Consistency, or a lack thereof

For the past month or so, I have had very little stability as I have been in a state of flux and unknowing. Will I get the job I interviewed for and finally get to officially settle down and start a permanent life? Finally live together with the Grackle and all of our little fur faces and have a consistent life instead of the temporary one I’ve been in for most, if not all of my adult life?

Well, although I don’t have official confirmation, I am 98% sure that isn’t happening. It has been pretty difficult to deal with and pretty depressing. All of my 1 out of 200 rejections are accepted almost as a given but to be 1 out of 5 and get rejected after they meet me, hear about my research and enjoy my sparking personality (to say nothing of my cute shoes) is getting me down about my prospects in academia altogether*

In addition to the soul crushing job market, the snowstorms in my area and a faulty transmission in Grackle’s car have conspired to keep us apart for most of February. I was able to get home this weekend for the first time since Feb 3^rd…. but am leaving for field-work on Friday so it will be at least 6 weeks till we see each other again. The whole point of taking a geographically close postdoc was so that we didn’t have to go 3 months without seeing each other!

Given all this, it doesn’t really seem like anything is consistent these days. Who knows what I will be working on come next year, where I might be in 18 months, if I will ever get a job, etc etc. But then as I contemplated just how much of a pity party my writing about continuity really was turning out to be, I thought about what it was we did this weekend.

We sat around our house and were completely boring. We watched sports and worked and played backgammon. The most exciting part of the trip was a visit to the antique mall where we found a three-faced dog planter (see below). Despite the snooze factor, the weekend was exactly like most weekends and has shown just how much consistency/continuity there can be in the mundane aspects of everyday life. This is actually quite comforting. The pets will always provide entertainment, Grackle will always do something sweet** and we will never get as much cleaning done as we plan.

This perspective is helping me accept the results of this years job search and remember that nothing is really so bad. It is fine I didn’t get what I thought was the perfect job and it is fine that weather and work and cars all seem to be working against me. The fundamental aspects of my life remain consistent and that is more than enough.

*I know that on my first year on the market that I am very lucky to have even gotten an interview and am grateful for the experience. Also know that search committees make decisions for all sorts of reasons and it shouldn’t be taken personally. Rejection still stinks, though.

**While out for dog food, he bought me an office chair so we can both sit comfortably while working/watching tv.

Ball dropped, again.

Alright! 21 days into InaDWriMo 09 and I have yet to update. It might not turn out so well this year. But things are still getting done- just different things!

The official update on projects:

1) Decent progress made. I've got 1700 words or about 5 pages of...stuff. Hopefully by Sunday night it will be in some sort of readable form since I am sending it to Rt-H at that point. It is really similar to a proposal that was funded a few years ago and I am struggling to make mine different at least in wording and structure. The best argument is x, y and z. But I have that other grant, which also sets it up as x, y and z. I feel like I am copying but there is no other way to say it!

5) Since this is the same as 1, I have made 1700 words of progress! Woo!

2 and 3) Haven't touched them.

4) Also haven't touched but should get to it this week.

So, what HAVE I been doing? There was another writing task that didn't make my list. A revision of 'paper with too many authors.' I am first author on this thing but my PhD advisor wrote it and is last/corresponding author. It is a weird situation but he doesn't want to be first and out of all of us, I had invested most in it. I get the paper, thinking that I would have to add a couple references and that would be it. Nope. It took over a week of re-writing to make sense of some new data that he added and negotiate how to say many of my critical comments in a way that will hurt no ones feelings. 'Paper with too many authors' indeed.

I also started working on a new project to get preliminary data for my grants. It has been so long that I forgot the voodoo that is bench work. It is really cool when it works though! I also gave an invited seminar (more on this later), spent a weekend doing awesome-physical-activity in a wild and wonderful state, applied for a bunch of jobs and am now working from PhD Town home for the rest of the month. Writing is always better when surrounded by pets, right?

Moving forward!

Today, I finished a major step of my data analysis for the first project I have been working on for my postdoc. I've avoided the temptation of graphing out the data as I was analyzing it to avoid having to re-do it and get an incomplete (or wrong) picture of what is going on. The first glimpse of what my numbers are and how they are falling out with my treatments was awesome. Totally hot science! Getting through this tedious task helps me really feel like I am moving forward with my project as well. Finally!

Of course, moving forward = finishing something = moving on to something else. This final step is all wrapped up in its own little ball of strife, but we'll get into that next time...I got up ridiculously early to bake a pie this morning for a dinner party and need more sleep.

Hohum

Just to make sure you know nothing has really changed around here today I worked from home (the real home in PhD-Town, not my apartment in Postdoc City) and planned to get a lot done. Including....

Finish getting old data

Start analyzing new data

Do laundry

Cook a nice, healthy dinner for the Grackle and I

What I actually did...

Didn't really get dressed all day

Read journals/books about new-research area

Started catching up on blog reading

Analyzed a tiny bit of old data

Discovered we are out of fabric softener

Am now waiting for the Grackle to get home with pizza and beer.

Beautiful weekend

It looks like it is going to be a beautiful weekend...that I am going to spend working. I am on track to finish one task (my data) before the Monday deadline but I have slacked on the other (my writing).  Trading this beautiful weekend for my time at home the past few weeks is easy and completely worthwhile. Plus, most of the people I know in Postdoc City are travelling this weekend so I won't even be tempted with fun distractions.  

The only question left is where to work? My options...

1) Apartment. Not much natural light, but it is quiet, comfortable and I have a fully stocked kitchen. Plus crafty distractions if I need a break!

2) Lab/office. My chair sucks but it is open and airy with giant windows. It should be quiet (no one else in my lab comes in on weekends) and being on the campus network will help with easy access to papers. The major drawback is well, it is the lab and I'm there most days. 

3) Elsewhere! I don't have a go-to coffee shop in Postdoc City yet and it might be time to find one! Of course, I might spend more time finding one, trying to get there, getting lost and then enjoying it than actually, um, working. 

Any other suggestions for where to write on days like this? 

Coming out of the fog

I guess I have been suffering a hooding hangover. It went well and it was nice to see ex-advisor for a few hours. He couldn't put his own hood on beforehand and put mine on upside down. Better than backwards at least! While it was good to take part in the ceremony, it was a little weird. Like a bridal shower. I'd encourage others to go to it, but I didn't get the tingly I'm-really-a-Dr-now feelings from it that I was set up for. There was free-flowing champagne afterwards though which was a lot of fun. It made me really miss my old lab. Well, part of it anyway.

After my Mom went back home, I got down to work. It is really more likely that I am suffering from a data hangover. The analysis I'm doing is intensive and mind numbing. It is going about half as fast as I planned. Working from home is great, but after 5 hours of analysis I can not even see straight! Still, spending time in my own house with the pets and being all domestic-like with dinner ready when Grackle gets home from the lab has been lovely. It feels like a break but I am still getting more done than I would in the lab! 

Both Grackle and I are coming under the gun and have to prepare data for conferences that are within a month. Today, he is at the lab and I am analysing. It isn't all work around here though. We are headed to the drive in tonight! Yay! I hope everyone is having a good holiday!   

Writing and running

Posting has been light but I have good reason----check out the sidebar! In addition to starting a blogroll (it isn't complete, if you'd like to be added please let me know in the comments), I have updated my writing progress. Progress bars won't work this time because I have no goals....just have to keep writing till it seems complete!

Life hasn't been all work and no play though. A few weeks ago, my officemate/friend/running buddy, Flamingo, encouraged me to sign up for a race for women's cancers. It is a good cause and the grad team would pay half the entrance fee so I signed right up. Of course at the time, we were running regularly so she convinced me* that we could totally do the 5 MILE race instead of the 5k. The messiness of dealing with all my data crap kept me from running for a few weeks earlier this month, although I had a few decent runs at RTL. After returning, Flamingo and I had a couple more runs but any real semblance of training was shot by that point. 

The race was yesterday and we both went into it just hoping to run the whole thing, and finish closer to our 'easy' pace**. Of course, it was also not just 5 miles- we found out on Friday that it was actually 5.3 miles. Plus, all of a sudden it was cold! 

The race itself was fun- I'm glad I did the longer one, as it was not crowded while the 5k had almost 6,000 people. Flamingo and I finished within a minute of each other and ended up running close to our fastest training pace***. 

It would be really nice to continue running while I continue writing and finish. Running always helps me de-stress and I usually either work out some problematic thinking during the run or manage to completely shut work out of my brain altogether. It is one of the few things I have tried to make a priority but bad weather, shorter days and deadlines may be too difficult to keep it up. 

*She is currently under the idea that the 5 mile was my idea. It wasn't, I promise.

**We are pretty comfortable and chatty at 10:00 min/miles.

***I managed 9:16 min/mile.

Optimistic and going home

I'm out in Remote Technical Lab (RTL) and have been working away. Things are going well and I am optimistic* about my ability to fix the data, finish things here and get home. I am wrapping things up today and heading home tomorrow, actually.

For anyone who didn't come over from the other blog, my history with RTL is a long, complicated one. It is located near a field site and I visited in 2006 to make possible connections. That worked well so my advisor and I wrote a grant, got funding and I moved to RTL in January 2007. Here I lived for 8 months during which time I completed the project we were funded for while running all the experiments for my dissertation in my spare time. I was miserable most of the time, had very few-outside-of-work friends and was living in an ex-FEMA trailer that pretty much had no kitchen or bathroom**. When I left, there were still samples to be analyzed and leaving them was a difficult decision. It isn't ideal to rely upon others for your work-but sometimes you have to. The lab had an out of sight, out of mind attitude towards me and my work so I waited over a year to get the results. That brings us to the samples being messed up and my coming back here to try to figure it all out.

I spent this week pouring over the tech's lab notebook and the analyses looking for patterns. After finding them, it turns out there was a technical error that accounted for most of the errors and I was able to reanalyze those samples. The fact that it all worked is amazing- I usually have really bad luck at the bench after a period away. It has been a year since I did bench work and this week resulted in the prettiest data I have ever produced. Fixing the errors did change the downstream analyses of the data so in addition to feeling confident about the changes in the data I made, the resulting conclusions will be more interesting. 

I'll be on another 7:30am flight tomorrow.

*I'm also mad as hell but that will be my next post.

**I had to shower in a different trailer and seriously, the toilet didn't work.

Review of the worst. week. ever.

This was my week......

Monday: Find out my data might be seriously messed up. Begin questioning all future plans such as graduation and postdoc. Cry a lot.

Tuesday: Decide that a trip to remote technical lab is required. I did work in this lab for 8 months and they ran these samples for me after I left. Curse relaying on anyone else for data.

Wednesday-Friday: Learn all I can about the problems and how to fix them. Curse having a major part of my project be something that no one at my university has expertise with. 

Friday night: Finally stop worrying for 4 hours and go out on a date with the Grackle. See an amazing concert that makes everything right in the world. I've wanted to see this guy for years and it was worth the wait!

Saturday: Back to reality, preparations for leaving, and watching the last ditch effort by the Cubs* tonight.

Sunday: 6 am flight to remote lab.

The status of internet at the remote lab is questionable so I might not be able to post till I get back. Even more fun, I don't even know when I will be back! 

Hopefully, the remote nature of the place will allow me to resume being productive on writing the dissertation. All writing has pretty much stopped as I deal with data issues. 

This was really a rock-bottom week for me and I spent a lot time just trying to hold it together. It was often a fight to stay proactive in the situation instead of just reacting to it. Hopefully, there will be more entries on the situation but for now, I have to get back to packing not only all my clothes but also my office into a single suitcase. 

*The last two games have been painful. What happened Lou???? 

Beating overcommitment, but not really

I have a tendency to do overcommit myself. I like going to conferences, collaborating and starting new projects so usually there is a lot going on all at once. But right now I have to cut back on these things otherwise I'll never graduate. Must focus! All attention on graduation!* It is really difficult to say no to people, particularly when I really want to do other things. So what have I been turning down?

1) My 10 year high school reunion

2) A conference in a beautiful place in Mexico the weekend my draft is due to the dean (there was even travel money available!)

3) An invited seminar tacked onto the end of that conference

4) Another conference that my collaborator (who is organizing a symposium) is trying to talk me into going/contributing to. This is the week I am hoping to defend.

5) My departments' informal student seminar series (not so much a turning down as a refusal)

There are some things that I just can't say no to/give up so the Grackle and I will be heading to our Mighty Midwest Hometowns for a wedding later this month. We are also hosting some friends visiting in October. 

On the work end of things, I heard back about my final paper that was submitted this summer. This was the second journal I've sent this paper too (first submission was in Jan 2007). The reviews from that first journal were so bad that I was told there may not be anything to salvage from the work. Salvage, I did! And this time the results were a bit better- two out of three negative reviews, yet we are still got that lovely gem of 'reject but resubmit'. 

I really don't have time for this right now but can't really say no to it. Hopefully the reviews will seem easier to handle after I ignore them for 2 days but they still are going to say, 'test more dots' and 'test a different type of dot'. I no longer have access to those dots so if the editor really, really expects more dots, we are in for a flat out rejection. It just seems weird that we were asked to resubmit with these major additional experiments. The editor does similar tests and knows that redoing them in the time frame for resubmission is impossible. The worst part of this is the time frame- we have 6 short weeks to resubmit. 6 weeks! They have had the paper since June (12 weeks to be exact) but we don't even get that long to rewrite it? 

So, what to do besides bitch about it? I sent it to my coauthor, who is also getting to the end of her PhD and has a habit of not getting back to me for months at a time (between her fieldwork, her husband's fieldwork, and sometimes just being a flake). Surprisingly, she is in the country and sees this as a worthwhile endeavor. I'll have a true re-vision of the paper in 3 days (because she is an amazing superstar when she actually calls me back). We will have to write some strong rebuttals and hope for the best.  

*And, uh, blogging. With a side of football. But I can totally work and watch football at the same time.