Feels Work after Field Work

I’m abandoning my structure because this week has not been about structure. This week has been about things bleeding into each other.

One of the takeaways about the past week that I really need to examine is: How do I value myself. People often tell me I am strong but I feel very weak, especially in the past 4 days. In those days, I have completely lost footing in my confidence and let my self-esteem go entirely.

I thought about calling this post “The Silent Sound of Attrition” but I think I will reserve that title for a poem I will write. At some point.

The facts of what’s been going on:

•        My play(s) opens on November 6^th
•        I am going to a conference Oct 31-Nov 4
•        I am presenting two posters at this conference, both from BAU and TLoTH
•        My dad and Catlady (his girlfriend) are coming to the conference to support me
•        I am spending my birthday with my mom
•        I fly back to TLoTH on November 6^th, theoretically at 2 pm
•        PartnerPenguin and I are still in a long-distance relationship
•        I have wine. Sometimes I even drink it.
•        The Flash and The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 3 exist 

Cool technology tidbit aside: my friend is currently studying abroad in London and she told me she saw Benedict Cumberbatch in a production of Hamlet. I have tickets to see a “live” streamed production of the same play on Friday night. The world is certainly flat.

So here’s where I am. When I was writing my abstract over the summer, I poured hours over it, trying to incorporate all of my findings from BAU. After several drafts and reverting back to last year’s draft with some additional findings, I sent the abstract to the profs at BAU who “mentored” me. I sent them the abstracts a full month in advance to an arbitrary deadline I set so I could get internal review and stop thinking about it. Neither prof responded more than a week before the deadline and within that context, one emailed me at 10 am for a noon deadline.

Backing up: what I did for my undergrad thesis was a pretty fundamental examination of bedrock mineralogy in a place studied for 7+ years without bedrock mineralogy. It was boring, rough work but literally: somebody HAD to do it. Despite my attempts, Prof 1 never pinned down a hypothesis so my focus was constantly shifting and never really answering questions. I spent a whole semester doing carbon fractionation. This involved 12-hour days (6a-7p, hour lunch) of tedious, technically difficult work. Not only did I never see the results, they never had anything to do with my mineralogy to start with.

Fast-forward to seven months ago. I am finally invited to a meeting on the project. There are at least 6 primary investigators (2 of whom are Prof 1 and Prof 2) with Prof 2 being the chief of their clan. I am asked to give a powerpoint on my findings. This is 4 months after I’d submitted a “thesis” to Prof 1 who did not comment on it, gave me an A (this person doesn’t believe in A+s) and gave me 50 pictures to synthesize two weeks before it was due. I have had some time to synthesize all of my disparate experiments and try to make some meaning of them. I bring a copy of my “thesis” and show other PIs. They love it. They are impressed.

After the presentation, there was Q&A time wherein mostly profs grilled me about various things I knew and didn’t know. One of the PIs asked me directly “What are your plans for publication?” Prof 1 looked at this PI and said “She’s not publishing.” No reason. No follow up. Just, no. She’s not publishing. In front of 30 people.

I have rationalized this interaction for half a year. Maybe Prof 1 thought I wasn’t ready. Maybe they thought my data was no good. Prof 1 is a renowned scientist who has created new fields of science. At some point, I just accepted that my science wasn’t worthwhile. This person only publishes cutting edge research; this is not cutting edge or even interesting.

This has left me with some pretty complicated feels. Essentially, this weekend they boiled down to: my research is garbage. It is single-use, disposable and not worth noting. This very quickly devolved into my thinking “If my research is garbage, I am therefore garbage because this is what I put my lifeblood into for a year and a half.” It is VERY difficult to extract pertinent scientific information when they are wrapped tightly in yards and yards of stress and feelings of worthlessness.

To compound everything, I have had to work on my poster for BAU at home in my “free” time. I am tech-ing a show this week. I had to come home on Tech Sunday and put on earmuffs at rehearsals because I HAD to finish my poster by Tuesday. When not working during rehearsal, there has been plenty of time to let my thoughts devolve into harmful and painful patterns that prevent progress in many ways.

Since the long-scale time-frame didn’t work, I just sent Profs 1&2 and Grad Student my poster to approve on Monday before I sent for internal approval on Tuesday. Grad Student replied that they would review and comment Monday night but still--radio silence. The profs either didn’t get it or didn’t bother. If I don’t hear back from them tomorrow (Wed), I have to send it to the printer anyways because I need to have a physical poster by Saturday and that shit takes time.

I don’t understand the standards or the rules. I don’t understand how this treatment could possibly exist in the same world as TLoTH where I got called out for not acknowledging someone in casual conversation. My name is not listed as a researcher on the website. My publication (poster) is not listed on the publication list. A year and a half of my research is absorbed into others’ work and there is no mechanism of recognition. I feel like I don’t exist. Like I never existed. Worse yet, I feel like I don’t deserve to exist in this context. Maybe my research really is that bad and unimportant. I don’t think that’s the case. I think I found novel shit that is somewhat boring but I’ve figured out how to tell a story. I’ve answered questions no one else has answered. I think I deserve to get a journal publication, even if not a prestigious one, just so that other people know the work has been done. Only the poster session will tell, I guess.

Conversely, my TLoTH poster has been really well received. I have gotten constructive criticism from all of my co-authors (that aren’t gutting deer) and I feel confident that what I’m presenting matters. 

There were a couple weird bumps on that road this week, mostly related to listening. Senior Scientists sometimes do not know how to listen. I told my mentor “Can we please discuss the changes you want to see when we have the poster in front of us?” at least three times. She completely steamrolled me and kept telling me what she wanted changed. Several of her edits wound up being irrelevant. It was very difficult to communicate that there was literally nothing I could do to change the things she wanted changed at that time. Since I’ve been on the verge of tears constantly, I cried and hoped she didn’t notice.

Sometimes I want to scream to the management and people senior to me, in general, “STUDENTS ARE PEOPLE TOO. In fact, we’re legally adults!” It’s only in glimpses, but I feel like if the retiring workforce (most of the lab) actually treated the next generation as those inheriting the thrown instead of indentured servants, everyone’s careers could benefit.

I mean I’m about to turn 26, for fuck’s sake.  I haven’t lived with my parents “at home” for close to a decade. I’ve seen shit and lived through shit you couldn’t understand. I’m not a child. Don’t treat me like one.

I have come to peace a lot more with the scientist whom I was previously having trouble understanding. I now acknowledge that:

•       We are both immensely pride-ful and eternally stubborn people
•       We care about language as a vehicle for scientific communication
•       We care about each other, professionally
• 
  
• And most importantly: 
• 
  
•       He is not allowed to correct my English. Only my science.

Now that I have understood these things about us, my relationship with him has gotten better. I am still working on sticking up for myself, especially in stressful situations, but I am working towards it.

Still, I am feeling…under supported with my own coping mechanisms.

I would like to give shout-outs to everyone who hugged me on Facebook upon my vaugebooking. Further shout-outs to those who texted or private messaged me. If I didn’t explain what was going on, it was because I was too fragile. I’m only just now feeling stable enough to write this…and this instability started to go down about Thursday or Friday.

To the friends who always set aside time to talk with me, I appreciate you.

Finally, mega shout-out to the Little Bear and her momma for randomly calling and making my life a whole lot better. Here is a video about giraffes for you: Giraffes are cool

Here's another picture that will never get published: 

No scalebar because I didn't feel like adding one. This illustrates porosity and variable composition of the rock.

Anyway, to wrap up: here we have a song that pretty much sums up my feelings for now. 

Crunch Time

One of the thought patterns I observe myself having a lot lately is “How did I get to be so lame?” and “Am I introverted?” I find myself wanting to spend more time alone than I ever remember doing.

I finally (on the car ride before I wrote this post) realized that I have A LOT going on and it’s enough to just be. It’s OK to pass up a Sunday afternoon of drinking for chores and cooking so I get good meals this week. It’s OK to come home after work or rehearsal and just chill.

I’m currently facing two major deadlines with three projects. On top of this, PartnerPenguin came out to visit me this weekend and stayed for less than 48 hours. Which, to be honest was extremely happy but also a little devastating.

Project 1

I am presenting a poster on my research for TLoTH at a convention on Nov 1. The poster has 17 figures, all of which I have made from scratch in the past couple weeks. I use PowerPoint to make my figures because that is the program I work best in. Illustrator, InDesign (which to the credit of my first high school was taught to me in 9^th grade) and even Photoshop boggle me. I am fully capable of learning these softwares, but honestly I don’t give enough fucks to spend my time that way. If I was to stay in a technical field or switch to a design based field, I will learn them. For now, .ppt is where it’s at.

Two of the figures and both of the tables were made in software that was developed in my group at TLoTH 10+ years ago. I mentioned before my difficulties with this program and how unhelpful the most knowledgeable scientist was when asked. To combat this, I have been asking a broader net of people to help me when I get stuck. My office mates are very talented in Excel (the program is written in Excel. Yes. That’s a programming language. Sorta.) so I have asked them for help.

But today I fucked up. The accidentally judgmental scientist came by to check up on me because I sent him an email. I told him I figured it out. But I did not credit my office mate for all of the help she gave me. And she was sitting right there. I didn’t realize I did it; I was mostly thinking “What can I say so this guy doesn’t call me stupid again?” After that previous meeting I cried a good bit and it took me almost and hour to recover, so I was very very scared of being judged like that again.

The scientist went away and my office mate called me out. “I was right here. That’s not right, to not give someone credit.” She told me this is not the first time I’ve taken credit for other people’s ideas. I felt horrible. Not only do I really try to give credit where credit is due but it also hurt me that I hurt her. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met. She is brilliant and funny and kind and deserves respect. I did not do that, for a moment.

I resolve to be more conscious of what I’m saying, how I say it and take time if I need to. I have been trying to do that more and more in the past couple years since a good friend called me out on my language framing behaviors. I appreciate the people in my life who trust and respect me enough to call my shit. It just hurts because my flaws are flaw-ful.

The good about the whole situation is that once I got over feeling sad (less than an hour this time), I was able to knock out two figures with that program. It had literally taken me a MONTH to get to that point. I finished a solid draft of my poster and called it quits.

Project 2

I took an hour of vacation today to come home and work on my other poster for the same convention. I am presenting my senior honors thesis from BAU (Big American University).  This has had it’s own set of problems and feels associated because, essentially, I never knew what hypothesis I was testing. I spent a year and half doing research (I produced more original data than some people do during their Masters) but it was all over the place. Now I have all of these beautiful pictures and I don’t have anything to do with them. So I will leave some of them here for you. I’m not even remotely using these so…whatever I guess.

 This is called a phytolith. It's basically silica tree-poop.

This is a fungal spore. These fuckers (called mycorrhiza) are responsible in extracting nutrients from rocks and giving them to trees so trees can do their tree thing. I am probably wrong and this is some normal kind of soil fungus. I don't really care: I learned about mycorrhiza, once.

Both pictures taken with a fancy-ass scanning electron microscope.

I spoke with one of my managers who gave me good constructive feedback to move forward. I’m glad I gave him what I had (even though it was rough) because he thinks I should publish. I have received advice from several scientists I work with to put together a manuscript after my poster and just go for it. I need to decide which journal is appropriate to publish basic science, but then go for it. I’m thinking PLOS One might be good. The feels come in because my mentor is one of those “groundbreaking” people. She has invented new branches of science. I think one reason she never pushed me to publish is because my work is boring. I didn’t find anything interesting. I just found what was there. Which was mud.

Anyway, poster #2 is in significantly better shape than it was earlier today.

Project 3

After I go to the conference (Sun-Wed) then I will see my mom and friends for my birthday (Thurs) and when I fly back and drive to TLoTH (Fri), my shows open that night!! This week has been rehearsal every night, hence the delay in posting. I love you all but sleep is more important than self-imposed writing deadlines.

My shows are going pretty good. Show #1 is directed by an inexperienced director who explained to us what cheating is the first day of rehearsal. That’s going ok. I do my part for 3 minutes and then I’m off.

Show #2 is going AMAZING. We went up in front of a live audience today and got legitimate laughs. Our producer’s comment was “That was fucking hilarious!” And then he turned to me and said, with surprise “You’re…really good! I mean, really quite good!” Lolz. I did do this for several years before becoming a scientist…

Anyway my cast mates are all nice in both shows. They are funny and it is nice to have people I can hug if I need a hug. Have I mentioned I am a ridiculously tactile person and not having my significant other to physically comfort me is one of the hardest parts of long distance? Well I am.

Active Hobby?

PartnerPenuin visited me so I didn’t make it to derby this week. I did, however, FINALLY get my bike fixed!! I rode to and from work once or twice and now it’s started hailing in the mornings. Ce mon vie.

I had a boyfriend-ish-type-guy once who said the word “melancholy” as “meh-lank-ly” with a British a. I leave you with a meh-lank-ly song and a good night’s rest.

Coulomb's Day

Note about the title: If I were to refer to this “holiday” I’ve had off today, I would call it Indigenous People’s Day. In honor of that, I have been reading The Snake Dance of the Hopi People. It’s twenty-fucking-fifteen, people. Why do we still have to spell out things like: celebrate native people, not their genocide. Don’t wear blackface. Don’t rape (it's a comedy sketch, shouldn't need any additional trigger warnings, but it does talk about rape).

This week has been one of the most intense think-weeks I’ve ever had. I’ve spent most of the week examining; my relationships, my path forward, my health.

Health: So it turns out I’ve been having mild-to-severe asthma attacks at work for a week. Having restricted breathing passageways is a bad thing. It took me about 5 workdays to figure this out. So finally I went to the urgent care and the doctor gave me a bunch of meds. An inhaler for the immediate asthma symptoms, a round of steroids to knock down swelling and a round of amoxicillin (heavy duty antibiotic) to get rid of the sinus infection I’ve probably had since I’ve been here.

Combined with having my period and reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking, this week was predictably a good time to analyze life things. I have drawn the following conclusions:

1) I cannot stay here another year. While this may be obvious to others around in my life, it has not been obvious to me. Having allergy-induced asthma is my line. It is astonishing how completely you can forget parts of your childhood and asthma was a part I forgot entirely.

2) I am at a different point in my career than a lot of people my age. Along the lines of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, I’ve come up with my own pyramid of employment hierarchy of needs. I am purely looking at employment as a recent college graduate, so please don’t penalize my analysis for not taking into account anything above middle management.

The pyramid:

A fundamental dissonance between being in the world of academia and the “real” world is the expectations for where you are going to be on this pyramid after college. In my experience, you learn the critical thinking and analytical skills to immediately start close to the top. However the reality that one typically starts at the bottom is a rough realization. I see a lot of friends announcing their first “real” jobs and the difficulties therein on Bookface.

The conversation that inspired me to make this diagram was centered on my path post-TLoTH. The friend I was talking to said “Y’know, in some cases you can get an internship where they even let you have your own project.” I realized in that moment that owning my project was not optional. Having a superior who doesn’t promote me as either a person isn’t an option either. I have had amazing luck in the past four years of employment to have bosses who not only have pushed me up; but also have given me the permission to be myself. I hover between the top three levels, and usually I own my projects with the respect and collaboration of my colleagues.

That being said, not everyone has been amazing. But I have been fortunate to have enough seriously good mentors to not settle for less. I know you people exist. I will find you.

3) Taking pt 2 into consideration: Graduate school is probably my most likely path forward to do what I want to do. I want to be engaged and interested in my work. I want to affect change. I will burn out if I do a technical PhD. I am looking at Public Policy but I’m open to suggestions. PartnerPenguin seems game on the surface but for both of our sanities, GradSchool will take place in a major city. Our relationship cannot survive in its current (long distance) state forever; we need to physically be in the same place. I am a very physical person and I do not want to do GradSchool alone. I need to be held.

4) I am scared. In fact, I am terrified. The GRE terrifies me. There. I’ve said it. The SAT was not pleasant. I took it twice and I did worse my second go round. It was used as a proxy for my intelligence and I was not seen as a person. I worked and I worked so finally when Big American University did accept me it was not based on that one score.

[WHOLE SECTION REMOVED BECAUSE I REALIZED IT WAS JUST ANXIETY TALKING, NOT REALZ. NOT THAT ANXIETY ISN'T VALID, IT'S JUST NOT PRODUCTIVE.]

I fear not being seen. I think that’s one thing that hit me pretty hard about Palmer’s book. I am afraid of not being seen for who I am. The undergraduate process felt very random and, like, I was just a speck among the masses. The process of being an undergraduate student meant that I had to form who I was. The people I valued most coming out of undergraduate were the people who saw me most. Now I have my identity and I have a community, I can finally go forward. But I am so afraid of losing that identity.

I do not feel like the rest of the application should be too difficult. I feel there are many people who are interested in writing me letters of rec and who would help me in editing and other stuff. By the end of this year, I will have been published (in some capacity) 5 times with a possible sixth. I have a TEDx talk. I practice my writing every week (to varying degrees of success). I feel confident that right now my biggest barrier to getting accepted somewhere is applying.

5) I don’t have to move forward immediately. I can take the GRE and that will reset my clock. It’s better to take it now, before all the fresh new-ness of that expensive education wears off. But I don’t have to act immediately. I might decide I want to. I might not. But it’s OK.

It’s also OK for me to vet my ideas/decisions/feelings with people who care about me. I’m getting better at this, but it’s a skill I’m learning. There is a difference between having an emotionally intelligent conversation and a blind agreement with someone. I reached out to several people in my life whom I could have intelligent conversations and they helped me come to the above conclusions. Thank you.

Work

As you can imagine, health issues significantly impacted my work this week. I am preparing for a conference and I started working on my posters. That’s right, I got two. Boo-ya!

I’m networking with people at the upcoming conference as well as from the conference I attended in the Key Route City a couple weeks ago. I’m trying to find role models. Mostly women (so far) who have travelled paths similar to what I want. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how many people respond to me. And how quickly they respond. There is this huge disconnect about career advancement that students are told: Don’t ask. Don’t try to connect with those above you. But if they are strong women, in particular, they seem to want to be asked. Not by everyone, not to the point of exhaustion, but they are more available than we students are taught.

And really, how the hell are you going to pull someone forward if they never stick out their hand?

Creative Hobby

Rehearsals are going great. One of the stage directions involves another actor getting up close and personal with me. I made the enormous mistake of looking into his eyes while he did this and I lost it. I laughed so hard I actually fell over on the floor and couldn’t get up. I was laughing too hard.

My play proposal did not get chosen but I’m cool with that. It was a good exercise. They actually really wanted to produce the play and it was a good point in the season but they didn’t want to risk it with an inexperienced director. I feel like this is fair, it would be a really bad play if I fucked it up. Maybe some day in the future!

Mum, my present for you may not be ready. I’ve been distracted. Womp!

Active Hobby

Derby is going pretty well. I’ve had to cut back to once a week due to schedule conflict with rehearsals. The woman who ran the practice on Sunday was really kind. She’s built like a linebacker (I think? I don’t know football…) but she’s really sweet. The whole team is all about positivity and encouragement. Sometimes it’s better to be on a team that’s not as skilled because they’re not as competitive and that’s better for a beginner. I’m a very competitive person in the rest of my life; it’s a relief to just be. But also work out so much that parts I didn’t know existed hurt.

Bike news! Bike is waiting on a new front tire but should be ready this week. I might be crazy enough to start biking to work again. I think that would do me good.

Cooking

I will briefly describe how I made this meal, because Good Panda misses the bygone time when I used to post recipes.

Tofu: Fried in pan with butter.

Three Bean Curry Soup: Soaked ½ c each of chickpeas and red-beans for 6 hrs. Drained and put in slow cooker. Added ½ c green lentils. Added jar of TJ’s curry simmer sauce plus one jar of water. One can of coconut milk. I might have added more water to make sure all beans were covered with at least 3 inches. Cooked overnight. You can also put the tofu directly into this and microwave/stove heat it. Red beans did not cook completely, chickpeas did. Can fix by stovetop cooking or picking out red beans.

DELICIOUS RICE OHMIGOD: 1 c. jasmine rice. Adequate water, which should be 2 c if you live at normal people elevation (0-500ft elevation). Three pinches of granulated onion. ¼-½  tsp fresh ground cardamom, take the bits OUT of the pods before you grind it. 5 or so pestels of saffron (it was a love-gift from PartnerPenguin. I’m not really that fancy). 10 stems of whole cloves. 1 stick of cinnamon, broken in halves or quarters. Cinnamon unrolls as it cooks, looks hella cool. Cook like normal rice, but yummier. Y’know the drill, bring to boil for a minute or three and then simmer until done. Turn over/stir every 5-10 minutes so pan doesn’t burn.

Cheap AF Palak Paneer: I made this delicious discovery lately. Melt 1 T butter in a pan, add a pound of spinach. Mush around the pan until all clumps broken up and you can convince yourself the spinach will cook. In a mortar and pestle, mash up ½ t cardamom. Add Vindaloo curry powder, if available. TJ’s curry powder also works. Add trace amounts of cumin and cinnamon. A shitload (1 t) of cayenne pepper, or however spicy you want it. I also added about ¼ t of basil to make it interesting. Add spice mix to spinach as it defrosts/cooks. Keep adding cayenne or curry powder if you think that’s a good idea. Finally, add a quart of cottage cheese. You can make this part, but I don’t recommend it. I failed horribly. But if you try, use 4% milk, NOT whipping cream. The fat content does NOT translate up.

And voila! Dinner is served. And lunch the next day. Because this makes like…6 portions at least, if you eat it all together. And you live alone.

Now to close out, I have two songs tonight. One is AFP’s (Amanda Fucking Palmer) because I haven’t really listened to her music. Warning, while this song does not really contain too much language or violence it is VERY sad. That being said, it is very beautiful.

If you have time, I encourage you to watch the whole Tiny Desk Concert of this band: DeQn Sue. I feel like their song “Magenta” speaks to me this week. I’m not quite mad, not quite sad, not quite scared, just magenta. I’m posting this version because I like her vocal effects here and I can’t find them in the other recordings.

Magenta

Weakness as a Human Attribute

I went to a bar this week and wound up hanging out with some new people whom I didn’t really know. For the first time since I’ve had it, one of the men asked to look at my wedding ring. Another guy looked at it, trying to figure out the stone and guessed adventurously that it was tourmaline. I laughed and said “Valiant effort, it’s Benitoite” which rendered a general WTF face from everyone. ::proudly displays hipster badge::

The man who had initially asked about it asked me why I was married. I said that it’s because I am not a very stable person and my relationship stabilizes me. He said “But why did you get married?” “I dunno, I guess societal norms and the changing of labels mattered to me.” He then said

“So in other words, you’re weak.”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” I replied. But it didn’t hurt. It was actually one of the most freeing things I’ve ever said to a stranger at a bar. I am allowed to be weak and I am allowed to have a partner who strengthens me. I am allowed to ask for help. I am allowed to not be the strongest person in the room. And the freeing thing was that I didn’t give a fuck. Why should I? I’m human, and I’m allowed to show it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about validation this week, and especially how it relates to people being able to be people in science. I’ve been trying to figure out how to express precisely how I want others to behave in my house, in my office cubicle, that make me feel safe in those places. What makes those spaces mine? Now that I have all this newfound ownership and privacy, how do I maintain it? I have been setting hard boundaries to differing success and trying to take away which important messages do I want out of life.

Work

This week a lot of things cleared up at work. I was able to have a really level-headed conversation with the scientist who “supposedly” had beef with me. As I suspected, we are both humans and we were both frustrated with the situation. Midwest Momboss caught my nonverbal cues and quietly stated to observe/moderate the discussion. I felt the opposite of alone. As long as I have access to in-person discussions of stuff like this, I have regained a little hope that the people who work with me are mature enough to work things out. I do not have blind faith or absolute trust in that. Two weeks prior of unproductive frustration have made me weary about being naïve that the “adults” will just take care of things. I don’t want them to.

I was invited to give my TEDx talk again in front of various higher ups at TLoTH. During this meeting, the Heads of my department were really nice to me. Head 1 didn’t say too much but was very supportive of my critique of their system. Head 2 (who I’ve mentioned, in a different context) was very energetic about how to incorporate more diverse undergrad students. He admitted that the department hadn’t been thinking about pipeline that far back and that it could do a better job.

One interesting passing comment was another department Head commented on sourcing undergrads for student programs. He said that he would look only at students from top universities because they were “obviously” the only students worth looking at. I was already in a little bit of a delicate situation in terms of how freely I could speak my mind so I did not address him. But I think mentalities like that are exactly WHY places like TLoTH have diversity issues. They do not think critically in how the universities population does or does not reflect a diverse range of backgrounds. The topic of public universities being truly public is a touchy and political issue. And of “top” universities, most of the ones he listed were private, therefore unattainable for all but a select few outside of those who can “pay” for it. Private (and public) schools who choose to invest in “diversity” students loose tens of thousands of dollars per semester on these students putting a lot of pressure for those kids to perform to certain GPA standards. Coupled with lack of role models and often lack of a support community on campus and at home, students in these scholarships have it pretty rough. If they are not feeling confident in fulfilling these basics (who would?) they might not be confident enough in themselves to apply for student positions at places like TLoTH. Thus leaving your applying student population homogeneous and small.

There are more sides to Imposter Syndrome in academia than one can understand after merely reading four articles on HuffPo. Start with reading Brene Brown, at least.

I care about the outcome. I care about how the pipeline is treated and I care about the system as a whole. That’s why I get invited to managers’ meetings. I’m certain (and have been encouraged from people reading the blog) that I will make a career out of caring about whole systems. This is why Big American University invested in me; I’m trying to make a decent return on investment.

Work (continued)

I would like to take a moment to say that I am extraordinarily proud of myself for my advancement to master two incredibly difficult programs with very little guidance. By which I mean one of these programs doesn’t have a users’ manual and the other has a user’s manual from 2000. But I am human (and the quant program [written in Excel] is quite possibly broken) I got to a roadblock. Because I am me, I asked for help.

I invited a scientist whom I have met a few times but never had one-on-one time with. He is a wealth of knowledge and I expected he could show me how to troubleshoot my problem.  It boiled down to a very simple issue where I had done the right thing in the wrong window. I also didn’t know the shortcut for copying the whole column in Excel. Neither of these things were a big deal and they were easily fixable and then I could move on to play with the data sets.

Except.

The dude somehow dragged out this encounter to be 45 minutes long. That’s annoying on it’s own but he spent the WHOLE time (from my perception) insulting me. This was at my desk, mind you. The thing that he said, several times, which really irked me was:

“I thought you’re from Big American University. Aren’t you supposed to be smart?”

He said this exact thing at least twice. He was laughing that nervous laugh of the socially awkward making what they think is a joke but they kinda are aware it might be harmful. But maybe not understand why. I responded: “I don’t think that has anything to do with what we’re talking about right now. Can we please focus on how to fix this issue?”

After the encounter I went outside and cried for a bit and felt better. I do not think this man’s intent was to be harmful. It’s possible that he’s used to treating students in this fashion and no one has ever commented. But I fucking raised hell. Quietly. To my mentor. Because that’s how we play at TLoTH.

Friends

This has been the Week of the Grad School/Early Career Freakout. What pains me about my friends experiencing feelings of deep inadequacy is that they are not taking advantage of services offered by their universities/employing institutions to help them cope. One of the most perfectly scientist ways someone put it this week was:

“I hadn’t considered [seeking help] before. I mean, depression isn’t clinical until it goes on for more than two weeks, right?”

We, for the most part are so uneducated about mental health as a valid and legitimate aspect of our health that we cannot even identify when we are in a crisis. We fear that if we are now in a crisis, then what the hell was it before? And I didn’t get help before, and I was “fine” so why can’t I just suck it up this time and deal with it. I have been reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking and she says it perfectly. “PLEASE BELIEVE ME. I’M REAL. NO REALLY, IT HAPPENED. IT HURT.”

I am happy to provide validation, support and love to my friends. But I learned there is a point I will draw a line. When a friend who I care about reflects on periods of past depression and says “yeah, like thinking ‘I fucking hate myself. I am worthless and never going to do anything with my life.’”

Though this disturbed me as I heard it, I was proud of myself. I said “No. Not here. I do not abide by that thought process and I will not entertain it in this discussion. Hard boundary.”

I have never done this before, but I realized that it was the right thing to do. It’s completely OK for me to protect myself. It’s OK that I don’t engage with self-loathing. I feel like this is one of the hardest lessons I have learned yet from living on me own. But I don't feel like I'd learned it very well previously, so I count it as a victory.

Creative Hobby

Rehearsals for the two little plays I’m in have been going pretty well. I submitted a proposal to the board of the theatre to direct a play. It is a very difficult and potentially boring play. I have never directed anything, let alone a 3 hour main event. I convinced a guy I’ve never met to be my producer. I’m stoked. I hope I get it.

Active Hobby

Went back to Derby practice on Sunday. Ow. Things I didn’t know existed hurt. My workout buddy was in a world of pain but she toughed it the fuck out for the drill we were in together. I’m proud of her. After that, I learned how to weave (at a very slow pace) both backwards and forwards. We did this one exercise where we all held onto each other’s hips and built up momentum to go around the rink. I didn’t really have to do anything and I just got to go really fast and yell “WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

I am not at all interested in this cold bullshit called "winter" that seems to be descending at a rapid pace. The only thing I am very much looking forward to is ice-skating. I haven’t ice-skated since I was a little kid and that’s the only thing about winters I have missed. My best friend growing up trained to be a figure skater and made it a couple steps away from the Olympics. Before she got really into it, we went to lots of lessons and played at the rink together. I was pretty good, even though I liked ice hockey more than figure skating. I am very much looking forward to going around the rink senselessly for an hour at a time, even if I don’t have a friend with me. Sure as hell beats running in my book.

Eeeeeeeeennnyway. I’mma close out now with a song. This video is worth every second so please bear with it. The announcement at the beginning is a time/space capsule in its own right. Videos like this capture some of the absolutely brilliant magic that is live music. I truly hope you enjoy.