disenheartened

Things are going really well at the conference, despite the title of this post. My talk, for instance, seemed to be a great success. I wasn't nearly as anxious as I thought I'd be leading up to the talk - although I was counting down the hours from the time I woke up. But overall, it was a pretty fantastic experience. Biggest crowd I've spoken in front of - a little under 1000 people. And my phD advisor, who was also in attendance (PA was not at this conference), had the nicest and most rewarding words for me afterwards. He was very proud.

And there have been plenty of really fascinating symposia topics so far (that has helped to keep me from obsessing before my talk - too interested in the other talks).

So with all these interesting symposia, and my talk going as well as I could have hoped, why am I feeling so disenheartened? I think it is because this is the first conference where I've noticed "the club."

I used to get almost star-struck when I finally caught a glimpse of any big name scientist in person. But now I guess I've been around the block enough to finally notice the subtle snubbing during talks, and the political ego boosting that goes on too. I understand that science is full of some very peculiar personalities, but I just wish success didn't have to depend on who likes who and other silly ego dependent games.

Maybe I would feel differently if I was in "the club" with all the other big names. But seeing as how the work of my former labmate (from my phD lab) was completely snubbed during some talks, despite the speakers having cited his work in their publications (which means they are award of it!), if my friends/academic siblings are not in the club, I doubt that I am either.

It's all just very disenheartening to think you can work so hard, and produce great work, but still not be recognized as successful because you're not best friends with the big names. That is also why I generally think less of PNAS as a journal - I've seen some people crap on paper and get it published simply because they were a member or close with a member of the academy. But that is a subject better left for a post of its own.

Ah well. I don't want to sound whiny. I'm just sad that this conference hasn't made me feel pumped about science like they usually do. I hope they're not all going to have this effect from now on.

losing time

Or maybe I'm just losing my mind.

Mr. Daybyday and myself had it in our heads that we had an extra weekend (one more than we actually do) before I leave for my conference. We were even planning to possibly visit friends and family back home for that now non-existent weekend.

I'm still baffled by this. I could have swore I saw that extra weekend on my calendar! But now it is no where to be seen.

Egads, that means I have one less week to practice my talk for the conference.

I have put together my talk and practiced it a couple times now - but I want to get feedback from PA and the group here before I really start getting the talk fixed in my head. I'm not terribly worried, but noticeably more worried than I was when I thought I still had 7 more days than I actually do.

In any case, working on the presentation has been keeping me very busy lately along with submitting the revised version of my manuscript, visiting with friends from out of town, oh, and unexpectedly buying a car!

Mr. Daybyday got a new job that requires him to change his license to the state we currently live in. But that bungles up things with the vehicle that we currently drive, in terms of insurance and the lease contract. I very strongly dislike driving the vehicle that we currently drive (because of a horrible, horrible blind spot it creates for people my size), so I was very excited at the prospect of getting rid of it even though it will end up costing us a bit to do so. Anyway, in the span of about 4 days we went from "hey, wanna buy a used car here and get rid of vehicle you hate?" to "wow, that was the biggest personal cheque I ever wrote" to pay for the new used car we decided to purchase.

Next thing up will be a mortgage. Scary!

So anyway, as rushed as that seems (and it was rushed), we spent a LOT of time investigating potential cars to purchase, which is mostly why I had no free time outside of work to blog - and during work hours I was too busy obsessing over my presentation and manuscript revisions.

And speaking of the manuscript.... Right after I submitted the revisions (which, by the way, took nearly 2 hours just to upload the files and copy and paste the figure legends into the silly online manuscript submission system, which then needed to be corrected to use their silly symbols because special symbols don't paste into the text box), the status of the manuscript said that the revised version was awaiting review. I wasn't sure if it would be sent out to the reviewers again or if the associate editor would just look at the revisions and my letter explaining them (the AE only called for minor revisions). Then about a day later the status changed to "Awaiting Editor in Chief decision" - that usually means the AE has made their decision and reccommends accepting or revisions or rejection and the EIC has to sign off on the decision. But it's been in that status now for DAYS! Don't they know I'm waiting impatiently to find out?

Well in any case I'm hoping that the rapid decision from the AE is a good sign, and that the EIC is just busy or something.

And now I should probably get back to practicing my talk again - right after I check on the manuscript....

Stupid nightmare

Okay, given my last post, how totally obvious is the interpretation of this awful dream I had last night:

I found myself suddenly at the big international conference, the day before I am supposed to give my talk. A bunch of my grad school friends are there (even ones that wouldn't be at the conference in reality - that should have been clue #1 that I was dreaming). Then it hits me:

I DIDN'T PREPARE A TALK!!!

I start freaking out internally. How could I have NOT prepared my presentation? How could I have completely forgotten such an important thing - THE major reason I was going to the conference to begin with?! How could PA have let me do such a stupid thing? And again, how could I let me do such a stupid thing?! How the heck did a whole month slide by without me realizing that I hadn't prepared my talk?

So at this point I'm thinking this MUST be a dream. I pinch myself. Repeatedly. I'm not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but I'm still at the conference, still very much freaking out.

Then I get all high and mighty and decide I will boycott my talk. After all, I have no slides. What else could I do? Yes. I just won't give my talk. But how bad would that look? I'm supposed to give this competition talk, and I just blow it off? I can't do that....

Sigh.

Okay, maybe I can somehow manage to put together my talk. I'll just reuse most of the presentation slides from the last conference - except there were a few things that absolutely have to be changed from my old slides. Alright, find someone with a laptop and internet access - then I'll access my computer at work with the presentation files and hopefully be able to modify the slides and then at least I'll have a presentation to give.

So I find one of my friends, and she lets me use her laptop - but I'm all upset because I know that even if I can somehow fix up the presentation slides I still have to practice my talk, which means I'll likely miss a bunch of the seminars during the first day in order to do that.

More signals that should have clued me into this being a dream: my former lab-mate, who is about to defend his PhD in real life, somehow managed to be the opening keynote speaker for the conference. Followed by by former advisor. And then another one of my friends (guess I didn't have much creativity for "extras" in my dream).

And then FINALLY, after I had just remembered how I verbally introduced the first slide of my talk at the previous conference, I woke up.

THANK DOG.

stupid stupid stupid. Why am I stressing myself out in my sleep?! Arg.

random update

I am SO close to finishing all the revisions for my latest manuscript. Just a few more edits after which I'll send the revised version to PA. Then hopefully we can send it back to the associate editor for publication! That would be delightful.

Then I have to start worrying about an upcoming conference and the talk I'll be giving there. When I registered for the conference and requested to give a talk, I also decided to try for one of those sort of "prestige" talks that they offer for recent phD students and new postdocs - a small number of the applicants are selected to give talks to the entire mass of conference attendees (no concurrent sessions). I guess I jazzed up my abstract enough to catch their attention and got myself selected! Woohoo! But also, "OH CRAP!"

I was so nervous preparing for my talk at the smallish conference I attended earlier this year - I just know I'll be more nervous for this one, and I don't look forward to that part. I really hope I get over this quickly. I've given plenty of talks to audiences throughout my academic life - but conferences still get to me. Well at least my talk will be during the first few days of the conference, rather than at the very end.

Aside from that I've been extremely happy to have Mr. Daybyday back home with me. He brought home with him some amazing stories and pictures from his adventure. Maybe next time I will be able to go with him.

And I'm still very much on the fence about this whole academic career thing. I think I'm just too scared to make an actual decision. I should probably start contacting some of the people I know who do research in government labs to set up some informational interviews. I just don't feel like I've done enough to prepare for those yet. Damn, I'm good at procrastinating.

A great big reunion

This weekend I gave my first ever conference talk. I was nervous and anxious leading up to the talk - and I hate that feeling. But once I was up there, and confident that I had practiced enough, I went into my auto-pilot mode and before I knew it, I was done! I think the talk itself was alright - and I much prefer giving a talk (despite the stress and anxiety) than a poster - mostly because I actually get feedback from the audience. I had at least three people ask questions during the time after my talk for discussion. And several people came up to me afterwards during the break to talk some more. I was pretty thrilled!

But what thrilled me even more was that the conference allowed me to once again be reuinited with several people from my old lab and university. I miss the people from my grad school days, so it was quite the treat to spend time with them again.

Sorry this post is rather short, and relatively uninteresting - my mind has been sort of blurry since the party with my old grad school friends. And I really ought to focus on the minor (but many!) revisions that need to be done on my manuscript - yes, that means I finally heard back from the editor and reviewers for my latest submission! Hurrah! And for once, I think the reviewers are actually going to significantly improve the manuscript with their suggestions and comments!

Okay, back to work!

Musings and martial arts

I'll start off with a quick update on my academic life. I finished writing up a script for my talk this weekend. I don't expect to memorize it, but I just find that once I've taken the time to write down the major points I want to make sure I remember to say, I feel more relaxed, and organized. I use my slides more for a visual cue, and to give the audience something to look at while I'm speaking. I don't like putting too much text on my slides, because I figure either the audience won't bother reading it anyway, or will have a hard time concentrating on either my voice, or the text on the slide while both are being projected to them at once. I try to emulate speakers I enjoy listening to. But I'm sure that I've still got a lot to learn. It is my hope that I will never, EVER, go over-time. It is the one thing that will almost always ruin a talk for me, and therefore, I wouldn't want to make my audience stay longer than they have to either.

Also on the academic front, while I was reading PhD Mom's extremely helpful post on how to write a faculty package I had a project idea jump into my head! So I emailed PA (who is out of town for a conference) about said idea, and was quite proud of myself. The project might not be feasible in the end, but I was just so pleased that a novel idea came to me - one that is quite different from the projects I am used to thinking about. Yay! I may just be able to do this academia thing afterall.

And if not, I could always become a martial arts instructor. This is being a little presumptuous, seeing as I have yet to achieve instructor rank in any of the martial arts I have studied thus far. However, this is the first time that I've gotten back into martial arts as an adult. I took some martial arts classes before I went to highschool (and yes, I am being vague on purpose) - for a few years even. My instructors told me that I had a beautiful punch. And the head instructor would always ask me to go to competitions and represent our club for the forms competition (where you perform the choreographed moves for each rank). I never went. I think I was too shy, or scared or something. Hell, I remember in the very first class I was so scared and nervous that my knees were literally shaking, and I was so worried the other kids in the class were going to notice my pants jittering at the knees. Thank goodness my parents got me into those classes. I can only imagine what a passive wreck I'd be if I didn't have the self-confidence I learned there.

Eventually we started sparring in class. I went undefeated, and yet, I remember having so much anxiety before every match. I think that is ultimately what made me stop going. That and I was starting highschool. Lots of transitions. But I think I would have wanted to continue if I wasn't so worried about having to spar again.

Fast forward about 15 years. I joined a martial arts group here at fantastic university - a different style from my previous training. I joined because the group came highly recommended from a friend, it was convenient, and I missed being involved in a martial art. I didn't realize how much I had missed it until I was back in the fold. I really really missed it. Because of my previous experience I was able to master the basics of this new style fairly quick, and have gone up a few ranks in this group. I am at roughly an equivalent level now to the one I was at when I left my old club. But the biggest difference is I no longer have anxiety about sparring! I don't know if it's just that I'm no longer the lone girl always sparring with a bunch of immature boys, or if I'm just less anxious in general now that I'm older. But I'm actually learning about sparring strategies for people of my stature, and having a really great time. I also really enjoy being able to teach fellow students. Even though I don't often out-rank them by much (or at all), I think because of my previous experience in another martial art, I can see the technical qualities of what we are being taught and therefore am better able to help the newer students figure out how to do the techniques as well. I enjoy it so much that I often wonder if I could follow in the footsteps of my current instructors and become a teacher myself - or even run my own club/school someday! ha! All of these day dreams and I'm still only about half way up the rank system.

What I really enjoy about these thoughts is the fact that I seem to have found a passion again - and a lost passion at that! It gives me hope - hope that I have something I'm good at and enjoy enough that if this academia thing doesn't work out for me, I know that there is something else out there that makes me happy and wouldn't feel like a step down. It may look like a step down to other people, but it wouldn't feel like one to me.

During the last year of my PhD I read Po Bronson's book "What Should I Do With My Life?" and at the end I was pretty dismayed by the fact that I really didn't have a passion. Sure I enjoyed science, but at the time I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and under-enthusiastic. So many of the happy stories in Bronson's book revealed that the person in question had been able to identify a latent or novel passion, and then ran with it. I was still searching.

But I think I may have stumbled back into mine.

Power-houses and small talk

I just finished running through my talk for the conference this weekend. Only two slides won't make the cut (due to time constraints), but I will tack them on to the end, after the acknowledgments in case someone asks a question specifically about the subject of those slides. Otherwise I think the timing is fine - though I feel a little rushed. I will probably put the time into actually semi-scripting the talk. I figure conferences, defences, and job talks are worth the added effort. When else do I have a captive audience for an extended period of time? I might as well do my best to make it worth their time too! I don't imagine I'd be able to put this much effort into daily lectures, but that is a different arena - facilitating the transfer and uptake of knowledge can be done in other ways. Next year I might even take some courses on teaching science - but I'm putting that off until I figure out what my next project will be.

I've been reading an awful lot of text books lately. I find that when I read about topics I have previously studied, but mostly forgotten, I gain a better, more firm understanding of the subject. Often times the terminology sticks, but the solid understanding fades quickly after the final exam. I worry that I will soon lose all but my mathematical vocabulary, and much of my other science knowledge as well! But it is difficult to find the time to reaquaint oneself with undergraduate subjects - and especially daunting when you have no professor to lecture for you, and instead only large texts books to sift through for the passages that will be most useful. What I find even more frustrating is that because I have no exam to study for, I don't know what information is worth retaining, and what can be glossed over. In an ideal world where I could retain everything I wouldn't gloss over anything - but I often feel that my brain is reaching critical capacity as is, and I really don't want to forget my phone number or where I live just so that I can remember all the components needed by mitochondria, for instance, to perform their various functions. It has been far too long since I've studied these things. I need a system.

I started writing down random thoughts, questions and ideas for research projects. It has been very helpful alleviating my worries of forgetting thoughts that might be terribly useful in the future. But those scattered scraps of paper need a home and some organization of their own. I think I need a "thoughts" book - I already have a "lab notebook" so that months from now I can figure out what the heck I was doing today. Hopefully the "thoughts" book can somehow help me write down things I've learned form my readings as well - despite the lack of a final exam, I'd still like to retain what I learn somewhere! I just can't believe it has taken me this long to get organized.

Anyway, I've been reading a lot of textbooks. I am trying to re-learn cell biology (actually, I am trying to learn it for the first time, since the course I took in undergrad was "problem based learning" and very little learning actually took place). How can I study anything in biology, even if it is only tangental to my work, without a thorough understanding of how the basic units work?

Whirring and buzzing

Today was an eventful day, in my head.

My goal for the day was to complete, at least in rough form, my presentation for an upcoming conference. I am happy to say that I accomplished this goal. I can now start practicing the talk and tweaking the slides accordingly. I have never given a conference talk before, let alone a quick 15 minute talk (although I've done 45 minute talks for weekly seminars, lab meetings and job interviews). How do you get your point across in 15 minutes without completely glossing over all the details? I chose to focus on my favorite findings - if time permits I may elaborate on them.

But the really big happenings of today took place primarily in my head, not in my presentation slides. You see, dear reader, there is a very small possibility that I may be pregnant. Or after three months off the pill my cycle might just be whacky like it was in the years before I went on the pill. Some basic probability and logic leads me to think that I am not pregnant - but I was shocked to find that part of me actually hopes that I am!

This feeling took me by complete suprise. I went through a rather long phase where I had decided that I didn't want to have children of my own (adoption some day, perhaps) - but then friends of mine started having children of their own, and darn them, they made it look appealing. And long before that I had enough fear put into me about getting pregnant (having 3 older cousins become teenaged moms will do that to you) that I mostly associated pregnancy with terrifying, unspeakables. The fear did not suddenly disappear upon my newly bestowed marital status either. Children are, after all, a huge responsibility. Not to mention the whole child birth/delivery ordeal. That still terrifies me.

Perhaps part of why I hope to be pregnant has to do with the weight of indecision no longer falling on my shoulders; if I'm pregnant, there's nothing to be indecisive about anymore - the baby will come, and we will make the neccessary adjustments, and do the best we can. But if I'm not pregnant, I have to play this passive-agressive game all over again. Do we actually try to get pregnant, or try to prevent it? If we try to prevent it, will we regret that decision later? If we try to have a baby now, are we ready? Wouldn't waiting a little while longer be safer? We'd be back in our home country in about two years, with paid parental leave rather than here where we'd only be partly able to cash in on that sweet motherland deal. Seems rather sub-optimal to me.

And thinking about all of the nuts and bolts, financial, emotional, immigrational and otherwise just sets my head spinning! I even wish I could take a whole year myself to be with the baby. Maybe I would change my mind before the year was through, but having that choice would be comforting. For a while I've thought that my husband would be the one to leave work for a longer period of time to take care of the baby. It makes financial sense, as my wages earn us more at this point, and if I continue with my career at this rate, I could even hope to land a faculty position after this postdoc. A whole year off could set me back. It makes me have crazy thoughts about bringing the baby to the lab with me (the room which houses my work space is crowded enough as is!) But babies sleep a lot, and I typically only require a computer and internet access to do most of my work. The only reason I wouldn't do it all from home is because I occasionally need to interact with people, and enjoy attending seminars (though I can't imagine the baby enjoying that!).

Babies, babies, babies. How did my parents do it? How are my friends making it seem so enticing?