Tragedy

I feel so very sad for everyone at Northern Illinois University and the families and friends of those who died or were injured. It's impossible for me to imagine what they are feeling or what motivated the shooter. It's utterly unfathomable.

I'm surprised at how few bloggers (in my circle) are writing about this. I guess because it's hard to know what to write.

E!

Amelie awarded me E for excellent! Thanks, Amelie!

There are so many awesome blogs that I really enjoy. Here are ten that I think should get an E:

Female Science Professor, who is so awesomely awesome.
Propter Doc, who doesn't mess around.
StyleyGeek, who is hilarious.
Cae, who is a hoot.
Jane, who just seems so darn nice.
Mad-hatter, who is groovy.
Arduous, who is endlessly interesting.
Sciencemama, who is both eloquent and foul-mouthed.
Bean-mom, who makes another person's kids so fascinating.
Unbalanced Reaction, who is so easy to relate to.

Oh my, how I could go on -- I have other favorites. I read many more blogs that I think deserve an E, but I should leave some for someone else to honor.

Don't spare me

Some things are hard to learn in grad school. The things we are trained to do during grad school, specifically research, are not the only responsibilities we are likely to have in the jobs we get after grad school. The most general observation I can offer is that I work mostly in the lab while my advisors work mostly at their desks. We are clearly not doing the same things.

The most obvious way to learn about all the administrative work that goes into running a lab is to ask one's advisor. But it doesn't always work. Once when I asked about funding, I was told I "didn't need to worry about it". I think my advisor was feeling stressed about the level of funding he had and how to distribute it. It irritated me though, because how are students supposed to learn things like how to manage a lab's finances when no one will disscuss it because they don't want to disclose any worries?

This is a rather isolated example, as Academic Advisor really explains a lot of what goes in the department, the politics of our field, etc. Certainly Research Advisor seems to tell me pretty much anything (everything?), but it's a little different with her because I'm the only student in her lab, so there isn't such a structured hierarchy. They both encourage me to go to meetings, introduce me to visiting scientists, discuss proposal ideas, and whatever else. Overall, my advisors rock. But I know that most students struggle with this stuff, perhaps not even knowing what they're missing. It must be especially difficult for students in really big labs with famous advisors who travel frequently. But the trade-off is the association they get with a flashy name.

Mrswhatsit has a couple of really great posts on this topic.

On one hand, I appreciate being sheltered from the nasty or not-fun parts of science. On the other, I want to learn how to deal with it all. At the very least, I want to know what I'm getting into. I want to be ableto make an informed decision about what kind of carrer to try for when it's time to apply for jobs.

How anonymous are you?

Today at work, a woman I barely know came up to me after a seminar and said, “I’d like to talk to you about something.” We were quickly alone in the room and then she laid it on me, “Do you have an anonymous blog?”

!

It turns out that through a complicated series of facts she learned from this and other blogs combined with some reasonable assumptions, she strung together my identity. Can you believe it? She didn’t even do any major sleuthing or google stalking. And our blog circles don’t overlap all that much (we compared notes).

I think it’s pretty cool to have learned this person is a blogger. We had a wonderful conversation about blogging, which developed into a two-hour discussion about grad school, careers, etc. I hope that we have more like it.

I have to admit that there are only a handful of blogs that I regularly read that I think are truly anonymous, i.e., I think there is enough information in most of them to develop a pretty good hypothesis about the author’s identity. I don’t have any false security about my identity either. My location is just short of obvious and I bet it would be pretty easy to figure out the rest of me, too. It was just a shock to have someone that close to home put it together.

I’ve said before* that my main reason for being anonymous is to keep this blog from coming up in google searches of me, my departments, etc., and that I don’t mind other bloggers knowing who I am but I don’t want people in my real life to know about my blog. There have already been things I decided not to write because I didn’t feel I was anonymous enough. I try to write posts that I wouldn’t be devastated to have real life friends/colleagues read, but also that wouldn’t devastate my friends/colleagues if they read them. I know it’s a real possibility that I will be found out someday (well, I guess I’ve already been found out, but I mean more broadly).

The moral of the story is, if you’re an anonymous blogger and you really don’t want anyone to know who you are, be pretty damn careful what you write. Anyone around you could be an anonymous blogger, too!

*I haven't actually said all that before. But that post I linked to has some great comments discussing this issue.

Archive Meme

Arduous tagged me for a meme!

Archive Meme Instructions: Go back through your archives and post the links to your five favorite blog posts that you've written. ... but there is a catch:Link 1 must be about family.Link 2 must be about friends.Link 3 must be about yourself, who you are... what you're all about.Link 4 must be about something you love.Link 5 can be anything you choose.I think this is a great way to circulate some of the great older posts everyone had written, return to a few great places in our memories and also learn a little something about ourselves and each other that we may not know.Post your five links and then tag five other people. At least TWO of the people you tag must be *newer acquaintances so that you get to know each other better....and don't forget to read the archive posts and leave comments!

My blog doesn't have an extensive archive yet, but whatev. Here are my choices:

Link 1: Family
This is my favorite post so far about family, but it's recent. Since I think the point of this meme is to highlight older posts, I'll link to this one too, which is about what I usually do during Thanksgiving break.

Link 2: Friends
So far, I haven't written so much about friends. I guess this explains why (although I have had some things to say about e-friends).

Link 3: What you're all about.
This post lists my top five dreamy dream jobs.

Link 4: Something I love
Selecting a post for this one made me realize this blog is pretty negative. I like finishing things and FotC, but Ecogeoman is who I really love.

Link 5: My choice
I'd like to point to two posts that go together about why I started this blog and why I named it The Happy Scientist, which is kind of a lame title at first blush.

I guess I cheated a little by linking to multiple posts. Oh well.
I tag ScienceMama (since Arduous didn't :) ), Psycgirl, Amelie, Amanda, and DancingFish. Of course, they don't have to if they don't want to. And if anyone else wants to do the meme, they should. I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering what's in a blog's archives but not having time to sift through them.

Potholes

I'm watching a news report about how bad the city's pothole problem is this year. There have already been 10 times as many reports of potholes this season than all of last season. Apparently, we've had more temperature fluxuations than usual (one day it dropped something like 45 degrees in about 9 hours), plus all that snow I've been whining about. This morning I saw some potholes so deep the rebar was exposed. In one, the rebar was broken, so cars essentially had to drive over metal spikes! Not surprisingly, we passed dozens of cars with flat tires. Just getting to work is an obstacle course!

Spring is going to be so awesome.

silly quiz

I saw this at Scattered and Random. I consider myself a morning person, but I guess that's not really the point of this. :)