Time to get down to business

I'm back from vacation, and feeling very much revived. It's taken a bit too long to get reorganized, but I think I'm there now, so it's time to get back to work.

Providing great motivation to jump back into work, our microscope, which has been out of commission for two months, is back online today. I've also successfully run all over campus collecting books and photocopying journal articles from four different libraries for the big push to work out the theory side of this project.

My goal is to be "done" with this project by the end of the calendar year. That means serious work from here on out. Wish me luck!

Babies and grants

Last week at lab meeting, my advisor told the group that he had just received word that a third major grant he submitted this year has been funded. We now have more than $2500 to spend PER DAY for the next five years. So, he continued telling us, he won't need to write any more grants for about three years. Now, it's time to get out lots of papers.

Gee, thanks. So glad I could be with you during more than three and a half years of babies and grants. Three and a half years when you were often absent, or holed up in your office, refusing to speak to anyone. Three and a half years with scant guidance because you refused to hire a post doc because you didn't think you could get one good enough. Three and a half years of hanging wall clocks, ordering basic supplies, and building equipment. (Did I mention that I started in the lab just 6 months after my advisor got here?) Three and a half years of being cramped in a too-small lab because we grew so quickly, but didn't have the clout to get more space.

To his credit, I guess, my advisor is now trying to get me interested in a bunch of "side" projects, each of which he expects will take only 4-6 weeks, and each of which will get me authorship (2nd or 3rd) on the resulting paper. But, here's the thing. I'm about to enter my fifth year in this lab, and I am already well into my 6th year of grad school over all. At this point in my career, 6 weeks for 2nd authorship on a paper just isn't worth it. I'm exhausted, spent. I don't want to spend even 5 minutes on anything that isn't going to directly advance me towards graduation.

I'm done. All done. It's time to move on.

Advice for new grad students

One of the best pieces of advice I can offer a new grad student is to find time each week for a non-school related activity -- sports, hobby, etc. This should be something fun and, preferably, something you do without any of your lab buddies. This probably sounds easy, and perhaps obvious, but when the work starts to pile up, it can be very easy to neglect your own self.

I've been dancing since I was six years old, and dance has always been a big part of my life. When I first started at my current university, I was reluctant to seek out dance opportunities because I already had so much on my plate -- trying to navigate a new school, learning to balance two residences (my first house, with my husband, and my apartment at school), and planning a long-distance wedding. About 6 weeks after moving, however, I had a huge argument with my fiance (we've fought maybe 3-4 times in the 9 years we've known each other), and the very next week I came down with the first migraine I'd ever had. We both agreed that it was time for me to to start dancing again.

When I'm at dance, everything else disappears, and I get an hour or so to focus entirely on me. It helps me work out the frustrations of the day; it gives me a chance to express myself in a wholly different way than I do at school; it gives me an opportunity to interact with people with differing interests from my own... This week was my first week back to dance after a one month "summer break." I didn't realize how much I missed it. Already, I'm sleeping better, waking up more rested, dealing better with all the things that are going wrong in the lab right now. It's a wonderful thing.

Motivation

I feel as if I've been coming across a lot of blog posts and articles about motivation lately. I just read a piece in Inside Higher Ed which suggested that grad students should find something they are looking forward to at/after graduation to use as motivation.

I am a very non-traditional grad student in the sense that I am married and a homeowner, and in that I'm essentially a commuter student, since I spend my weekends at home with my husband and my weeks up at school. This has made it very difficult for me to cultivate close personal relationships with any of my friends at school, and impossible to even find friends in my home town. After four years, this has become very draining.

Some of my lab mates had suggested in the past that they'd like to visit me at my home and tour the local college town, which is fairly well-known and has some fun activities to offer. So, last week I sent out invitations for a bunch of them to come down, visit the town, and enjoy a BBQ at my house. All but one of them bailed at the last minute. In the end, I guess they were all put off by the hour and a half drive down. I can't blame them -- I have turned down invitations in the past to do things with them over the weekend because I don't want to make the drive back to school an additional time, or lose what precious little time I have at home for an activity that maybe isn't all that exciting to me. Still, my failed attempt to gather friends at my home highlights the fact that the life I'm currently living is out of whack. Really, I'm living two lives -- a life at school and a life at home, and neither one is complete.

So, one of my motivations for graduating is knowing that when I'm through I will finally have the chance to find a local best friend. Someone who is in a similar place in life (married, homeowner, maybe with a kid on the way -- as I hope to have too once I get out of school). Someone that I can go for coffee with, or to dinner, and talk about the things happening in our lives. It will be nice.

Educating the family

My current home puts me very close to my extended family, and I spend time with them at least every 6-8 weeks. We were together this weekend for my cousin's birthday -- chatting and eating, as is always the way. Talking to my family about what I do is always a bit of an adventure because neither science nor graduate school are things that they have great familiarity with. I've been in grad school more than 6 years now, and it was only last year that they stopped asking me what my plans were for summer vacation, or what classes I was taking the upcoming semester. I should be finishing up this Spring, and one of my cousins (21) asked me, "So, when are you applying to [your husband's] college?" My immediate thought was, why would I apply to another school? Don't I have enough education? Then I realized that she meant apply to teach there. So I replied that I would apply this fall, if there is a position opening, and that's a pretty big if. Later in the conversation, her sister (18) asked me if I would be graduating with a degree in science. Well, not just science, I replied, physics, with a focus on biophysics. So, you wouldn't go teach chemistry?, she asked. No, I said, I haven't taken chemistry since high school, so I'd be a very bad chemistry teacher. Still later, my uncle asked my husband if he should be called "Dr.", since he has a PhD.

I don't say these things to poke fun at my family. Really, I wonder when I became aware of graduate school -- what it means to get a masters vs. a PhD, what (sub)fields are available, what you do when you get out, the difference between an MRU and a PUI (in terms of going to teach at one or the other), what a post-doc is. My cousins are both intelligent women, so I can't figure out why the older one would assume I could just apply to teach at a university whenever I wanted. It's not like applying at Walmart; there aren't always positions open. Also, my husband and I talk about being physicists, and he is a physics professor, so I wonder how my younger cousin could believe I was getting a PhD in general science.

Am I just too far into the process to remember how little I knew about it before I started? Or was I maybe more aware because my father has a Master's and I grew up in a University town? And is that awareness, or lack-thereof, indicative of the scope of a person's aspirations? (My sisters both have Master's degrees, and I'm on my way to a PhD, but of our five cousins on that side of the family, only one seems likely to complete a four year degree.)

What's in a name

Choosing a name for myself on this adventure was probably the most difficult task I faced in setting up this blog. My husband suggested FemaleScienceGraduateStudent, modeled after FemaleScienceProfessor, a favorite blogger of his. Although I am very proud to be a female scientist, I balked at being so narrowly defined. It is one of my pet peeves that when I meet new people and tell them that I am a physicist they almost unanimously reply either: "I didn't like physics in high school." or "Wow. You must be really smart." And then the conversation dies. Apparently, I can't be related to by a non-scientist. Nor am I expected to have other, non-sciency, aspects of my life upon which we might find common ground. Although I intend to use this blog to talk mostly about my life in science, and realize that most of my followers will likely be scientists, I still prefer to describe my musings more broadly. As well, I find that a fair number of my graduate school woes stem from the fact that, in my lab, I'm a physicist swimming in a sea of biologists, and the tide can be overwhelming. So I decided to give my blog the moniker Interdisciplinary Introspective. Welcome to my world.