introducing...dr. ruth!

Woo hoo! I did it!!

Friday was my dissertation defense and "final examination." I don't know why they call it a final exam, because it's not really an exam. It just has the feeling of a final exam because it's such a big thing, it's the last thing before you're officially a recipient of your PhD, it's the last thing that happens before the committee signs the forms that magically transform you from being a bachelor or master to a doctor. The final exam is a question and answer session, an "oral exam" of sorts, but the questions (at least for me) were much more of a "what's your opinion" sort than a "what's the absolutely correct answer." Probably because in reality science has very few absolutes, so best-guesses are as good as it gets.

Anyhow...that is over, and it was very amazing to wake up on Saturday and realize...hey...I don't have to work on polishing my dissertation or practice my defense presentation or review the literature to have potential final-exam answers fresh in my mind...EVER AGAIN!!!!!! That was really the best part: it's over.

Just so you know, the correct abbreviation for Doctor of Philosophy is Ph.D. (or just PhD). Big P, little H, big D. The cake decorator did indeed write big and little letters as instructed. However, the end result wasn't quite what we had anticipated.Just goes to show how underwhelming it probably is to most of the general public that I have earned my PhD: they don't even know what it means!! Oh well.

countdown

I am in the final stages of preparation for my PhD dissertation defense on Friday. My main concerns are that

• I won't be able to come up with decent answers to questions people, especially my committee members, ask
• My committee will not pass me and will make me do more work
• There will not be enough room in the room in which I'll be presenting for everyone to fit. A lot of people have been saying they'll come, and I couldn't get the larger room that I had hoped for. But at least it's bigger than the one that the one administrative assistant kept telling me would be fine -- it seats about 30 people and contains a seating area with comfortable couches as well as a kitchen area. Apparently she's never been to a dissertation defense, because at least twice that many people generally seem to show and it's entirely unprofessional to give the biggest talk of my life in a room that looks like a living room and includes a food-preparation station!

I'll try to let you all know how it turns out. I have other news, too (it's not too exciting, just amusing), but I am rather focused on something else right now. Thanks for bearing with me!

nice little random free things

Aah... (That's a happy sigh, not a freaking-out one).

Things are coming together with this whole dissertation thing. I need to turn in my mostly-final copy to my thesis committee on Friday of this week. I nearly killed my brain doing nothing but working, eating some, and sleeping this past week trying to get everything pulled together, but it's paid off. An quick trip to the chiropractor helped to relieve a bunch of the pain that I had accrued in my neck and shoulders from doing computer work so intensely, and I've been able to sleep.

Of course, as soon as I had pulled all of my text, tables, figures, and references together into one file and sent it off to my advisor for a final look-through, a few non-niceties occurred. The journal article I had sent in for review got rejected. Bleh. I realized that I had a few more sets of data to analyze that require a statistics computer program we don't have in the lab and I've been borrowing the use of from a friend who has her own data to analyze and really doesn't need me stealing her computer any more. Blah. I finally read the formatting requirements for the University's electronic dissertation thingy, and it means I have to figure out how to do some new things with Word that I don't know yet and I have to shorten a couple sections of my dissertation because they're too long - being concise has never been my strength. Pooey.

Well, little by little those things are also getting untangled from the mess they seem to have created. My advisor has chopped up the one section I wrote to make it successfully fit into the allotted space (I have to read his revisions, but I'm thinking they'll be okay...he's pretty good at not being too wordy). I have a new plan for the journal article, and having written my entire dissertation already means that it will be semi-easier to put in a few extra parts that I had been trying to keep out of that particular manuscript...just cut and paste from the dissertation!

And the most lovely thing occurred with the statistics issue...I was Googling around trying to locate an online calculator that would do a Kruskal-Wallis test for me and having no luck and then started to give up on that and look into Bonferroni corrections instead since I am never quite sure if I have accurately taken them into account, when lo and behold the program I had been using at my friend's is available for a 30 day free trial. Yay!!! Now I can analyze as much data as I want to. I'm so geeked! I really, truly am. GraphPad Prism, the statistical package I am referring to, is so user friendly. I haven't been using it for its intended use -- it's technically a graphing program and makes pretty, pretty pictures with only a few clicks of buttons, and that is so incredibly wonderful. Now that I have it on my computer, I actually am inclined to make all of my dissertation graphs over again using the program, but I have a feeling my time would be much better spent doing something else.

I think...that this might all work out somehow. The dissertation defense date is April 4. ...Can I make it until then...????

are you sure...?

I know I ought not to worry so much.

I know that worrying doesn't help and that usually when I start flipping out about something, it rights itself rather quickly and then I am just left feeling frustrated that I had wasted so much energy being concerned that nothing would ever work out.

But...every time that something worrying occurs, I find it very difficult to not worry about it.

The latest frustration to my life comes less than 24 hours after having accepted a postdoctoral job. So - hey, good news: I have a job lined up for after I graduate, which tentatively means by April 1! And just when I thought the saga of my future was coming to a peaceful close, just when I thought I had covered all my bases, just when I thought I had clearly grasped what I'm supposed to be "doing" with my life (at least for the time being) -- frustration!

The frustration: a particular member of the committee that decides whether I really get to graduate or not suddenly sends me an email to the effect of, "Huh, you're going to graduate soon? When did this happen? What have you actually accomplished that gives you any capacity to graduate?" (This person was not at the meeting where the other members of the committee told me to write up all my results and get the heck out of grad school...but I did indeed inform the individual of my results and the rest of the committee's instructions to me to finish up and graduate...almost 3 months ago...!) So...I send the person the summary of the last meeting and a bazillion tons of my results. And then I get a, "These results are weird - they don't look like other peoples' results. Do you know how to analyze your data? You really should ask someone who has done this before (a.k.a. my employee). You should have another meeting; everyone probably thinks your stuff stinks."

Ow.

There are some times in my life where I wish I had the capacity to selectively erase peoples' memories. If I had that ability, I would shake this person, say, "You really hurt my feelings. Do you actually think I am completely incompetent and don't know how to analyze my data??! And for your information, I have asked no less than 4 experts in this area - including the pioneer - who have a total of more than 50 years of experience, and they told me I was doing it correctly. Now you're going to make me sit down with the person in your lab who you're so convinced knows more than all of those people?? And by the way - you obviously don't know any of the literature on this stuff, because the "weird" results you think I'm seeing is because nobody has ever reported anything about these cells, so of course it's not going to look like anyone else's! The other 80% of the committee has not indicated that my stuff stinks. If they thought so, they should really tell me instead of being jerks and waiting until I'm obliviously accepting a new job to suddenly trick me and say 'You gotta do more work here, nah nah nah nah!' Speaking of that, why in the heck did you not say anything about this anytime during the past 10 weeks that you have had the data I just resent to you?????"

And then I would erase the person's memory of that conversation so the person wouldn't be angry at me.

Sometimes I just want to be understood.

Of course, I cannot say any of that stuff, and it is best if I come up with more kind, convincing (and non-violent) ways to support my scientific work. But right now I am worried...that I won't get to graduate this semester...that people think my work (and...thus, by association and production, ME!) is worthless and stupid...that my future bosses will be upset that I told them I'd be available in April when I won't be...that some hideous, embarrassing disaster is waiting to befall me and will involve people saying, "You should have done this, this, this, and known that, that, that."

As I think about it, those are not things that are truly very REAL. Well, at least not the last one. Reality tells me that more than a majority of the graduate-or-not committee have written letters of recommendation to the very person who just hired me -- obviously those people think that I will/should graduate. And...the new boss told me repeatedly that April 1 is flexible. ...Breathe...okay...it'll be okay...

So! Yes, that is the update on me and what's up in my life! I got a job. It's lovely. I am really, really, really, really, really looking forward to it at this precise moment because it has NOTHING to do with my current area of research - HIV - which I am very much disliking currently because it involves so much competition and requires so much detailed, outrageous information to be provided to convince people of anything, when, in my humble opinion, I think that really nobody has any actual concept of the depth of complexity of what's really going on and why (see, for example, here. I got into this field because I wanted to help people, not because I wanted to duke it out with people who are too self-centered and stuck in their own ways to consider that there could possibly be a different way of looking at an answer to their favorite question.

just like that

It's been said time and again that despite the phrase "It's not what you know, it's who you know," the more accurate phrase is, "It's not who you know, but who knows you." In the scientific community in which I've been reared, this has always come across to me as meaning stuff like, "Your boss will tell his other boss friends that you need a job, and then you'll get a job with one of them" or "Someone you went to school with will be working at a place you're interested in, and that will be your 'in' to that company." I believe that those takes on it have their merit.

However, in light of the fact that marketing and sales in the business world often seems to really be selling one's own self (e.g. kind, classy, humorous Businesslady takes her client to a 5-star dinner, and poof - the big deal is sealed! It's not necessarily the deal on the table or the food on the table that do the convincing, but rather the kindness, classiness, and humourous-ness of the person orchestrating the convincing. I mean...would you prefer to buy something from a Rude Nasty person or a Friendly Happy one?) -- in light of that, it seems that an additional interpretation might be considered for that old saying.

What happens if a person doesn't try to figure out who else might be able to make the right connections with the company/person she's interested in? What if instead she just goes ahead and makes that company/person know who she is? Call it an introduction, if you'd like. Sometimes at a social gathering a friend/co-worker will introduce me to a new person, other times I just introduce myself. Why shouldn't it be like that in the world of finding an employer? Maybe the key to getting "known" is to make one's self known.

You never know what will happen. Even if you weren't trying to do it. Such was the case with me this past week. I have been sending out my curriculum vitae and a lovely blurb about what I plan to do with the rest of my life to researchers far and wide, and where appropriate I have been following up with telephone calls. I figured this was just what reasonable people do, but rumor has it that I'm incorrect. Thus far the following have resulted from these calls:

• A busy researcher who had put filling-that-position on the bottom of the list of things to do moved considering me for the position to the top of the list
• The crazy, disjointed background I have that I think seems like I have no idea where I'm headed has repeatedly been praised by forward-thinking researchers
• I discovered that a position that was not yet advertised but which is even more in line with my training is available with one researcher
• In short order, I am being whisked away for an interview the end of this week

Not quite sure where any of this will end, but the moral of the story is obvious: like it or not, "marketing" one's self does wonders -- and not just for getting an interview or job, but also for making one realize how marketable one might actually be!

hodgepodge

Last Thursday Relient K made their closest stop to Pittsburgh on their Appetite for Construction tour with Switchfoot and an opening band ironically called ruth (I assure you - it's not me, and you don't want me to be on a stage singing...not pretty). Unfortunately, the venue was still 2.5 hours away; fortunately, it was in one of my most favorite towns and I know a few people there. Unfortunately, the weather was sort of ucky - rain and a little hail/sleet/iceball stuff - on the drive there; fortunately, there was little traffic congestion, even on the roads that are often jammed (that's what happens when one leaves much earlier than rush hour!). Unfortunately, the lack of traffic meant I arrived a lot earlier than I needed to (not actually a bad thing...); fortunately, someone in town called me and invited me over for a wonderful home-cooked dinner in the meantime, and there was still ample time to arrive at the concert and meet up with the group I was sitting with. Unfortunately, the lead singer of Relient K was not feeling well and sounded a little pained to be singing; fortunately, despite his illness, they did not cancel the show as they had been contemplating. I would have been really, really, REALLY bummed if they had canceled. I have been waiting for this concert for months.

Despite the not-feeling-well-ness, the performance was very enjoyable, and I was just happy to see the band in real life. They played some of my favorite songs and one off of their new Christmas album, which I just purchased and can't wait to start playing once Thanksgiving is over. I just think it's appropriate to wait until one major holiday has concluded before really ramping up for another one. Although I did put up my Christmas tree, lights, and nativity scene yesterday...but that was more of a logistical decision, because I won't have time for that again for another two weeks, and then it's too close to Christmas!

Friday and Saturday I attended a branch meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (I know, aren't I the most way-cool clubs???), which was at a small college on the other side of Pittsburgh. It was informative and interesting, and I enjoyed talking with many of the other attendees. However, for some reason it's left me in a work-related-emotional slump. I guess I had sort of been hoping to make some good connections for post-doctoral positions at the meeting, but that didn't happen the way I had envisioned. It wasn't all bad, and I did glean some information about a couple places I have been thinking about applying, but it wasn't what I had hoped for. It brings into question whether it's just utterly ridiculous to ever want something, because it seems that it's entirely too heartbreaking to deal with when what we want does not come to fruition. But maybe that's just real, true humanity -- wanting something, even though we know that it may never come into being, seems to be at the core of being a genuine human being. I guess that in many ways I would prefer to be disappointed than to become so callously apathetic that I don't care whether anything at all ever occurs. Doesn't make it any easier, though.

i can write

The day has finally arrived...!

Last week Thursday I had my sixth thesis committee meeting. These meetings occur approximately every six months and involve me meeting with the five professors who oversee my research, telling them about what I've been doing, and hearing what they think I ought to do next. For this meeting I pulled together all the data I've accrued from the past five years, sorted through it to put it in the most honest and yet favorable light, and presented my case. And lo and behold, the response I've been longing for arrived:

Stop doing more lab work and write that thesis.

Woo hoo! Know what that means? I get to graduate!! (Soon. Well, in a relative sense. Probably March-ish of next year, which is only a few months away.)

Thus, as I embark on the fun last stage of this journey with the companionship of my trusty computer, I think I'm going to need one major item that I currently lack: a workstation that does not contribute to the massive pain in my shoulders that I am currently feeling. If anyone has some thoughts, please do let me know.

Yay, thesis! ...Oh yeah - this also means I'm supposed to find a new job...! Starbucks a few miles from my apartment is hiring.... ;-)

musings on age

Labor Day weekend had me thinking about "me" as a 26-year old. I spent the majority of the weekend tent camping with some other women around my age who are residents at a hospital. In many senses, we are so young! It's sort of amazing for me to think that they're doctors, I almost have my doctorate, and we're not 30 yet! We (assuming we survive) have a long, long life ahead of us! Wow! We've come so far in such a short amount of time. A camping neighbor visited us and exclaimed about how neat it is to see young people like us spending time in the great outdoors.

After the camping trip, I spent a little over 24 hours in a nearby college town. As I meandered around the campus, I was struck by how young everyone seemed. And when I thought about it, the freshmen starting their university studies really are likely 7 to 9 years younger than I, and that's a significant age difference. No wonder they looked young!

I volunteer as a librarian at my church on Sundays, and it turns out that I'm in the children's library. The most profound thing that I have learned in that position is that while children are children, they are still people. Sometimes I (and others I have observed) tend to treat children like pets. As if they can't understand language or facial expressions (which, incidentally, I believe pets actually do have some capacity for). As if they can't comprehend complex emotions and ideas -- and as if they don't have their own complex emotions and ideas. Working with the kids in the library has taught me that this is entirely untrue, and that really...children are just small adults. The major difference between most children and most adults appears to be that children don't know better than to suppress their inner selves; adults have learned that to be "polite" or "socially acceptable" they must act according to specific rules, even if that is not how they really are inside. Not that this is totally a bad thing, but the point is that children are much more genuine than adults.

Seeing children as people instead of children (or pets...) reminds me that the college freshmen I saw this weekend are also people and not college freshmen. And that the teenagers at the next-door campsite who found it desirable to eat dinner away from their parents by sitting in the middle of the paved street are also people and not teenagers. Plunking these individuals into categories diminishes who they really are and limits who and what others will allow them to be. There is value and worth in the thoughts and feelings that all of these people have, even if they're not as "advanced" as matured adult-thoughts and adult-feelings.

And...to come full circle and apply this to myself... During my visit to the college town, I attended a conference centered around bioenergy (yes, like my beloved microbial fuel cell). In a conversation with two professors I met, I expressed the framework of my increasingly-more-lucid future dreams (which, yes, you may have noticed have not actually been spelled out on this blog; it's sort of like "if I write it...it won't come true"...). The two professors, who have many years of experience and expertise in the fields of which I spoke, both met me with "uh...do you have any idea what you're talking about?" looks. At least that's how I felt. I am increasingly aware that I try very hard to say the things that make people happy with me, but sometimes the ways they respond that make me think I have not impressed them do not in fact necessarily mean I have failed at presenting myself to them in a favorable light; I still feel that way, but I don't think it's always how they feel about me. Not that it should matter so much what others think of me.

Anyway - I felt like my thoughts and feelings were obviously not very "mature adult-thoughts and adult-feelings." Immediately the scale that weights the "goodness" or "badness" of a day began tipping far towards the BAD side. Then another professor, the one in charge of a program I'm interested in (and thus the one I'm most interested in impressing...), spoke with me and further discouraged my idea and encouraged me to try a different approach. To be fair, the approach this professor suggested is the more traditional one and in some senses would be easier. But just because it's easier and is the way everyone else does it doesn't mean it's better. Right? But then you throw into the mix-of-thoughts the fact that this professor and the other two have all been working successfully in their respective fields for a long time and know what they're talking about...and maybe I should listen to them. How do I know if my way won't work, though? But if it doesn't, all those folks who gave me the "you're crazy" looks will just shake their heads and say "I told you so" and remind me of my silliness to even try.

...Once my brain hits this point, the scale tips to the COMPLETELY AWFUL, WASTE OF TIME DAY mark, and I'm sorry I ever came to this conference and want to just move to Switzerland and pursue research on something totally unrelated so I can get away from all possible thoughts and associations with these people who must think I'm a complete idiot for even envisioning the future that I spoke of...

It reminds me of when I wanted to be the place kicker on the high school football team but after practicing and training through the summer, right before the season started the football coach basically told me I couldn't. But that's another story.

So, I suppose what I should learn and do from all of this is take these peoples' suggestions for what they're worth, give myself some credit (after all, I'm 26 and nearly have my PhD in microbiology and molecular virology - I must have some idea of what is going on, right!), and remember that I'm a person, too, regardless of my age and experience, and my thoughts and feelings do have value. I am a person and not a 26-year-old microbiologist. That is far, far too limiting of a definition.

what i want

I kind of think I should not write this here; it's more like a journal entry. But what the heck...maybe it will be of assistance to someone else.

I haven't reached any final conclusions yet, but many things are ordering themselves neatly in My Crazy Brain regarding where I'm headed in "the future." Specifically this means "my career." Over the past several weeks I've been getting (I hope!) a much better vision of (again, career-wise) what I enjoy, what I'm good at, what that means, and what I should do about it. If I had to give a word to the result of all this thinking, it is CLARITY. Not utter and complete clarity, but clarity nonetheless.

But something else has happened as I've been attempting to muddle through myself and all that is me. Not only can I now look through job ads and say, "Nope...nope...not quite...hey that one's good...nope...no" (instead of my previous method: "Hm...well...I could do that...but I'm not sure if I'd really like it...but it's a job...and it's at a pretty good institution...and maybe if I work on that virus for a while I'll learn to like it...") but I also feel a bit more capable of viewing people this way. I can't believe I just wrote that - it sounds excruciatingly cruel, judgmental, and mean. But I don't quite mean, "Hey, let me go down a line of people and give them a plus or a minus and decide whether I will give them the time of day or not." I'm still all about being kind and respectful and friendly to all people. However, I think I can also tell with more clarity who is a good "mesh" for me and who isn't. (Please, if you do insist on thinking I'm being cruel, judgmental, and mean, please please please tell me -- I'm still open to being wrong, even in my own self-evaluation!!!)

The concepts of "compatibility" and "chemistry" in the study of social interactions have long been rather repulsive to me simply because they seem to be so...categorical. "Ruth, you'd do well with someone who is intelligent, conservative, driven, and family-oriented." What, so I need to just reject all people who are not highly-educated, liberal, working hard at a dead-end job, and prefer dogs and cats to children and babies? Of course, that's not precisely what it means, but you get the picture. Where's the "give people a chance" and "sometimes people change" in all of that? And isn't that saying, "I'm too good to associate with that sort of person"?

But as I understand more about who I am and what I am all about...it makes me realize that those categories, however limited, do indeed mean something. If I can say "I like this, I don't like that, I'm good at this, I'm bad at that" about myself...why in the world can I not say, "I like this type of person, I don't like that type of person, I'm good at relating with this type of person, I'm bad at properly dealing with that type of person"? I sort of think that I can...and should! It seems rather foolish to get into a relationship - friends, dating, anything - saying, "Well, no matter how utterly difficult it is to get along with this person and no matter what we do to hurt each other, I am determined to make this thing work!" That's called Control Freak and oversimplifies things.

I am believing more and more that sometimes...some people are not good for each other. May be because of one person, may be because of both people. But sometimes, there are, in fact, irreconcilable differences. ...Much better to recognize this before getting emotionally attached or - worse - making a lifelong commitment to the person, right?

i should have been an engineer

Gracious!

Not that I'm getting worried or anything, but as I embark on this "what am I going to do once I graduate?" quest and start looking into jobs and fellowships and all that jazz, I am discovering that engineering seems like a very lovely place to be. I pulled up a listing of jobs openings being advertised through the University's career services website, and no less than HALF of the jobs were for engineers! And they weren't in boring things like "do research for the rest of your life" or "let's run the same computer simulation every day Monday through Friday for 80 years" or any other rat-race things that seem unappealing to me. They were in practical application settings (like...manage water treatment) and useful, cutting-edge disciplines (like...the U.S. patent office).

I'm sure these jobs aren't nearly as splendiferous as I envision them to be, but the fact remains that a) any one of these jobs would NOT require a PhD and b) any one of these jobs would pay at least twice as much as any job I'll be getting in the next five years even WITH my PhD in biomedical science (unless I go into biotech or pharmaceuticals, which I don't want to do). I think people assume that because a person has lots of letters after his or her name, that person must be earning a whole lot of money. That is not true.

Not that money is everything. But still - I sometimes regret that I did not really comprehend what engineering was until about 3/4 of the way through my last year of undergrad. ...Actually, I didn't really get it until about 6 months ago. I believe I would have really enjoyed engineering, at least certain types of it. Now I feel like it's too late to learn it and/or too expensive to go back to school to study it.

Pity, too, because although there's that geeky, nerdy image always given to engineers, my experience has been that there are actually two categories of engineers. One is that classic kind: Dilbert-esque, with horn-rimmed glasses taped together with white tape, always way more organized than ever necessary, in their own world using language nobody but engineers understand, and entirely socially inept. The other is a completely different breed: they are hot (as in good-looking), fit, suave, charismatic, and could be Abercrombie & Fitch models. I kid you not. I have known many such people! Combine that all with the extraordinary intelligence and drive one must have to be an engineer, and you have pretty much the perfect individual. ...And to think I could have gone into engineering and met a perfect man while sitting in thermodynamics class and fallen in love (since the male:female ratio in engineering is such that any woman has a pretty good chance of finding an available man) and lived happily ever after with lots of money... Sigh. What was I thinking??! But I suppose I would have been just as likely to have gotten stuck with Dilbert.

Anyways, that's not a good reason to embark on any particular career. Beyond the excitement, money and amazing-men draws of engineering, we get back to the whole microbial fuel cell thing. My heart is not set on these or any other sorts of biofuel technologies, but every so often I wish that I held the knowledge that would enable me to hop right into that field instead of needing to work with all my might to open the door to get myself in. It's useful. It's interesting. And it's something I just wish I could understand more. But I don't recall how to do calculus and I can't keep electrochemistry terms straight and I never totally understood quantum mechanics (I know - it was just me who didn't get that concept, right?). It feels like when I look at the fuel cell world...it's in this glass building that I can peer into, but which I need a special key to gain access, and I don't HAVE that special key, so I can never get in. I can't get to that thing that go grabs at my heart, that sparks such an interest in me. ...Probably the fact that I "can't" have it is part of what makes me want it so much...

But what am I talking about? I don't want to have a career in biofuel cell research and development! I want to teach! What am I fretting about?

...But it would be cool if I could teach engineering...

:-)

what if...?

In light of my newly recanted burning desire to plot out every last detail of my future, my mind has wandered to questions about "What would have happened if you had chosen a different place for graduate school?" Two notes on that sentence: 1) The question isn't a "Oh, woe is me, I made a bad choice!" one; it's simply, "Hm... That would have been interesting." 2) I have absolutely no idea when the last time I read or used the word "recanted" was (excuse the grammar awfulness just there), but for some reason that word flowed nicely through my fingers onto the screen...!

So. What if...

What if I had chosen to attend University of North Carolina? I had a tough time picking between Chapel Hill and Pittsburgh. In many respects, Chapel Hill is just the type of location I would love to be in: a smallish college town, lovely weather, situated equidistant from the ocean and the mountains. I even had the pleasure of meeting someone from a sister church of my college church while I had my interview, and I then spent the next summer living just around the corner from that person (who happened to be an incredibly sweet, good-looking, tall young man). The research there isn't bad, and everyone was very friendly.

The interesting thing about UNC is that one of the motivations for strongly considering the school was the Research Triangle that, in addition to Chapel Hill, has vertexes in Durham and Raleigh. Back in 2002, it seemed like THE place to be. A job was guaranteed in the area. That seemed like a very wonderful thing to me at the time. The biotech industry in the Triangle was thriving and growing. To my fresh-out-of-undergrad mind, it sounded perfect and secure. However, here I am five years later, and I haven't heard a thing about the Triangle in ever so long. Yes, there's a lot of good research being done at UNC, North Carolina State University, and Duke University. However, it's a far cry from the picture that had been painted in my mind. A forecast is, after all, merely a forecast. I feel I would have been disappointed if I had selected UNC with the prospect of jumping into industry in the Triangle...only to find that it wasn't as up on the up and up as had been projected.

What if I had chosen to attend the University of Pennsylvania? Now that is an interesting question. To this day I believe that many people probably thought my choice to turn down Penn was incredibly stupid. In fact, the more I stay in research, the more I believe that. The program I was accepted into at Penn had an agreement with the National Institutes of Health where Penn students could select from not only the Penn researchers but also the researchers at the nearby NIH to pursue their doctoral degree. At the time I was incredibly naive about what that meant. I do recall that it was emphasized in pretty much every informational talk we interviewees sat through; it obviously was something Penn was extremely proud of and thought would impress all of their applicants. Well, call me ignorant, but I wasn't impressed because I had no idea what significance research at the NIH has in HIV and pretty much every other biomedical field. To give you an idea of how appealing the NIH would be to most anyone who knew what was going on in science, at the latest HIV meeting I attended, almost every speaker was from or working in close collaboration with someone at the NIH. The rest of the speakers all seemed to be from Penn.

There you have it...I blew a huge opportunity for getting to work with the best of the best in the field at what many would say is the most coveted biomedical research facility in the world. The NIH (seemingly) has it all - state-of-the-art machines to do the cutting edge research, internal funding so grad students don't have to worry so much that their boss is going to tell them "Oh, you can't do that experiment, it's too expensive," beautiful buildings, the smartest people in the world in the next lab over, access to an endless supply of volunteers for tissue and blood samples. Besides that, it's situated in a fairly wonderful area of the country (again, not too far from both a large body of water and a open, mountainous region - these two aspects pique my interest very much). Anyone who is interested in building a solid career in scientific research would jump at the chance to get an in. And I said no??? What was I thinking!?

Yet, I still am not convinced that I would have selected Penn, even if I had known then what I know now. After all...I don't want to build a snazzy career. I don't want to spend my life chained to my research or be cut-throat competitive. I want to work hard at what I love doing, sure, but not to the extent I gather is the norm at the NIH based on conversations with other students and researchers I have since met who are there. That's not where my heart is at. Perhaps if I had chosen to go to Penn, I would be headed in an entirely different direction from where I'm pointed now...and it's anyone's guess as to whether I would be happy or not.

What if I had chosen to attend University of California, Davis? This question intrigues me most. Over the years here in graduate school, I have achieved a deep appreciation for the HIV-related work going on at UC Davis. For some reason I never seriously considered their offer, and I can only assume it was because they accepted me and made an offer without flying me out for an interview so I thought it was a lousy, second-rate place to go. Today I very much disagree with that judgment; two of the top ten people I would like to work with if I stay in HIV research are there. Probably another thing that kept me from Davis was its distance from family in Michigan. Who would have guessed that by my third year of grad school my sister would be living only an hour and a half away, which is closer than any family member is currently?

There are so many "what if"s. In the end, I really don't know. Nobody ever knows! What I am confident of is that, had I chosen a different school, I would not know the people I know today; that would be sad. And it's slightly possible that I never would have fallen in love with mucosal immunology and the gut in particular. (You can determine whether or not that was a good thing to have happen to me here in Pittsburgh!) Maybe I also would not have learned to rock climb...or scuba dive...or knit! No knitting -- now that is an unusual concept to attempt to grasp!

It's good for me to look back and see how my choice panned out, especially as I approach the end of my graduate schooling and will eventually (but not now!) need to make a choice about where to step next. I realize that what I think will happen is not what does happen. And usually what does happen is a lot better than what I thought would happen, even if it is a little nerve-wracking to get through.

For, even in my selection of the University of Pittsburgh as the school for the pursuit of my PhD, what ended up happening was not at all what I had anticipated. I was exceedingly interested in one particular lab when I moved to Pittsburgh. The projects going on were directly related to my strongest interest in the HIV field. I rotated in the lab for 3 or 4 months, and I was very happy there and got some great work done. My rotation project was not really about the particular interest I had; it was about the gut as a reservoir for HIV during chronic infection and had to do a lot with T cells. When I finished that rotation and went on to the next lab, I picked up a project involving the gut, also, based entirely on my new-found interest in that organ. And six months later when I had to select the lab in which I would continue my education...it was not the one I had come to Pittsburgh for. I could certainly have gone there; there was an opening for a student, and I enjoyed the mentor and the people I would have worked with. But, as usual...something better had been revealed to me.

Funny how that works, eh?

...And I hadn't intended on writing this, and it sounds super, duper silly, but I just thought: D is a great guy. Wonderful. But apparently not for me. That's sad. And yet...if someone better in coming...wow, Someone Better is going to be AMAZING, because D is pretty darn good!

Hooray.

getting up

This week the trend is for life to be ironic. You only get to see one such example, but really there have been many.

It was both funny and sobering when I turned back the pages in my journal on Tuesday as I ate breakfast. After much thinking and talking and crying on Monday, I finally got to the place where I could see that all my efforts at trying to get my life together for the future...were not working and, more importantly, weren't necessary. I was out of control...and what I was trying to control is beyond my control.

A counselor once gave me a picture of spheres of control. There were three concentric circles. The inner one represented things I can control. The next one out was things I have influence over but can't ultimately control. The outer one was things I have no control over. I really don't like those outer two circles. But seeing them helps me to look at situations in my life and think about in which circle they exist.

Once I realize something is out of my control, though, it's still another gigantic leap to accept that it really is out of my control. And it's even tougher to let God have control of it, which is really the only way things will work out.

The irony of my reading on Tuesday was that I was sitting at the table with all of these realizations and the peace that came with them, I saw that I had written just that in my journal...on SUNDAY. Why did I not at all remember thinking those thoughts?

The answer is, quite simply, that it's one thing to think of a concept but it's quite another to agree with it. And for me, to get to the point where I realized I was not agreeing with it, I had to get a bit hurt in my heart. I had to go down to a very low place, where the only place to go was up.

Also ironic is how very appropriately my new best friends of Relient K sang about my precise feelings:

I'll tell you flat out
It hurts so much to think of this
So from my thoughts I will exclude
The very thing that
I hate more than everything is
The way I'm powerless
To dictate my own moods

I've thrown away
So many things that could've been much more
And I just pray
My problems go away if they're ignored
But that's not the way it works
No that's not the way it works

When I go down
I go down hard
And I take everything I've learned
And teach myself some disregard
When I go down
It hurts to hit the bottom
And of the things that got me there
I think, if only I had fought them

Don't fret, ya'll - I'm good now, because the song, and my story, ends like this:

When I go down
I lift my eyes to you
I won't look very far
Cause you'll be there
With open arms
To lift me up again
To lift me up again

hrmn...now what?

This past weekend I took a few steps in trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be headed after graduation. I know that I won't really know for a while (part of this is that I don't have a graduation date established, just "by the end of 2007"), but I'm trying to weigh my options and send out some feelers for some of the directions I am feeling nudged to head.

For this past weekend, that meant two things:
1. Inquire for the MFC researcher I'm interested in if he anticipates any openings for a postdoc anytime soon. I sent this email on Friday evening.

2. Visit one of the cities I'm thinking of going. Why? To get a sense of the place. And...maybe get a blast of lightning saying, "YES!! This is the place to go!! Now, find someone to work with here!!" (I might add that I realize this probably seems like a totally backwards way of selecting a job - at least a postdoctoral research position - to first figure out to which city one wants to go and then figure out if there's a job there. As my boss told me once, the only reason to do that is for family or boyfriend/fiance/husband. I assure you, that is not the case in my situation.)

So, I went to the city yesterday, which was sort of a disaster because I had planned on leaving my house much earlier than I did but that ended up not happening for reasons beyond my control, and as it turned out I hadn't really put much thought into how much time I would have in the city, and all the things I had put on my mental list of stuff to do would have taken at least 7 more hours than I had allotted myself. Well - the getting to the city and doing what I hoped was a disaster. The visit was actually very much NOT. I got a lot of very good, very tough thinking done on the way there and while I was exploring some of the area. No bolts of lightning, though. I did, however, really, really, really, really, really, really appreciate the fact that this city does NOT have insane, falling apart roads like Pittsburgh does. And people also know how to drive there, unlike in Pittsburgh. And it's clean, unlike in Pittsburgh. (I don't hate Pittsburgh, but...it's got a lot of stuff that really bugs me. Some cities are just not for certain people!)

Then I came home this morning. More thinking on the way back. More thinking as I walked to the bus to go to work. One thing I had gleaned from my visit was that regardless of the choice I make - to move there or to move somewhere else or do something totally different than what I'm thinking now - it, in a sense, doesn't matter. It's not like the world will end because I make a choice that is less than perfect. And my life will not be ruined if I make a bad choice, either! So if I go to this city and then it turns out to be a lousy idea...well, that's it. It was a lousy idea, and I accept that fact and move on. (Perhaps easier said than done, but still the thought makes me feel much less anxious about my choice.) And suddenly on the way to the bus I thought, "Well, then GO! There's nowhere else you want to go, so why don't you just go and do it! And it's not a bad choice, anyhow!"

Hm. ...Okay!

And then I got to work and turned on my computer and checked my email and read...

"My lab is pretty full right now, so no, I don't anticipate any openings in the next few months."

Oh. Bleh.

Well, that negates that option unless I somehow decide to beat a dying horse (which I have realized recently I'm pretty good at doing!) and figure out a way to convince this researcher that I can write a grant and get funding for a project of my own to do in his lab. And - I'm not being low-self-esteemy here! - the chances of me actually getting a grant for this type of research coming from the field I'm in is very, very, very low, so that does not seem like a very wise course of action. My efforts would be best spent somewhere else.

And so...what does it mean? Shall I search for other opportunities in the city? I'm sure there are lots, and many that are much more related to my current work and expertise. Do I look somewhere else? The interesting thing is that besides the MFC research, right now absolutely nothing grabs me. Not like when I was in undergrad and looking for grad schools - I was passionate about HIV, and that guided my choices. But I'm not passionate about HIV now, and I don't feel passion for anything except bacteria making electricity. And this is both frustrating (I'm not even at Square One; I'm at Square ZERO!) and comforting (I can do...anything! Wow - that's a lot of options!). But not very informative.

...I suppose that in conclusion I shall say...stay tuned to see this story progress and discover the exciting conclusion in a matter of (I hope!) months...! Oh, and if you have any passion to pass on, please do.

:-)

and now for something completely different

It all started with Al Gore.

So, I never actually watched An Inconvenient Truth, but I have heard enough about it and seen a few interviews with the former presidential candidate to know its general message: greenhouse gases are killing the earth, and energy levels are at crisis level if we are to continue operating at the status quo. I've always been big into recycling and reducing waste and composting and turning off lights when I'm not home and all that other stuff (the lights more to conserve cash than energy, admittedly), and I try to be conscientious about what I'm doing and buying and using. The arrival of Gore's movie sparked a renewed interest in this whole culture and attitude, although nothing dramatic.

The seed was planted, however, and sprinkles of water came from various articles I read here and there in Science. It wasn't until I heard a talk by Nathan S. Lewis last October here in Pittsburgh that anything really sprouted, though. Lewis is, I take it, well known in at least some circles for his adamant approach to addressing the global energy crisis. His lecture (which you can experience here) was highly informative, and any listener who was paying any attention at all would certainly have walked away incited. Incited to do what, though? Use less energy? Walk more? Lobby for funding for solar power research?

What really moved me was the comment Lewis made that if the energy problem is not fixed, it doesn't matter how many anti-malarial drugs or vaccines against HIV or cures for cancer are developed, because without energy, you can't manufacture them, and you certainly can't get them to the people who need them.

It was depressing leaving the talk, in truth, because I had just been told that my research was not just useless but utterly useless. But, being that I don't like staying down for all intents and purposes, I decided to flip the problem on its head: No, I do not understand things like what a terrawatt is or how to build a nuclear reactor or what a solar panel is made out of. But I do know what photosynthesis is. I do know that plants and some bacteria and other microorganisms are able to harness energy from the sun, which doesn't seem to be likely to go out anytime too soon. I don't know a whole lot about those topics, but I do know something, and if I can invest the little I know in with the little pieces other people know...maybe some sort of solution could be derived. (The same, you'd think, would be true for HIV. However, I'll point out that the more we learn about HIV, the more we realize we don't understand the immune system and the human body and how cells work...we're not playing with set rules, the rules keep changing. The wonderful thing about chemistry and mathematics and physics and engineering is that for the most part, there are set rules. So I see the two problems, although both exceedingly complex and requiring creativity and persistence, different in the sense that fixing one is rather a shot in the dark and fixing the other requires some manipulation and getting our human ideas to conform to the laws of the universe.)

Thus began many months of stewing. And when I was reminded of Gore's new campaign when a department downstairs posted an advertisement for a free showing of the film, I suddenly became interested in seeing what people were doing with bacteria to generate energy and if they could possibly use my help (or if I could possibly have anything helpful to offer).

And that is how I stumbled upon my new momentary obsession: microbial fuel cells. The concept is to dump some water that has bacteria in it (like...treated wastewater) in a "thing" (see, I have no idea about those engineering terms) and the bacteria send electrons to the one end of the thing, which allows the collection of energy in the form of electricity. It's neat. It's useful. It's a challenge. It's in need of many angles of investigation. And the wastewater part is still in keeping with my trend to work with excreted material from living organisms*. Furthermore, for those of you following the "D" saga, one of the leading researchers in the microbial fuel cell field just happens to be at the school in the city where "D" lives. But today I'm not feeling very "in like" with "D," so that's really not a major determining factor.

Familiarizing myself with microbial fuel cell technologies over the past week has been enlightening and stretching. It takes me a long, long time to read anything about the subject, because I don't fully grasp about half of the concepts. My background in biochemistry with courses in physics, physical chemistry, and even an introduction to chemical engineering should really be helping me a bit more, but I realize that four years of not thinking about those topics and filling my head with topics like T cell receptor antigen recognition and Peyer's patches dendritic cells has made my quick-access knowledge base about such subjects minute. Today I hit the library - the engineering and chemistry libraries, to be more precise - in hopes of finding some introductory textbooks, because - what do you know! - I did not have any desire to keep the books from any of those classes when I finished them in undergrad... In addition to re-learning some valuable information, I've also been entertained with the differences in terminology: in the alternative/waste fuel field, "MSW" stands for Municipal Solid Waste, while in HIV it stands for Men who have Sex with Women (as opposed to MSM, who have sex with Men). I don't think we'd have much luck harvesting energy from that sort of MSW. Not that HIV-field MSW don't have energy. I'm just saying...well, I was trying to make a joke...I guess science and jokes don't really go together...

Although!! I did get this one on a Laffy Taffy wrapper a few weeks ago in the midst of Insanely Long Hours in the Lab - and I laughed:
"What is a parasite?"
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Something you see in Paris."

Now, that is funny! In more than one way! Or, maybe I've been in the lab too long.


-----
*My sister, I believe, was the first to point out that I seem to gravitate towards projects that involve "waste matter" for lack of a better term. My first "real job" was at a veterinary clinic where I worked primarily in the dog kennels, and although it might sound like a treat to feed dogs and then play with them all day, at the end of the day you have to clean up after them. Every weekend that meant at least 100 dogs. That's a lot of poop that needs to be scooped...

I moved on to college where I began working with a researcher who studied uroliths in cats. "Urolith" is just a nice way of saying "bladder stone." When that was over, I was hired in a microbiology lab where I smeared cow fecal samples onto growth media. The Sis told her friends that her sister "Used to work with cat pee, but now she works with cow poop."

In graduate school, I haven't gotten any better. I work with a bacterium that is best known for causing food poisoning, and more and more people are realizing that the gut (meaning the intestines) is extremely important in HIV infection, so most of my major experiments involve isolating cells from intestines, and that means flushing out all the half-digested material that naturally builds up in an intestine...

Yum! I don't see why treated sewage should not be a next step.