Celebration (Scientiae, June 2010)

This months Scientiae topic is "celebration." I'm facing a lot of personal and professional challenges right now, so it's a good time to force me to look at what's going well.

Professionally, I feel like I'm finally seeing where I want to go. I love writing and words. I always have. But I have also always loved learning how things work and analyzing the bejeezus out of them. In undergrad, I chose to pursue science because I knew I'd get to learn about and analyze the natural world. I also that scientists have to write a lot. Little did I know of the chasm between the writing I loved in English class and scientific writing. If I wrote a paper in scientific style for any other audience, it'd be burned in horror.

I've also noticed throughout my education that scientists and non-scientists often have difficulty communicating effectively. Each side has a hard time putting themselves in the other's shoes. Scientists want the public to be more informed, and the public wants scientists to explain things more clearly. When one side or the other lacks the ability or inclination to remedy the situation, an intermediary can help.

That's what I want to be. I want to be the middle-(wo)man who helps people see how science impacts their lives and helps scientists understand the needs of society. I want to write about science for a less specialized and non-scientist audience. Given my recent aimlessness, this realization is certainly cause for celebration. It has renewed my enthusiasm for learning and research. I'm really enjoying my copy-editing class and I'm making much better progress toward my PhD on a more consistent basis.

I don't need a PhD to be a science writer, but it wouldn't hurt to have the credential and the time in graduate school may supply many more professional development opportunities. With those extra experiences in hand, I'd have a better chance of finding a suitable job when I graduate, and I'd maintain financial security and flexibility in my schedule and location in the mean time.

Personally, I've been committing more time to things I enjoy. I'm writing more, I'm reading more, I'm traveling more, and I'm more physically active. I've read more books this year so far than I did all of last year, or maybe even in the last two years. I'm riding 75 miles next Sunday. I recently received my yellow belt in jujitsu, which I attend reguarly when I'm in Grad School Town. I spend all of spring break on the east coast with friends just for fun. Before last November, I don't remember taking any trips that were just for fun. They were all family vacations or work-related.

It's incredibly liberating to chase my dreams and passions. None of it is without stress or worry (because those are present no matter what), but it is all completely worth it. I am much happier for following my heart even if it means taking a (sometimes significant) chance and hoping it works. After all, if I won't take risks to be happy, what's the point in having dreams?

See the rest of the carnival, June Scientiae Carnival: We’re Having a Party, at Rocket Scientista.

Summer... break?

The semester is finally over and I have chaotic plans for the summer. The foundation involves bouncing around the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic US. Then I'll fill time between travel with everything else.

It's already started. Actually, it started before the semester truly ended. I spent a week and a half in Wisconsin, after the end of classes and before my sole final exam, helping my parents while my dad started chemo. I've been in Grad School Town for a week and a half. Naturally, I'm leaving again tomorrow for Wisconsin. I'll be there three weeks this time for various events that happen to be spaced a few days apart and another week of heavy chemo for my dad.

Beyond the next few weeks, I have a trip to Tennessee in August and a trip to Virginia and DC at some point. I don't have many solid plans--just an idea of what I want and need to do. The only reason I know when I'll be in Tennessee is because someone else planned the timing. I hope to make it to New York, too, but that might have to wait until the fall.

Filling in between the travel, I'm taking a class on copy-editing through mid-late July. I like writing and I want to take advantage of free classes while I have the chance. It can't hurt to improve my self-editing skills, plus I might want to be a science writer after grad school.

I also met with my advisor this week to set some research goals. We want a full draft of the paper from my MS by June 4th at 5pm. I know I've set goals like this before, but this one feels more reasonable. I really want to get this out of the way so I can move on to the next step. I'm talking about the prelim, of course. I'll spend the rest of the summer preparing that so I am not required to take a class in the fall.

Then there's random bike events, which are mostly not planned yet. I'm registered for a 75-mile ride in Milwaukee on June 6th as part of the Ride for the Arts. I'll attend jujitsu when I get a chance in Grad School Town. When I'm in Wisconsin, I'll spend time with my family and help my parents keep up with their lives. I also hope to fit in some cooking, reading, hiking, writing, movies, and dancing.

It'll be a packed few months, for sure! I think I'll make it... :P

Silence due to intracranial mass

While my silence here may not be unusual, the reason for it is. Here's the (abbreviated) story of the past few days.

My dad had a persistent headache for two or three weeks when my mom finally convinced him to see the doctor last week. The doctor scheduled an MRI for him this past Monday. The MRI showed a lime- or lemon-size intracranial mass (read: brain tumor) and he was immediately admitted to the hospital. I drove from Grad School Town back to Hometown on Tuesday, barely a week after I'd made the same drive the other way returning from my holiday visit. I packed enough clothes for a week since I had no idea how long I'd be staying.

The surgery to remove the tumor went "as well as [the doctors] hoped." They took out almost everything they intended to, leaving a little behind to avoid unnecessarily damaging his brain. Three hours after the surgery, my dad was looking around and chatting with everyone just as he was before the surgery. His recovery is going very well so far, so we are all relieved and happy. We still don't know what lays ahead for his continued recovery, but we are extremely thankful just to have him return from surgery as the same person.

I slept at the hospital Tuesday and Wednesday night. Last night I slept at my gramma's house since things seemed to have settled a bit more at the hospital. Shortly after I returned to the hospital today, Dad moved to the regular neurology wing. That means he has a private room, fewer monitors, and less frequent nursing checks. He and Mom should sleep better tonight. I'm sleeping at their house tonight and will return to the hospital tomorrow.

Dad will probably stay at the hospital at least through the weekend. We are taking it day-by-day until the pathology report comes in (probably by Wednesday). That should help us lay out a more long-term plan. Dad keeps saying he's going to fight this as hard as he can for his wife, his kids, and the rest his family and friends. "You can't hurt steel."

I don't know when I'll return to Grad School Town. Luckily, I brought everything I need if I get a chance to work or don't make it back in time for classes. Hopefully that will keep me from starting the semester too far behind. Posting may be sparse and/or brief.

Friday-Saturday, AGU 2009

Friday was my big AGU day, the day of my poster session. One of my group's collaborators had a talk first thing in the morning, so we all got up early for that. It was quite good--one of the best I saw at AGU. We left a few talks later to pick up my poster from Kinko's. Along the way, we picked up some caffeine and breakfast from Peet's Coffee. I highly recommend the California Raisin Roll. It's like a honey bun filled with some creamy filling and raisins, then glazed. After all my (mock) worrying, the poster turned out fine. Huge, but fine. Like a good little group of lemmings, we all trooped back to Moscone South to put up my poster. The advisor had a lunch meeting planned and invited me and my lab mate to join them. My lab mate went along, but I declined. I wouldn't have as much chance to look at the posters in the afternoon as they would. That set me up for another solo lunch outing.

I wandered back to the hotel, checking menus posted in windows along the way to see if anything appealed to me. Cafe Mason seemed like a good option, so I grabbed my laptop and headed back there on my way to the afternoon poster session. I ordered a turkey club sandwich with fries. Not exciting in itself, but it was really well done. Thin sourdough toast, tomato, lettuce, turkey, and crispy bacon for the sandwich and light, non-greasy fries on the side. Perfect for a pre-poster session meal.

The poster session technically started a few minutes before I got back to Moscone South. This was my second poster presentation ever and I was late. Oh well. I met several scientists I knew only by name about my research. All of them gave positive feedback. If I told them my plans for wrapping up this work, they said they look forward to the publication. If they made suggestions before asking me about future work, it was already on my to-do list. In other words, I didn't get much new feedbck on my research, but the reassurance that someone values my work outside of my little research group was valuable, especially with my recent motivation issues. One of the scientists commented that my poster looked very nice, too (someday he'd learn to make a nice poster :P). If nothing else, I got to meet other people in my subfield and they got to associate my name with my work. I'd say the poster session was a success.

My group left the poster session an hour or so early since we had dinner planned in Berkeley. Most of the attendees were in the free beer line anyhow. We caught the BART to Berkeley and found Beckett's Irish Pub for dinner. I ordered a fish fry, which was again excellent. (I'm fairly certain this area does not know how to make bad food.) I didn't intend to order a drink unless something sounded particularly interesting. Of course, my lab mate found a something that fit that description a few minutes after we ordered our food: hot apple cider with brandy. How could I pass that up? It was tasty! I was stuffed and happy by the time we left the pub. We had a bit of time before we needed to catch the BART back to San Francisco, so we wandered the Berkeley campus. Beautiful campus, at least in the dark.

We'd hoped to fit Muir Woods in somewhere, but our flight was too early in the day to make it on Saturday. My advisor suggested a self-guided bike tour of the city instead. Sure, why not? San Francisco only has a few hills. Eight miles later, we'd toured a good chunk of the city between our hotel and the Golden Gate bridge. We ran out of time to cross the bridge. My advisor was sore the day after the long bike ride. I was fine :).

After returning the bikes and retrieving our luggage from the hotel, we made it to the airport with just enough time to grab a bite to eat and board our plane. The San Francisco adventure wound down with a 15-minute delay on the tarmac for air traffic control delays at our destination and a quiet flight back.

AGU09 blogging delay

My last day of AGU and last two days in San Francisco were such a blur that I didn't get a chance to blog about them yet. Rest assured, I will get to it. It might be a few days, though, because I'm leaving for the holidays on Tuesday and have a full schedule until then.

Thursday, AGU 2009

I haven't picked up my poster yet. Kinko's called me this morning to tell me that they couldn't laminate anything larger than 36" and my poster is 48" on its smaller dimension. I chose to have them print it on the regular paper anyhow and just not laminate it. So, it's printed. I just didn't get a chance to get it today since I refuse to go there by myself. The advisor and I will get it first thing in the morning. I promise.

Other than the slight snag with the poster, my little group had an interesting start to the morning. Mostly my lab mate. She was supposed to be registered for the conference, but they couldn't find her name on any of their registration lists around 7:30am, when registration first opened. She had an early morning talk that still wasn't uploaded. Our advisor and I didn't have any problems with registration, so he took her presentation to upload it and I stayed with her to get the registration worked out. She ended up paying for it on the spot (again). If AGU later finds that she was charged earlier, they won't actually charge her card. This is not a helpful beginning to the day of her first talk at a major conference.

Once she got her badge, we headed up to the speaker ready room. Our advisor texted her to let her know that her animations weren't working. They eventually got the issue fixed and re-uploaded her talk. The people running the room said that even though they uploaded it, the revisions may not make it to the room she'd be speaking in by the time her talk started. *cross fingers that it works*

We all trooped up to the room where she and my advisor were presenting nearly back-to-back. Her turn came up and the animations worked flawlessly. *whew* The advisor's talk went fine as well.

By the time lunch arrived, my advisor had disappeared and my lab mate left to meet a friend. I was on my own. Since I've never been to San Francisco before, I didn't want to eat at a chain restaurant even if it would be cheaper. I walked probably half a mile in god-awful uncomfortable shoes. My feet were killing me by the time I collected my matzo soup, sirloin with Brie sandwich, and banana from Soup Freaks. Instead of being smart and heading back to the hotel to change my shoes when I was already part way there, I hobbled back to the conference center to feast. All of my lunch was tasty and out of the ordinary. Perfect! I saved the banana for an afternoon snack.

Half way through the afternoon I finally gave up on my shoes. I felt like I was walking on stubs and the bones in my foot were trying to poke through at my ankle. That can't be a good sign. I planned to catch the shuttle bus back to the hotel... until I found out the bus doesn't run during the day. I walked back to the hotel, about half a mile again (everything is half a mile today). It was quite a painful walk, so I wasn't walking very fast by the time I got to my room. My feet were relieved when I pulled off the the modern torture devices.

I hung out at the hotel for a bit to let my feet rest, then headed back to the conference with the intent to see a few more talks. Instead, I ran into the department head and followed him and another professor to the exhibit hall to find free stuff. My favorite two items were a NASA calendar and a star-shaped five-color highlighter from DoE GCEP. Then I joined a bunch of people from my department to find dinner.

We hopped the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf (my first cable car ride!) and decided on the Sea Lion Cafe. It was the most expensive dinner I've ever had at $55 and per diem certainly won't cover it, but it was scrumptious. I had a plate of squash and onions, baby lobster tail, prawns, salmon, sea bass, and jasmine rice. I'd never had lobster, prawns, or sea bass before. There was also a dish of some sort of creamy citrus sauce, which complemented the lobster especially well. A couple of friends insisted that I consume alcohol, so I ordered a Sunset Splash--essentially a mix of rum and vodka with a splash of cranberry juice for color. It was strong and it was yummy. I have yet to find bad food here.

Our department group scattered pretty quickly after a failed attempt to find an open ice cream shop. All my little group has left at the conference is my poster tomorrow afternoon. If it wasn't for that, we'd probably fly out tomorrow. As it is, we're leaving Saturday afternoon. We may work in a trip to Muir Woods Saturday morning. I hear it's all the rage :P.

Let the San Francisco adventure begin! (AGU 2009)

I put the finishing touches on my poster for a Friday poster session while flying to San Francisco (my companions--my advisor and a lab mate--finished their powerpoints on the plane, too). Our plane arrived at the San Francisco airport a little late tonight because of air traffic control issues (read: it's foggy). Then my advisor looked it over and approved it after a couple of minor revisions as we rode the BART (like DC's metro) to the hotel. We knew there were several Kinko's within walking distance of the hotel, but first order of business needed to be food.

My advisor, a lab mate, and I dropped our luggage at our hotel before walking to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. I had some excellent Salmon Teryaki (served with a small salad, miso soup, and rice). I ate a whole dinner in a reasonable amount of time with chopsticks! That is nothing short of amazing to me since I've never been very good with chopsticks. My companions had sushi. I've never been a big fan of sushi, but I didn't mind one of the kinds my lab mate shared with me. I should check with her what it was.

After dinner, my advisor and I set out to have my poster printed. The nearest Kinko's was only a few blocks away... and closed 20 minutes before we got there. Perhaps a quarter to a half a mile away, there was a 24-hour Kinko's. That'd work. Our path took us into an area that had progressively fewer (working) streetlights. Perhaps half the windows had bars on them and there seemed to be an abundance of local spray paint artists. Regardless, we soldiered on and found the store.

A very friendly employee greeted us. He asked what we needed printed and took us right to the computer to look at the file. When he double-clicked to see the contents of the memory stick, the computer claimed it was not formatted and asked if he wanted to format it. He did not understand what the question meant. I informed him that we did not want to format the memory stick. I'm still not sure if this was a mac/PC problem (I have a mac, they use PCs) or something else. He asked if we could send him the file. Sure, as long as I have my poster printed by tomorrow evening and it turns out well.

After our lovely sightseeing on the way to Kinko's, my advisor grabbed a taxi to take us back to our hotel. I jumped through all the required hoops to get on the free wireless, emailed my poster as a PDF (which involved a bit of patience since I was emailing a 20MB attachment), and confirmed the printing options when the friendly employee called me. My poster should be ready by late afternoon tomorrow. Thank goodness! I hope they print it correctly.

The fun of coincident exams and big conference

Flying to AGU tomorrow. Poster will be printed in San Francisco since it is not done yet. I beg the five Kinko's within a mile of my hotel to not have simultaneous printing problems or large orders.

Final exam due in two hours. Stressed? No, of course not.

By the way, I've added myself to the AGU blogroll. I will be blogging what I can during the time I'm at the meeting (see the blogroll for more coverage).

back on track and rarely at home

Monday... again. I haven't decided if these seem more or less frequent than they are, but they sure don't seem to come at the frequency they should.

I went to a family reunion this weekend. My great-grandparents have something like 300 descendants. Only a fraction of these people showed up, but it was still a sizable group. Given that my family is quite loud, this event was pretty sedate. I met a few more distant relatives and ate a lot of good food. My grandparents made sure to introduce me to the lone PhD in the family :).

I produced a bunch of plots for the meeting with my advisor last Friday. He was very pleased with the results. Unfortunately, that means we've expanded my to-do list :P. Most of the additions are details that I hope won't take too long.

I finally feel like I'm back on track with research. I think it really helped that I got my house set up and clean the way I want it. It feels comfortable again. I also think my weekends away have helped. I needed to get out of town and do some new things. I've noticed a bit of a dichotomy between academic success and happiness. I'm generally not very happy when I'm doing really well in school, and I'm generally not doing as well as I would like in school when I'm at my happiest. Maybe this time I can combine happiness and academic success. It's been working for a week or two now... :P

My advisor is gone this week until Friday. We have a meeting scheduled Friday morning and I drive to my parents' again Friday afternoon. After a brief visit with some family, I'm catching a flight out of town for a week and a half. I'm unbelievably excited about this trip. I haven't had a real vacation in over two years. Even though I will probably do some research while I'm gone, I expect to have a great time.