Mar 28, 2013
May 25, 2011
new place
It's been an incredibly tumultuous semester. Intense classwork, labwork and prepartion for my (currently ongoing!) qualifying exams, intense new exercise program, caring for a sick friend, preparing for our wedding, family visits, moving to a new apartment, a new volunteer job, health challenges... Every time it seemed like I was going to get a break and some sleep, something new came along.
Things feel like they're settling down a bit, which is almost entirely a good thing. The semester is over, and I have only one 6-week class left to take as a graduate student. The new apartment is so much nicer than our old one. Unexpectedly, something ephemeral about the layout and ambiance of the new place has made playing violin and piano exponentially more attractive, and there's been a lot more music in the air. Harriet loves all the nice new windows, and has practically taken up residence in the front bay window, where her nose is inches away from a huge rhododendron bush that is crawling with bumblebees. Our tiny new container garden is planted and we may be overwatering it out of excitement. All the really important stuff for the wedding is all set. And half of my qualifying exam is done!
It's the other half of the qualifying exam that is going to dominate the next few weeks, punctuated by TWO out-of-state trips to attend friends' weddings. Studying for the qualifying exam requires a lot of discipline. The list of topics I may be questioned about is massive, and I have 7 completely full composition books of notes from the last 2 years that I am reading through. It's tiresome. It's really not surprising, given my tendency to over-organize, that I'm trying to devise some kind of "daily schedule", full of healthy things such as arising early, exercising before breakfast, mandatory reading and artistic betterment, and hours of studying without a computer to distract me. I have a history of such grand plans. They appeal to me so much - wouldn't it be nice to wake up at dawn, exercise and meditate when it's nice and quiet, eat breakfast in the garden, study in a relaxed, yet focused way for many hours, leaving time enough at the end of the day for a nice walk, a nice dinner, and minimal housework?
I'm never sure if I'm chasing after a pipe dream or not, and I know I tend towards wanting everything to be all set, just right, just so, picturesque and so on, before I really dig in and get started. But on the other hand, these are healthy habits I envision for myself! And even more pointedly, I know they make me happier and more relaxed. Why I don't choose them 100% of the time is both baffling and a testament to the enormous difficulty of changing habits. It's an awful feeling to want to get things done, but find yourself glued to banal news articles. It's terrible to want to exercise, but to feel groggy, stiff and out of sorts. And worst of all, it's terrible to feel like you can either be productive, or be relaxed. No, I want both.
I guess I'll keep chasing after my perfectly productive, perfectly relaxed routine. Because honestly, there's more than enough time in a day to get things done in a relaxed way. I think the problem is that often, the things that I think will relax me (oh, I just have to read this one more pointless thing before starting work... I really need a break in which to play solitaire... etc.) don't relax me at all. And the things that are truly relaxing seem, at first, to require more effort. I don't know why it's so non-intuitive. It's not that there's no place to listening to my own feelings and doing what the moment suggests - it's just really hard to tell when I'm fooling myself.
Wake up: 5:30
Exercise: 5:50-7:20 (sometimes done by 6:50)
Breakfast, Shower, Dress: 7:20-8:00
Work: 8:00-11:30
Lunch (and if home, housekeeping): 11:30-12:30
Work: 12:30-4:00
Music/art/reading/hanging out with Brian: 4:00-5:30
Dinner/necessary tasks/tea/meditation: 5:30-9:00
new plan
I've decided to start using this blog for more prosaic purposes. I find I often get "blogger's block" because I can't think of anything interesting enough to say - and I'm done with that. Instead, I'm going to try to write short, frequent and possibly pointless entries just for the sake of getting things written down. Maybe I'll just write my to-do list. Who knows.
Jun 6, 2010
scientist
After a 2-month spell of awkward hesitation, overthinking and worry, I finally decided which lab I wanted to permanently join as a Ph.D. candidate. Mercifully, things worked out - resolving at least a week's worth of unpleasant daydreams regarding my "inevitable" rejection - and I started work right away.
I hadn't anticipated what a difference it would make to be a Real Member of a lab, as opposed to a UROP student, intern or rotation student. Although my duties as a student researcher are not unfamiliar - and actually the project I'm working on is a direct continuation of my rotation project - the internal experience has proven to be entirely new. After a few days in my new lab, I noticed my attitude shifting. Somehow the time went faster. Instead of reading papers out of a sense of duty, I was looking them up for fun. I asked for extra background reading. Most of all, I found myself feeling irresistibly curious about my experiments.
It's not that I wasn't curious before. I was, in a removed way. But, as I've endlessly proclaimed in the context of early education, a lack of independence and ownership over one's work and learning dampens curiosity extraordinarily effectively. It's hard to be excited about doing exacting, repetitive work for a project that was created by somebody else, directed by somebody else, and that will be finished and celebrated by somebody else after you leave. In those situations, your ideas are of modest (if any) importance. You feel totally replaceable - and your curiosity begins to tend toward the hour, the contents of your lunch box, and your evening plans. I felt that way as a child so often, and yet somehow, I failed to recognize the same dullness of mind that had overtaken my scientific thinking as I pushed through my rotations.
So, I must say - it was wonderful to realize that my ideas are once again relevant and important. I feel twice as awake, and for the first time in years, I found myself wishing, on a lazy Sunday morning, that Monday would come sooner so I could hurry up and get some results! I might actually discover something! Imagine that! I might learn something that nobody on earth has ever learned before. Maybe it will open a door. Maybe, somehow, it will help people. That's what science should be about.
A few days ago, an essay edited by my new PI was returned to me, covered with correction. I realized later that I had expected to feel rather defeated by the sheer volume of comments - in fact, I'd almost been preparing myself for a brief period of embarrassed mourning. But as I through the paper, I started to smile. Every logical hole, sloppy reference and choppy description had been pointed out, and I suddenly realized that I was tired of getting away with those kinds of mistakes. I know better - every single error in my papers was one I'd thought about as I wrote it, and lazily decided to ignore on the grounds that nobody has ever called me on them before, so why bother? Well, I can't do that any more. Now I get to be a real scientist.
This is where things get seriously, though. Being a real scientist. Sometimes it's hard to know what that means. In some labs and institutions, being a scientist means being part of what is essentially a business whose product or brand is new information about a very specialized topic. And a couple hundreds of years ago, being a scientist meant you were a Thinker - and probably also an inventor, entrepreneur, philosopher, ethicist, radical or handyman! (And, possibly enemy of the state. Thank goodness for modern times.) This stark change is particularly evident in biology, which requires increasingly enormous amounts of money, specialized equipment, detailed background knowledge, and complicated techniques to do cutting-edge work. Although there's certainly nothing wrong with the "science as business" model, it doesn't appeal to me. What I LOVE about science is its way of calmly and rationally dismantling our frivolous hierarchies, irrational beliefs and false boundaries - along with our ignorance and suffering. Science is the great equalizer. We're all made of nothing but atoms - molecules, cells, tissues, organs. Our bodies constantly rebuild themselves, day in and day out. We aren't at all who we were yesterday - and we'll be different again tomorrow. The way we build our lives around certain power structures, our prejudices, our desires - it's a front and nothing more; a practical way to deal with the world so 6 billion organisms can have any hope of surviving together. I think it would be impossible for me to do good science while wrapped up in the illusion that I had to rise to the top. Because there isn't one. For me, what makes science go are the sparks of collaboration that set your mind wheeling off to new ideas, combined with a constant, sobering reminder, repeated ad nauseum, that new knowledge can be both helpful and dangerous.
As luck would have it, I have a feeling - though I'm wary of jumping to any conclusions this early on - that I have landed in the right place at the right time and, critically, with the right people, to figure out a way through this maze. I've got my fingers crossed.
I hadn't anticipated what a difference it would make to be a Real Member of a lab, as opposed to a UROP student, intern or rotation student. Although my duties as a student researcher are not unfamiliar - and actually the project I'm working on is a direct continuation of my rotation project - the internal experience has proven to be entirely new. After a few days in my new lab, I noticed my attitude shifting. Somehow the time went faster. Instead of reading papers out of a sense of duty, I was looking them up for fun. I asked for extra background reading. Most of all, I found myself feeling irresistibly curious about my experiments.
It's not that I wasn't curious before. I was, in a removed way. But, as I've endlessly proclaimed in the context of early education, a lack of independence and ownership over one's work and learning dampens curiosity extraordinarily effectively. It's hard to be excited about doing exacting, repetitive work for a project that was created by somebody else, directed by somebody else, and that will be finished and celebrated by somebody else after you leave. In those situations, your ideas are of modest (if any) importance. You feel totally replaceable - and your curiosity begins to tend toward the hour, the contents of your lunch box, and your evening plans. I felt that way as a child so often, and yet somehow, I failed to recognize the same dullness of mind that had overtaken my scientific thinking as I pushed through my rotations.
So, I must say - it was wonderful to realize that my ideas are once again relevant and important. I feel twice as awake, and for the first time in years, I found myself wishing, on a lazy Sunday morning, that Monday would come sooner so I could hurry up and get some results! I might actually discover something! Imagine that! I might learn something that nobody on earth has ever learned before. Maybe it will open a door. Maybe, somehow, it will help people. That's what science should be about.
A few days ago, an essay edited by my new PI was returned to me, covered with correction. I realized later that I had expected to feel rather defeated by the sheer volume of comments - in fact, I'd almost been preparing myself for a brief period of embarrassed mourning. But as I through the paper, I started to smile. Every logical hole, sloppy reference and choppy description had been pointed out, and I suddenly realized that I was tired of getting away with those kinds of mistakes. I know better - every single error in my papers was one I'd thought about as I wrote it, and lazily decided to ignore on the grounds that nobody has ever called me on them before, so why bother? Well, I can't do that any more. Now I get to be a real scientist.
This is where things get seriously, though. Being a real scientist. Sometimes it's hard to know what that means. In some labs and institutions, being a scientist means being part of what is essentially a business whose product or brand is new information about a very specialized topic. And a couple hundreds of years ago, being a scientist meant you were a Thinker - and probably also an inventor, entrepreneur, philosopher, ethicist, radical or handyman! (And, possibly enemy of the state. Thank goodness for modern times.) This stark change is particularly evident in biology, which requires increasingly enormous amounts of money, specialized equipment, detailed background knowledge, and complicated techniques to do cutting-edge work. Although there's certainly nothing wrong with the "science as business" model, it doesn't appeal to me. What I LOVE about science is its way of calmly and rationally dismantling our frivolous hierarchies, irrational beliefs and false boundaries - along with our ignorance and suffering. Science is the great equalizer. We're all made of nothing but atoms - molecules, cells, tissues, organs. Our bodies constantly rebuild themselves, day in and day out. We aren't at all who we were yesterday - and we'll be different again tomorrow. The way we build our lives around certain power structures, our prejudices, our desires - it's a front and nothing more; a practical way to deal with the world so 6 billion organisms can have any hope of surviving together. I think it would be impossible for me to do good science while wrapped up in the illusion that I had to rise to the top. Because there isn't one. For me, what makes science go are the sparks of collaboration that set your mind wheeling off to new ideas, combined with a constant, sobering reminder, repeated ad nauseum, that new knowledge can be both helpful and dangerous.
As luck would have it, I have a feeling - though I'm wary of jumping to any conclusions this early on - that I have landed in the right place at the right time and, critically, with the right people, to figure out a way through this maze. I've got my fingers crossed.
Jun 3, 2010
fluffy little summer post
So, we've consumed two entire watermelons in the last week. They weren't HUGE watermelons, but they weren't all that small, either. Today, we got stuck barefoot in a rainstorm... on purpose. Last weekend, we took a big bowl of cherries (no, really) and went walking to Harvard to buy a sunhat (I kid you not) and ended up finding a truck giving away free Ben and Jerry's ice cream (this is almost unbelievable). We sailed. We ate cucumber sandwiches. During our morning runs, we stop to smell the roses, which are pouring out over almost every fence in Cambridgeport. We fixed up our bikes (winter commuting is really harsh on the poor things) and pedalled around all freshly de-rusted in the late afternoon sun. The fan makes a racket in the window and papers flutter on the desk. The ice cube trays are refilled every day. The comforter is kicked off of the bed, so we can sleep like little children, all sticky-cheeked and warm and heavy, our legs hanging off the bed and our arms splayed out.
Summer.
Summer.
Jun 2, 2010
dreaming in science
I'm trying to come up with a Great Idea for my thesis. This is about as difficult as hunting endangered tigers. Great Ideas, it would seem, are not only rather nocturnal, but also elusive, and fond of inhospitable climates. I languish in the humid evenings, coming up with one terrible idea after another... and then fall asleep, and wake up tangled at 3 in the morning with a fragment of a brilliant plan which fades away in to only the most frustrating memory after a few seconds. Ideas also show up while I'm biking, or running, or in some complicated arm balance at yoga class - in short, at any time at which it is absolutely impossible to write them down. Lately I've even started to dream these ideas, but of course in my dreams they are confused, nebulous and utterly nonsensical, despite appearing with an air of certainty.
C'mon muses, would it kill you to visit me when I've got a pen in hand?
C'mon muses, would it kill you to visit me when I've got a pen in hand?
Jun 1, 2010
a bad day snuck in
Despite a Herculean effort, I have not yet managed to force my capricious stomach in to obeying my every whim. This is really no surprise. What was I expecting, a bloody miracle?
But I'd be a damn liar if I didn't admit that it still throws me for a serious loop now and then. Yesterday was, unfortunately, one such example. By the end of the day I was gritting my teeth to get through every successive minute at work, with progressively less grace. Same old story, same old pain, and unfortunately, same old crushing doubts.
Though I'm not much of a fan of pain and nausea, it's the doubts that get me these days. Would somebody else give in as easily? Do I give up when others might only complain of discomfort? Am I subconsciously giving myself an excuse to fail? Who am I letting down by giving in? Will they even believe me? Will they ever trust me?
There are very, very few things that make me mad. This is one of them.
*****************************************************
Another cup of tea, another deep breath, and I begin again.
I try. I try so hard.
But I'd be a damn liar if I didn't admit that it still throws me for a serious loop now and then. Yesterday was, unfortunately, one such example. By the end of the day I was gritting my teeth to get through every successive minute at work, with progressively less grace. Same old story, same old pain, and unfortunately, same old crushing doubts.
Though I'm not much of a fan of pain and nausea, it's the doubts that get me these days. Would somebody else give in as easily? Do I give up when others might only complain of discomfort? Am I subconsciously giving myself an excuse to fail? Who am I letting down by giving in? Will they even believe me? Will they ever trust me?
There are very, very few things that make me mad. This is one of them.
*****************************************************
Another cup of tea, another deep breath, and I begin again.
I try. I try so hard.
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