A 42 Family Town

I enjoy the month of December.
There is still plenty of cold weather ahead, it is Christmas Season, and I am filled with Hope for the upcoming year. December is also a time where I look back at the past year and think of all of my accomplishments. This usually involves writing a Christmas Update letter and sending Christmas cards out to my extended family and faraway friends.

It is Sunday, December 21st. I have already traveled to my vacation destination, and I haven't even started composing a Christmas letter.

Remember the post Probability of Order? That was vague, wasn't it? Right. Well, I did it- I made the change- the turbulence is over- I left my old boss's group.

What does that even mean!!!

Unless you are in pursuit of your PhD in the basic sciences, you probably don't immediately understand the significance of leaving someone's group. At the end of this post I have a link to some of my previous thoughts on my graduate situation where I compare it to Slavery in the Old South. Today I will use a different comparison.

My department is a small town where the popular pastime is gossiping about other people's business. The town consists of 42 families, but instead of houses, we live in one apartment complex composed of 3 buildings. The gossip flies faster in such a close proximity.

The research groups are polygamist families before any sort of feminist revolution. The boss is the husband and the graduate students are the wives. (Although husband and wife here are used only to indicate power, not gender.) Leaving my boss's group is equivalent to getting a divorce and getting remarried in this small town of 42 families. My old boss has now been divorced 7 times in the last 6 years.

The good news is: I am out. I am now in a new group lead by a woman who has been a professor now for 2 years. I am going to have to work 60 hours a week on a regular basis- but it will be toward something that will get me a PhD. And that is the goal.

I feel a big sense of peace with this change because I trust my New Boss "Alice" where as I did not trust the old boss "Catfish." Catfish had the following priorities:

1. Complain about life in general, esp. about home repairs, graduate students, and other families in our 42 family town.

2. Sculpting: Ordering rocks and staying home from work to have them delivered, getting graduate students to make illegal copies of sculpting videos at the library, giving chemicals from the lab to the sculpting teacher, making a mess in the lab by mixing chemicals and rocks, talking about sculpting.

3. Making money by not actually doing anything: This is Catfish's secret obsession. He likes to talk about how he invested 1000 dollars in this start-up company that is one of his student's thesis projects. My thesis project had me doing experiments that had already been published in 2002! Why did I have to do them? Because he had a patent on this idea (which was a dumb idea which will never make him any money) and he was sure that if I did the work for it he could start a company and make a profit. Right. Forget about doing something because it is good science. Catfish only wants to use science in hopes of making himself rich. What else?

4. Playing Solitaire and Hearts on his laptop. You know how with Windows the start menu shows the recent programs used the most? Right, well every week for group meeting we hook up Catfish's computer to the projector and give him our power point presentations to show. He inevitably clicks on the Windows start menu icon... and the 2 most used programs on his laptop (his only work computer BTW) are ALWAYS Hearts an Solitaire. (the thing is- not only is he not working- how can any semi-intelligent person be entertained by those games!!! Right- Catfish is not intelligent.)

5. Telling graduate students that they need to buy research supplies with money from their paycheck. Awesome. Did I mention that it is HIS JOB to provide research funding for us? Oh yeah- Solitaire is way more stimulating that writing grants or publishing papers. What else is his job? helping his students get their research published in scientific papers. The last time one of his students published a paper containing original research was in 2005. In a few days it will be 2009.

Okay enough of that-- How did I get out? Well my old thesis project was based on this instrument and it was broken when I got it and continued to get worse. Catfish didn't think it was ever broken so it took a long time for me to convince him that we needed to fix it. And finally after trying to fix it for a semester- I realized that it wasn't fixable. The instrument I am talking about is a prototype that never made it to market. There are 5 of them in the world- and they are composed of many "made to order" parts. So... right... but Catfish has a patent (see #3 above) so when I told him that I needed a new thesis project because I couldn't fix the instrument- he said no. And I found a new thesis project in a different group. (A socially acceptable reason to get a divorce.)

In my new group, my new boss, Alice has a different set of priorities:
1. Get research done
2. Publish papers
3. Write grants
4. Stay on top of the current science literature

I think I will be happy in my new family.
Merry Christmas to me.


Recommended reading: Yes Masta, Youse a Good Masta

The Probability of Order

I haven't posted in a long time - mainly because I feel that my life experiencing some mild turbulence. I am so American because by "my life" I mean my working life. My home life is beautiful.

The turbulence is fine- I am not distressed about it. I am only being cautious as I move about the cabin and having my seat-belt buckled when I am seated.

My current experiences right now have got me wondering: Does everything happen for a reason?

Katu said, "Everything Happens For A Reason." (EHFAR)
I said, "I don't know if I believe that. I don't know if I believe in anything, even Science."

EHFAR got me thinking about Presbyterians and predestination. In college I was at a Bible study in the Methodist church and the preacher talked about how Evil exists in this world. Car accidents kill promising teenagers who haven't had a chance to realize their full potential. Everything does NOT happen for a reason. Some things are not of God.

Even if we remove God from this equation, Is there order in the universe? I now think that there is only a certain probability of order.

I am wondering about EHFAR because suddenly things seem to be falling into place. Actions I took in the past because I thought they were good things to do now have an unforeseen payoff.
This could be the probability of order swinging my way again. Or it could be the fact that humans have evolved to look for meaning in their own lives.

new horizons

I just booked a plane ticket to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I guess I'm freaking out a little. I have not done something like book a plane ticket somewhere since I went to Germany and that was a good five years ago (eegad, time flies).
The major reason I booked the flight in the first place is because I signed up to attend a visitor's weekend at the grad school I've been eyeing (and kind of salivating over). They offer travel scholarships, so I figure if all I end up paying to go to Iowa for four days is forty-five dollars, that's money well spent. Hell, if I were going expressly to take in the sprawling horizons of rolling wheat fields, forty-five dollars would be hard to beat. But considering that visiting this University will ultimately decide which direction I will lead my life in the next year and a half, forty-five dollars is coo-coo wacky craziness.
Granted, I suspect the trip will end up costing more than that, but the point I'm trying to make is, no matter what, it's worth it.
I'm not sure why the sudden urge to get things done came over me (though, I should note that the urge to apply to the University for the Fall of 2009 came upon me in a similar fashion). But I suspect it's because I was feeling like quite the downtrodden soul earlier today and this is my way of bouncing back with a vengeance, all Beatrix Kiddo like.

All Hail Snail Mail!

Once every five years our department goes under the scrutiny of the External Review Committee. This is a group of professors from other universities, six to be exact, three of which were from schools in California. Anyway, they come to our school for 3 days and talk to everyone from undergrads to accounting for our department. Basically, they talk to everyone and write up a report of suggestions to make our department better. It seems like a good system to me.

Anyway, I was asked to be part of the graduate student group. So I talked to these professors for an hour on Wednesday... And on Friday I wrote each of them a thank-you note on cards depicting my school's seal or an artist's rendition of a landmark associated with my school. I mailed them on Friday, too. That is a fast turn-around time for me, and I am proud of it.


One of the things I learned in my Women's group is that people love getting hand-written thank you notes. Especially if they are a professor that you just met and talked to a little bit. They probably thought nothing of the encounter when it happened, and then magically they get this nice hand-written note in the mail! And suddenly you become their new favorite person. So I get a big check mark this week under the title: NETWORKING.

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Therapy ended. I knew this was coming, I just didn't know how abruptly it would happen. Actually my last visit was April 30th. She told me we had 3 more weeks. But during my session on April 30th, her husband was at work on a 20 foot ladder. And he fell off of the ladder. 20 feet down. He fucked up his back and now he is paralyzed from the waist down. She left work. I was her last client. She hasn't been back in over 2 weeks now. She was getting phone calls during our session about her husband, but at the time she silenced them. It is a little creepy thinking about that now.

I am not taking my "lack of therapy" very well. I feel like I am in mourning. Like I lost one of the best things in my life. I lost my connection with the world beyond grad school. I lost my fake mom. That is why I made my list of positive things, to counteract the negative things in my head. I don't have much motivation. I am beginning to get scared of people. I am making myself start my day with 30 minutes of Elliptical. If I do that I have a good day. If I don't, I have a bad day.

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On a lighter note. My sister's birthday is this month.
I just made my Amazon purchase to be shipped to her house.
Her gift is the following:
1) I like you, by Amy Sedaris
2) Girls of Riyadh, by Rajaa Alsanea

Defeat and Moving Forward.

I surrender to you, bed bugs. You win. I've tried my best to kill you. I've been patient. I've tolerated having my possessions doused in chemicals. I even allowed toxic powder to be spread along my walls and bed frame. It seemed like the problem had been quelled for a while, but when my girlfriend started getting bites again, I learned that the tenants living on the floor above me weren't allowing the exterminators into their apartments. Unfortunately, toxic powder on my floors is no solution for mentally-challenged neighbors. So, I decided that if the people in my building want to cohabitate with bed bugs, I'm moving the hell out.

I haven't had a moment to breathe this past week. I've been recording the guitar parts for my band's new record every night in New Jersey after work. My schedule has been- wake up at 8am (at my girlfriend's house), go home to get ready for work, get to work around 10am, leave work around 7pm, take bus to New Jersey, arrive around 8pm, record until 12am, arrive back in Brooklyn around 1:30am, sleep, repeat. Somewhere amidst all of that, I managed to find a new apartment. This is my new bedroom (a wall of it at least):



I have no idea when I will find the time to actually move my stuff into this new place, but I am relieved to have found it. I signed the lease and got the keys this morning. It's a nice place, though significantly smaller than my previous apartment. It's a trade-off that I'm willing to make for no bed bugs and a shorter commute. My old place was a 12 minutes walk to the Graham L train, and this place is only 5 minutes (even shorter if I go to the Grand station). I have until June 1st to move out of my current place, so I should be alright.

Tomorrow, I'm flying to Lafayette for my sister's college graduation. I'm missing the actual ceremony, which is on Tuesday, but I don't think she really minds. Then, it's back to New York on Monday night, and.... who knows what's next.