Due in part to the start of a new academic year and Meja's revitalization of our program's Communications board, this post marks the resurrection of my blog.
Who am I:
-A student of immunology on a clinical research track starting her second year of graduate school.
What I want to tell you:
Everyone's first year of graduate school is rough. Due to unusual happenings and timing problems, mine was extremely rough. I struggled for a number of months with the thought of switching labs and/or quitting outright. But at some point (admittedly, it happened later rather than sooner), something snapped and...I started getting on. I won't tell you I've had wild success, and I won't lie and say that I don't have awful days anymore. But it's a lot better now.
One of the things I struggled with the most was the thought that these problems were mine and mine alone, indicative (at best) of a failure to cope or (at worst) an inability to do science. I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is not true. In posts to come, I'll tell you bits and pieces of what I went through, what I am going through, what I did that helped, and what I had to accept was out of my control. Maybe you'll find it helpful; maybe none of it will relate to you. But I want you to know that 93% of the time in graduate school, the problem is not you. I learned/am learning to deal, and you will too.
Things I will probably write about in the following weeks:
-My first committee meeting
-Why Brad Dourif is the most amazing and underrated actor of our time
-How I became strangely evangelical about running shoes
-How I learned to stop putting my foot in my mouth every time I talked to my PI
-Maintenance of a healthy, positive attitude in graduate school (SPOILERS: It involves lowered expectations, PhD comics, and www.reddit.com/r/pitbulls)
-Axolotl husbandry
-Keeping a proper lab notebook (SO IMPORTANT!)
-H.P. Lovecraft
-Contrary to popular belief, folkdancing is a lot of fun and you all should do it with me!
Things I promise I will not talk about anymore:
-WAAAH I am so fat
-WAAAH I am so unproductive
-WAAAH I hate my project/lab/life choices
-Running away and joining the circus: Y/N?
-Pros and cons of various exotic dancer names
This year is going to be a better year than the last one, I have no doubt at all.
-IL-X
Showing posts with label Grad school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grad school. Show all posts
Thursday, August 22, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
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.
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.
Monday, December 31, 2012
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!
-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!
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Noted!
It is only upon writing a table of contents for your lab notebook that you can truly appreciate how much your lab notebook skills suck. Yeeeesh.
I have a fierce appreciation for a good lab notebook, the product of years of lab notebook incompetence. As a complete lab novice in undergrad, a well-meaning but distracted postdoc handed me a handsome blue hardcover book and informed me that this was my notebook. A notebook? For me? Why, thank you! I proceeded to take the worst notes of all time over the course of the summer. Really, it was my calculations and emotional ranting book. After a few months, the postdoc scolded me for my borderline illegible notes. I was (in my mind, justifiably) peeved. It was my notebook! Who cared if anyone else could read it? I could!
(I probably couldn't, not now, anyway. My rotation era notes were absolutely baffling to me this afternoon, and I'm doing very similar experiments then and now. Eeeesh. I really hope no one needed my notes for my undergrad thesis, because I'm certain they were not even a little bit better.)
We spent a class in one of my seminars going over how to keep a good lab notebook. The professor repeatedly apologized to us for being boring, but I was thrilled. THIS was what I needed, and had been lacking.
I'm not going to say that my lab notebook is perfect (it is still somewhat disorganized, and I often forget to write out the purpose and conclusions), but it's a work in progress and I'm proud that I've been able to evolve.
For anyone who is interested (probably very few), here are my personal Notebook Commandments. Yes, I did print out a copy and post it in my notebook.
1) Write in black ballpoint pen.
2) Start every experiment with a statement of objective, purpose, and plan.
3) Take notes on materials used (lot number, grade, sources: I am NOTORIOUSLY bad at this.)
4) Each repeat of an experiment should be written up separately, but you can refer back to previous ones if nothing has changed
5) State the conclusions
6) Record each experiment on consecutive pages (again, bad: it can be hard to predict how much space you'll need for an experiment, and I often do more than one experiment simultaneously)
7) Draw a single line through incorrect entries. Draw a single line through unused spaces and sign/date it. (This is so you can't fudge your notebook later with added data.)
8) Someone else should be able to follow your work.
9) Tape in all loose papers to your notebook.
10) Consider keeping a separate binder for supplemental materials and cross-referencing it as needed.
I have a fierce appreciation for a good lab notebook, the product of years of lab notebook incompetence. As a complete lab novice in undergrad, a well-meaning but distracted postdoc handed me a handsome blue hardcover book and informed me that this was my notebook. A notebook? For me? Why, thank you! I proceeded to take the worst notes of all time over the course of the summer. Really, it was my calculations and emotional ranting book. After a few months, the postdoc scolded me for my borderline illegible notes. I was (in my mind, justifiably) peeved. It was my notebook! Who cared if anyone else could read it? I could!
(I probably couldn't, not now, anyway. My rotation era notes were absolutely baffling to me this afternoon, and I'm doing very similar experiments then and now. Eeeesh. I really hope no one needed my notes for my undergrad thesis, because I'm certain they were not even a little bit better.)
We spent a class in one of my seminars going over how to keep a good lab notebook. The professor repeatedly apologized to us for being boring, but I was thrilled. THIS was what I needed, and had been lacking.
I'm not going to say that my lab notebook is perfect (it is still somewhat disorganized, and I often forget to write out the purpose and conclusions), but it's a work in progress and I'm proud that I've been able to evolve.
For anyone who is interested (probably very few), here are my personal Notebook Commandments. Yes, I did print out a copy and post it in my notebook.
1) Write in black ballpoint pen.
2) Start every experiment with a statement of objective, purpose, and plan.
3) Take notes on materials used (lot number, grade, sources: I am NOTORIOUSLY bad at this.)
4) Each repeat of an experiment should be written up separately, but you can refer back to previous ones if nothing has changed
5) State the conclusions
6) Record each experiment on consecutive pages (again, bad: it can be hard to predict how much space you'll need for an experiment, and I often do more than one experiment simultaneously)
7) Draw a single line through incorrect entries. Draw a single line through unused spaces and sign/date it. (This is so you can't fudge your notebook later with added data.)
8) Someone else should be able to follow your work.
9) Tape in all loose papers to your notebook.
10) Consider keeping a separate binder for supplemental materials and cross-referencing it as needed.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Gratitude
I really am a truly lucky person. Evidence for the following:
1) Although I bitch and moan about graduate school, I have an exceptional PI. Case in point: On Monday, I gave a (admittedly somewhat unexpected*) paper presentation at lab meeting. Despite having never head of the research group in question and having no personal stake in their success or failure, I proceeded to get extremely attached to the paper. Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be a relatively unconvincing paper. Out of said attachment and embarrassment at having failed to see its (now obvious) inadequacy. I proceeded to defend the paper like it was my senior thesis. When this failed, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I turned to slouching in my chair, crossing my arms and apparently, looking extremely pissed off. I know this because after the presentation, my PI came to me solely to say that the group's critique of my paper was in no way a personal indictment. BLUSH. Urgh. But I did appreciate hearing that. And I do find our lab's journal clubs to be extremely interesting and helpful.
*I swapped spots with the postdoc to present a paper in October, but then the postdoc left, making it a swap no longer. Spitting in the face of logic, whatever part of my brain dislikes journal presentations decided that clearly, I was not scheduled to go again until next semester. Saturday night, Intaglio was getting his Halo on with MJ, one of my labmates. Out of nowhere, I suddenly got an uneasy feeling and over the hail of bullets, asked Intaglio to ask MJ whether or not I was scheduled anytime soon. I was. In two days. Whoo. I was pretty decidedly unthrilled.
2) Officially cancer free! The mole was dysplastic, not malignant, but they managed to get all of it off in one blow. I will have to go get yearly skin checks, but hey, that's fine by me. Finally, I can be free of all the queasy images of metastatic melanoma infiltrating brain tissue...at least for a little while.
3) Relatively slow week in the lab-after some drama with the AHIU SDYFDIUHGD!T@$#&*^%#!!! flow machine, my PI said that I could stick to ELISAs for the time being until we get the technical glitches worked out. More than fine by me. I'm making today and tomorrow a reading/writing day...so far I've cobbled together my epidemiology group's final presentation. After that, I'll work on my individual epidemiology project (1000 words, let's see how fast I can write the motherfucker up!), my PowerPoint ethics presentation next week, and my research article/abstract for mid-December (really, just the abstract is due, but it's uniquely hard to write an abstract if the rest of the paper is AWOL).
4) While I still undoubtedly waste too much time on the internet, I'm starting to slip back into healthy, relaxing habits. I've run a bit each morning this week (only 3-4 miles, I'll re-up the distance slowly). I'm getting back into reading for pleasure--I'm working through a book of Barbara Kingsolver essays, and after that I'm going to get started on John Dies at the End, which apparently is some kind of modern cult classic soon to be a movie apocalyptical something. And writing. Not fiction, but honestly, I do like writing papers. Last week, when I was cramming to get some semblance of a draft together before a meeting on Friday (which has to be completely re-written, incidentally), I found myself surprised to be enjoying it. Happy to be back in the third floor of Ebling, happy to be cobbling together something that had meaning, happy to be picking through sources, happy to be involved in something that I could make really, really good with only editing and research.
That's the thing about grad school right now--I feel that I try, I put in effort, I try to make it really, really good--and then I screw up in some non-obvious way, make a rookie mistake that I've never made before, or things just go to shit for no reason whatsoever. I have full agency when I write. I appreciate that.
5) So much more: My sister (IL-RN, now!) working full-time at a well-paying job she enjoys, a closely knit MSTPosse, RuPaul's Drag Race Allstars and the fact that Chad Michaels won, the fact that Gardein protein tastes so much like meat, the fact that I have an amazing partner who sticks with me thick and thin even as I'm fretting unproductively about weight, life goals, money, committment, etc., the fact that my parents are happy and in good health.
Life is good. I need to seek out the small bits of happiness available in almost everything
1) Although I bitch and moan about graduate school, I have an exceptional PI. Case in point: On Monday, I gave a (admittedly somewhat unexpected*) paper presentation at lab meeting. Despite having never head of the research group in question and having no personal stake in their success or failure, I proceeded to get extremely attached to the paper. Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be a relatively unconvincing paper. Out of said attachment and embarrassment at having failed to see its (now obvious) inadequacy. I proceeded to defend the paper like it was my senior thesis. When this failed, I am somewhat ashamed to say that I turned to slouching in my chair, crossing my arms and apparently, looking extremely pissed off. I know this because after the presentation, my PI came to me solely to say that the group's critique of my paper was in no way a personal indictment. BLUSH. Urgh. But I did appreciate hearing that. And I do find our lab's journal clubs to be extremely interesting and helpful.
*I swapped spots with the postdoc to present a paper in October, but then the postdoc left, making it a swap no longer. Spitting in the face of logic, whatever part of my brain dislikes journal presentations decided that clearly, I was not scheduled to go again until next semester. Saturday night, Intaglio was getting his Halo on with MJ, one of my labmates. Out of nowhere, I suddenly got an uneasy feeling and over the hail of bullets, asked Intaglio to ask MJ whether or not I was scheduled anytime soon. I was. In two days. Whoo. I was pretty decidedly unthrilled.
2) Officially cancer free! The mole was dysplastic, not malignant, but they managed to get all of it off in one blow. I will have to go get yearly skin checks, but hey, that's fine by me. Finally, I can be free of all the queasy images of metastatic melanoma infiltrating brain tissue...at least for a little while.
3) Relatively slow week in the lab-after some drama with the AHIU SDYFDIUHGD!T@$#&*^%#!!! flow machine, my PI said that I could stick to ELISAs for the time being until we get the technical glitches worked out. More than fine by me. I'm making today and tomorrow a reading/writing day...so far I've cobbled together my epidemiology group's final presentation. After that, I'll work on my individual epidemiology project (1000 words, let's see how fast I can write the motherfucker up!), my PowerPoint ethics presentation next week, and my research article/abstract for mid-December (really, just the abstract is due, but it's uniquely hard to write an abstract if the rest of the paper is AWOL).
4) While I still undoubtedly waste too much time on the internet, I'm starting to slip back into healthy, relaxing habits. I've run a bit each morning this week (only 3-4 miles, I'll re-up the distance slowly). I'm getting back into reading for pleasure--I'm working through a book of Barbara Kingsolver essays, and after that I'm going to get started on John Dies at the End, which apparently is some kind of modern cult classic soon to be a movie apocalyptical something. And writing. Not fiction, but honestly, I do like writing papers. Last week, when I was cramming to get some semblance of a draft together before a meeting on Friday (which has to be completely re-written, incidentally), I found myself surprised to be enjoying it. Happy to be back in the third floor of Ebling, happy to be cobbling together something that had meaning, happy to be picking through sources, happy to be involved in something that I could make really, really good with only editing and research.
That's the thing about grad school right now--I feel that I try, I put in effort, I try to make it really, really good--and then I screw up in some non-obvious way, make a rookie mistake that I've never made before, or things just go to shit for no reason whatsoever. I have full agency when I write. I appreciate that.
5) So much more: My sister (IL-RN, now!) working full-time at a well-paying job she enjoys, a closely knit MSTPosse, RuPaul's Drag Race Allstars and the fact that Chad Michaels won, the fact that Gardein protein tastes so much like meat, the fact that I have an amazing partner who sticks with me thick and thin even as I'm fretting unproductively about weight, life goals, money, committment, etc., the fact that my parents are happy and in good health.
Life is good. I need to seek out the small bits of happiness available in almost everything
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
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.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Transition
So, today I ate a cheeseburger, as per my 101/1001. And I ate a ton of sweets. It hasn't been the best of days. Tears, screaming, kicking (of furniture), all before 9 AM, followed by a meeting with my PI and a combined total of 5 hours of seminars. Willpower being a finite resource, I was pretty well screwed (or so I justified eating dinner at the Great Dane with Intaglio: we split sustain-a-burger and a chocolate-nut torte, among other delicious but awful foods.)
The truth is: Grad school has been rough. In medical school, my goal was to get As. After I finished medical school, my goal was to get a great score on the boards. All of my energy was focused toward each single goal; it required a lot of work and tedium, but I was capable of it.
Now, my time is split between lab and work, at minimum 50-50. On top of that, I'm supposed to be writing a review article, and, at the risk of sounding like Teen Talk Barbie, immunology is hard. Which is why I'm reading papers and writing this review article, but right now it just feels like one more thing to tick off my list. One more thing preventing me from doing research, which reminds me--the controls have been fuzzy, the cells aren't growing as fast as they should be, and no one has worked with viral particles before in our lab. Coming home each night, my goal is always to work, or at least read, but realistically I just wash dishes, do laundry, tidy up, or wind up poking around reddit. And then I go to sleep. And then I get up and run, and then the day begins.
Intaglio is in the same position as me; he's gone from working on his prints full time to less than 50% of the time, as he now works in the frame shop and teaches classes on the weekend. So at the end of the day, we're tired, we're dispirited, and we're not really in the mood to feel sympathy for anyone but ourselves. We haven't been gentle with each other. We haven't really been interested in each other's struggles.
We made up, but the damage to my diet was done. Nothing to do but start fresh tomorrow (and have Intaglio take the remaining Ghirardelli squares to work). When I disappoint myself like I have today, I often feel like that's the only thing to say. Tomorrow I'll be closer to the person I want to be. Just because it didn't happen today doesn't mean I can't make it happen tomorrow. True, I suppose, but today it just feels false. That's why there's tomorrow.
The truth is: Grad school has been rough. In medical school, my goal was to get As. After I finished medical school, my goal was to get a great score on the boards. All of my energy was focused toward each single goal; it required a lot of work and tedium, but I was capable of it.
Now, my time is split between lab and work, at minimum 50-50. On top of that, I'm supposed to be writing a review article, and, at the risk of sounding like Teen Talk Barbie, immunology is hard. Which is why I'm reading papers and writing this review article, but right now it just feels like one more thing to tick off my list. One more thing preventing me from doing research, which reminds me--the controls have been fuzzy, the cells aren't growing as fast as they should be, and no one has worked with viral particles before in our lab. Coming home each night, my goal is always to work, or at least read, but realistically I just wash dishes, do laundry, tidy up, or wind up poking around reddit. And then I go to sleep. And then I get up and run, and then the day begins.
Intaglio is in the same position as me; he's gone from working on his prints full time to less than 50% of the time, as he now works in the frame shop and teaches classes on the weekend. So at the end of the day, we're tired, we're dispirited, and we're not really in the mood to feel sympathy for anyone but ourselves. We haven't been gentle with each other. We haven't really been interested in each other's struggles.
We made up, but the damage to my diet was done. Nothing to do but start fresh tomorrow (and have Intaglio take the remaining Ghirardelli squares to work). When I disappoint myself like I have today, I often feel like that's the only thing to say. Tomorrow I'll be closer to the person I want to be. Just because it didn't happen today doesn't mean I can't make it happen tomorrow. True, I suppose, but today it just feels false. That's why there's tomorrow.
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