You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2009.
thanks for the additional fun memories that you continually add to the graduate school experience. i really enjoy spending an hour on the phone with one of your carefully-trained customer obfuscation service reps on such a frequent basis, when i could be doing things that actually lead to the graduate degree i’m working toward… coincidentally, this circumstance is the very reason that i am stuck with you fuckjobs as my insurance company. i admit that it’s a new thing for me, being that angry every single time i end a phone call with your service center.
you’ve taught me that my anger issues are not fully controlled, and though i may need therapy, i better have the cash to pay for that myself because that’s so not your problem.
i can appreciate the fact that those of us who actually USE the insurance benefits are to be punished to the fullest extent of your capabilities, and that it’s really quite convenient for you assholes to scapegoat off paying for a bill for a good 8 months by doing it wrong, denying it for no reason, and training your managers to be so amazingly unavailable and incapable of using the telephone EVER.
i also understand that it’s very hard work for you to juggle all this foolishness and feckless behavior, so it costs me an arm and a leg each month just to pay for the joy of spending all these hours on the phone with you, arguing over benefits that i apparently do not have and should not be receiving, despite the content of my university’s student insurance contract.
in summary, i see now it is quite clear that graduate students are such a sub-par group that we and our dependents do not deserve healthcare, but you clearly deserve a good ~25% of my take-home income to provide this massive complication to my already hectic and worrisome financial life. my bad for thinking i could provide my dependent with a hospital visit and needed medical equipment. i should have known better. i’ll just pay those bills myself with the remainder of my salary for the next 3 months- the money i have left after i pay you twits, of course.
but it’s all great fodder, i tell ya, for when i am older and sharing my story of hard work and success with the younger generations. with great vigor i shall shake my fist and say, “oh, that piece of shit insurance company!!!!” while ranting about how totally broke i was and how many people take advantage of you while you’re a graduate student.
now if you don’t mind, you can just find me over here filing a complaint with the state bureau of insurance. have a nice fucking day, motherfuckers.
occasionally, i’ll post these little snippets from my years gone by. people seem to like knowing that it doesn’t take a perfect, spotless background to become a scientist. i seem to like breaking down bullshit expectations.
let me take you back several years, now. at this time, leigh is 21 years old. she’s generally scraping the pieces of her life together and putting them in some kind of logical order. she’s learning what it is to be an adult, and finishing her college degree and planning a rapidly approaching summer wedding. she’s awaiting graduate school admissions decisions. life is hectic and busy, she’s relying on some healthy and some questionable coping mechanisms, but she’s largely cleaned up her act.
today she is standing atop the bluff, overlooking the city and the river on a blustery april day, as she often likes to do. but it’s different this time. today she’s met her dad for the first time, and he is standing next to her in her most peaceful escape place. she has generously invited him to come overlook her domain. and there are certain conversations to be had. there is no guide book for this type of meeting, leigh has no idea what to expect.
part of her wants to say, “no. not now. i’ve got too much going on already.” she doesn’t know if she can handle talking to him like this. part of her wants to hurt him, as if inflicting pain upon him will somehow ease the years worth of pain she experienced. and part of her wants to hear the words and make this connection.
she never felt particularly empty without him; without the three sisters she wasn’t really aware she had. after all, you can’t miss what you don’t know. it was he who chose to walk away before leigh was even born, to go make another family and adopt another daughter only 4 months leigh’s senior. while she was a little bitter and had some abandonment issues, it’s nothing she couldn’t handle without him.
how could he just walk away and move on like that? and why should she even bother wasting her energy on someone who could do such a thing? would the pain of opening up the old wounds of her life achieve worthwhile returns to even go there? there are no solid answers to these questions.
people change. after 21 years and seeing his daughter all grown up without him, he was a humbled man. though leigh is still sometimes conflicted five years later.
i admit, it’s a strange full-circle thing that as a child i was always yelled at to go get (evil ex-)stepdad a beer so he could get more drunk and do more damage to me… but my dad throws a backyard bbq whenever i stop by and always keeps me supplied with the alcohol.
maybe one of these days it won’t feel so weird, that sting will go away. judging by how i felt writing this, it will be a while.
i tried to keep thesis-related crap off the main blog page, but damnit, i need to rant…
this beast is about 86 pages long now. i’ve been working on this during whatever downtime i can find, if only just to proofread one section. it’s after 10pm on a saturday night, i am not making a damn bit of progress anymore. and yet i keep trying, which is now at best an exercise in futility and at worst making me hate this document even more. endnote x2 is supposed to be helpful, but i find it highly irritating. i am pissed off, i’m tired of writing this thing, i’m tired of cross-referencing and digging up stuff to rebuild my corrupted endnote library file, i’m frustrated that half my referenced papers are printed out in folders at home and half are at my desk in the lab. and i have this craving for an ice cream sandwich.
apparently, some time away is needed. i feel like i have taken enough time away and should be productive.
i think i’m much like my science big sister and dear friend- i am panicking ahead of time, so that when the real deal hits i am prepared. i have over 2 months to polish one chapter and write another, write a paper for submission to mega journal (ack!), and do 3 weeks worth of part time benchwork. i should not be stressing myself out like this.
in other irritating news, a friend asked me today when we were having kids. and (after the pain dulled and i could resume breathing,) i replied that the timing was not right and i had to (a) write a thesis (b) defend it (c) publish (d) find a job with real health insurance and (e) move cross country before that was going to happen. he tells me that i can totally get pregnant and have all that sorted out before the baby comes. argggghhhhhh!!! i love this guy like a brother, but my family’s life is not the same as his family’s life! i give him some slack, i know this came about because he adores being a daddy, he’s a very GOOD daddy, and he wants us to have that same joy in our lives.
in fact, with our 5th wedding anniversary rapidly approaching, i am starting to get a lot more of this from all directions…
trying to schedule a meeting of all my committee members is like trying to walk on water: impossible, but there are lots of unsubstantiated rumors that it has been done. on several occasions, i have said hell with it and met with unavailable members individually or conversed via email. however, this is not an option this time.
there are some faculty physics that have not been properly defined, so i am going to list some of them. if i have missed one, please add to the list in the comments.
1. the multiple faculty location principle:
-when two faculty schedules are compared, the likelihood that one is available is inversely proportional to the likelihood of availability of the other.
-probabilities decrease in a logarithmic fashion for each additional faculty schedule. (100%, 10%, 1%, etc)
2. the laws of scheduling physics:
-appointments cannot be created or destroyed, they can only be rearranged or recycled.
-schedule entropy is always increasing- there is no way to reduce entropy to zero.
3. scheduling exclusion principle:
-no quorum of four can occupy the same room at the same time.
-(exceptions made for when scheduling attempts begin 6+ months prior to the proposed meeting time)
others?
from the major meeting:
-i am very fortunate to be in a subfield which has a lot of very senior female scientists who have made major landmark-type contributions to the subfield. i also had the great fortune of sitting at a table with many of them for an evening. that was truly exciting, to be surrounded by such influential and accomplished female scientists. we had some fantastic conversations.
-several attempts to recruit me as a postdoc… all of which i felt quite ambivalent about. of course, the one i really want does not operate this way. damn! this is so the way my life goes.
-the big interview happened too. for hours beforehand, i was just a total ball of jitters. it took 2 glasses of wine for me to work up the nerve to initiate the thing, and then it went great and i made it to the next round. go figure! afterward, i drank heavily.
-i kept running into people from home state. the cool thing is, people from home state love finding connections with other people from home state.** this will provide me with at least a nice framework to network at home, outside of my current connections.
-i also ran into a PI from my department, who i never see, while waiting to pick up some dinner. we ended our working relationship on a fairly bad foot due to someone else being a horse’s ass. so i sat at the table with his group, and we bonded over what a fucking horse’s ass that other person is. how unexpected.
-finally, the last thing i will write about is having my shoes approved by the single most authoritative shoe approval source available. this was a tremendous honor to have bestowed upon me- and i only wish that at the time, i wasn’t coming down from the drunkenness and decompressing after the big interview.
now i have some regular life to catch up with. no rest for the wicked…
________________________
** i tell this story: people in home state, especially in bars, LOVE finding things in common. it’s amusing. if you tell them you’re from (location), they will then proceed to do their best to make a connection. i joke that someone will go as far as to say “oh, (location)? yeah! my room mate’s girlfriend’s sister’s friend’s uncle’s coworker’s husband is from there! let me buy you a beer!”
i stole this from JLK… have had a hellish morning, i’m tired, still letting some of the tension go from the last few days. sadly, i need to be reminded why this is all a good thing.
The items that apply to me are BOLD
1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
she attempted an associate’s degree, but single mom-hood and other troubles ended that after one semester.
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
9. Were read children’s books by a parent
one of the best things mom ever did for me.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
i paid for them. recall i was independent well before the age of 18, and financially independent even before that. a lot of these “before you turned 18″ questions are fairly irrelevant based upon that…
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
i’ll qualify this by saying that there are still plenty of negative portrayals of women in the media
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
all two of them that weren’t for the purpose of visiting family
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child
ex-stepdad’s mom was an artist who lived on an inheritance and spent her time painting
23. You and your family lived in a single family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
25. You had your own room as a child.
i grew up an only child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a college entrance exam (eg. SAT/ACT) prep course
28. Had your own TV in your room
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
to vegas, to satisfy the addict’s cravings for alcohol and gambling and throwing things at the kid
31. Went on a cruise with your family
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.
From “What Privileges Do You Have?”, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you please acknowledge their copyright.
i was winding down from a very high-intensity series of days at a major meeting, when i found that i was TAGGED by Sci!
i am now supposed to come up with three resolutions for earth day: something small and easy, something bigger, and finally how i could do something i already do, but better.
i’m already quite conscious of the environment in my everyday life, and my husband and i have even taken on some fairly major projects like running a car on restaurant grease to make a very long commute more eco-friendly and more affordable. (actually, it’s for sale now, if anyone’s interested! we don’t have the room for fuel processing in an apartment complex.)
so here are my resolutions:
small: when i buy things, i will look for items with the least amount of packaging. (i also highly recommend Sci’s resolution of using cloth grocery bags. they have far more comfortable handles than the plastic ones.)
bigger: i will make fewer little trips to the grocery store and just do all my shopping at once.
better: my car is already small and fuel-efficient, but i’ll try to have less of a leadfoot. i have tried and failed at that many times, but i’ll try again. bad habits break hard.
flying halfway across the country doesn’t strike me as particularly green… but that’s what i’m doing tomorrow. i need a break from all this conferencing and a weekend of quiet! although the phone conversation i had with my boss this morning cracked me up:
leigh: i’m exhausted and i don’t get home until late thursday night. i’ll be back monday.
boss: oh grow up! it’s just a conference!
yep, tough love all the way, my boss.
last night was some kind of hell to get here, but i am here and i am in one piece.
have been cruising relevant posters, vendors, etc. have picked up a few good publications- they love giving shit away here. i think that’s awesome.
no sooner had i sat down to flip through the conference program than someone strikes up a conversation, and wants to recruit me as a postdoc. it’s all in who you know, we had several people in common. crazy stuff.
lots to do before the conference, and if i shut myself off from the internets i just might finish another major section of the dreaded chapter 1 before i go. i have plans to knock out yet another section in flight and on various layovers because it’s stuff i’ve already written elsewhere many times.
attempts to schedule the next committee meeting are being thwarted by a non-responding committee member. grr! other than that minor irritation, i am prepared to tell potential postdoc mentor that i’m tying up loose ends and will be ready to go by the end of summer.
this week may just lead to big changes in my life. i am 100% welcoming of changes! here we go!
i like conferences, i really do. there’s always so much to take in, new people to meet, new places to see, cool workshops, and lectures by famous people i might not otherwise get to see. it’s a chance to make a good impression and maybe get some networking contacts.
it’s also kind of like “the other side” of science. the getting out of the lab, after countless hours of tireless work, and showing the world the really cool stuff that you’re doing. this is a refreshing change, and who isn’t proud to show off how awesome their results look?
a trivial thing i like: going from old-jeans and free-t-shirt lab chic (hey, when you use some nasty chemicals, there’s no sense wearing nice clothes) to looking like an actual professional. on a day to day basis, i really do not dress professionally. i’m not at a stage yet where my apparel is safe from my daily activities. as such, i don’t always feel like a professional, either.
this does pose a problem in that i’m totally clueless about how to actually dress like a professional! i started pulling my nice clothes out of hiding yesterday to decide on what to wear to my poster and what to wear to the meet-up with potential postdoc mentor. i got frustrated after about a half hour of trying different combinations. so i decided to purchase a new shirt- maybe that would help.
leigh is also not practiced at shopping for clothing. like, at all. so there was a whole lot of fail going on there, and i came home empty handed. (why can’t i have cool people nearby to go shopping with me?!)
if i’m more worried about what to wear than actually presenting my poster, i am at least in good shape as far as my confidence in my work goes.
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