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