Finishing up

Part of my family is in town to help me move to TempCollege Village. It's a little strange; I haven't had their moving assistance since my boarding school days. Of course, the added manpower is more than welcome.

Today I conscripted my little brother into Unbalanced Reaction's Laboratory Forces. We invaded the lab and tag-teamed glassware cleaning. We were undeterred by the fact that former Coworker snuck quite a lot of his dirty glassware onto my bench. Whatever.

"Wow, Coworker sure has posted a lot of passive aggressive notes around the lab," my brother noted. "They'd be great for that website. Ohhh...that's my favorite: 'Put things in the bleach bath or I will SCREAM!!!!' "

Too bad I couldn't have had more coworkers (or Coworkers) like my brother!!

Let the games begin!

And by games I mean the start of our long distance relationship / two-body problem.

N.A. leaves in the morning (and by morning I mean 4 am).

Given how not in sync our respective faculty training schedules / start of classes are, we won't be able to see each other until at least Labor Day, if not later.


:(

planning it out

I've been referring to my new job location as TempCollege Village because that is what it is: a freakin' village. A "city" of approximately 8,000. There are some traffic lights, but there is no target within a two hour radius. There is a McDonald's but no Walmart closer than 30 minutes. I know this thanks to google maps but also warnings from the Unofficially Faculty Handbook, which details all the retail and cultural offerings in TempCollege Village (hint: it's shorter than some of my undergrad papers).

So as a result, I've had to get very organized about what I will need when I move. I'm used to being able to pop over to the store whenever I need a trash can, wine, or a light bulb. Sure, the TempCollege Village grocery store will carry some of those items, at a price. I've begun compiling my (rather extensive) list of items I will need for the bathroom and kitchen once I move. I've also already bought the bare essentials like a shower curtain, a roll of toilet paper, etc.

But my favorite purchase so far is my day planner. I used to put everything in my planner. I vividly remember one spring break where I thought it had been left behind at a hotel. It wasn't pretty (lucky, it had been accidently stashed in my brother's luggage). My first year of grad school, I heavily used the standard LargeU day planner. After I got done with classes, I moved away from the planners, mostly using iCal. But no matter how many hours I'm in front of a computer, I still like to write things out. I can see them better, and I can take my day planner out at meetings while my laptop is a little more obtrusive. So I went to Target and picked out a plain, 8.5 x 11" spiral-bound day planner.

I'm a control freak. Now that I have some semblance of control over my move, I'm much calmer about the whole event. N.A. is pleased with the result, although a little bemused at my joy at possessing such a basic day planner.

growing pains

I have less than two weeks remaining at LargeU. I feel behind on everything. Although N.A. took a lot of my stuff to Tenure Track state, I still have lots of odd 'n' ends, books, and clothes that need to get packed. I haven't touched my desk at work (at which I spend at least 10 hours a day as my wet lab work has been nonexistent for the last nine months or so). And don't even get me started on how much stuff I have to clean in the wet lab, including at least 50 buffer bottles left behind by Undergrad (which is a story in and of itself).

Coworker (actually, all of them) are in total freakout mode due to a combination of several of us leaving as well as The Boss being out of town for several weeks. This means that I had to go in all day Saturday and Sunday (not that uncommon though) in order to get caught up. Forget getting a paper written this summer; I'll be lucky just to get through the data.

And to top it all off, N.A. and I can't seem to get back to Normal Communication. Instead, we both overreact to everything the other says. I can hear myself getting shrill, and it even annoys me, but I can't seem to stop. I know that part of it is due to complete exhaustion from sleep deprivation and the other is reacting to his sudden announcement that he is leaving this weekend (THIS weekend!). I'm freaking out because I don't want him to leave while we're having all these spats.

In reality, I shouldn't be freaking out about packing, my work, or N.A. I should be enjoying my last time as a grad student / post doc. I should be getting ready for my first faculty position. I should be playing around with my new camera (Nikon D80! Woot, woot, as my students would say).

Instead, I feel myself slipping. Sure, The Boss is happy with my results, and N.A. and I will get through this. But come three weeks from now, when I'm at TempCollege all by myself, I know I'm going to regret how we're leaving things.

desperately seeking sleep

During my boarding school and college days, I routinely slept four hours a night on weeknights, crashing for 10 or 12 on the weekends. Once I came to grad school (not so much the real world as maybe the "realer" world), I quickly found that I needed to bump my sleep up to 6 hours. A full nine hours left me in a euphoric state. (no, really. I've had many a Coworker comment on my extremely good mood after a good night's sleep.)

My bed has been moved to N.A.'s state. This past week I slept on the floor. (okay, I few nights I slept on an air mattress but always ended up with my ass on the floor due to overnight deflation.) Last night N.A. and I decided to treat ourselves to a hotel room.... but my planned night of sleep ended up in the bathroom due to a massive case of food poisoning.

I'm exhausted. During the day I chug coffee to get through the day. By the end of the day, I'm near tears from exhaustion. I should be crashing at night, despite my bed(less) situation, but my brain churns while my joints ache. I'm crabby, woozy, and worst of all, whiny.

Poor N.A. Not only is he sleeping on the floor, too, but he also has to put up with me!

A conversation with N.A.

I didn't have any corrections for my thesis. This can be attributed less to my brilliant writing and more to the fact that I send The Boss chapters as I finished them....and likely the indifference of the rest of my committee (although to be fair, four of the chapters were previously published so they didn't really need to look at those).

One of N.A.'s committee members is notorious for his attention to detail. N.A. came back from his defense with a copy dripping in red ink. Today he came by my office to make use of our extra large monitors (multiple windows of the same Word doc is my favorite. feature. ever.)

"There's corrections on every page!" He complained to Coworker.

I thumbed through his copy, interested to see if that was true.

"There!" Here's a clean page!" I triumphantly jabbed the unmarred page with my pointer finger.

N.A. blinked and calmly replied, "Yes, but that's because it's my references."

Poor N.A. I hope he can get through the corrections soon! Then there will be two doctors in this house!

empty house

N.A. packed up most of my stuff and his and drove it to his new state yesterday. 25 hours of driving in two days (round trip...he'll be back in a few hours).

As a result, I'm sleeping on the floor. My apartment in TempCollege village is furnished, so we decided to be optimistic about our two-body problem and go ahead and take most of my stuff to his state (where he will start his tenure-track position Aug 1).

By "optimistic about our two-body problem" I mean the following:

- that our six-ish month relationship can survive nine months living in separate states
- that I can be okay with possibly making compromises in my career for a man
- that I can find jobs in N.A.'s new state to apply to in the fall
- that I can get interviews and get a job in N.A.'s new state next spring

To say that I'm nervous would be a gross understatement.

sense of entitlement?

During my time here at LargeU, I've had the...ummm...opportunity to meet all kinds of graduate students. None irritate me more than those that feel that they are entitled to a Ph.D. And I'm not going to go off on a "a Ph.D. is a privilege" or any crap like that.

I just think that a Ph.D. requires a lot of hard work. For the sciences, this hard work roughly translates into slave labor as you balance 70+ hours a week in the lab and often coursework and often TAing. Grad school is not for the feint of heart. Grad school is not for everyone.

So I get really irritated when I hear / talk to / see Facebook references (yeah, yeah, I know) to fellow graduate students (that openly do NOT spend even 40 hours a week in lab OR have to take classes anymore OR TA) bitching about how they can't wait to get past this horrible thing called graduate school and out into the real world where they have no BS to deal with or hoops to jump through. These types of people are not working hard and merely using up grant money for their RAs (now at least they are conserving money by not spending it on lab supplies!!)

People like that have gotten kicked out of my research group. For a variety of reasons, other PIs in my department have been more tolerant.

To be clear, I don't begrudge those who can come in, do their 8-5 M-F, and get results. I simply can't do that. What I don't like to see are slackers that barely get by their classes, do a crappy job teaching, get virtually no research accomplished and then still get a Ph.D. from LargeU.

You know the type of grad student I'm talking about. I'm sure you can elaborate.

high class anxiety?

Over the past few months, I have had a recurring dream. I don't often recall my dreams, so when I do, I especially take note.

In my dream, I'm in a very large lecture class. One of those huge bowl-shaped lecture halls that can seat hundreds of students. The problem is, I've been skipping class. I've missed the midterm, not turned in papers, and I heard a rumor that the final was this morning. By the time I showed up, grades were already turned in, and there is no recovering my failing grade.

I'm done with my Ph.D. I haven't taken a class since 2004.

Anyone good with dream analysis??

"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." ~Robert Fulghum

Now you know I'm not one to criticize others' child-rearing skills (ha, ha), but I feel like the following warrants (at least a little) judgement:

At the laundromat last night, I watched (with the occasional eye roll) a woman play pinball through three loads of laundry all while her toddler ran about, dodging open dryer doors, bumping into strangers, and, my favorite, alternately smacking his hands on the floor and then licking them. Did I mention that he punctuated all of these activities with piercing shrieks?

None of this behavior warranted a glance from the (not-so)attentive mother (who admirably played on, even despite the very distracting plead from her seven-year-old, "Mommy, can I play?).

Not until the toddler ran into the single person bathroom and promptly fell into the toilet.