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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”
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.
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…
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…
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.
i’ve had this post in the back of my mind lately, and since i’ve literally been working every waking hour lately, it totally slipped my mind that it’s father’s day this weekend.
i’m new to this whole thing- celebrating father’s day, that is. it was barely five years ago i met the man who contributed a haploid cell that eventually led to my existence. i describe him as such here because, at the time i met him, that is pretty much the only contribution he had made to my life.
this makes picking out a father’s day card a little… difficult. let me go through all the iterations of father’s day cards i have to reject for lack of applicability to the situation:
1. you’ve always been there for me. (well, not really)
2. you taught me so much (uh, indirectly maybe?)
3. i will always be daddy’s little girl (puke!)
4. blah blah blah, lifelong positive influence, blah blah blah. (not quite.)
you get the idea. these are all totally disingenuous coming from me. and i really suck at teh disingenuousness. so i usually just call, and send a little note wishing him a happy father’s day.
now i give the man credit for the last several years. while the circumstances are a bit much to delve into for me, i will just say it took some courage for him to stand there and tell me how sorrowful he was that he missed out on my entire lifetime, wanted to contact me on every birthday but never did, and that he could only hope to try to make up for his mistakes. (and his eyes, when i told him what my life was like. that said a lot.)
that is why i call him dad.
but i didn’t just grow up with a total lack of father figure(s). one man heroically stood in and played father figure every summer for my entire childhood. i call him grandpa.
grandpa taught me how to swing a hammer and turn a wrench. we made fences and fixed machinery together, we changed tires the old fashioned way. we walked over the hill and brought in new calves from the winter blizzards and performed basic care for all the animals together. he took me to the carnival to see the horses every year, and he took me to the fun park- things that i never got to do otherwise. he taught me about life and death, nature and the land, and how hard work and sacrifice would take me anywhere i wanted to go. and so much more. all this knowledge from a man who did not receive a high school education. and the influence it had upon me was tremendous.
grandpa proudly walked with me down the aisle at my wedding.
that event happened in part because my now-husband (then-boyfriend) thought it was astoundingly, mind-blowingly hot that i nonchalantly picked up a ratchet and got my hands dirty with him that one time so many years ago. with him having grown up without his own father, and having a heroic grandpa of his own, that helped us to find a deeper connection that lasts to this day.
my uncle took me berry picking every year since i can remember. we would eat as many strawberries straight from the field as we took home, and supplemented the wild raspberries growing in back of the old shed with handfuls off the canes at the raspberry farm. we would sit atop our respective round hay bales at night and bullshit about life and everything. he let me help fix up his old house down the road from the main family land parcel, and he let me drink a beer every now and then. i have always considered him to be a friend more than an uncle.
both of these men physically towered over me for most of my life. even today, they are several inches taller than i am. (i come from a family of very tall men.) but they really lifted me up with their time and their care for me as a family member, as someone whose biological father abandoned her, as someone who needed their influence. (as someone who had a horrible male role model at home who she wished to forget.)
the men of my maternal family are father figures to me. as are many others who i have looked up to over the years. it takes more than contributing a haploid cell to be a father, but it also doesn’t necessarily require that haploid cell contribution to be a father figure and really change someone’s life for the better.
happy father’s day to the fathers and the father figures who influence our lives.
guys… i suck at blogging lately. i especially suck at blogging about science. i haven’t blogged a science topic in who knows how long. and that’s sad.
but i’m really coming down to the wire here. it’s looking like i will be defending in july. and this scares the ever-living fuck out of me. because there is oh so much left to do.
and i’m so tired. i don’t know why i’m so tired. i just want to sleep.
instead, i rewrite, revise, add, change. words, sentences, paragraphs. i swear this is the hardest part. i’ll admit it. i’ve picked up damn near everything i’ve ever tried pretty easily. i sailed through a lot of shit while others struggled with it. but this! this sucks. and i am not good at it. there, world, you found it. something i just can’t seem to pick up.
it’s a fitting end to this mess called grad school, i suppose.
[setting: after a bitch session about how we've been here half a fucking decade, dissertation-writing, publication-submitting, defense-preparing, job-finding, dealing with PIs, and in my case cross-country-moving]
leigh: so what are you going to do after you defend?
friend who does not drink: i think i’m going to get drunk.
leigh: [blinks]
friend: yeah, i know.
leigh: i… i don’t think… i’ve EVER seen you drink.
friend: yeah, i know.
leigh: well, i am totally in to celebrate with you. i gotta see that.
grad school: driving otherwise non-drinking people to drink since forever.
scheduling the defense is like making a five-year-running threat actually come true. that is, if i schedule it, it becomes real and i actually have to do it.
i am having second thoughts about this. am i actually ready? can i get everything done? shit…
randomly party-crashing self doubt sucks.
i should be really happy right now. like, having a drink in celebration happy. but instead, my visceral reaction to EVERYTHING lately is to get even more stressed the fuck out.
so i’ve turned to a new tactic. i’m totally ignoring today’s awesomeness and writing the last 2 pages of the introduction. tonight. or else.
i will do the required business, which should actually be something i’m happy to do, tomorrow. when the writing is at least crossed of the LIST OF SHIT TO DO.
this is ridiculous.
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