One day, perhaps...

"A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this." --Aneas (from Virgil's Aneid)

Things have been moving at a fast pace these days-- it looks like I have a date set for my defense: Friday, August 9th! It also happens to be Baby H's birthday. Only to bring me luck, of course.

Everyone was on board at a recent committee meeting and the discussion was surprisingly pleasant. This helped my confidence a lot, and reinforced what I have been saying since I've realized it: start this process early! Get a committee and get them involved as soon as you can. Group meetings are even better because of the discussion they drive-- not just a benefit for you and your project, but the discussion amongst the faculty with their peers allows them to bicker between each other and not with you. Really, everybody wins here.

There is a visible light at the end of this 6-year-long tunnel. Finally.

Now it's jut a matter of getting all of my remaining experiments done, dissertation written, and papers submitted! Yeah... sound like a lot? Because it is. But, I think my excitement and the prospect of ACTUALLY BEING DONE has overtaken any extreme feelings of stress. In the last months, the project has been streamlined and is manageable. I know exactly which experiments need to get done, and, barring any serious contamination/mysterious lab issues, it will get done on time.

The writing part is somewhat daunting. I like writing, but it is quite the time-consuming process for me. Actually, it's just consuming in general. Writing consumes me, and in order for me to produce a product I'm satisfied with, it's essential that it does. It is an art form that breeds and destroys perfectionists. And, hardest of all, there is no real way to know when you're "done" writing something. It will forever seem like something can be tweaked and changed, something could be said differently, or expanded upon. In the end, though-- at least with a dissertation-- it doesn't matter.... It all has to be in there, the data, the story, but in the end, it just needs to be finished.

Definitely.

Check out #WhatShouldWeCallGradSchool because it's awesome.

A despondent rant

This is nothing new, but no less true. No less significant. Perhaps it's so devastating because it's not new. Because my entire experience in grad school has been an uphill battle, one where I continuously plummet back down the mountain and have to retrace my path. Do it again, except while battered and bruised.

Throughout my career here, my successes seem few and far between. They are shrouded in the myriad (often unexplainable) failures. And by this, they are rendered insignificant and forgettable. My confidence in my capabilities as a lab-based scientist has waned. Experiments work and fail with the changing of the tides or, perhaps, by something more random. Repeating experiments to confirm results and to complete the requisite n = 3 only results in having the third inexplicably fail. Was it a bad day for the cells? My incompetence? Wrathful lab gods? I'm unsure.

My list of experiments to be completed in order to finish my degree is plentiful. It wouldn't seem so impossible, however, if experiments worked when I did them. If I was able obtain usable data from 3 experiments the first 3 times I did the experiment, instead of accumulating them within 20 times of repeating the same. Unfortunately for me, this is not an exaggeration.

Do you know how much more I could have completed, how many other new things I could have done in this time, if the experiments had just yielded appropriate results after 5 times instead of 20? Do you know that I could be finishing this degree this summer instead of staring down a long tunnel that may or may not end by the Spring of 2013? Do you know how much anxiety, stress, and disparaging comments could have been avoided had these experiments worked, had the positive controls read positively, and the data obtained in a timely manner?

I think I'd be much happier. I think I'd feel like this was worth it. I think I might have the will and desire to come work everyday to finish this degree. Maybe I wouldn't feel like my day to day life is useless, a waste of time. I wouldn't spend hours, days, and weeks completing an experiment to ultimately determine it failed. I wouldn't be looking at the same "to-do" list I have had up for months, wondering why barely anything is crossed off when I know I've been working constantly. Maybe then I wouldn't feel like a failure.

MadLabRat, PhC

Some wonderful news from the past week: I passed my Oral/General Exam!

This was a huge relief and a great feeling. I'm so happy it's over. I'm now officially a PhD Candidate. The last 4 years? I guess slave, underpaid worker, or plain old graduate student was the appropriate title. I celebrated with some good food, better friends, awesome Girlfriend, and some karaoke.

Fig. 1

As for the exam itself, it went well overall. I had prepared and practiced my presentation profusely, and I believe it paid off. I received several compliments on the layout of my data and project aims in its accessibility to the audience. Always a good thing to hear. Advice from this experience #1: A clear presentation (bullet points and plentiful images) allows you to successfully communicate your ideas to a broad audience and prevents confusion. This last point may seem obvious, but in academia, even the slightest bit of confusion may offend certain professors' sensibilities, resulting in angry ape-like behavior (see Fig. 1).

My committee was a bit more aggressive in  dwelling on certain aspects of my project, aspects I didn't expect to be the focus of discussion. That was another major take-away point for me here, and for anyone preparing for such an exam (where anything is fair game for the panel to ask/discuss)-- you really never know what points will flip the switch in certain people's minds and lead them to focus on something specific. This is why it's important to think carefully about how you say things, what you choose to say, and perhaps, to get to know your committee members a bit better before the exam. I am definitely guilty of not engaging them sooner in this process, but I'm not going to get into the reasons for that here.

Even though I felt I had some sort of answer or talking point about anything that was mentioned, in some ways, I felt I somehow came up a little short in my committee's eyes. I'm honestly unsure how accurate my personal assessment of this situation is, seeing as I did pass after all. But for me, if it's not A's across the board with a glowing record of achievement (which you don't often receive in grad school), it's obviously a failure. Maybe my best advice, then, is to steer clear of the PhD track if you're a perfectionist at heart.

General Exam Crazyness

It's coming! My Oral Exam is rapidly approaching-- February 10th!

Needless to say, things have been insanely busy. Really. Most days involve waking up to babbling Baby Girl at 7:00am and it doesn't stop til I hit the pillow again that night. Even so, I am making a lot of progress and being productive, which feels great. Proposal is written, revised, and sent out to the committee. This was a ton of work but I've admittedly learned a lot through this whole process of reading and digesting literature. If there is anything to be said about this whole stressful endeavor is that preparing for this exam is incredibly useful (unlike the written exam we work our asses off after our second year, full of knowledge that most of us never use afterwards). Lab work is often routine and monotonous; it's easy to feel like you're not really an 'expert' in anything besides pipetting. In reading so much of the current (and past) literature, I feel like I finally have some ownership over these content areas. Plus, my thesis is now about 2/3 written.

Currently, I'm working on my presentation and analyzing some more experiments I completed a couple weeks ago. I am genuinely interested and -gasp!- excited about the results. They've proven useful for my presentation thus far, so that's a plus.

Woo! Almost there. Seriously cannot wait for this to be over.

I'm Tired and It's Only January 3rd

Happy new year! I hope 2012 is looking bright for everyone, I wish you all good things in the new year.

So far, 2012 is looking to be busy exciting. On the agenda: I have my General Exam scheduled for February 10th! I'm happy to finally have that on the calendar. I've met with each of my committee members individually and have mostly positive vibes coming from them, which is great. Something the whole process did make blatantly clear, however, is that I really should have started meeting with them a whole lot sooner (meaning at least a year before I did...). Outside input-- separate from your advisor-- has proven to be incredibly valuable for both my project and my psyche.

Sadly, for many of us in my program, engaging your committee in your project construction is this nice fairy-tale idea that is not actually encouraged. If anything, one gets the feeling that it's frowned upon until you have a clearer idea of your project.. more "preliminary" data... in my type of lab work, however, by the time you have this data, half your project is completed. Kind of negates the whole idea of having other bright minds contribute to the formation of your project and ability to give you feedback on your PROPOSAL... you know, prosed work? At this stage, it's no longer proposed; it's done. And there's really not a whole lot of time left to change your approach to address concerns from committee members. Perhaps we, as grad students, could be "more proactive," but it seems that even when students try to push, unless your PI is on board and supportive, it's futile.

Anyway, ranting aside, it's scheduled and I can't wait for it to be over! January is looking super busy with experiments and proposal writing/studying for the exam. SOT comes around again in mid March in San Francisco (woo!). The most exciting news: an abstract was accepted for a poster at an international conference in Paris in May!! I'm on a mission to find funding to support my travel, I'm optimistic that I'll finagle something. I've been aiming to go to an international conference, and this one is perfect-- it focuses on environmental stressors in the origins of disease. Plus, it's in Paris :) Wish me luck!

Feeling the Crunch

I'm having trouble deciding which time crunches in life are real and which are self-inflicted (and likely unnecessary). In my head, it's all about the next thing that has to be done, and it has to be done ASAP. No exceptions. That nagging voice telling me to work faster and walk quicker just doesn't quit. Maybe the academic environment is responsible for this: you're made to constantly worry about not producing enough data, or not fast enough (what if you get scooped?). What if your funding runs out? Many aspects of these things are not controllable, so the one thing that is-- your productivity-- becomes the main object of obsession.

I'm feel like I'm always late, and I'm unsure how important that date really is.

I walked out of a lab meeting today and was immediately stricken with a mix of anxiety and panic. My presented progress was sufficient this time around, so I left relatively unscathed. Regardless, my brain switched to scheduling the next 2 months+ of my lab life the instant I finished discussing my data. No matter how much progress I feel I made, or how hard I had worked in that past month, I ALWAYS walk out of the meeting overwhelmed by how much more I still need to do. Is this me being too hard on myself, or is this really just the reality of being a productive worker? When do you get to the point where you feel like you were productive enough?

For someone who really likes to strike a line through such things, mentally and physically, these lingering loose ends are guaranteed to induce panic. With the nature of lab work-- tedious, relying on cells to grow over the course of days and weeks-- I can't just rush to my desk and bust out the work that needs to be done. I am forced to sit and plan, and work for weeks to finish even one more experiment, one that may work to my benefit...or it may end more tragically (See: cell contamination). It's a horrible lesson in patience that I'm really tired of learning.

Grad School Made Me Blind

I want someone to do a study (or, actually, several studies) on grad students working in labs. Here are some ideas so far::

1. Repetitive Stress: No, I'm not referring to the chronic stress from advisor expectations or the constant disappointments. The ergonomics peeps should study repetitive stress due to pipette use, or overuse as the case may be. It's a legitimate problem I worry about.




Fig. 1. The scariest looking lab worker pipetting something colorful (generally not the case).


2.  Blindness: I'm pretty sure that sitting in a dark room for hours staring into a microscope, scanning for and taking pictures of fluorescent-glowing cells is likely going to cause long-term damage to my perfect vision. Prospective cohort?

Fig. 2. Approximate size of and light availble in the room containing the microscope.

         3. General measures of sanity. I think this might actually be ongoing in certain departments-- the attempt to monitor stress and its effects on certain health outcomes. I believe one was related to cancer, actually... Imagine that headline when the study reaches mainstream media-- "Scientists say, Grad school gives you cancer!"

Eureka?

I realized this morning that I will not be any good at this blog thing unless I have a focus.  At the risk of it turning into one giant rant, I decided this is going to be my outlet for all things grad school and lab fun related.

Really, I was thinking about all the times I've put some random grad-school-related phrases into Google in a bout of frustration (i.e. "Grad school makes me feel stupid") with the hope that some links pointing to sage wisdom and helpful advice would pop up.  Believe it or not, there are several things that do show up, and some are even helpful.  Many times, they are simply blogs and ramblings of former graduate students, many from within the sciences.  It really helps me to see other people thinking and feeling the same things I am while trudging through this strange world in which its very easy to feel stuck.

Maybe, one day, this site will come up on a Bing search by a desperate grad student, and their day might be that much brighter.