Still waters don't always run deep!

When I was a kid, stuff on sun signs was a big fascination among my friends. And everybody loved it that I was a Capricorn. For several years I was told that all the traits a Capricorn is supposed to have (and which they are impressed by) are traits that I possess. Apparently, my friends thought I was practical, rational, independent and basically the "strong and silent" types. They were spot on about the "silent" type! But one key adage associated with a Capricorn was... "Still waters run deep". Nope, still waters don't always run deep. They sometimes "stagnate" and its been a key feature of my life for some time now.

The first person to use the word "stagnate" to describe something about me was.... eek!... my boss!!! That was a nightmare in its own right! Well, here is the background story. I manage 3 projects in lab and I love 2 of them to bits! But the third one is a bit iffy.... its a left-over project from an old collaboration we had on a protein that I do no believe is responsible for affecting neurogenesis (the topic our lab focusses on). Now our collaborator lab is closing down and is destroying their transgenic mice. I needed tissue from them to complete the study which obviously, I don't have anymore! So excuse me if my enthusiasm for this project is not very high!

Ironically, some of the best data that I have collected since I joined the lab was on this one project that I am so resentful towards. My first committee meeting focussed on this project and a ton of questions were asked that I could not answer. This was 4 months ago. Now 4 months later, I can kinda sorta answer my committee's questions and concerns, but the care factor is still pretty low. So its not surprising that  my boss pointed out (and rightly so) that my knowledge in this particular protein and its relation to neurogenesis is "stagnant". It really is, I haven't bothered to study it, I am guilty of what she accuses me of.

Its almost time for me to go to India. In 48 hours, I will be at JFK, waiting to board my flight back home. Its been two years since I returned. As excited as I am about going back, I have been forced to stop for a minute and examine myself and how far I have come. At this point, I found the word "stagnant" pretty descriptive of the situation I am in.

Here is how I should have progressed over the past couple of years - after an initial bumpy stage of settling into a new country and a new life, I should have gotten a handle of how things work in life, how to live on my own, how to cook and provide for myself, how to be strong and courageous, be there for the few friends I have here and overall, be a good person.

Here is how I really am - Still settling into a new country but am in denial that I am still figuring things out, I want to believe that I know what I am doing, but I have no clue. I still have no idea how things work in life, I live on my own but I haven't figured out how to be strong enough to enjoy it, I barely cook and barely manage to take care of myself. I am not strong, I am not courageous. I have been a good friend to the few friends I have here but not a perfect friend. Am I a good person overall? I dunno, I feel like I am still the same person who set foot outside her home in India for the first time, 6 years ago - an angsty teenager who is bitter about how life is so "unfair" and whining about how it sucks to be alone and wallowing in self-pity.

So have my travels made me grow? Am I returning home to my family a better person?

Even today, when things go bad and I feel depressed or lonely, I can't seem to take care of myself. I need to call my mom or dad or Clueless and talk to one of them. I still need support to lean on. I never figured out how to apply the single best advice I have received ever... and its from clueless... she always says... "Don't think about it".

Four simple words, one profound truth. The more I think about things, the more terrible they seem. The more I brood, the more hopeless the situation becomes.

Well, hopefully when I get back after my vacation and start life here again, I will make some progress and change into the person I want to be. Life is not so bad. I am blessed. And someday I will learn to derive happiness from this knowledge :)

Ph.D Candidate in da house!

I passed my qualifying exam!!! UNCONDITIONAL PASS!!!! :D :D :D :D

Ph.D, here I come!!!

Be prepared to call me Dr. Macho Girl. Soon

And by soon, I mean in 3-4 years :P

Writing to destress

A friend of mine brought a paper to my attention about exams. And now suddenly, a few things make sense to me (and a few things surprise me still). But essentially, the paper said that students who are taking exams tend to do better if they write about the stress or whatever before the exam. I don't remember the details. I am so stressed out right now that all the details are fuzzy.

Even details from my own proposal are looking fuzzy! I feel so under prepared for this exam. I am really intimidated by one of my committee members. He is one of the science Gods and I must not anger him. But I haven't read every paper out of his lab and this scares me. A LOT!!!!! I keep oscillating between feeling confident that I will be fine tomorrow, I know my stuff, to feeling like I am so screwed for the exam tomorrow!

A part of me is also really bored of my slides. I have looked at them so many times. I know them really well. But I also know there is no point in having the most brilliant slides in the world unless you know how to use them to your advantage and convey all the information that you intend to deliver to your audience. Being a nervous public speaker, thinking on my feet has never been my strength. I tend to forget stuff to mention every now and then. Its embarrassing as hell when I realize I forgot to mention some detail I was supposed to then have to say, "Oh! I forgot to mention this earlier, but this protein is expressed here as well! Which is why I am looking at this brain region in the first place! Heehee!". Yeah, doesn't look too professional.

I so completely understand what Dawn meant when she said after her qualifying exam that all she wanted to do was to burn all the papers. If I pass tomorrow, that is what I will want to do. But I also love my environment. So I will settle for the recycle bin.

I also feel nervous because this is the first time I have come up with a science proposal all on my own. This proposal is my baby. And my proposal is going to get attacked tomorrow by my committee. I have to try and protect it! This scares the crap out of me!

Now I suddenly understand why just before my exam seasons all through undergrad, the number of blog posts dramatically increased. I was just relieving my stress. So I could perform better in my exam. And now this is what I am attempting to do again. I turn to my blog, one of my best friends, for a source of comfort. And its working. For now. I know this is going to be temporary. I will start freaking out again. At that point, maybe I will call mom and complain about how long the night seems to me.

Its showtime folks! Time to get ready for the biggest exam I will ever take! Wish me good luck! :)

Exam season... for the last time!

As tradition has it, the number of posts (if any at all!) on my blog goes up during the exam season. And now, I am preparing for the biggest exam event ever! Qualifying exam!!! I'm sure I called GRE the biggest exam event at some point. Eh. I'm fickle. Big surprise! :P

But yeah, being the classical Indian nerd who can score straight As in regular exams for course work, qualifying exam is a bit of a mystery for me. At least I am past the biggest hurdle - coming up with a brand new research topic to talk about. And writing a proposal on it. In fact, the proposal is due today (or tomorrow, I'm not sure but it sure as hell is going out to the committee today!). Now comes the part where I make some powerpoint slides to make a 15 minute presentation of my proposal then be prepared for an hour or more of grilling from my committee. Now this is the part where my exam preparing skills are thrown off track. Qualifying exam is just so.... floopy (for lack of a better word to describe it). I haven't the first idea where to start studying for it!

Just 15 days to go before my presentation. Knowing my cramming capabilities, thats plenty of time, if I use it right. I haven't started freaking out yet. But I know its just a matter of time!

Here goes nothing (and everything)!!! Wish me luck! :)

Of late... and early

Over the past few months, my routine has gotten set in stone. I get up each morning and am in lab by 8:30am. Come what may. What distinguishes weekends from weekdays is that on weekends I get in at 9am or 10am at max. And of course, that I can park my car in a faculty spot :P :P

But every once in a while, I need to go late. Because the leasing office of my apartment opens only at 9am and I got to pay the rent every month. Today is one such day. You'd think I would sleep in and get ready at my own pace, given I need to go a little later than usual today. And I did sleep in. And I did get ready at my own pace.

Its 8:30am now, I am ready to go, but can't leave for another half an hour so I am sitting here blogging :-/

Oddest.thing.ever

Whatever happened to the days when you never seem to be able to leave the house on time and rush to work? I never seem to be able to leave late! :P

Potential caveats of awesomeness

I have been writing a term paper on an original research topic. Everything has to be a new idea, never thought of before experiments which will lead to a new and exciting discovery that could revolutionize the field! My research needs to have three aims and each aim should talk about the rationale behind why I am even thinking about these experiments in the first place, how would I approach the problem, what are the experiments I would do, the techniques I could use, what would be the predicted results and interpretations and finally what are the potential pitfalls and alternative approaches.

I personally have a problem with the "potential pitfalls and alternative approaches" sections

Clearly, I have spent insane amount of time researching the topic, what has been done so far, what could be done, how can it be done and thought about this problem from every possible angle. After taking everything into consideration, I design and re-design experiments to try to eliminate any possible loop holes that people could pick on. And by "people" I mean myself too!!!

However, in the field of research, if you cannot find pitfalls and caveats to your experiment, you aren't considered awesome or smart or any such thing.

You are an idiot!

And not just any idiot

A egomaniacal idiot!

:-/

I guess I asked for it....

Grad school makes me feel stupid!

I can haz motiwayshun plz?

Being a second year grad student brings in some joys and some sorrows. The main joy being, you know for sure this time that once you are done with the course work, it truly is the last exam you've ever had to write. But that joy seems negligible compared to the sorrow. Oh, I am sorry, its not really sorrow, I think the word I am looking for is STRESS...... S.T.R.E.S.S......... S.T.R.E.S.S


That's because second year in grad school ushers in the qualifying exam, fondly called "quals". And in my university, quals has to be on a topic that is not related to your thesis project. And it has to be a novel research idea. Meaning, nobody else should have worked on this stuff before :-/ Its hard to motivate yourself to think outside of your thesis project.... why is that you ask? Well, let's see, you went through the trouble of going through several lab rotations, most of your rotations revolved around this same topic in science, and you finally picked this lab, not just because the prof and the people are really nice, but also because you are absolutely in love with the science they do. So you are pretty much married to your thesis project... it's like a long term commitment to science in that field.

So now I guess you can understand why I was not happy to have to explore outside to find a topic for quals.

Luckily for me, I am doing a course this semester that requires me to write a term paper on an original research idea, separate from my thesis work. Best part, I can use it as my quals topic if it works out well!!! :D Yay! \o/

Anyways, an unwilling MG sat down to pick out a topic. I figured, "Hey, the whole world is worried about obesity, why not think of anorexia!", and lo behold, I found a nice research topic.

So I collect all the research papers, go through them, file them neatly and get organized, open a blank word document and type in the word "Introduction". At this point, I realize I would like some music in the office. So I turn to Pandora to supply me with some good tunes.

The first song to play as I type in the initial words of my term paper....

APOCALYPSE PLEASE.... by Muse....

:-/

Is somebody trying to hint something at me???? X-(

I can haz some positive motiwayshun naow plz?

kthxbye!

:P

Recipe for whaaaa?

The graduate student organization for my university had decided to start a monthly newsletter. They are doing a really good job. The newsletter looks very professionally done (hats off to those involved!). Every detail has been taken care of, each page has a beautiful header on the top, the page number at the bottom right and the tag line to the newsletter on the bottom left. The students are amazing writers with a good sense of humour. So its no wonder that when I saw in my email that this month's issue is out, I eagerly opened it.

Turns out to be a Holiday special issue having tons of delicious recipes. So I sat reading them all. Its a way to destress, thinking about good food. And also its a great source of motivation. After all, these recipes were tried out by fellow grad students. If they had the time to cook this stuff, I definitely have the time to try something new every now and then. 

Anyhow, one particular recipe caught my eye, especially the ingredients list at the very bottom of the page (bottom left, specifically)

Ingredients:

4 jumbo prawn

2 cups of coconut milk

1 medium size onion

Your source for grad student life 

:O :O :O :O

Talk about tough recipes, this one demands the very source of my life!!!! :P :P :P

Bet its a tasty dish ;)

Intelligently stupid

When I decided that grad school was the way to go for me, I had the choice of coming to the US to do science. And most people, including my parents and my Honors year supervisor, encouraged me to go. Apparently, the scientific community in academia had  a unique quality in the US which I wouldn't find anywhere else.

Its not like I have worked in other academic environments (like Europe). But I am beginning to see what people meant. The students, post docs and PIs here are always so excited about science! Science is a religion, science is fashionable, science is rad (not sure if I fully understand the meaning of that word)!!! People keep up with the scientific world so its not uncommon to pass by two people in the hallway getting very excited about a paper in Science, Nature, Neuron, whatever journal. I wasn't used to this scientific culture so it took me a while to get just as excited about this stuff as everybody else is and to openly discuss stuff. Now its not strange to see me saying stuff like "Did you see how brilliant and elegant that test was?" or "Are you friggin' kidding me???? That test result was inconclusive!". My PI asked me if I wanted to go for a symposium in January. When I saw the list of speakers, I think my heart almost literally skipped a beat. Yes. I have embraced science as my life!

A huge part of getting into this mode was to subscribe for the table of contents for journals with big names, like Science, Nature, Cell, Neuron, Journal of Neuroscience etc. And anybody in the scientific world will realize what a big deal Science Magazine is!!!

So imagine my amusement when I opened the email containing the table of contents, only to find a word from the sponsors which said....

"Don't waist wells anymore!"

:-/ 

Clearly, we are capable of unravelling the mysteries of the world and beyond but had to miss a few spelling classes to get there! :P

Counter productive

Sacrificing sleep at night to get work done only to fall asleep during working hours in the day :-/

And apparently, this is grad school normal.

So I've come to the right place!!! :D