Archived Posts: November, 2005

Thinking
I spend a lot of time in my head - daydreaming during seminars, making lists on my walks from the parking structure, drafting conversations - some that never happen - while I should be writing papers or explaining some semi-complex scientific thought. I've found that keeping some much of myself inside makes me fumble when I try to translate the thoughts to spoken or written words. Grad school, followed by my current post-doc, have made me even more self-involved. So I'm hoping that by reviewing some of my daydreams, lists and conversations, I'll learn something - maybe think a little less and do a little more.

Camden
I must have been distracted while taking pictures of early-morning London. Maybe I just got turned around – my sense of direction is notoriously poor. But for whatever reason, I walked for about an hour. I was suspicious that what had once appeared so near was taking so long to reach, but I decided to bask in the wonder of exploring somewhere new. Then I found myself gazing up at the British Telecom Tower, once again far north of where I had hoped to be. Farther north, as it turned out, than I had started that morning. Camden had somehow taken my carefully highlighted map and sucked me back into a place where there was little to see or do.

Hitting home
The problem, as I see it, is that we become used to our environment. Bad things happen, sometimes at great frequency, and in order to survive, we become immune to some of them so we can be happy in spite of the fact that circumstances sometimes suck. I think it's an admirable trait - this adaptability - to be content in a world that is so clearly less than ideal. But sometimes it makes us tune out some critical piece of information and we lose part of ourselves.

Continuing on...
For as much as I think about my decisions, I’m terrible at predicting my outcome and will endlessly obsess on rejected alternatives and how things would be different if I had understood myself better. So I’ll continue this - maybe with some vague hope that someone else might read it. If they do, maybe they’ll figure me out and offer some insight. If not, the worst case scenario is that I do it myself. And that still puts me ahead of where I currently am.

Science, academia, and hope
Disease, and the treatment thereof, is such a huge problem though. I think I get discouraged because I see how far we have to go. I remember being stuck in traffic with my mom on a trip to St. Louis to do some shopping. The arch looked so very far away, and I started to whine. So Mom continued to pick out little goals - we just wanted to get around this corner, then we just wanted to make it over the bridge, then over the hill, and eventually we had passed enough little markers that we reached the destination. I've never been good about seeing the little accomplishments though - I tend to notice how very far we seem from the arch and feel inadequate when I think about how quickly we should be trying to get there. I hear about people who are hoping for miracles, and I want to hurry. Sometimes there's just too much stuff in the way though, and you have to slow down. Going too fast, as satisfying as it is in the moment, can trick you into taking a bad detour. You have this idea, and it’s exciting and promising, but someone’s tried it already or there’s some fatal flaw. So we spend hours upon hours reading about what other people do – how they do it, their successes, their advice, implications for the field, possible problems. And some days all I see is suffering – patients with several alternatives, but none of them good. And it's frustrating to spend time reading the map when I'd rather speed toward something and hope I'm heading in the right direction.

On being single
Normally, before I go to bed, I think about the man I might marry. How he speaks, his priorities, education, experience, political opinions, appearance, sense of humor, whether he likes dogs or cats, if he wants to live in the city or somewhere more rural, his occupation and hobbies, his friends, how much he’ll like my family, how long we’ll date before he finds me irresistible and proposes, how he’ll kiss, how long he’ll want to wait before we make love, the books he wants to read, how it'll feel when we meet, whether he prefers college or professional football…

I am a statistic
So it was a struggle to get here, and it’s a different battle right now as I continue to grow. But I like to think the bulk of us represent good intentions. The final page of the survey contains a congratulatory statement from Dr. Carlson at NSF. Basically, she's saying that we have the potential to improve our world. And I think it's that hope that's critical - that somehow the training has provided us the means to make things better. So I'm wishing my many fellow graduates the very best of luck in initiating change, questioning current theories, and making something more clear, more effective or less painful.

Dream
But as soon as I had calmed myself and focused on the numbers above the doors that marked the progress of my ascent, the elevator would begin to tremble on it’s axis. While continuing to rise and spin, it began to flip end over end. The rotation in 2 directions created a path I was unable to predict. I sometimes traveled diagonally, sometimes upside down – but I was continually pulled in different directions. Unable to adjust, I was scared – out of control, unfamiliar with my ever-changing environment, and not at all sure I was still headed in the right overall direction. I would cling to the bar though. It gave me a way to remain slightly stable so while I was pulled in many directions, only my body was free to move. My head remained near the bar as I wrapped my arms around it to ensure I wouldn’t be torn loose.

Home
It’s dial-up here – no cable modems and wireless routers, so my laptop and I sit in the living room, isolated from the world, left with only my thoughts as I listen to nothing. I know of few places outside my parents’ house that pure silence can be found. When I was younger, family would visit with a telescope – there are no city lights to disturb your view of the stars. They found Venus once, but I couldn’t see it – I was either looking in the wrong place or not seeing what I expected to see. I had a friend who said I lived in the darkness outside of town – a place where the lights don’t reach, people never lock their doors, and you know to slow down near the curve in the road so you don’t hit the neighbors' dog. He likes to stand in the middle of the road, wagging his tail as you roll down the window to shoo him away.

Last day
I loaded the color printer with the thesis paper – soft, smooth and watermarked – elegant somehow in its off-white color and silky texture. The way the paper felt under my fingertips is one of the clearest memories. The way the printer slowly marked each page, unimpressed by my silent screams to hurry. Things take time – quality, whether in color images and bold text or in carefully scripted equations and centered tables, takes time – and as desperate as I was to finish, to just be done, the pages slowly floated into the tray, pausing momentarily between chapters.

Enough
I find definite answers to be the most reassuring. You’re done when the grass is all short and neat, the kitchen doesn’t need attention after the dishes are clean, counters disinfected and floor mopped. I have tasks – clearly defined and easy to understand – and I can do them, knowing with all certainty that I did well.

Research isn’t like that. Definitive endpoints are horrifically difficult to achieve. By nature, the community is critical and questioning – you should have designed the study without this confound; you could have used X’s method rather than Y’s and noted greater reproducibility; these results are flawed; this interpretation is more speculation than fact; your patient population is skewed and doesn’t represent the true status of those who suffer from this disease. There are always problems, and while some are due to inevitable mistakes and can be corrected, some issues are continuously present.

How to: research as an undergraduate
My dad took one of my new business cards when he visited last month. We were talking today and he asked for another since he had given it to someone at work. This colleague has a daughter who may be interested in entering my particular field of study, and Dad thought I might be able to offer some advice on how to prepare for, then get admitted to, graduate programs. My first thought was that she should gain some experience in a research environment. I didn’t have that opportunity as an undergraduate, so I did a summer program at a larger institution.

Weakness and wings
The lesson, I thought, was to stay in the nest until you were sure you were ready to leave. If you tried to fly too early, you might fall, and even the best of intentions from 2 young girls, an aquarium and an eye-dropper full of food couldn’t help you. It was another sign to be cautious, to be sure, to be careful.

Average
My nativity set, painted by Grandma, gently graces a coffee table by the front window. One of the camels is missing an ear, the paint was faded on the cow’s nose, and one of the wise men has been glued back together at his base. But they’re perfect – used to being stored in hot attics or small closets, but always unpacked and carefully placed somewhere special at Christmastime. I look around and see memories – some old, faded and a little chipped, others more vivid. So as I think about how I always placed all the animals in the manger with baby Jesus and left the people outside in the cold (they had heavy clothes on!), and see how bright the porch becomes when covered in tiny white lights, I feel comforted. These painted pieces of ceramic – Mr. and Mrs. Claus on my mantle, the tiny pink angels on my TV, Mary and Joseph on the bakers rack in the kitchen – are familiar, safe and representative of people I love.

Hello out there: some notes to visitors
I have, however, read over my paltry selection of archives and wonder how redundant one person can actually be. One of my huge problems with seminars and conferences and courses is that many educated people fall in love with hearing themselves talk. So enamored are we with having someone, anyone, listen to us, we tend to ramble on – thinking of countless ways to make the same point, when everyone understood what we were talking about within the first 2 minutes.

Paging the Resident
He called me back, but was in a meeting (so I felt badly for disturbing him when he was busy with something else). So we talked later that afternoon and agreed to meet tomorrow so I could get the file I needed. I’m supposed to page him when I have free time. Apparently his pager isn’t the beeping minion of evil that I have to carry around with me. Who knew? The lesson, and my original concept in writing this, is that it’s fine to bother people. For someone like me (don’t interrupt, don’t get in the way, be quiet and polite, show appreciation when people help you out, never make a negative impression), that’s difficult. It’s probably part of the reason I took a post-doc rather than one of the industry jobs I interviewed for. I need to gain more confidence. That wraps it up pretty neatly – I need to feel better about my skills, ideas and qualifications to be truly effective in a field in or out of academia.

How to: Interview after grad school
So you want to be a post-doc. Or more likely you can't get that faculty or industry job you've been eyeing and need to work somewhere. I happen to have a few talents, and one of them is interviewing. I have a lot of ideas for a post on the grad school admission process, but the post-doc/job interview process is more recent, so I'll do it first.