ability to make effortless eye contact evaporates.  I can make tenuous eye contact with friends and family.  Ugh.  Eye contact should not be required in a civilized world.  It is entirely cultural.

On the whole, though, life is good right now.  I'm a happy camper.

Reflections in bulleted form

Things I did for the first time this year:
-Visited the West Coast (Seattle and its surrounding areas for Intaglio's brother's wedding)
-Took Step 1
-Did a mini-rotation in the hospital
-Started graduate school
-Spent Christmas without my family here in Madison
-Settled into cohabitation
-This would be as good a space as any to mention the fact that Intaglio and I got engaged over Christmas
-Voted in a presidential election

Accomplishments that made me proud:
 -Passed Step 1
-Ran a half-marathon
-Maintained a good GPA the first semester of grad school
-Taking better care of my physical health: Exercise, vitamins, flossing, skin cancer screenings...it's like I'm an adult or something.

Things I learned this year:
-Exercise does wonders for my mental health.
-So does RuPaul's Drag Race.
-Keeping a good lab notebook is both essential and not too taxing.
(I harp on the notebook a lot, but it's been a thorn in my side, as I've alluded to in the past.  Even now, it's far from ideal.  I'll think I've written down everything I possibly could, and then a week later I'll try to repeat the experiment and realize that, you know, I didn't write down how much LPS I added per well or something infuriating.)
-Reading for pleasure is both a delight and a necessity
-I am not a social butterfly, but I need to be around people.  The friends I've made during the course of the MSTP have become more important to me than I could ever imagine. 
-"Collect data today like your machine will break tomorrow."

Things I have learned, but am slow to act on:
-Sugar is not good for me.  It causes horrible mood swings and depression the following day.  Regardless of whether or not this is psychosomatic (and yes, it likely is), my life is simpler when it's removed or heavily restricted.
-It's very easy for me to get sucked into repetitive internet surfing.  Checking facebook every four minutes, that sort of thing.
-One must do the thing that is frightening.  I've been dragging my feet finding a preceptor for the shadowing program during my PhD years, because I'm afraid of my PI's response, time constraints, research constraints, etc.  None of my reluctance changes the fact that I need to find one, and soon.  I'm just making it harder on myself.
-Change is most effective in incremental bits.  Write this paper for an hour a day!  Exercise every morning!  Take notes on M3/M4 stuff so you don't lose it all before you re-enter med school!  One life coach, trying to motivate a woman to go to the gym, told her to put on her gym shoes every morning for a week.  That was it.  The next week, she exercised for five minutes after putting on the shoes.  Change is much less aversive and much more sustainable when broken into small chunks, and yet I consistently try to dive in head-first.

Resolutions for 2012:
-Keep a gratitude journal (very Oprah-like, but I've found that it does tend to stabilize my mood)
-Eat one dessert a week.  This will be the most challenging resolution, and the one I'm most likely to break.  It goes against my last point about not diving in head-first, but as far as sugar is concerned, for me it's pretty much all or nothing.
-Lose 10 lbs, keep it off
-Keep the apartment tidy by not slipping into laziness: eg, washing dishes before the food dries on them, folding laundry right after it's done in the drier, disposing of junk mail immediately.  Likewise, do homework <48 hours after it is assigned.
-Via the bit-by-bit approach, start writing every day.  
-Figure out what my goals are.  I don't really view resolutions as goals--they reflect my desire to stop falling short.  In terms of longer-term goals that extend beyond "stop the self-sabotage"....I don't really have a clear picture yet.  I'd like some goals.

Happy New Year's!  Despite my somewhat melancholy-sounding introspection, it has been a great year, and I am hugely grateful for all that I got to experience and learn.  Here's to a wonderful 2013!

A week in grad school

Tempeh bacon and warmed chunks of frozen mango with cinnamon.  Jogging to the lab at 7 AM to start an incubation.

Too much butter, too much sugar.  7 or 8 dozen bowls, dishes, plates, mugs, teapots, butter dishes, and salt/pepper shakers that used to belong to my maternal grandmother, brought to Madison by my aunt and uncle.  A half a loaf of lemon pound cake in one day.  Boredom, tears, stress.  RuPaul's drag race.

Trying to go vegan for a week or two in order to clean my system, whatever that means.  Gardein entrees.  Odwalla bars surprisingly don't taste like sawdust.  Feeling pretty good.  Less of a sacrifice than I imagined.

Intaglio playing Halo 4.  His birthday is coming up soon.  I should organize some sort of celebration.

Stat exam today.  Eh.  Mounds of eraser shards after totally overthinking one problem.  Got it in the end.

Dermatology screen last week.  Diagnosed with a dysplastic nevus, to be removed at the end of November.  A little unnerving.  Note that it's not a typical dysplastic nevus: it doesn't fit the A/B/C/D/E's.  The woman doing the screen noted that it's better to think about moles as a gestalt--instead of fretting about large, funny-looking moles, try to notice moles that don't fit the pattern.  My dysplastic nevus is very small and dark, while most of my moles are large and light brown.  Trying not to worry.  When it metastasizes, melanoma goes straight to the brain.  It hasn't changed much that I can tell.  It's probably okay.  I'm still nervous.

Apartment is neater.  Kitchen is still a mess.  Laundry needs to be done.  

Lab work.  Flow cytometer is being unnervingly cloggable.  It took one grad student and a postdoc most of today to fix it, which is how I wound up running samples until 7 PM.  I really need to figure out how to unclog the machine on my own.  (Better to not to clog it in the first place, but it's not like I'm running chunky samples.)

Can't tell if some cultures got contaminated or the cells all just died.  Lab meeting tomorrow at 10 AM.  Will likely be 11 AM or later.  Need to analyze two experiments before that.  I'm hoping to salvage something meaningful.

So yeah.  No real complaints.  I am grateful, life is good.