That's why I'm here

Today PI and I did some major work to get a new project going.  It relied heavily on my expertise, which is quite different from that of anyone else in the group.  My old lab group could have done what I did, but they just don't have the time to help initiate new projects like this one.  The whole point of me doing this postdoc was to bridge between my old group and the new group to make work like this happen.

It felt really good to use my skills to do the thing I was hired to do.  I felt valuable.  In addition, it felt good to do something familiar after months of working outside my comfort zone.

Moving

We're moving on Monday!

A list of things I will miss about our current place, in no particular order:

• Lots of space, including plenty of closet space and beds to accommodate a visiting family of 5
• Beautiful original woodwork
• Tree-lined streets, including big trees right outside the window that make it feel like we live in a treehouse
• Relatively inexpensive rent
• Wonderful neighborhood -- very safe and quiet-ish yet very interesting with lots to do
• Excellent natural light

A list of things I'm super excited about in our new place:

• Shorter commute!!!!!
• Dishwasher!
• Laundry in unit!
• Elevator
• Pool and sundeck
• Pool table room in the building
• Gym, with a view, in the building
• Party room, with a view, in the building
• Garage parking space
• Lots of kitchen counter space
• Decent water pressure
• A toilet that flushes properly
• Bathroom door that latches and locks
• Busy, super-hot neighborhood
• Incredibly convenient access to public transit
• Closer proximity to many of our friends
• Shorter commute!!!

Life has been really out-of-whack for us lately.  I really thrive on a solid daily routine.  I'm hoping that the move, with its resultant shorter commute, will offer a clean slate for getting myself back into a comfortable schedule.  I'm surprisingly stressed about the move itself, but so excited to do it.

Closure WIN!

I turned in my final thesis yesterday. All the tasks that I expected to be roadblocks -- obtaining forms, getting signatures, paying fees -- fell into place one by one. The grad college guy said he'd look over it early next week and then let me know if there are any formatting issues.

I'm so pleased to have this phase over, and to have it over before my post-doc starts. woot!

Closure FAIL

I thought I could deposit my thesis today. But I could not.

By the time I went home yesterday I had done all the revisions required based on the defense, checked over all the data, and did and most of the formatting. This morning I got a later start than I intended and then I had to stop to buy the fancy paper on my way to work. Buying the paper took a while, as I had to consult with two different associates to make sure I had the right stuff. When I got to work, I spent some time making the last of the formatting changes, and then decided I needed to read through the whole thing one last time to make sure I hadn't done anything weird during the revisions and formatting. Then I printed it. Then I did the copyright form. Then I did the Earned Doctorates form. Then I got it all sorted into the proper envelopes. Then it was almost 3 pm and I still had to get a money order for bound copies I want, drive to the university, pay the stupid get out of jail grad school fee, pick up the signed forms from my adviser, and hand it in at the graduate college office. Cutting it close.

I got on the highway without stopping at the bank for the money order, so I had to turn around and go back for it. Then I forgot exactly where the building with the cashiers' office is and lost some time circling it and finding a parking space. I thought that office closed at 5, but in fact it closes at 4 and I got there at 4:04. Fuck. And why the hell can't I pay this lame-ass fee online? So I went to my adviser's office to get the forms, thinking I'd at least be able to get the packets all ready. Nope, he wasn't there despite an email yesterday saying he'd be there all day. he was probably expecting me earlier than 4:15. Whatever.

I was inordinately disappointed that I couldn't just get it the fuck done. I even had a bit of a tanty in the car after I left the closed cashiers' office. I still have plenty of time before the deadline to graduate this semester, but I just wanted this phase of life to be over. I don't want it to drag on another day. And I really wanted to have it done and dusted before I start the post-doc.

But whatever. I'll suck it up, and go back tomorrow and try to take care of it.

The day did get significantly better after all that, however, since EGM made a positively outstanding chicken makhani. Yum!

Ding-dong the diss. is done!

I emailed it a little while ago, and posted a printed copy to my out-of-state committee member!

My sister sent a wonderful surprise! A gift basket with champagne, chocolates, cheese and crackers, and fancy nuts. And it happened to come while I was home, which is awesome because it turns into a huge clusterfuck when we miss a FedEx package. It totally made my day. Well, that and finishing my motherfucking dissertation!!!

I still have to hand out hard copies (which were f'ing expensive at Kinko's so I only had three done; I will print the rest at work and then pay just to get them bound), but it's getting too late to do that today. I doubt anyone will mind getting that next week, or even after Thanksgiving, and I will still get to say they had the dissertation three weeks in advance. Whatever, I am so relieved.

Now let's hope that they like it!

I'm off to party!

Countdown relief

So, things have gotten better for me lately, stress-wise. The change happened as soon as I got my defense lined up. This strikes me as a little paradoxical, since you'd think that once the clock was officially ticking, I'd be freaking out about finishing. I think the crux on my anxiety was that grad school was starting to feel interminable.

I had a committee meeting in May 2008, and at that point we all thought I'd finish in about a year. Actually, I thought I might be able to defend in March 2009. When it became clear that wouldn't happen, I thought I could do it in June. Then October. Finally I put my foot down with December.

I had sort of a low point mid-summer. The proximate reason was my frustration with the slow pace of paper revisions. The ultimate reason, however, was that I just could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. It seemed like I should be wrapping up, but there was so much left to do and no one seemed to be thinking I should be nearing completion except me.

I was adamant that my defense had to be done this year. There's not a good reason for that, though, except for the psychological cost of waiting longer -- I've completely missed the graduation deadline for fall semester. I simply could not handle pushing it off any more.

Fortunately, I feel like the tension broke over the last few weeks/months for several reasons: 1) I got my advisors' blessings to schedule the defense in December; 2) my out-of-state committee member agreed to come and scheduled his travel; 3) I finished a draft of the pile-o-shit paper (aka poopsicle); and 4) I have all my data in hand.

Now all I have to do is finish the mother fucker.

Time for sprinting

Today on the way to work, we heard the results of some marathon and I thought, "I have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon." I get the idea of training really hard and consistently for many months, and then having an enormous sense of achievement and personal satisfaction upon finishing the race. Even though I hate running, I can see the appeal. But after doing this stinking phd, I never again need to prove to myself that I can achieve a long-term goal. I know I can cope with delayed gratification. And I know that it kind of sucks.

From now on, I want everything RIGHT NOW!

Well, maybe not everything right now, but I know I never need to run a marathon.

Craving a break

I've heard lots of people exclaim, "I NEED a vacation!", which I always thought sounded a little melodramatic. I love taking vacations, I like breaks from work, but I've never felt like I needed a vacation. Until now.

I'm sick of work, sick of the pressure of finishing, sick of the worry about finding jobs, sick of the looming deadline. All of it. I want a break. But, I want the break to come with the relief of knowing grad school is over. I've been fantasizing about vacations, looking at travel websites when I should be working. My current favorite is a Caribbean cruise in mid-January with either EGM, my real-life BFF, or both. BFF, you in?

My ideal post-defense scenario involves staying a while in my hometown at Christmas break, then lazing my way through January taking said cruise, maybe going to the science blogging conference thing in NC and visiting a friend who lives in that area, and visiting a research institute in another state to give a seminar. Then I'd like to work part time through, say, March. I want to earn enough money to pay my basic bills while having time to polish my diss chapters for journal submission at my leisure. Actually, if I don't have a job lined up before I graduate, I think this scenario is a real possibility, but we'll see.

PhD Mommy made a good point in the comments on my last post -- that not having a contingency funding plan forces you to finish. I think this is another reason I've been reluctant to make arrangements for next semester - I don't want to give myself the option of pushing my finish date back any further. However, today I got news that changed that. I have a committee member in another state who wasn't sure he could make the trip here for my defense. Without his travel plan in place, there was still room to change the date. Now he has decided to come and has paid for a flight, so the date is final. I'm really going to do it this time!

Accepted!1!!Eleventy!!11!!!

This morning there was an email waiting for me to tell me that my paper is accepted! You know, the one I've been fretting about here basically since this blog's inception. Yay!

There are a few minor revisions to make, but basically the reviews were, dare I say, glowing. One of the reviewers who read the first version of the manuscript reviewed it again. This person didn't like it at that point because it wasn't novel enough, but now s/he says I addressed all of his/her concerns, so the paper is okay. The other reviewer, who is different from last time, said things like the paper is "well organized" and "very concise" and "illustrate some great evidence [for phenomenon we were trying to measure]". Woot.

Ecogeoman took me out for a very nice dinner tonight to celebrate. Our tradition, which we established long before either of us had anything ready to publish, is that we go out for beers when one of us submits a paper, out to a nice dinner when a paper gets accepted (on the other's dime, of course), and then a smaller dinner like pizza when the paper finally comes out. Tonight we went all out with a bottle of wine and dessert, but this was partially justified by it being our official five-year anniversary tomorrow. :)


You know how sometimes when you are waiting to hear the result of something, you say negative things but deep down you expect a positive outcome? On the contrary, I really expected this paper to get rejected from this journal, but to get accepted elsewhere. Since the 2008 data have been integrated, this journal is one of highest ranked in my field. I'm obviously super pleased with this, but that's in part because I think this is the only piece of my Ph.D. work that is broad enough in scope to be suitable for anything but a specialists' journal.

Honestly, this feels even better than I thought it might. How rare.

Holding my breath

When I submitted my paper earlier this year, my mom said, "I'm sure it will be accepted -- you're so smart!"

Now, I know she was trying to be positive and encourage me, and since she doesn't have any experience with science publishing, it was really the best she could come up with. But I responded, "don't say that, because by that logic if it gets rejected it will mean that I'm not so smart." She said, "oh. yeah. well, I hope it gets accepted."

It's kind of funny when people try so hard to say something really nice and it just comes out all wrong. My poor mom probably felt like there was no winning.

***************

I've already written here that the paper didn't get accepted, but I was invited to submit anew after revisions. The revisions were tricky, and then it took months for my co-authors to sign off on the revised manuscript. It's now under review again and I really hope it gets accepted. If it fails again, there is little hope that I can get it turned around and accepted elsewhere before I graduate. Plus, the journal's impact factor has risen significantly since I submitted the paper the first time such that it is now one of the highest in my field. This is the part of my PhD work with the broadest appeal, so I think it is my only chance for a paper in a high-ish IF journal for the time being. Wish me luck! In a better way than my mom.

Revisions

I've spent about 75% of my work time in April on paper revisions. They really aren't all that bad, but I've had to do some literature searches, read papers, and dig out some old data to beef up the results and that all takes time. I also got log-jammed on one difficult section, but I'm think I'm over it now. I'm striving to have most of it done before Friday, when I go to Florida for a long weekend with BFF and another friend.

I've been feeling a little frustrated by working on these revisions. Of course I see this as a priority; I want to get the paper turned around as fast as possible so it gets published as soon as possible. Since I have no publications yet, I'm desperate to get this one out. But. The annoying part is that this manuscript is already dissertation quality. The changes I'm making will certainly make it much better, but it is already good enough for my diss. So instead of spending my time on the other chapters that are not yet written, I'm spending more time on this chapter to get it ready to resubmit.

I'm obviously not going to set aside the revisions in order to work on another chapter, but it is frustrating to sink yet more time into this one that could be considered done.

Good news

Ecogeoman would like you to know that he got a fellowship to pay his stipend next year! Since he intends to graduate before next school year is over, he's hoping that they'll let him start the fellowship early, which would relieve major stress since there may not be a TA for him this summer. Since he's foreign, he can't really work anywhere else, so we're worried he may not have any summer funding. Here's hoping for some flexibility.

Inspiration Award

I'd like to thank Amanda for honoring me with this lovely Inspiration Award. The rules say I should now nominate 7 bloggers who inspire me. I want to honor some bloggers who do something I find totally amazing: blog in a foreign language. These blogs are written in excellent English by people whose first language is not English. It's hard enough for me to write in a coherent way, and I'm writing in my mother tongue. Cheers to those who have interesting things to say and can say it in more than one language!


1. Amelie (who writes in not one, but two languages!)
2. Hypoglycemiagirl
3. Stepwisegirl
4. Nina
5. Saxifraga
6. Sciencegirl
7. Chall

These are the first 7 that sprang to mind. I know some of these people live (or have lived) in English-speaking places and I'm sure all do at least some of their work in English, so maybe I'm be condescending or something by saying they're amazing. Still, I can't imagine that it's not a least a little challenging to blog in something other than one's first language, especially since this king of blogging is usually a hobby. Anyway, these are terrific blogs regardless of what language their authors like to speak.

I'm sure there are many other great blogs like them (maybe some that I don't realize are written by non-native English speakers) that deserve a shout out as well.

My manu-baby: 5904 words, 43 pages*

Blogging has been light around here while I made the last push at delivering my manu-baby, as Research Advisor has been calling it. After much labor, it was finally submitted yesterday at 6:08 pm. It entered the world with all its references and figures just right and we have big hopes for its future.

In other words, the paper I've been whining about for the last 12 months is FINALLY DONE!!!

We aimed kind of high on the journal (at my insistence) so I'm not holding my breath that it will be accepted. I think it will at least go to review. I really hope so because I don't want to think about it for a few months. I'm looking forward to working on other things for a while.

Research Advisor came through in the end with tons of great comments and lots of help with the final details. And she gave me a Twix as soon as I hit submit.

I learned a lot during the course of writing this paper: science, writing, communicating, and managing coauthors. I'm hoping the next one is easier and quicker.


*word count does not include references and stuff. page count does.

yay!

I've been thinking about what I want to write about the year that just ended and my hopes for the year that just started, but in the meantime, I absolutely must tell you:

I bought a new t.v.!!!!!

You may recall that my current television started to crap out in the fall. The sound worked fine, but the picture would sometimes not appear. A slap on the top of the box would usually fix it. However, for the last couple of months not even a serious pounding would summon the picture. In an attempt at non-consumerism, I might have tried to get it fixed but I knew that the digital revolution was coming (yes, I know I could have gotten a new tuner. but that combined with the fact that the repair probably would have been very expensive made me decide to scrap the 2002 analog model). Anyway, I bought a 32-inch Samsung LCD and I love it. The digital signal is amazing. The picture is not at all fuzzy, wavy, or shadowy and there are some extra channels. Awesome.

Now I can reconnect with my Netflix account. And much more importantly, I got the new tube in time for the next season of Lost!

Oh yeah...

I almost forgot to tell you -- I got one of the little grants I applied for last month! I feel especially proud because no one read it besides EGM. He provided very useful comments about the presentation, but since both advisors were too busy to look over it at the time, nobody critiqued the science. It makes me feel good that it was my idea and that it was good enough to be funded. Granted, it is only a tiny award in a competition that likely has a very high success rate, but still. Unfortunately, EGM was not so lucky. He took it well though and was happy for me instead of being bummed for himself. What a guy.

The reason I didn't get all excited and post about this sooner was that they put me in a very strange category. This is semi-annual competition by my university graduate college. There is one application for more than one award, so you check the box for the one you're applying for. I got the other one. It is donor money earmarked for a type of research I most certainly do not do. I called the dean's office because I thought it might be a mistake (maybe there is another ecogeofemme who applied?). Nope. I guess there weren't too many fundable applications (or any at all?) that they could justify as meeting the requirements for this award. It seems like a major stretch to give it to me, but whatever. I'll take what I can get!

Progress Update #1

Okay, so I know I sorta begged Dr Brazen Hussy for InaDWriMo and now it's already November 9 and I haven't even put a word counter up. Shame on me. I promise I'll get on it. For now, here is a summary of my goals.

I'd like to accomplish two writing tasks this month: 1) a very short paper I'm co-writing with Awesome Technician and 2) the first draft of the manuscript that will be Chapter 3 of my dissertation. AT gave me a very, very rough draft of the manuscript a few weeks ago and I think it will end up much shorter than the original so, although both manuscripts are InaDWriMo goals, I think I will base my word count goal only on the Chapter 3 paper. Let's say 5000 words. I already have a rough draft of the methods section, so I'm going to start my count with that even though it's cheating a little since I wrote it before Nov 1.

My progress this past week was pretty slow. I spent two days in the field helping with other lab projects and Tuesday was pretty much shot with the election hoo-ha. I did work on the short paper the other two days. I pretty much overhauled AT's draft -- reorganizing it, clarifying the logic, and working out some of the arguments. I had been working on a it before Nov 1, but I got it far enough to send it back to AT on Friday. It still needs lots of work, but I'm hopeful that we'll have a finished draft by the end of the month. The co-writing process has been pretty interesting so far, so I think I will write a separate post about that soon.

I did make some small progress toward the Chapter 3 paper as well. I had one last little bit of data to collect and now that's done! It feels fantastic to have every last number in the spreadsheet (I think). I'm really hoping to have a complete draft of this thing by Dec 1, but there is a lot of data crunching and interpretation that need to be done, so I think it will be slow going.

In other news, today is my 1 year blogoversary. I intended to write a post about how much my blog habits have changed since I switched from being a reader/commenter only to writing a blog as well. Perhaps tomorrow.

UPDATE: Um, so I just did a word count for the Chapter 3 paper and it's already more than 1000 words. I think I will up my goal to 8000. kthnxbai.

Experiments

I recently listened to a seminar about data that came from experiments. Big deal, you say. It was interesting to me, however, because my research, although basic, is not amenable to small scale, proper experiments. Responses to treatments take a long time emerge and the really interesting work happens at a scale that cannot be easily captured on a lab bench.

Much of the work in my subfield would be better defined as "studies" instead of experiments. Most of the actual experiments are large, long term affairs that attract investigators from far flung institutions who write their own large grants to fund work on some aspect of the experiment. An advantage of this arrangement is that there is very little duplication of effort, which means there is very little scoop risk since everyone knows what everyone else is doing on a particular experiment. The downside is that you can't set up small, independent projects very easily and it's difficult to get much done without outside collaborators.

During that seminar, I was really envious of the students in that professor's lab. It would be so great to set up an actual controlled, replicated experiment in a lab, let it run for several weeks, and then have data. You'd be seeing the fruits of your work all the time! If something didn't work out, you'd be able to try again with so little investment. I think the pace of research would feel so much faster.

I love the work I do and have no desire to change fields. But damn, sometimes the progress seems downright glacial.

100%

I'm finished! The Crummy Tedious Boring Dirty Samples are done! Go ahead, check the counter.

I left the lab yesterday with just four samples remaining, so I was pretty confident I would finish them today. I didn't have to carpool, so I stopped on my to work this morning and bought two large bags of mini Twix candy bars. I got some semi-unexpected help with the samples today, making it possible for me to finish by 5:00 pm! I went around offering everyone a Twix since most of them had helped me with the samples over the past three years or at the very least, they had listened to me complain about them. I left the rest of the candy in our shared food spot with a note saying "[Name] finished her [samples]!! Everyone gets a Twix!"

Blogging about this work really helped motivate me to finish it these last few months. It's a pity I don't have something else now that would lend well to a new blog progress counter. I do plan to do InaDWriMo, however, if Dr. Brazen Hussy organizes it again.

Renewed hope

Last weekend I was all bummed because I had lost hope of meeting one of my goals. Not a big deal, but it put a small dent in my motivation. I didn't mention that one of the things prohibiting me from making the goal was a field trip scheduled for next week. Happily, today I learned that the trip has been cancelled!

With that news, I reworked my plans for the next week or so. I have two small grant applications, the latest round of manuscript revisions, and 24 more Crummy Tedious samples to finish before my (arbitrary) deadline of October 15.

With helpful comments from EGM, I think I have just finished the first grant proposal. It's not due until Monday, but I'm going to go ahead and turn it in tomorrow because I really don't want to spend any more time on it. The second one is a shorter version of the first and I have a draft, so I should be able to wrap that up in a half a day (being realistic about the time to do the supporting document crap*). I'll do that tomorrow morning so I can give Research Advisor time to read it if she wants, then I'll turn my attention to the manuscript. I have to revisit some calculations; depending on how onerous they are it might take me as little as half a day or as much as two days to finish the revisions. The Crummy Tedious samples will take 4-6 days, but I think I might be able to get some help from that international student. Although tight, it still might be possible to get it all done in a week.

Sorry to give you such a boring post but this is how I obsess about things sometimes. I'm ecstatic that I might make my goal after all, which is of course my primary source of self worth, just like all scientists, right?

*Mercifully, the supporting crap for these is nothing at all compared to big time grants.