not even close

i’m hitting up the pubmed tonight… with my attention span of next-to-nothing and with the hopes of finding a couple of references that will support my entirely novel (and apparently never-before-investigated in any system whatsoever) results.

being this novel is pretty sweet, but it means trying lots of literature search terms to find something- anything- that might support your results.

imagine my surprise when searching for [topic of interest + subtopic + search term 11], finding a paper about sleep quality and daytime performance. which is entirely unrelated to any of the search terms i used.

what i haven’t told you yet, is that i’m consistently running on <3 hours/night of sleep at this point, and the hyperarousal syndrome doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. (july in general is never a good month for this, but this + graduating = hell.) i think pubmed is trying to tell me something.

for the record… shut up.

a former colleague of leigh’s was just bragging about her $50k/year postdoc at megacompany. meanwhile, leigh is looking at some NIH-funded postdoc positions, which pay in the $37k/year range according to the NIH pay scale.

wow, leigh is totally getting screwed. look at all the money she could be raking in, if she only went to work for megacompany.

right?

wrong. my colleague was not taking into consideration that cost of living in her destination city is 120% higher than my potential destination city. colleague’s salary would have to be about $81k to match, when factoring in cost of living.

so, shut up, former colleague. kthx.

[really, i just don't get how such educated people manage to be so stupid about money. you'd think... ah, nevermind.]

anything that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong.

dear SECOND biotech company that shall not be named,

kindly piss off. between you and the original biotech company that shall not be named, a straightforward enough two-month experiment has turned into a totally frustrating five-month exercise in insanity. if any of this had been my fault, it would be one thing. but between dud supplies and dud chemicals i am pretty much at the mercy of your collective idiocy. please get your shit together. i have to get this data, and you are the last thing standing between me and doing so.

also, allow me to share a few tips with your customer service department.

situation 1: customer states the chemical they have been working with for n years is not the same consistency and color in this lot.

inappropriate response: “have you used this chemical before? have you used this assay before?”

appropriate response: “how is it different? has your technique appreciably changed recently?”

situation 2: customer states that they have <2 weeks to submit dissertation, and these data srsly need to be included. also, tomorrow is pretty much the last day the customer can run a diagnostic assay with replacement chemical and still get said data in time.

inappropriate response: “ha, isn’t that funny” [note: yeah. it's so fucking funny. you stupid fuck.]

appropriate response: “i’m sorry for the inconvenience, let me rush ship this to you”

do consider these suggestions in the future. and send me some chemical that actually works, will ya?

frustratedly,

leigh

leigh attempts to take 1-hour break, teh univerze says “no”

i thought it would be nice to make a trivial grocery shopping trip today to break the monotony of editing my thesis. after all, weeks and weeks of 18 hours a day, 7 days a week really starts to grind on the nerves, ya know?

but apparently the thesis gods were upset by my attempt to escape from their prison, and collaborated with the traffic gods to thwart my plans.

because while following a curve in the road, i found myself face to face with an oncoming driver in my lane! wtf!! no time to hit the horn or anything- i had a half second or less to react. so i ran my car into the ditch to avoid a head-on collision.

i should be happy that there was a ditch, that there was no collision, and that i managed to somehow avoid hitting any mailboxes along the side of the road. but i’m kinda pissed off that i need to go get my alignment checked now.

some people should not be allowed to own cars.

so FUCK YOU, thesis gods. i will not be dealing with you for much longer. and the traffic gods may irritate me sometimes, but they always keep me safe.

…

really… i’ve got nothing.

no personal reflections, no thoughts on the hellish writing/defending process, no thoughts on the job search. my brain has switched to emergency power and is really only useful for final editing of this beast of a dissertation.

bear with me, folks. we are now into the last month, and fuck if it hasn’t already put me underwater.

deadlines approach. sub-deadlines to accommodate the travel schedules of certain individuals are upon us. i will return… later.

a peek into my strained mind

i am going through some serious mental strain with all the deadlines about to hit me… giving me major flashbacks… anger, frustration… residual issues that i have refused to cope with rearing their ugly heads… making this a particularly intense feeling of overcoming a mountain to get where i am today. funny, this kind of stress- the kind pushing me to reach this final goal i’ve been chasing just to prove them all wrong- the one where i tell the statistics to get fucked- is the thing that jams the blade in up under my ribs.

girls like me? we marry men just like the ones we grew up with. WRONG.

girls like me? we become addicts. i’ve had my experiences, but in the end, WRONG.

girls like me? we have records. yes, i was arrested once. the DA was dumbfounded at what would lead anyone to think it wasn’t self-defense. they wiped the charges from my record. so, WRONG.

i relive those and other moments far too often lately. but there’s no time to run anywhere with my horror stories now.

on one hand, i hope i walk into that defense feeling every second of the uphill battle to get here. i think it would be practically insurance that i got up there and defended this thing like a rockstar.

on the other, x more weeks of this will break me.

and that leads me to what i was getting around to saying… i am seeking solace in music. from my fellow uphill battlers, fighters against the naysayers. and for all the bullshit the guy spews, this one excerpt really struck me… and i find it oddly comforting.

Nobody asked for life to deal us
With these bullshit hands we’re dealt
We have to take these cards ourselves
And flip them, don’t expect no help
Now I could have either just
Sat on my ass and pissed and moaned
Or take this situation in which I’m placed in
And get up and get my OWN
I was never the type of kid
To wait by the door and pack his bags
And sat on the porch and hoped and prayed
For a dad to show up who never did
I just wanted to fit in
Every single place
Every school I went
I dreamed of being that cool kid
Even if it meant acting stupid
Aunt Edna always told me
Keep making that face till it gets stuck like that
Meanwhile I’m just standing there
Holding my tongue trying to talk like this
Till I stuck my tongue on the frozen stop sign pole at 8 years old
I learned my lesson then cause I wasn’t tryin to impress my friends no more
But I already told you my whole life story
Not just based on my description
Cause where you see it from where you’re sitting
It’s probably 110% different
I guess we would have to walk a mile
In each other’s shoes, at least
What size you wear? I wear tens
Let’s see if you can fit your feet

[Chorus]
In my shoes, just to see
What it’s like, to be me
I’ll be you, let’s trade shoes
Just to see what it’d be like to

Feel your pain, you feel mine

Go inside each other’s mind

Just to see what we find
Look at shit through each other’s eyes

But don’t let ‘em say you ain’t beautiful
OoOo They can all get fucked
Just stay true to you sOoOoo
Don’t let ‘em say you ain’t beautiful
OoOo They can all get fucked
Just stay true to you sOoOoo

-Eminem, “Beautiful”

win!!!1!11!

i have been fighting with completing my dataset for the Last Experiment in Grad School since spring. these issues were caused entirely by a faulty lot of product produced by Biotech Company Who Shall Not Be Named (no, the link is not to their website, but my open letter to them.)

well, after a several-week backorder of supplies i needed to make my OWN products, i spent the 4 days making a large batch of them. and then another 3 days to do a practice run on some scrap samples.

and guess what, Biotech Company Who Shall Not Be Named?

MINE fucking WORKED. unlike your useless shit.

now i can actually finish data collection and the associated crazy set of ANOVAs with my name on in before my defense… always a good thing.

the “how to graduate” guide is 22 pages long

so much for electronic dissertation submissions being simpler than the alternative! plus, i have to do some kind of screwy rain dance in order to receive my final exam card. i love the graduate school at mega u.

today’s random facts:

i have worked roughly 66 hours this week. and i have a good 6 hours of work left in today, which i believe is still wednesday. credit to copious amounts of teh strong coffeez.

i have x weeks until i fly out to Potential New City to interview the members of Potential New Group. the timing of this is sub-ideal, but the only time that would work.

i have applied to x + 54 industry jobs with only x-2 interviews.

i have x+2 weeks until the dissertation submission is due. weeks are ticking by too quickly.

i do not yet believe that i am graduating. reality had better sink in quickly.

x is too small of a number…

doomsday has been defined.

the big day has been scheduled. there is no turning back now, it’s do or die.

bloody fucking hell. i can no longer pretend it doesn’t exist.

back to work…

ugh!

can people just quit breaking lab equipment already??!

i hate being the only one who can fix this shit… especially when i had a productive work-from-home day planned… and tomorrow i need to use the equipment in question. this is bullshit.

goddamned undergrads.