Terrible and good

I spent a heartbreaking morning sharing hugs with friends at a funeral.  This was awful, in a way that made me so grateful for my friends, and grateful that my friends also have such good friends in each other.  Does that make sense?  But, as much as it made me feel very close to this group I've been with all these years, seeing my coworker's family grieving together made me really want to be closer to my family for some non-mourning activities.  It was a very sad funeral because this guy was such a spark of life for so many people. Sigh.  For some reason I didn't think this would be such a tough day for me, but seeing some of my other students from bioethics in such a state of grief really ripped me up.  I do feel better after the service, though.

And of course, the rest of my life in in a giant shake up right now, as always.  Dr. Rockstar offered me a 6-month post-doc position in his lab (too late, I'm not tempted, but it did make me feel nice).  In other awesome news, I got a major title promotion at the Science Center.  I am to be the first ever Scientist in Residence at the Science Center, which they are hoping to make a more accessible position to bring in collaborative interactions with the local professional community.  This is great for me, clearly, but I think it will be a really good move for the science center.  One of the things that sold the Director on the title was the fact that I have provided them with access to my professional network.  Need volunteers, or info, or to borrow some equipment?  Everyone I know here is a scientist, so that hasn't been a problem for me to find these things.  We'll be hashing out a description for this title this week in order to provide a framework for recruiting other Resident Scientists for relevant volunteer work and interactions.  Hooray, I am valuable!

Adventure weekend!

One of my friends had a birthday this week, so we seized on the excuse to celebrate. On Friday, we went to a bowling alley that does bowling and karaoke- bowlaoke. I'm not naturally inclined to either, but in combination, both are way more fun. On Saturday, Matt and I went to the Millvale Brew Festival with some new friends. That was pretty fun, sipping beer in the sunshine down by the river. I was glad to be the driver, my tummy has been giving me all shades of grief and beer doesn't help. Although, neither does the Thai food we went for after. It's hard to make good choices. That evening I went with the birthday girl out to the suburbs to see Dr. Rockstar's band again. It was a great show- lots of science songs and local color.

Today I am wishing I could find a job I want to apply for, which is just torturing myself. Is it a bad idea to go back to school? Do more loans really solve the problem I have? 16 working days left, I am hoping my friends don't forget about me after I don't see them every day...

Where is this headed?

Among the fun filled delights this weekend, I both "hosted" a bridal shower for a friend (I brought the paper plates and encouraged the gals that did the real work), and saw Dr. Rockstar in concert. Since this is the polar opposite to the rest of my week (People! Stimulation! Fun!), I think I was a bit more in-tuned to my place in it. Example, I realized fairly abruptly that I am not on target to be in a band at any level of success, even though this wasn't an opportunity I remember giving up on. I believe it is called Opportunity Cost, I'll get back to this. I also remember when Matt and I were going to get married, and that seemed like it was just going to seal-the -deal on a lifetime of happiness. Don't get me wrong- I am so happy with the "married to Matt" part of my life, but since coming to grad school, that part has been much less central to my identity then I thought it would be when I was 23.

And now I am at this exciting/terrifying jump point, I am about to finish school, and I can opt to stay the course- find another training opportunity, learn something new as a postdoc- or leap from the Ivory Tower to.... something else? It makes me wonder where I am headed, and also how wrong I might be about that. Either way, the only way to get to where I want to go, is start going there- if I want to be a middle aged rocker, I better start rockin', and if I want to be living closer to my family, I shouldn't look for jobs in town. I should instead stick to my guns, and look for my dream job/lifestyle. If I want to try at all, I should shun the academic style and pursue something in industry or government- something really different.

But maybe I have a fatalistic work ethic. I don't think I can be happy unless I find some meaningful and productive work, but I will insist on taking it much to seriously and personally so that I can be just as miserable in other fields as I am currently. That might just be my dissertation talking. Everyone can find something they don't like about their job, and it is likely not something they might have predicted at the outset, right? But really, what if I am leaving the best job I'll ever have? There are plenty of things I REALLY like about my current job, and I am confident I could get another job like it. And in this economy, the job you can get is worth 100 you can dream of.

Maybe I am being old fashioned, but it seems like the jobs you used to have shape the jobs you can get next; at this point, I am on track to be a virologist. Should I be trying to jump the track to go into policy, or should I just accept that I am a trained virologist? In principle, my NEXT career change can take me to policy, but the longer I stay on this track, the more I am a virologist. Opportunity cost, right?

But let's face it, all this is a lot of panic and not a lot of job hunting. I like to imagine if I weren't so paralyzed with indecision, I might spend more time finding, nay, targeting great jobs and getting good job offers. So far, my many paltry efforts have only given me belated rejection, and not sense of improvement- which is not helping the paralysis.

Moral of the story- if you know anyone who needs a scientist, send them my way.

Knowing things seems to make a difference

Two interesting things happened this week that made me feel like spending 3 weeks cloistered and learning some science were not a waste of time. First of all, this scientist came to visit Dr. Rockstar, and he wanted people to talk with her. We talked a little bit about my work, and how that might intersect with her work (on how viruses assemble), and we agreed that she would send me reagents to do an experiment that would be interesting to both of us. I felt really capable of talking about, not just my own work, but also how that intersects with fields, and was able to reference specifics. We actually got into this 3 way discussion about... well it doesn't really matter what, but I felt pretty awesome reminding Dr. Rockstar about the evidence from the mid-80's that showed that these late 90's hypotheses were well founded, even if they still haven't been thoroughly tested. Yeah- my dissertation has some 200 references right now- so I've been doing a LOT of reading.

The other kinda cool thing was I gave a seminar this week. Just my usual, annual seminar for the department. I barely spent an hour putting the slides in place, gave a pretty scattered practice talk for the Dr. Rockstar's lab, who gave me really helpful comments, which I didn't have time to deal with until the morning of the talk. I spent another hour and a half on the talk (which, since it was 30 min- means flipping through it twice). I felt a little nervous giving a talk I spent so little time preparing, but I think it was perhaps one of my more interesting talks. Part of my nervousness was talking about a project that didn't exactly fail, but surely gave us disappointing results. How do you say that without opening yourself up to being eaten alive by criticism? With some help, I decided to go the open and honest approach, which was really well received. But more than that, I felt like I had a lot of context to add. After all this reading and thinking, I am starting to understand that what we undertook in the project is not straightforward. That is why I felt like the seminar was quite successful, even though I talked about a project that was basically an epic failure. Lots of positive feedback after that.

I am still stymied with my one "easy" experiment, so I'll be doing bench work for at least a few more days. Today, I am going to try and incorporate some of the comments from my coworkers on the introduction to my dissertation. Dr. Boss wants to see that on May 1, although there is lots more work to be done (figures? tables?), I feel like that is pretty do-able. Next weekend is also the wood-firing, so I am trying to get work done ahead of that so I can really enjoy it.

Success at the kiln!

We cracked open the kiln last night- the only major casualty was a off center bowl I shattered with a log- a fair sacrifice. A lot of stuff turned out really nice, I tried some new things this time, making "tiles," using plaster molds, hand building with "spring cut slabs" (this requires a picture, but it turned out pretty great) and not glazing everything. Some of the unglazed stuff looks great! Also some of it looks just mediocre. I think I am partial to the glazed look, but it is amazing what plain old ash and reduction can do.

I brought in the first round of very extraneous pieces today to share at work. I had 4 boxes of modest size to bring home, so I brought the smallest box of pieces I could part with in. Actually, we do have plenty of bowls at my hour already. I picked and attractive mug and walked it up to Dr. Rockstar, who I imagined would politely accept my childish looking craft. He was actually really thrilled that I would think of him. Which is weird, considering I think of him in almost everything I do, as in- would this be good enough for Dr. Rockstar?

My in-laws are coming tomorrow for a long weekend. I hope they've enjoyed their train trip and are energetic enough to see a bit of the city while they are here. I'll be photographically in debt to the blog by mid next week, so I'll endeavor to get that under control asap.

Madison-first update

I am starting to regret the carpe diem decision to drive out to Madison. Starting a brutal week of science by rolling in from an exhanusting long drive is not good brain management. We left Ptitsburgh at 5am Tuesday, arriving is sufficient time to make the 5pm happy hour, and remain physically present for the talks until 10pm. At this point, we promptly wimped out, instead of hanging around to chat up our future collaborators. We got an eye roll and a tut-tut from Dr. Rockstar for going to bed 'early.' Here we are at day 2, and I don't feel sufficiently recovered to drink anything but coffee all day long. This, or course, leaves a body feeling like a jittery shell- not like a brilliant scientist. Fortunately, the only scientists here that I am especially eager to please are some good ol' boys from the FDA, and they don't stay out late to drink beers. I'll get up early and meet them for breakfast instead.

So far, all is quiet on the scoop front. This is a great relief- I am sure we've got at least the 6 months I think I need to publish this story in peace. The few competitors with overlapping interests seemed to have either dropped their efforts or be far enough behind that I am not so worried. For now. I'm emailing updates back to Dr. Boss in an effort to keep him in the loop. Otherwise, I am here with two of Dr. Rockstar's grad students, and happy not to need to be the life of the party.

Practicing,...

The next major event on my list this week was to practice the talk (The meeting is July 13-18, my talk will be on the 16th). I was scheduled to give lab meeting for Dr. Rockstar's lab, and since they are the experts in this field (not Dr. Boss's lab), I elected to practice for them. Dr. Boss and I had work through the slides, but I had carefully chosen all my words yet. My undergrad told me he was excited to come see me talk. I cringe, but I can picture how flattered/interested he must be to see his work fit neatly into the bigger picture.

My twelve minute talk was done in 10 hyperventilating minutes. Fortunately, Team Rockstar had good suggestions for me. I feel good about this- I prefer to give bad practice talks, gets the nerves out early, and practices all the pitfalls so they are easier to avoid in the future.

It all boils down to this- I am nervous about presenting this work because I feel like any fool with an inkling would make the same choices we did, do the same experiments, and end up with the same results. That is the blessing and curse of science- given the same results, we should all be able to make the same conclusion. Since it seems so painfully obvious to me, I skip past describing in detail the experiments I actually perform- they aren't hard, but I am the only one in the field that still does these things. Oh. Right. In fact, working for Dr. Boss (who is not a virologist), means that none of the assumptions of my work would be obvious to a virologist. That is the beauty of working for Dr. Boss. Team Rockstar also helped me through so sticky points- make the hypothesis sound stronger, connect some ideas more often. There were some opposite suggestions to what Dr. Boss had suggested, which made Dr. Boss laugh. With yet more practice, it can indeed be a good talk.

Take THAT, week!

I've either become jaded or really good at what I do here. This week has been busy, and stressful, but not the epic endurance test that any single one of these factors caused me in my first and second year here. The run down-

Monday and Tuesday, clear schedule to work on Midterm that turned out to be really hard. Minimal guilt associated with not doing experiments, this class doesn't take up much time otherwise.

Wednesday, present 1 hour-long lab meeting for Dr. Rockstar's lab. The process of getting ready to talk for an hour about the things I need help with is never fun, but didn't require multiple practice runs or anything like this has in the past. In fact, I was reading a paper for my midterm until I went to set up the projector. Dr. Boss thinks I am meeting expectations. Submit midterm ~7pm.

Thursday- go to class, what, there were TWO papers to read? Skimmed these during lab meeting and was still the most 'participatory' student. Check!

Friday, last push! I am leading the HHMI students in a discussion of Reserch Integrity. I am relying on the fact that the case study was really cool to give me some time to think about how to assess students in discussion. We have TWO hours, people! I didn't even decide what I was going to wear the night before (although jeans and a hoodie wouldn't have taken long to arrive at), I would have thought I'd be more nervous. I am a little worried about letting down the faculty who provided me these students, but I don't know what other kind of prep to do in the mean time.

Just a few more hours until this week is conquered!

Days like this...

Days like this it is easy to like my job. This morning the street was covered by an inch of ice, so I got up early to give myself time to get in to work. Figured it would melt as the day warmed up. The freezing rain that fell on top of last night's snow was coated in another inch of sleet before it started snowing REAL hard. Dr. Rockstar told his lab to go home early, and Dr. Boss is out of town (in San Diego), so I deferred to Dr. Rockstar's wisdom. Most of the lab is gone to a different meeting, so I had planned to fill my time with some organizational tasks to make use of the extra space and quiet- nothing that can't wait. We 'survivors' all decided to cut our losses and head home before the roads got ugly. Caught a bus home 4 hours early and got to shovel the sidewalk and drink hot chocolate. Great Job!

I am home now watching the weather. They keep contrasting "Winter Weather Warnings" with updates from the weather in Tampa. Where the Super Bowl is going to be.

A challenge:Travel Wish List

Hi, My name is Sandlin, and I have insatiable wanderlust.

In part, this is to blame on the World Map we put up behind our couch. It passively reminds us about the vast swaths of the earth that we have never been remotely close to stepping foot in. Part of this is to blame on Dr. Rockstar, too. Today in lab meeting he announced that in addition to the pending travel arrangements with the Aussies, he'd need to start planning a trip to Malawi and Madagascar. I want to go to Madagascar! It is on my life list.

This of course marinates in an atmosphere that is very forgiving of those with wanderlust. My baymate Teresa and I are planning our next trip to NYC this spring. My siblings are ALWAYS going to really exciting places. Our trip to Mexico was long anticipated- it was basically my 'finished comps' gift and Finish Teaching incentive. And that was wonderful! And easy! And I want to do it again. And more!

I wonder about having this conversation with my boss- how much do I have to get done here to justify taking huge chunks of time away?

For the moment I am coping with these urges by watching the map instead of the TV, and making lists. Tonight, we made a list of our Top 10ish Travel Destinations- one for domestic location, one for international. These are places we think we might be able to get to in the next say, 3 years- politically stable, affordable, exciting, exotic locations. Except for Cleveland, which is none of the above.

I'll publish the lists IF you'll meet my challenge, loyal readers. Let's call this the first of many future Blog challenges to encourage discussion and commentary. Dear Readers, your challenge is this: throw up your own lists. Doesn't have to be 10 (we couldn't get our lists that narrow), or in order, any entry will qualify. Maybe we'll all have somewhere in common we can all go to next. Let's share a travel daydream.

I feel like a million bucks!

Or perhaps I should say a 106%.

You know how the parents always say- and imply, and encourage- that all our hard work will someday pay off, and that perseverance will be much more valuable then any short sighted distractions? You know? This is the kind of thinking that lands you in grad school, people, so mind your words closely.

This is also the kind of thinking that doesn't mind you are working 60 hours a week, commuting several hundred miles a week for a job that by any measure isn't "dream" quality. But good, encouraging and supportive friends and family says "stick to it," " someday you'll get noticed, promoted, whatever," "they don't pay you to complain- you're a professional, they pay you to make it look easy" (actually, Dr. Rockstar said this to me). And you keep working, with little more then a sigh of disappointment when you get passed over for raises and promotions and more interesting opportunities.

And then your grump of a boss calls you into his office while you are shooting the breeze with the few other lonely types who are still working the day before Christmas Eve. And he slides a slip of paper across his desk that spells out in dollar $ign$ that he has noticed your hard work, and your talent, and your perseverance, that he'll be damned if they'd let you go now, and that even though your annual review passed with little more than a cost of living increase he wanted you to get what you deserved after all.

Even though Matt isn't the sentimental type, I know for a fact he is still carrying this slip of paper in his pocket, and standing about a foot taller.

Alternate ending- my boss sent me an email today to tell me I am "Awesome." Looks like everyone is going to have a good vacation. Merry Christmas!

Final Score from Wisconson

After I've had a bit of time to collect my thoughts, I wanted to give a more complete impression of my time in Madison. As I said, this was my first real conference, so I didn't know what to expect. I can only imagine my dear readers have no idea what I am talking about. While my naive impression was that conferences are where the nerds go to get their "Sitting Through Lectures" Merit badge, this was a lot more about networking. And a lot less about sleeping.

I went with Dr. Rockstar (who left me to my own devices) and one of his undergrads, and we fared Quite Well. I did see every talk that was even remotely relevant to my work (a small chunk of the 120 talks given), presented my own work at a poster session and met a lot of people. I met (among others) the guy who discovered one of the first viruses in our family in 36 years, the guys who actually found the (other) virus in cancer cells, the lab that had been studying the cancer and were surprised to find out they were virologists, Dr. Rockstar's fav grad student and his lab, the FDA lab that historically studied our virus after its release into the human population (this was an accident), Dr. Rockstar's wife and Dr. Rockstar's band. I wouldn't call him that for no reason.

The band actually came to play at the final banquet/ball. They are a cover band, and they took audience requests so long as well all kept dancing. And Dr. Rockstar's undergrad and I couldn't stand the possibility of having attended the "most sedate meeting ever" (according to the Old Guard), so we endeavored to get a lot of the people we had met dancing with us. And we did. Believe it or not, there is nothing a famous scientist likes more than a big dance party. We kept a private tally of all the famous people who would dance with us. And we danced until the banquet hall kicked us out. It was a great party, and I think Dr. Rockstar no longer thinks I am such a nerd.

Update on the scoop: my (now favorite) collaborator pulled me aside at the banquet to tell me she had talked to Dr. Bigbucks to see how far along they were on MY PROJECT, and gave me some really good advice/ things to tell my boss. And then she said she would go talk to the editor of the journal that we submitted our paper to and cheer lead a bit. What a wonderful woman.

Final Score: Days in Madison: 5
Talks heard: 80
Icecreams eaten: 9
Poster presented: 1
Nights out past bedtime: 3
Famous Scientists Danced with: 4
Improved interest in my science: 5X

Did I hear a scoop?

Still in Madison this morning, which has been a really interesting, stimulating experience. Up until now I was floating in a cloud of bliss that my project was foresighted enough to look for viral inhibitors before they got so hot. See, this winter, a group showed that a very closely related virus causes very aggressive cancer. This has been a major highlight of the meeting. I had been confident that while drug discovery would get popular, we had a head start.

This morning I got up early for a talk from Yale where Dr. BigMoney showed that they have a high through-put screen, and some inhibitors, and that their system for testing against the whole family of viruses was established. Just yesterday I was outlining the paper I might publish in a few years where we described out screen, show our drugs and show how nicely they work on other members of the family. I am still trying to process how bad this is- our screen is faster and more specific, but required a lot more follow-up experiments = time. Of course we won't find the same drugs, but in this field you just have to be first. My other adviser Dr. Rockstar who is here with me says I just need to work faster- people were bound to be interested in this now that it is so fundable.

We'll see what my boss says, but I am feeling very shaken. Is their screen better? Can my plan get better? How far along are they? How much am I willing to sacrifice to catch up? Is it too late??

Today is the last day of the conference, and the ball. I'll be back in Pittsburgh Sunday night, which may results in some delayed phone calls home. I'll give a better description of ths conference when I've had some time for reflection.