wowed

We saw Avatar this weekend and it pretty much met my expectations. I agreed with most of the reviews I've seen -- the story was hackneyed but the movie was visually stunning. Really worth seeing in the cinema.

I might have mentioned this before, but one of Ecogeoman's favorite things in the world is going to the movies. I could take it or leave it. Like many people, he tends to prefer action movies based on the argument that those really need to be seen on the big screen, whereas dramas are just as good on dvd. Unfortunately, I hate movies that have significant time devoted to chase scenes (too stressful!). Which means that I often dislike the movies we see.

I really wanted to see Avatar in the theater, however, because I was curious about the 3-D. I remember when 3-D movies were popular for a short time when I was a kid, but they used those crappy red-blue glasses that distorted everything. The modern 3-D is amazing. It was seamless; most of the time it simply enhanced the visual impact of the movie rather than being an intrusive, noticeable special effect. There were a few points when I became aware of the 3-D but it was really cool. I'm glad we saw this movie in the cinema despite the $14 ticket price (!) because I don't think it would have anywhere near as much impact on a tv.

Catching up

Only 134 blog posts left to read (79 of which are Lockwood's), down from, like, 600 when I returned from vacation a week ago. Although I missed lots of interesting posts on which I would typically leave a comment, I'm resisting the urge to comment on most of them in order to get through the backlog a little quicker.

Also, I'd like to start posting here a little more frequently and regularly now that the intense period of dissertation writing and defending is over. But I'm not making that a NYR. :)

Resolutions

A belated happy New Year to my vast audience! I hope the new year is treating you well. So far I'm off to a pretty good start, having taken a relaxing vacation in a warm location, won a small award for a poster I gave a conference last year, and just about nailed down a post doc that should start pretty soon. More on all of that later. For now, I give you my (overdue) New Year's Resolutions.

1. You might recall that last year I resolved to post birthday cards to all 28 members of my family. I did reasonably well, but I was late for most of them. This year, I will get them sent on time.

2. I will open and file the mail the day that it arrives. I hate dealing with the mail. We don't get all that much of it, so I usually let it pile up for a few weeks and then go through a bunch of it at once. Unfortunately, that practice leads to unsightly piles and important items getting misplaced, so this year I'm going to change my mail-procrastination habit.

3. I will do 15 minutes of housework every day except Friday. Because really, if you keep up with it just a little at a time, it's really not such a bitch.

Notice that there are no work-related resolutions? That's because I don't have a clear enough vision of how my job is going to play out to formulate how I want to structure my work life. So many things are going to change, but plenty will stay the same, including my personality and temperament. I have some ideas of how I want my post grad school life to go, which I think I will discuss at length in future posts. Stay tuned!

Peer reviewing: then and now

I refereed two papers this week. I think that between the commentary we wrote for our meeting session and the research paper I have in press, I got integrated into the publishers' systems, and associated with certain keywords; neither paper was passed to me by my adviser, rather I was asked to review directly by the subject editors.

In contrast to my earlier experiences as a reviewer, these went really well. Both papers were fairly straight forward and right up my alley, with nothing that I felt was outside my expertise. I think that the growth I attained through writing my dissertation made me feel much more equipped to critically read these papers. Moreover, both papers were really good. The combination of nice manuscripts with my defense-enhanced confidence made doing the reviews something of a pleasure instead of the anxiety-filled example of impostor syndrome that I felt when writing reviews in the past.

That's nice.

Ahhhh

Well, I am happy to report that post-defense life is great. I feel like my shoulders just, like, dropped and released all this tension. I've been half-heartedly working -- enjoying myself but not getting much accomplished. In addition, I've been really on top of all the other life stuff that I've been ignoring, like signing up for temporary health insurance, getting my car emissions test, etc. Just a couple of days left before I go to my home town for BFF's graduation party (master's degree - yay BFF!) and two weeks with the fam. I'm really looking forward to that, since I typically visit Home Town every 2-4 months, but this year has been much, much less. After that is the cruise!

I have lots of post ideas, but no motivation to write them. It's always a little tricky for me to post from my folks' place, but I'd like to get some of these posts out while I'm away. We'll see.

That's Dr. Ecogeofemme

I didn't spend 6.5 years in evil Ph.D. school to be called "Ms" thank you very much!

In other words, I passed!

And it was not anticlimactic at all.

What now?

Ever since I turned in my thesis, I've had a really hard time getting back to work. I finished it on a Friday so I felt like I had earned the following weekend off. Then the next week was Thanksgiving, so I only had Mon and Tues at work, during which I did very little. I rationalized that I should give myself the week to think about things other than my thesis (like post-docs), and then return from Thanksgiving with fresh eyes. But then I didn't really do much last week either. I was distracted by some prep stuff for my probable post-doc, which felt difficult so it took longer than it should have. But now that's done so I have no excuses to get on with the defense prep.

Ecogeoman is annoyed and nervous that I don't seem more nervous. Right now I just don't feel that anxious. I feel like I did my best on my thesis, and there isn't much more I can do now to prepare for my defense. I mean, it should represent the last 6.5 years, not the final 6.5 days, right?

But I really should do something. I have to give a 10-20 min presentation at the start of the (closed) defense that should cover the highlights of my work without going chapter by chapter. I've got a start on that, but I still don't have a clear vision of how I want to structure the talk. Blurgh.

So, today I'm going to read my thesis. While reading, I'm going to make a note of papers that I need to skim to refresh my memory. I'm going to list questions I think I might be asked. And then I'm going to put away my thesis and let myself ruminate on it so tomorrow I can attack the presentation with the big picture in mind. Later, I'm going to read up on the one statistical technique I used that I'm not 100% confident about.

This is exactly how I felt before other major tests, like the SAT in high school and prelims in grad school. I think that I'm probably a lot more stressed than I'm letting myself acknowledge, and that the actual stress level won't be evident until after the defense when it goes away. Next weekend can't come fast enough!