Minnesota Gift Baskets

A recent conversation with the boyfriend, not at all related to Minnesota Gift Baskets,

I say, "My brother sent me a video today."
"Like on UTube?"
"No, a video."
"Like in an e-mail?"
"No...a tape."

How quickly the old technology gets forgotten.

The first time I ever heard Bjork's song "Isobel" was on a telephone. The local paper had done a review of her album. Following the review was a small blurb, "If you'd like to hear a track from the new album, dial 503 555 1212." At that point, I hadn't yet heard of TMBG's "Dial A Song," but it was a similar idea. "Dial a song" is much different these days.

How quickly, indeed.

And yet, the really very old continues to be revered. An Australian website was recently launched, providing high school teachers with resources to discuss careers in science. The graphic design and writing style suggests that it might also be intended for a younger audience. Among other things, the site features Australian Nobel Prize winners:



To me, this is a corrollary to what I mentioned recently regarding the stock photo diversity poster. This line-up of white dudes in dated frocks is an equally unrealistic reflection of what science looks like. In high school, I was presented with similar line-ups, though Marie Curie was usually involved, and I always felt so far away from the excitement of scientific inquiry when faced with those grainy black and whites.

So what's the answer? You don't like the diversity poster. You don't like the Nobel Prize winners. What would make you happy?


A better alternative can actually be found at the same Australian website. There, we see a list of scientists, both men and women, ranging from biology to engineering, from geology to scientific journalist. I feel this is the most engaging part of the website, but I really wish it were expanded. Perhaps, I dunno, adding pictures of these real people would really brighten things up. It's so much easier for a kid--a potential member of the scientific community--to relate to a "Scott Burgess: ecologist" or "Suzanna Turk: engineer" than it is "Old white dude: Nobel Prize winner."

Time Travelling with Scrooge McDuck

So say the boyfriend,

I can't believe it's 11:25 am on a Saturday, and I'm already pissed off at the department today.

Okay. Let's back up.

I attend panels. I don't know why, because 90% of the time, the panels I've attended are less than mediocre. They are generally made up of four people with the exact same perspective. They are all the same because whomever was given the task of organizing the panel did so at the last minute. Moreover, the panel moderator doesn't moderate, and instead talks more than the panelists themselves. The result is a panel that answers 3 questions in 1 hour, and thanks for coming folks!

There have been one or two panels that have been really valuable. The panelists were caring, informed people with good ideas, and the panel was well-moderated. Maybe that's why I keep going. It's like the time I did a really awesome flip-turn in the pool. I keep trying to do flip turns, thinking back to that awesome one, but I usually just get water up my nose, and push myself into the floor of the pool.

Ow.

I'll be honest. My perfect panel would consist of multiple clones of myself that had made very different life choices and gone forward in time to live out the next 10 years of their lives. For the panel, they return from year 2017 to report back to me what they'd seen. I'd ask questions like,

"So, "fcsgs B," who decided to get married but stay childless. You now work at Carnegie Mellon. How are things for you? You published 10 papers this year? Wow! But, do you have enough time to do the things you want, like practice yoga and write your novel? Do you regret not having kids?"

"And you, "fcsgs A," who quit school, had two children by 36, and started a successful chain of self-serve dog washes in Seattle. Do you feel intellectually fulfilled? How do your children feel about your upcoming divorce?"

"How about you, "fcsgs C?" You are still single. You haven't published in two years because of all your teaching responsibilities at University of Portland. Are you hopeful that your sporadic research will make an impact on the field? Is it important to you to make such an impact? Did your shoulder ever get better?"

And for some reason, Alan Young of the original Time Machine would be there as moderator, entertaining us with his Scrooge McDuck voice acting.



Okay, I didn't say "ideal" was at all "realistic," so I keeping attending the panels of this world, hoping to catch a glimpse of my own future clones. I haven't found them yet. It's been a little wearying, really, not having anyone that I can talk to about this. It doesn't even have to be a clone. I'm just searching for someone with an open mind. Someone who doesn't want me to be just like them. For most people here, students and faculty, any mention of not applying to the Top 10 is received with scoffing. "Why wouldn't you?" Or, "At a small school, you'd be teaching all the time, you don't want that."

I don't?


In an effort to have a real conversation about this, I got a membership at MentorNet. It's a website bringing together people who are looking for mentors with people who would like to be mentors. I decided to be more proactive in looking for this magical person I've described. I decided to find that human being interested in mentoring, one who would give me advice about the small school vs. big school issue. A person who'd been through something other than working like a dog and making sweet love to the University of GradShitTownVille.

At MentorNet, members can configure their profile, including setting preferences for a mentor. The preferences are things like,

Field of Study
Education
Work Sector (e.g., private, government, university)
Gender
Alma Mater
Employer
Geographic Location
Ethnicity
Professional Memberships

My only preferences were "[Computer Science or Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering] + PhD + University." And MentorNet reported,

Unfortunately, there are no mentors that match with your preferences at this time.

Sigh. In fact, the only PhD's in MentorNet in my preferred field of study, are these five people that all work at Texas Instruments. I appreciate that they've volunteered, but I don't need to talk about industry, thank you.

Here at University of GradShitTownVille, there's been a lot of attention lately paid to graduate students getting academic jobs at the top schools. Perhaps by "attention" I should say "propaganda," which is honestly getting quite old. Recently, a "club" was started for students interested in academic jobs. I inquired with the club president that perhaps a panel would be of value. Perhaps a panel of people who could candidly discuss the pros and cons of working at the small liberal arts school versus the Big Top 10 University. The question was essentially ignored, translated into this defensive "Why not work at top 10?"

To these people, when I ask questions like that, I may as well ask, "Explain to me the benefits of breathing in and out, versus not breathing at all."

And so, with telling the boyfriend that whole story, comes that quote,

Mr. Loaf speaks for Dr. Moore

I've been in close touch with my brother lately. In part, because it's Valentine's Day, and we always send each other Valentine's cards. In part, because I know from Mom that he's having trouble with his girlfriend these days, and I thought he'd need the pick-me-up.

My brother and I have always been pretty close. We fought like rabid dogs after my parents got divorced, but once he hit 6 feet, it all worked itself out. Mainly, because I realized he'd seriously would kick my ass if I kept bugging him. Usually, when my brother and I are together, we make random allusions to stuff that happened to us as kids. For example, I sent him the following picture in my last e-mail to him.



He got a good laugh out of that. I won't go into the gory details of that one. Maybe another time.

Anyway, chatting so much with my brother makes me think of Meat Loaf, the singer/actor who appeared in award-winning films such as "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and "Fight Club."

His name was Robert Paulson.

The year that Meat Loaf released his "Bat Out of Hell II" album was the same year my mother married her third husband. My mom's third husband wasn't a particularly nice guy, so my brother and I were usually holed up in my brother's bedroom. He had a TV and Super Nintendo in his room, so many hours were spent playing Super Mario Kart and listening to music.

For Christmas of 1993, my brother and I each got our own copy of the "Bat Out of Hell II" cassette, though I think what actually happened was that my brother got two copies and gave one to me. Or that's what happened with the Cake album. Hell, I don't really remember. Anyway, "Bat Out of Hell II" was the album that had the 12 minute song, "I Would Do Anything For Love, But I Won't Do That." The joke between my brother and I was always, "Do What Meat Loaf? What won't you do?" Though, I think everyone in America made that joke.

I'm trying to write a workshop paper right now (with 1 week's notice) and with all this thinking about my brother, it seemed like the "Bat Out of Hell II" was just the right album for working like I'm on fire. Lots of bad-ass rock ballads about Rock & Roll, wasted youth, bad sex, cheerleaders, and motorcycles. If that isn't inspiration for a crappy workshop paper, then I dunno what.

The lyrics for the songs on this album are freakin' great. For example, in his "Life Is A Lemon, and I Want My Money Back," Meat Loaf declares,

What about your school?
Its defective!
Its a pack of useless lies

What about your work?
Its defective!
Its a crock and then you die

True genius.

Jim Steinman wrote the lyrics to the songs on this album, as well as to some of the mega-hits from 80's goddess Bonnie Tyler, but damnit it's Meat Loaf who knows how to deliver.

For the past few days, I've been reading a really well-written and informative research paper written by Moore and Boyer in 1985. It tells the story of integrating a linear decision procedure into a theorem prover. Moore and Boyer do two things right with this paper. First, they do a good job of raising general issues of system integration, using their case study as a motivating example. Second, they write the paper in a tone that's entertaining to read. It's like I'm having a coffee with Moore, and he's just telling me about his adventures with a particular theorem prover. And sometimes, they've got a little bit of snark that is so professionally delivered,

Readers troubled by our selection of such a simple and old-fashioned decision procedure are invited to reflect upon the fact that an instantaneous oracle for deciding linear arithmetic problems like those above would increase the speed of our theorem prover on typical program verification problems by less than 3%.

Admittedly, I'd like to see a research paper written by Meat Loaf. The above passage from Boyer and Moore, if written by Meat Loaf, may be something like,

Readers who think we ought to be fast,
Have got a hell of a lot to learn,
And can shove it up their ass.

Art of Explaining

At the physical therapist today. With my shoulder, I have "achey days" and "okay days." I've tried to describe what "aches" to the therapist, but it's hard. There's no pinpoint of pain. The explanation is simply, "My whole arm hurts."

Until today, I'd say, "My arm hurts," and she'd associate it with the pain in the tricep that is usually associated with the rotator cuff muscle injury. I'm not good at explaining body parts, so it makes total sense that's what she heard. Today, though, I was lucky. I'd had a horribly achey day, and with all the pain sensations shooting through my arm, I was able to more articulate what was happening.

I said, "I've been really achey. I've had this burning pain in my bicep."
She replied, with furrowed brow, "Bicep?"
"Yeah, and, well, sometimes, it hurts in my elbow."
"Elbow?"

She immediately got to work, kneading and feeling and trying to figure out what I was talking about, for, as I discovered today, the bicep and elbow have nothing to do with the rotator cuff. She found what felt like a frozen pea deep in my bicep, and another at the top of my armpit. She also found what is typically called "tennis elbow."

She asked, "Is that tender?"
I replied, using the technical terminology learned from my ancestors, "Like a son of a bitch!"

With the discovery of these other muscle injuries, it's clear there's lots of work ahead of us. However, on a more positive note, since muscles are vascular systems, they are a lot more responsive than dried up, yucky tendons. With today's breakthrough, I'm more hopeful about my shoulder, erm, arm. More than ever, I feel it's possible that I might be doing a real "Stick" in my Sun Salutation (see Step 6) sometime again soon.

The lesson that I hope readers get from this is TAKE CARE TO AVOID REPETITIVE STRESS INJURIES. I've been sitting in front of a computer for over 10 years, and only now have I spent the money for the right chair, the right keyboard, and the right mouse. What's $200 now compared to hundreds and hundreds in medical bills later?

But this also points to a bigger challenge I've been facing lately. I can't seem to get my ideas across to people. I feel like I've lost my vocabulary, and I can only see the pictures in my head of how I understand a topic, with little access to the words that go with the pictures. This has been especially challenging in recent meetings with people who are more mathematically inclined than myself, and my inability to say things with precision just generates more furrowed brows. But, in this charged environment where people constantly interrupt each other, it's hard to be able to pause and reflect on the right phrase to convey an important research idea. I can't blame the enviroment entirely. I need to be more patient with myself, and more assertive with others. If my audience doesn't understand an idea the first time, I need to ignore my rather irrational embarassment, and just explain it again a different way.

Depress, Unimpress, Cold Compress

I'm trying to figure out the word to use when one's esteem of another decreases. For example, I previously felt neutral about someone, and now I consider them to be a liar. Is that "to unimpress?" To unimpress suggests that I was not impressed by them, but it does not seem to suggest that my esteem of them has decreased. Is it "depress?" I mean, I'm certainly familiar with depression, but this isn't it.

I recently discovered that a faculty here at GradShitTownVille plagarized really quite heavily on a tech report he wrote just a few years ago. I'd actually looked up his tech report on a subject to get a second explanation of a particular topic. Instead, I realized he'd simply copied the first explanation I'd already read. And by "heavily plagarized," I mean that there are whole paragraphs that have been copied, with just a little editing.

Let's say that the topic is...ponies.

Original work:

"The simple pony barn addresses the general problem of trying to house a pony in a discrete and controlled edifice that is governed by the linear stochastic difference equation..."

Tech report:

"The pony shed addresses the general problem of trying to house a pony in a discrete and controlled edifice that is goverened by the linear stochastic difference equation...."

*Totally* different. I know.

So far, what I've learned about being a "top" professor is that you have to:

1. Befriend graduate students to get your name on a paper for which you did absolutely no work.

2. Write research papers about the research your student has conducted, but without listing the student's name on the paper.

3. Heavily plagarize.

Sadly, I don't think I'm "top" material. These days, the following is looking good as a potential employer.

Still, browing over the thesaurus doesn't give me good verbs for the act of "lowering one's esteem of someone else." Any suggestions?

Brand New Doofer, Regina Spektor, and Cheerleaders + Math

The house adjacent to mine is a little green house with a long gravel driveway. A man named "Terry" owns it, and he rents the rooms out to people; usually single men in their forties. The turn-around rate is pretty high. Terry is working on a project; singing the whole bible in the garden shed behind his house that he calls his "studio." Terry asks me about my relationship with the lord. One time Terry dug a trench in his yard using a hand drill and an auger bit. I try to ignore him.

My dad helped me move to GradShitTownVille. We drove across the states from Oregon. The second day we were here, Dad had already dubbed Terry as "The Doofer." So, my neighbors are the "Doofers" and the leader of the Doofers is Terry Doofer. With Terry renting out his place to so many Doofers, it's hard to keep track. There was Dan the Taxi driver and the "Indian guy" who needed a place for two months before he graduated. There was "Glasses guy" who didn't appear to have a job, but smoked all the time on the porch. There was "Frank-That-Worked-At-Kraft," who liked to "help" me but usually just caused more problems. Like I said, hard to keep track.

A new Doofer moved in today. He brought his few belongings in a rented U-Haul van. I'll wait for a few days before I name him. He might be one that stays for a while, and I don't want to just name him willy-nilly.

* * *

I [heart] the new Regina Spektor album. I had her previous album, "Soviet Kitsch," but lost it when my last laptop died. Damn you iTunes. I *wanted* to like her previous album, but it was too grating, too weird. Though, "Ode to Divorce" was a particular favorite. This new album, called "Begin to Hope," has a smoother feel. Some of the tracks are silly and fun, and some, especially "Lady," has some definite blues influence, particularly from Billie Holiday.

* * *

This note from an old friend who reads the blog. The edits are mine:

I just wanted to let me know that you have corrupted enlightened me in at least one way.

I was watching Heroes, when the pretty, popular, blonde cheerleader met her real mother, an also attractive, 30 something, blond woman, for the first time, the first thing that they estabilished as their common ground was that math is hard!

I was immediately annoyed and thought of how you would like that. I wanted to write an email to the show thanking them for perpetuating the stereotype and telling all the girls out there that even if you have the ability to regenerate any injury and are otherwise a pretty smart character, math is still hard and too much for your
pretty little head to handle. Just stick to cheerleading and looking good while pulling large pieces of metal from your chest after you jump off a building.

Old friends are my favorite.

Die-Khat-Oh-Me

I am dang jealous of the boyfriend today. He's been in Seattle the past couple of days, interviewing with Bbbbilll! We spoke on the phone tonight, talked about how his interview went, his $24 shopping spree at REI, and his Baja Fresh intake. His most interesting comment about the interview was,

"It was strange to me that whenever I talked to a man, I was talking to a researcher. Whenever I talked to a woman, she was a non-researcher."

That wasn't a comment on his attitude towards women in science, it was what actually took place. Only the recruiter and the HR rep. were women. The five or six people that interviewed him were all men.

It's too bad that Microsoft appears to suffer the same problems of diversity that many universities around the country do. Though, if you look at websites alone, you'd think there were women EVERYWHERE. I do appreciate what academic institutions are trying to do with these photographs, but it really seems quite contrived. For example, the following picture has a diverse group of people doing something obviously technical,



I have an engineering degree, but I have no idea what they are looking at. Moreover, I wish someone would just give that girl a step-ladder. I can see the thought-bubble above her head, "Almost....allllmoosst."

Other pictures seem less contrived, like this one of a woman in a clean room. Though, I don't think visual inspection alone can pass a silicon wafer out of quality control.



MIT seems the most honest with this photo from a recent EE freshman orientation,



Still, I'm always quite suspicious of these pictures, no matter how realistic they are supposed to seem.

Why do you always have to be so paranoid?


Sigh, you again? Well, for the past two years, there have been some "Diversity Posters" hanging around the hallways of my building. It's a photo montage of about 6 people; including a Latino man, a couple of African American woman, and this other woman who looks like she could be Rene Russo.

Can't you just be happy that there are female icons in your building, even if only in paper form? The department is trying to make an effort!


That's just it. The women in that particular poster are just icons. I realized this one day when I was visiting the Planned Parenthood website. One of the African American women depicted in the "Diversity Poster" was also in the photo montage on the P.P. homepage. Either this woman is a high-profile computer scientist AND birth control pill user or ...

Damn you, stock photography!

Can't even find enough "real" female computer scientists to make a stupid poster?

Alanis Morissette, voice of the graduate student

Many of my life's milestones have taken place in the desert. My mother took my brother and I to the desert for our first post-divorce vacation. I witnessed my grandmother's burial in the desert. I travelled to the desert to say goodbye to the leave behind the girl who dated that awful jerk, and hello to the woman who would become this graduate student. My most recent trip to the desert was five years ago, to visit my auntie in Las Vegas. I had just bought Alanis Morissette's "Under Rug Swept" album. I listened to it on my portable CD player as I walked the neighborhood streets, in a time that did not yet know the iPod.

Back then, Alanis songs always represented to me some unresolved anger at some stupid boy that had treated me badly. I know all the words to each song assigned to these boys. These days, thanks to having a decent boyfriend who doesn't call me bitch and who does his own dishes, I've not really listened to her albums as regularly. Today, I got out the "Under Rug Swept" album. It's been a bad 10 days, and I needed something for a structured screaming exercise. Upon track 2, I suddenly wondered if Alanis had ever been to graduate school. With all my frustrating faculty issues lately, it didn't seem appropriate anymore to think of old boyfriends when I hear lyrics like these:

The faculty members who won't let me finish my sentences:

Dear narcissus boy I know you've never really apologized for anything
I know you've never really taken responsibility
I know you've never really listened to a woman

Dear me-show boy I know you're not really into conflict resolution
Or seeing both sides of every equation
Or having an uninterrupted conversation

The faculty member who did that not-so-appropriate thing:

We'll fast forward to a few years later
And no one knows except the both of us
And I have honored your request for silence
And you've washed your hands clean of this

The faculty member who turned me away for advising:

Wait a minute man
You mispronounced my name
You didn't wait for all the information
Before you turned me away
Wait a minute sir
You kind of hurt my feelings
You seek me as a sweet back-loaded puppet
And you've got a meal ticket tast.

Weird.

I got a lot of "grrr" in me right now, in part due to the 12 hours of meetings I had last week. 12!?@#$What the$#@!? I'm trying to keep perspective, but it's tough, as I feel I've hit a local minimum with my research. My advisor is unhappy with my progress and wants to shut down my project. Grrr. Right now, I'm trying to recollect and try a new strategy to get him to listen to me. Without. Interrupting.

Still, I'm learning more and more. I've noticed that there are fewer and fewer things that folks say that sound like alien language, which is great progress for a EE in CS. Even the formal methods boyfriend hasn't stumped me for a while. That's something...right?

* * *

To keep things light-hearted, I'll end with a good boyfriend story.

These past couple of weeks it's been dang cold in GradShitTownVille. I whine about the cold at least three times a day. I thaw myself in the bathtub every night. I take heat-cuts through three buildings on my way to lunch. During one of my whiny moments, the boyfriend said,

"Whaddya mean it's cold? It's 261 Kelvin!"

Pile of Wood

Suzuki-san travelled far to meet Koke-sensei, to learn the ways of stacking wood. She had heard the stories of the great wood stackers, their intricate patterns and their bright intelligence, and she wanted to follow in that path. Upon meeting Koke-sensei at the School of Wood Stacking, he said,

"All you must do," as he pointed to 100 logs, "is stack that wood."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she was able to stack 40 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before her.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "No longer does that wood interest me." He pointed to another pile of 100 logs, and said, "You must now stack this wood."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she was able to stack 80 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before her.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "We have a new student Suzuki-san. Please help Yamamoto-san with his stack."

For two years she worked at stacking the wood, helping and mentoring Yamamoto-san. Without any instruction, only studying the wood stacks that sprinkled the grove of the School of Wood Stacking, she and Yamamoto were able to stack all 100 logs in a precise manner, as the woodstackers before them. With all 100 completed in the stack, she was very joyful, ready to graduate from the School of Wood Stacking.

Koke-sensei approached and said, "Good Yamamoto-san. You may go." He turned to Suzuki-san and asked, "And what of your stack?"


And that, Mr. Clock, is why it takes so long.

This Blog's Been Such a Downer Lately

I've noticed this blog's been kind of a downer lately. People dying of cancer, moldy carrots, and identity crises. So, for a change of pace, I'd thought I'd blog a bit about the mundane day-to-day, to show that my life isn't all tears and trauma; because honestly, it's really not.

Three nights ago, I was laying in bed, writing up a presentation for a course I'm taking. The boyfriend came to bed, and I started zipping up my laptop in its case. He asked, "Time for sleeping?" I replied, "Nah, I gotta poop." He saw I was looking for a catalog to flip through, and he asked, "Is this going to be a 'Number 5?'" [I've been known for some fantastic craps.] I said, "Nah, just a regular number 2."

Three days ago I attended a talk by a woman from a tiny little college. Her talk was great, and afterwards I told her so. I told her, "I'm so used to the top 'distinguished lecturers.' They aren't at all good at giving speeches. Your talk was fantastic and your work is really interesting!" Her talk was especially engaging, because while she spoke about Markov chains and stochastic processes, she still connected her research to pop culture and recent events.

Two days ago I attended another talk by a guy from a big university. Lucky for me, his talk was also quite good, and I was pleased with getting two good talks in two days. He made some analogies to connect the audience with his work; and I was very pleased he didn't use stupid sports analogies. He was talking about a best-fit algorithm, and he said, "Who here is married? Well, for those of you still looking for the perfect mate, I'm sure you have that list of qualities you want from your mate. Maybe you want a blond, but she's a brunette but a great woman otherwise. Maybe you want a guy whose over six feet. He's great, but only stands at 5-11." At that point, I looked around and noted the male-to-female ratio was 40:1.

Today I had a radio show. I'm a DJ at the local community show, and in addition to my "World Music" show, I help out with a Sunday show from time to time. For the first time in a while, I had a great time. The music was great, I featured some local artists who'll be playing in town next week, and my announcing voice was smooth and sexy. Hopefully I can keep it up next week during my regular gig. If you're interested, check out the following folks:

Amelia. My favorite band out of Portland, it grey smooth sound evokes visions of rain clouds.

Martha Berner. Out of Chicago, "Down and Out in San Francisco" is my favorite from her recent Indie-Folk-Rock album "Ten Tiny Little Pieces."

Katie Herzig. Currently living in Nashville, she's recently produced her own album "Weightless" which is gutsy, soft, and poetic.

Sally Spring. A musician whose been around 30 years, played with the Monkees, and has a new rock-folk album featuring Glen Parsons and Marshall Crenshaw.

Kristin Diable. A New Yorker via Louisiana whose music is rooted in blues, folk and soul.

Rose Polezani. Said to evoke "early Liz Fair or Edie Brickell."

Persephone's Bees. Russian singer/songwriter Angelina Moysov, influenced by Russian Gypsy music and British Punk.

The Moldy Carrot

Folks may not be aware that I'm currently on week three of physical therapy for a shoulder injury that I've been carrying around for about a decade. My New Year's resolution is to get it back to health. My therapist originally diagnosed it as two rotator cuff muscle injuries, but today she said, "Let me try something." She mooshed around the shoulder joint a bit and said, "There, does that hurt?"

yes!

Turns out, I have three, THREE, muscle injuries, ah ah. The therapy has been slow going, and I've been incredibly grumpy these past few days from my achy shoulder. Still, I did carry this injury around for ten years, so it's quite clear I have a high threshold for pain.

so that's not the only reason you are grumpy?

Gee. What insight.

I've been trying to figure out ways to work more productively. I recently read the book, "How to Organize and Your Work and Your Life." Overall, the book is okay, and can be scanned in one sitting. The exercises at the beginning, however, are really what motivate the reader to hurry up and get organized. In one such exercise, the reader is asked to write down everything she wants to accomplish in her life. Here's my list, in the order that the goals popped into my head:

live abroad; visit to New York; see the Atlantic; attend an Indian wedding; meet Nancy Leveson; graduate; obtain tenure; publish a novel; help my parents improve financially; backpack in New Zealand; have a happy, fulfilling partnership; donate a large sum of money to a good cause; work somewhere with a critical-mass of women and underrepresented minorities; bake a Pastel de Tres Leches; visit Mexico; live in a 'green' house; live in a big city; return to Tokyo; 'perform' in front of a large audience; bike a large distance; foster a child; hike a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail; do 5 pull-ups; like myself and my body; learn to ride a motorcycle.

Hm. Nowhere on this list do I see, "Win Best Paper Award" or "Write Outstanding Thesis" or "Work at Top-10 University."

I recently visited a fellow academic diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer. She's gone bald from the chemo, and is facing her upcoming surgery. I asked her what she does during the day, and she replied, "I spend time with my son. I don't care about papers or proposals anymore." She also reports that her old colleagues have all been rather cold. Just like Penelope Leech in Status Anxiety, her view of work has changed dramatically. No longer is it a source of fulfillment, but rather a task in which one does as little as possible in order to do the things one really wants.

Lately, I've been wrestling with my own career path. Cutsy teaching school or top 10 university. Unlike many of my fellow grad students, I don't get much fulfillment out of the work that I do. To me, it's just work. There are days that I have to trick myself into being even vaguely interested in Kalman Filters or NSF.

All the cards are before me. The list of life goals, how moved I was by my fellow acadmic spending time with her son, and my ambivalence towards things computer science. One might think that would put me in a good mood. I'm a planner, and I derive joy in knowing the next step. But I still have a ways to go in the PhD. "10 papers in three years" says the advisor.

What the organizing book seems to presume is that completing individual tasks and acheiving particular goals will fuel one's energy towards more tasks and more goals. But it seems there are some other, underlying carrots as well. Do a good job on the report, and the boss gives you a raise. Finish the review on time, and you'll be in line for the next promotion. The PhD offers very few carrots such as this. For me, it's been the same carrot that it's been for the past five years.

graduation...

I don't get raises. I don't get promotions. It's just the same shit year after year. Admittedly, the carrot is getting moldy, and I am really having trouble even wanting the carrot anymore.

And so, all that there is why I'm grumpy.

For now, I will go and enjoy the Posole I made for dinner, and try to focus on the joy of the moment.

Don’t pout, your face will freeze that way and then you’ll be sorry

Thinking back to my childhood, I can't remember if my mother ever told me that my face would "freeze that way" when I was pouting or grumpy. My mother had more memorable sayings like, "gahdamsonnuvabich" or "he's so dumb, he couldn't pour piss out of a boot." I'm sure I heard from television how my face could freeze into a permanent frown, or perhaps it was just one of those sayings that I absorbed one time when I went to McDonald's for lunch. However I managed to hear it, I've been thinking a lot about it. I've not been thinking about it in terms of lying to kids to get them to do what you want, but rather in terms of permanent changes from temporary behaviors.

I mentioned before that it's qual time here in GradShitTownVille. For those that have an oral qual, I tell people that in order to succeed one either has to *be* cocky, or be able to *fake* being cocky. Professors here are like a big litter of puppies; they'll maul the one that's not like them. If you can't exude that particular flavor of confidence--which, by the way, smells a bit like rotten orange peels--then you may be packing out of here with a masters degree, heading west for Google to make a fantastic wage. Poor you.

Personally, I'm not particularly cocky. I don't like to remind people of how much I know or how awesome I am. In fact, I maintain that I'm probably the dumbest asshole in my whole department. The good part is that I can at least *fake* being cocky and confident, smelling like rotten orange peels just like the rest of them. I'm a hermit crab, entering an abandoned seashell to protect my soft belly just long enough to last through a presentation, a conference, or a conversation with a faculty member.

I treat the faux confidence like a temporary shell because there are places in life where it does me absolutely no good. A yoga session, for instance, is not about knowing the poses better than everyone else. It's not about being a rock star. It's not about competition at all, in fact. It's about keeping an open mind, being able to observe how my body is responding to the pigeon pose: which, by the way, is sometimes just "Ow" instead of "Om."

I've seen graduate students here enter a similar hermit shell, but never come out. They've evolved from that cute and determined undergraduate who just wanted to teach, to a younger version of their workaholic advisor, working on a proposal the night his baby is born; all to be the next rock star in wireless ad-hoc networks using resource slicing to provide channel isolation. Or whatever. Basically, their faces froze.

I'd be fooling myself to think that I, too, haven't been changed by this place. I'm quieter now; less willing to talk. I'm more selfish with my time, unwilling to give any random request for help an unhesitant "yes." Perhaps those are good things. Hard to believe that I used to talk more than I do, and I'm more sane now that I'm working on my writing rather than helping some Tom, Dick or Harry move.

There has been some damage, too. I remember coming for the PhD just to be another fantastic professor at the little Catholic school on the Bluff. Anymore, I don't know what I what I want to be when I grow up. I cannot divide the messages I get about "Top 10 This" and "Top 10 That" from the things that I think will make me happy. Yes, I'm a clinically diagnosed workaholic. Yes, I want to do the best job possible. But can't I do that at a place where it's okay if I knit an hour every evening? Or where the choice is not "kids OR tenure?"

Hard to say.

All I know is that I'm done with that proposal, and I can get back to working on the things that will actually get me outta heeere.

My favorite moment during my two-week break in Portland

Eating dinner with good friends Mr. and Mrs. Clock. Making small talk. Chatting and joking and enjoying the company of nice people. And Mr. Clock asks,

"So, when are you going to be done."

And Mrs. Clock, who has obviously seen this post, lunges across the table with her best mom finger and says,

"Don't you DARE ask her that."

Dang. Really wish I could have had her as my body guard all during my break.

The Screen Door Slams

We begin with a dream sequence. It's 8:30 am on a Monday, and I'm currently oversleeping, risking being tardy for a meeting. My subconscious knows I'm taking risks, and because it would much rather sleep, I begin to dream that I'm in my meeting with Moira and a professor. I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, meeting with exactly whom I'm supposed to meet.

Professor: Well?
Me: Ah yes, of course.

[I reach for my bag and pull out two $50 gift certificates for the coffee shop where we're meeting. The gift certificates are beautiful. Printed on 60lb paper with script handwriting, subtle rainbow security background, and a small hologram. Nothing like in real life.]

Professor: Thank you.

[And she begins looking at the gift certificates, which have since become a pamphlet for birth control. She turns to the page describing Ortho Evra, the patch that has long been removed from the market due to health issues. The professor points at the page, making a sound of disgust.]

Professor: Tsch.
Moira: I know. Bananas and water.

[And as I nod my head in dreamy agreement about how 'bananas and water' the patch was when I was using it, I start to realize that I'm not in my meeting after all and I really need to]

Wake up, only to find I've started my period. And I realize quickly it's going to be that two-tampons-at-once sort of day.

* * *
Three days later, and it's 4:00 pm and I'm sitting in my pajamas listening to Bruce Springstein, stifling back tears of absolute frustration. I'm trying to finish an NSF proposal I'm preparing. The professors, including my advisor, are all out of the country, and I'm suddenly a post-doc/secretary. It's one of those things where I'm proud to have been asked, but I realize the small damage it's doing to me. The proposal is due three days after a paper deadline I should have submitted to, but just couldn't put enough energy into writing them both at the same time, AND get a real Christmas visit with my family. I made the choice to spend time with my parents over the break, rather than in a coffee shop basking in the glow of the iBook. And so, my prelim is postponed yet again, but I'll have the experience of an NSF proposal. One of those, "Better that I did it, now I know better, but I wish I hadn't" sort of things. Like donating eggs, smelling a freshly-cut durian, or going skiing (and falling out of the lift).

* * *

My friend is about to take the qual. She studies 23.5 hours a day, and talks about it all the time. She talks about quitting and failing, like qualers do. Like I did. Of course I do not envy the stress she's going through. But, in a way, I envy very much the constant progress she's making towards a concrete goal. I think my current tears of frustration are coming from working dilligently, and getting nowhere, an old chevy, without a differential, stuck in the mud. It's a funny scene in "My Cousin Vinny," but not at all in the Ph.D.

It's all so just bananas and water.

6 scenes from three weeks

11/24/06. In which our heroine watches through tired eyes as her dog begins to stand again.

11/27/06. In which our heroine, presented with grave news about a friend, questions the value of spending 70% of her waking hours working on research and obtaining a doctoral degree. She goes to hug her dog, still dizzy from vestibular disease.

11/28/06. In which our heronie's lower back is pleased to see the dog able to get up and down the stairs again.

12/6/06. In which our heroine walks along the beach of some exotic location after making only a mediocre presentation at a conference to a room full of male peers.

12/9/06. In which our heroine, pressured for time, edits an NSF proposal on an overnight flight from South America.

12/12/06. In which our heroine, buggy on cold medicine, sketches a blog post and prepares to head west for Oregon. Despite the piles of work and sinus congestion, she smiles inwardly knowing she'll be visiting beloved friends and family very soon.

The Pooh Glasses

I admit to having a Winnie-the-Pooh phase in my younger years. I'll even admit to not really being out of the Winnie-the-Pooh phase, although the stuffed animals are in a box in the attic. And my father, usually desperate for ideas for holiday gifts, one year gave me the set of Welches Winnie-the-Pooh jelly glasses. Empty glasses. I can still hear him yelling at me, "You know how much jelly I had to eat for those!!"

I actually like the holidays. Our family, when we were whole and young, were always in our best form during the holidays. Aunt Celia hosted the Thanksgiving dinner in Portland, and on the drive there I was on the look-out for Ruldoph along the I-5 corridor. My brother and I played pool with our dorky cousin, and we tried to understand the intricacies of the pachinko game in the basement.

Christmas, too, was always very special in an Inspector Gadget sort of way, with my parents trying to keep my brother in the dark about what he was getting. One year, he systematically opened all his presents, and then rewrapped them. I watched in horror, the same feeling I have when I watch old CSI episodes late at night; the good doctor performing an autopsy. The following year, Mom didn't label any of the gifts, and then couldn't remember what was what. That was the year that my brother got a t-shirt with rainbow hearts and I got blue parachute pants.

My parents divorced in 1985. Aunt Celia died at 38 in November 1994, just two weeks before Thanksgiving. The holidays are more divergent now, but they aren't any less whole. These days, the holidays mean I get to wean myself off my asthma medication and hop on a plane for the cleaner, happier west coast. I get to see friends and family I don't normally get to see anymore. I get to wear a gortex jacket instead of four layers of wool, and I get to ride the light-rail, go shopping and dancing and hiking, and do all the things that make me feel like a whole person, rather than an underpaid research machine. This year in particular will be fun because I'll get to see two of my best friends in full pregnant form. And since they are my skinny friends, I will smile inwardly, knowing for a few months at least, I won't be "The Fat One."

Where was I?

Ah.

The complete set of Winnie-the-Pooh glasses are with me here in GradShitTownVille, reserved for very special occasions. This evening, while shopping for ingredients for a chocolate pecan pie, I came across one of the greatest things about the holiday season:

The nog.

Ah yes, my love for egg nog is freakish and horrible, and I've been known to splash a bit of the nog on my cereal in the mornings. This year my concern was that my love for nog would conflict with my new-found hatred of corn syrup. But no worries, the local store was clever enough to carry Horizon Low Fat Egg Nog, ingredients including egg yolks and tumeric (for color), but definitely no corn syrup. But this first glass of nog to bring in the new year isn't served in a Pooh glass. The Pooh glass is too reserved, too oppressive for that first gulp of thick, yellow heaven. This evening, in a 9 oz Gibraltar Tumbler, I marked the begining of the holiday season. The dizzy dog, snuggled in her blanket, munched on rawhide in happy approval. And with the first glass down, I ready the Pooh glasses for many future deposits on my arterial walls.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Let us raise our Pooh glasses and toast to all for which we are thankful.

Good Dog.

I have a dog. She's twelve years old. I adopted her when she was four at the Oregon Humane Society in Portland. She's a good dog. She's very laid back and behaves more like a big cat, except when presented with a leash. Then she looks like she jumps around like she's moshing at a Kiss concert. She's been with me through three jobs, two houses, three boyfriends, and has walked thousands of miles with me.

Once, late in our relationship, I said to the boyfriend, "I love you more than the dog." He said, incredulously, "Really?" I thought a little more about it, and replied, "No, not really."

So, when the dog gets sick, my world stops.

This morning, I was eating my breakfast toast when the dog stumbled into the kitchen
like she was drunk. Her legs were moving without any coordination, and she kept falling to the left. Her eyes weren't tracking. Her head was bobbing like a blind musician. I called the vet, and we headed for the car. She was alert enough to understand we were going somewhere, but she couldn't walk, so I carried her. She stumbled into the front seat of the truck and crash-landed against the steering wheel, which was funny even though I was a little panicked. My attempts to stay calm were interleaved with the assumption that the dog was going to die. All this, just three days after I'd reminded her of the "You cannot die when I'm in graduate school" speech.

Twenty minutes later, we both stumbled into the vet's office, with me trying to carry her, and
the dog trying to walk.

This is the same vet that diagnosed her heartworm when we first moved her, which helped me find some meaning to moving to this place. Her old Portland vet never tested her for heartworm. If we hadn't moved to GradShitTownVille, she wouldn't have been tested early, and she probably would have died.

After today's prompt examination, the vet said her condition is very likely explained by Vestibular Disease. It's basically "Old Dog Vertigo." This is caused either by an inner-ear or middle-ear infection (or a brain tumor). He is treating her with antibiotics, which may or may not help. What she needs now is to be still and quiet in a well lit room, and we'll hope for recovery in 7-10 days.

This dog is a true bad-ass. She's had cancer, knee surgery, heartworm, and currently has arthritis. All that, and she still leaps for joy when we go for a walk, but we probably won't be going for a walk for a few days. Nonetheless, we know how to handle these kinds of situtations. We'll get out the old ramp, create the towel pully system, and prepare for a little lower back pain (for me, not the dog). She's sleeping quietly on her favorite rug now, the same rug she always throws up on when she's sick. She gets up from time to time and tries to walk, stumbling to the left. She's still quite interested in petting and food.

I'm looking forward to an exciting weekend of vomiting and doing the odd little dance required for helping the dog outside to the bathroom. Right now, I crack up a little whenever she cocks her head to the left, and then I kind of cry a little.

Room for Rent

Looking over the GradShitTownVille newspaper to find the Sudoku puzzle, I saw an ad that said,

Room for rent in Artist's home. $225 per month. 555-1234

I paused a moment, and tried to remember how many times I've seen such an ad. Quite a few, really, but then I'm from the West Coast. The phrase "artists's home" is inviting, I suppose. I think of backdrops in movies; those very well-lit, airy lofts with maple floors and high ceilings. There's original art on the walls, a pottery wheel in the living room, and in the background, Demi and Patrick are making out. I doubt that this is what the ad's "room" looks like, but that's what comes to mind.

I also realized that you hardly ever see the following ad,

Room for rent in Scientist's house. $225 per month. 555-1234

What would this room look like? Would there be test tube racks and nested beakers everywhere? Posters of Professor Honeydew and Albert Einstein? Maybe an intriguing, gigantic boiler in the basement? Odd.

Anyway, it's something to think about, because these days my brain is stuck in a rut. The boyfriend is out of the country for a few weeks, and I've entered what I call "Hamster on the wheel" mode. The only thing that occurs to me to do is workout or work. I'm never sure why I go into this mode when he's gone, except to perhaps admit that I'm a raging workaholic. The boyfriend, too, is a raging workaholic. But, as I learned from my House MD DVD, he and I are like ethanol and methanol. Alone, we are potentially poisonous chemicals in the human body. Together, we bind together and are pretty harmless.

What?

Which makes me wonder why doctor shows can be so good and shows attempting to demonstrate graduate school are so so so bad. St. Elsewhere, House MD, ER, Grey's Anatomy are all pretty good television shows featuring the trials and dramas of TV doctors. Now, I understand that it's very unrealistic that every single doctor in a staff at an emergency room or hospital would be totally dreamy.

Oh Dr. Burke!

Yet, the medical science featured seems decent. Perhaps that's because I know nothing about medicine, so as long as there's beeping machines and blood and needles, it looks okay to me. Contrast this with that dumbass "NUMB3RS" show. There you get a poorly written show about mathematics, the FBI and graduate school written by people who have no clue. The professor characters say things like, "I'm very glad I hired him as a collaborator."

You don't *hire* collaborators!

You're telling me. Moreover, these guys never seem to have paper deadlines.

You said you were in a rut?

Ah, yes. These days I'm thinking about two major issues that aren't particularly joyful. In a recent turn of events,

I think you already mentioned this, but maybe it was just to me, because you whine about it ALL THE TIME,

my advisor says I need to publish 10 papers in the next three years. So, it feels that I have to look forward to three more years of living in this hell on earth measuring out my life not in coffee spoons but in paper deadlines. I lift my head a bit to look past graduation, and I have the passing realization that the rest of my life will be measured out by paper deadlines. With this huge "10" number looming over my head, I have this horrible stomach ache; that I will have to fit marriage and children and parents and friends between the paper deadlines. I will be either a horrible mother or a horrible researcher.

I guess I'm being overly dramatic, especially with the TS Eliot reference, and I suppose that life has to measured out in some kind of unit, but ...

but you said you were thinking about two things?

Wait for it. Jeez.

I suppose, after almost five years of this crap, I'm just a little exhausted. I'm tired of feeling like Bill Murray waking up every morning to Sonny and Cher's "I've got you babe." I'm tired of getting paid shit to work constantly, and I'm tired of being told to be an independent researcher when I'm trying my very, very hardest to do just that. Okay, so I am whining, but isn't that what "to blog" means?

It's the same root as the verb "to blave," And, as we all know, "to blave" means "to bluff."

Exactly.

...but you said you were thinking about two things?

Yes, I did. But I realize now that don't think the other thing is bloggable. So I will let T-boy finish this one up. Take it, Stearnsy:

For I have known them all already, known them all:--
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Overloaded terms

In case I haven't mentioned it here on this blog, I am learning Japanese. Why? I guess I figure I'll only be a student for a couple more years, and I wanted to take advantage of that by learning something I probably couldn't learn on my own. Why Japanese? I love learning languages, and there's a remote chance I could move there someday, so I might as well learn it. I also have a huge set of Chinese brushes at home, and it'd be nice to actually understand some of the characters that I script.

Yesterday was our first day of Kanji. Until now, we've been communicating in written form using only the two phonetic alphabets of Japanese, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is a pictograph-based alphabet, and it's one reason why Japanese is so hard to learn. Japanese newspapers restrict themselves to using "only" 2000 kanji, but there are many, many more.

The word for Sunday is "Ni-Chi-Yo-U-Bi." The Kanji for "Ni-Chi" and "Bi" is the same, but pronounced differently based on context. This freaked out many of the kids in the class.

I say "kids" because they are all undergrads, and I'm actually older than everyone, including the teacher. It's very humbling, since I'm also one of the dumbest kids in the class. I do fine on the exams, but I can barely talk, and I sound something like Benjy in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.

And yet, finally! I was so happy to learn that something from computer science could be reused in my Japanese class. Consider the following snippet of code in VBA:

if (a = b) then
a = b
end if

That's right, the same symbol is used for testing equality and for variable assignment. The term is "overloaded operator" and it's particular use can only be determined based on context. So yesterday's Japanese class seemed obvious to me (for once) thanks to science.

I asked for it

In a phone message from Cheryl,

"So I was at Megan's and she says I have something to tell you and she's pregnant. Then we go over to Erin's and Erin is pregnant. Then it turns out Megan M is pregnant, too. Then we go over to Jenny's and Jenny is pregnant and it just so happens that Jenny's sister is also pregnant. So I told my boyfriend he's not touching me."

It's like the Village of the Damned back home.

It's like the 17000 Yen Shinkensen ticket

Has anyone else seen an iPod vending machine? I just saw one yesterday. Am I so five minutes ago or what?

Fours

The first of these that actually looked fun.

Four jobs i've had:
Orange julius-er,
Taxidermist,
Book illustrator,
Software engineer.

Four movies i can watch over and over:
The Last Unicorn,
Sixteen Candles,
Groundhog Day (oh, the irony),
Garden State.

Four places I've lived:
Salem, Or,
Portland, Or,
Vancouver, Wa,
GradShitTowneVille.

Four television shows i love to watch:
House,
Law & Order,
Mash,
...four?

Four places i've been on vacation:
Disneyland,
Japan,
Memphis,
Seattle.

Four of my favorite dishes:
Flan,
Lentil soup,
Eggrolls,
La Bourride.

Four websites i visit daily:
Google,
Gmail,
...four?

ttfn.

Occlusal guards

I went to the dentist today for the first time in four years. I hate the dentist. I go only when my gums start to ache. Dentists are too much like car salespeople for me to do otherwise. Everything is fine. I have no cavities, and I floss like a pro.

Dentists and I have a long history, starting with the moment I met my sadist orthodontist, Dr. Greenbaum. He had a lustful eye for my father's teamster's insurance, and demanded every possible procedure my little mouth would merit. At the end of it all, I had two surgeries, 10 months of head-gear, two years of braces, and a fake tooth.

Despite all that, I have the teeth of a 50 year old woman because I grind them. I grind during the day, and at night. Today's dentist demanded I get a "night guard" at a price of $263, none of which is covered by health insurance. As a result, I've decided to send a bill to each person who has contributed to grinding my teeth.

1. Alan the professor. $54. For consistently answering questions during other people's presentations at research meetings.


2. Mocra. $110. For not understanding the concept of "wire wrap gun" and multiple other offenses.


3. Bartender at campus bar. $12. For referring to the women assisting with the barroom game as "Bingo Bitches."


4. Advisor. $10. For delaying my prelim until I publish more papers.

I've no doubt I'll think of more. Maybe I'll be able to afford two of these things.

What we learn from each other

I find myself to be the department's official "moderator." Yes, like Phil Donahue. If there is a panel somewhere in this building that needs to be moderated, I'm often called upon to do it. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. I have a loud voice.


2. I listen to what people say, and formulate interesting follow-up questions.


3. I am funny, which means even if the panelists are boring, the event will still be somewhat engaging.


4. I am mean, which means I will interrupt people who talk on too long about one question.


5. I do not embarass easily, which means I can talk in front of a room of very important people, and not really give a damn.

That said, there have been times where I wished I was asked to be on a panel, rather than just moderate for one. This happen to me most recently last summer during a middle-school-girls-in-computer-science event that my College of Engineering hosted. The panel consisted of a group of women in computer science who were gathered together to inform young women about the ins and outs of computer science.

Even if no one was interested in my own life stories, it was nice to be in the room. The panelists themselves were quite good, ranging from undergrads at my university, to recent undergrads, from graduate students to tenured professors. After the panel, the panelists were asked to mingle with the students. I met Isis, Alex, and Jocelyn. I especially identified with Alex, who said she came from a very poor family. When I asked what she wanted to do when she grew up, she said, "I want to be a doctor when I grow up so that I have enough money to follow my other dreams." I replied, "I did that exact thing. I was very poor growing up. I went into engineering so that I'd have a high-paying job, so that I could write a book..." Isis, Alex, and Jocelyn were all writers. Alex was writing screenplays, Isis was writing novels, and Jocelyn was writing poetry. I was instantly reminded of myself at that age, when I carried a little notebook around filled with my little stories.

Thing is, I'm still working towards that "job so that I have enough money" and I haven't written that book yet. Last night, I was flipping through the pages of my writing journal, seeing all of the little stories and ideas that I've recorded over the last eight years. Some of the notes are sketches of entire novels, some sketch chapters or short stories, and some are just two sentences describing a woman eating lunch. I think I have something in that big book of mine, and I think I owe it to myself to sit down and try.

I turn 30 in five days. Some people wrestle with 30, feeling that they are officially "an adult." I feel the opposite. I feel like I've earned 30. I've gone through all the self-doubting, body-hating, self-sacrificing crap. Since entering engineering, I've been mistaken for a business major, fired, mistaken for an account manager, laid-off, mistaken for a project manager, sexually harassed, and told I'm not creative enough as a Ph.D. candidate. And I'm still here. I've successfully made it through the bastions hidden within the dark and dank pipeline, yet having forgotten some of who I was before all this began.

But because I'm only 30, it is definitely not too late for me to do as Alex said; to "follow my other dreams." To that end, I definitely need to do a better job of carving time out for myself. I've been good at making sure to swim and go to yoga, to make healthy meals and spend time with friends, but I also need to make sure I sit down in front of the lappy and get started on something that's been a long time coming.

Three scenes which decrease the weight on my shoulders

Scene 1: It's the morning. Boyfriend is reading last blog post while I'm getting ready for school. He says,

"This is so depressing. I don't want to be in the faculty husband's club."

At which point we have the jokey argument about which of us is smarter.


* * *


Scene 2: Talking with my friend Moira over e-mail. I'm frustrated with all of the female faculty in our department who are in the faculty wives' club. They include Emma who is married to Alan and Lisa who is married to Gary. I say,


"I don't want to be another Emma or Lisa."
Moira replies, "You won't. Besides, your boyfriend isn't another Alan or Gary."

Which is very true. I won't say anything more than that.


* * *

Scene 3: Sitting in my chair, trying to work, thinking about all the reasons why I shouldn't even be where I am today.

1. First-generation students are less likely to complete the necessary steps to enroll in a four-year institution. Of first-generation students, only 36% aspire to a bachelor's degree or higher, 45% take the SAT or ACT, and only 26% apply to a four-year institution. By comparison, 78% of students for whom at least one parent has a bachelor's degree aspire to a bachelor's degree or higher, 82% take the ACT or SAT, and 71% apply to a four-year institution.



2. At top research universities, about 15 to 20 percent of [computer science] majors are female (Moreover, it's embarassingly much lower at my own department).



3. About two-thirds of doctoral students entered their doctoral programs free of financial indebtedness.

If I got this far against the odds, then perhaps I can get further.

What weighs heavy on my mind.

Elizabeth Dewberry, the author of "His Lovely Wife," articulates perfectly my current life concern. The characters of this particular scene are Lawrence, a Nobel prize winning physicist and his "trophy wife" Ellen. Lawrence and his wife Ellen are discussing the upcoming engagement of Lawrence's colleague Eric and Eric's graduate student girlfriend, Mart.

Lawrence begins,

"...they are getting engaged over dinner, and he wants us to be the first to congratulate them."
"They're getting engaged? You know that for a fact?"
"Yeah."
"What if she says no?"
"She won't."
"And that's what he expects? That she's already made up her mind to drop her whole life for him? And what? Join the UCLA Faculty Wives' Club?"
"I don't see Mart in a faculy wives' club."
"Me either, That's my point. Can he get UCLA to give her a job?"
"I don't know. I'm sure he could."
"Yes you do know. He can't. Not in this economy when they know he's not going anywhere whether they give her the job or not. If she wants to teach, she'll have to do adjunct work and get paid beans, and if she wants to work in a lab, she'll never get her own lab, she'll have to spend the rest of her life being someone's assistant."
"Not necessarily."
"It's what happens in dual-scholar marriages. I've seen it a zillion times. If you haven't, it's because you haven't thought about your colleagues' wives. But one of them gets the real job, usually the man, and the other does the shit work for a few years, hoping they'll prove their worth and the university will give them a real job, and eventually, they either get fed up and quit, if they're lucky, or they continue to care about their work and believe in themselves and they get bitter that nobody else does, or they start believing the implicit message of their bottom-of-the-totem-pole status, that they're there because they don't deserve anything better, which becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy, and they start shutting down intellectually and creatively, which drives down their self-esteem, which keeps them from being able to produce anything publishable, and they start blaming their spouse, which is not altogether unfair, though not really fair, either, because the spouse didn't create the system, but usually, the spouse isn't rising up against its inequalities, either, and in fact, the more successful the working spouse is, the more that person has invested in keeping things as hierarchical and unfair as they are, despite the harm it does to the person they supposedly love most in the world. So either they divorce, or the less-accomplished spouse decides she's got to find a way to live within the system, or without it, and she takes up a hobby like painting or photography or poetry, none of which she's particularly good at, and the next thing you know, she's trying to create an identity for herself, but it's somebody she's not, and her whole life becomes devoted to living this lie to herself long enough and convincingly enough that eventually, she believes it. Is that what Eric wants for Mart?"
Lawrence hesitates. He picks up his wineglass, which is empty. Puts it back down.
Then: "I don't know what the fuck he wants for her," Lawrence says. "He just wants to marry her."

The Love and Romance of LTL

Very recently, I've seen an intense integration of my work life and my personal life. My boyfriend, who is another graduate student in my department, is presenting at meetings in my research group. The purpose of these presentations is to educate my group's professors and graduate students on the main ideas of another research area of Computer Science.

This week, his presentation was rather reminiscent of how we met. We met during the qualification exam. We had been assigned the same paper to present to our respective committees; 61 pages of satanic verses on the topic of the synthesis of fault-tolerant concurrent programs. Recently, I heard the original copy of the paper was actually printed on human skin.

If you know me personally, you'll know that my research area has very little to do directly with Kripke structures, AND/OR graphs, CTL, or soundness and completeness. One could argue that any field of Computer Science is related to these fundamental methods of formalization, but such an argument annoys me. Instead, put yourself in the shoes of a second-year CS grad with a background in Electrical Engineering. It took me a couple of days to realize that the "U" in that paper was "Until" and not "Union." It was dire. It was not good. I was going to fail.

And so, that first time we met, he stood at a whiteboard and described the main points of Linear Temporal Logic. He spoke deliberately and quietly, with a slight Southern accent. I was in love, but it took me two more years to tell him so. Weeks later, I was presenting the paper like a pro, thanks in part to that lovely man.

It is very likely that no other person in this week's research meeting found my boyfriend's presentation romantic, but it really was.

Larvae

In recent comments, folks visiting this blog have talked about that feeling of being in a "larvae stage" in graduate school. If I understand the commenters correctly, the larvae stage of one's life can be associated with frequently saying to oneself, "When I grow up, I will..." When I was in undergraduate school, I suffered from this larvae stage rather significantly, for I mistook life changes that proceeded the larvae stage with the simple obligations one has for living one's life.

This mistake manifested itself most in my health. In undergrad, I was always putting health-related duties off until graduation. "I'll lose all this weight when I have time, after I graduate." "I'll join a gym and exercise 4 times a week, after I graduate." "I'll go to the dentist when I have a real job and real benefits, after I graduate." As you might imagine, one year after I graduated, I weighed over 200 pounds and I had cavities.

Throughout my years of working as an engineer, and my initial years of graduate school, I still had lapses where I mistook life changes with living life. My second year of graduate school was an exercise in self-torture, allowing everything but my research to go to absolute hell. By third year, I was back to weighing over 200 pounds and I was crying every day. Fast-forward to this year. I swim three times a week, I bike when it's warm, and now that winter is almost here, I'm taking a weekly yoga class. I recently finished a 10 month stint in therapy in which I re-located my spine, and thus my ability to stand up to asshole professors. I'm published in my thesis topic. My romantic relationship is healthy. I still haven't gone to the dentist, but I realize--thanks in part to the commenters--that I've shed the little cocoon I used to live in.

I am larvae no more.

Rather, I am an adult who must balance her adult responsibilities to be a healthy, happy, and productive human being. I still have those days when I go home crying, but I make choices that can quickly bring me back to center, rather than wallow in self-pity. As for the big life changes, they are still on the horizon, but I cannot mistake those transitions for day-to-day living.


Now, if I could just get a decent paycheck.

How to get a piece of me.

Two e-mails recently in which I've been requested to give my time to someone.

Dear FCSGS,

I am Student V, a graduate student advised by Professor K. I am about to take the qualification exam. Your advisor is on my qualification exam. and I would like 15 minutes of your time to discuss your advisor's research.

Let's dissect this e-mail. First, he notes that he is advised by Professor K, who has helped me immensely in the past. I figure that this Professor advised Student V to contact me. I feel like I owe Professor K, so this increases the chances that I will make time for Student V. Next, Student V notes a very specific issue to discuss, mainly my advisor as an audience member in a qualification exam. Finally, the amount of time being requested is very reasonable. This Student V and I will be meeting this week.

Next e-mail:

Hello

My name is Worker A and I m working for Motorola as Software Engg. I was browsing through the GradShitTownVille University research page and found you.

I m interested in operating systems and computer organization areas. But still not sure which one I should pursue. I might want to go for a MS /PhD. I need some information regarding the same. Do you think you can spare some time ?

Let's dissect this e-mail. First, it's very apparent that the author was just "browsing" since he asks no question in particular about me or my research area. He is interested in two different areas, not particularly related to me, and wants general information about graduate school. He obviously failed to note the "Graduate Student Resources" link on my personal website, or he would have found the list of links answering this question. Finally, he is asking me to spare "some" time, but to discuss what? I am not a professional guidance counselor. I replied to him with a list of links, but I did not agree to meet with him.

A Bad Good Day

This morning I woke up "knowing" that I would receive a paper rejection today. All day long, a stone sat heavy in my belly, made up of equal parts of 1) hopelessness, 2) weak hope, and 3) dread. Typically, my paper rejections involve a couple of days of crying, tearing hair from my head, and threatening to quit the PhD. To compound the emotional difficulty of rejections, my advisor has told me I cannot do my prelim until I have more publications, so another rejection would only prolong my time-to-degree.

All day long, little good things kept happening. The long-awaited book I requested from the library arrived. I didn't screw up too badly in Japanese class. I didn't crash my bike into a stupid undergrad. I ran into a friend that decided to stick with the PhD just a little longer. I had a quick coffee break with a friend. I watched a well-organized practice defense. And during all these good little things, the stone remained in my belly. I figured such good things were just a portent for the bad thing to come.

I waited at school this evening for the bad news I expected via e-mail. I didn't feel like putting both my boyfriend and my father (who is visiting for two months) through the torrent of tears that would come. I could rely on Friday night's empty building to give me the opportunity to cry privately in a bathroom stall.

Carrying that stone all day long in my belly, only to find out 10 minutes ago that the paper was accepted.

Advising First-Year Students

I'm trying to remember how scared I was as a first-year graduate student. How I suffered from information overload and yet how I wanted to know everything. I also remember how stupid I was to worry only about courses my first two years, how long it took me to finally begin research, and how far back it set me to change advisors my eighth semester. I wish that someone as mean and pragmatic as me would have helped me back then.

Act I

Nameless student 1. "Professor Z e-mailed me about a research assistantship, but I'm not sure..."
FCSGS. "Professor Z is one of the strongest professors in that area. I hear she's a good advisor to her students, and if she's willing to fund you, that's really great news. I suggest you take it."
Nameless student 1. "Yes. But I heard she pushes her students really hard."
FCSGS. "Dude. You are at a top-ten university. Everybody is going to push you really hard."

Act II

FCSGS. "Who are you interested in being your advisor?"
Nameless student 2. "I dunno, his name escapes me...but I'm interested in Formal Methods, Security, and Systems."
FCSGS. "Good luck with that."

Act III

Nameless student 3. "I'm a TA for this course. How much work do I have to do?"
FCSGS. "You are supposed to do 20 hours of work per week. It's a tough balance between research and teaching, but you will have to manage."
Nameless student 3. "Right, but how much grading will I have to do?"
FCSGS. "I don't know, you need to ask your professor about duties. I never TA'd that course."
Nameless student 3. "But how much work is it going to be?"
FCSGS. "I don't know."
Nameless student 3. "How many classes do I have to teach?"
FCSGS. [eyes wide] "I DON'T know."

Well, I tried.

I need to go vacuum the car. Dad gets here on Thursday.

Mutual Respect

I have the privilege of working with a professor in another department at my university. I respect him very much, for he has done excellent work, and still he regards his colleagues both with consideration and respect. Moreover, he treats his students as colleagues, rather than as students. During a recent teleconference with an important funding partner, he said to the caller, "Let me introduce you to everyone in the room." He proceeded to introduce each graduate student one at a time, making sure to emphasize his or her strength and contribution to the project.

I compare this to the treatment that I get in many of my own meetings with the seven or so professors that I work with in my own department. In multiple meetings, I see a number of examples of poor courtesy. A few weeks back, I was in another teleconference, this time with just computer science faculty. The lead professor introduced only the principle investigators, pronounced all their names incorrectly, and ended with, "Oh and there are some graduate students." I've seen graduate students give presentations and when a question is asked from the audience, without hesitation, their advisor will answer it FOR them. I've seen faculty members say, "My graduate student did this work, but I will present it," all while that graduate student is in the room. I've seen faculty members complain to each other about their personal lives during professional meetings. I've seen thousands of occasions in which people simply interrupt each other. It becomes a game of who can talk the loudest, or who can talk the longest without stopping for breath. I am trying to remember the last time I saw someone actually finish a sentence. It reminds me of the Black Burst wireless protocol in which higher priority nodes are allowed to jam the channel until the lower priority nodes give up. Certainly not all the faculty behave in this manner, but it's certainly the typical behaviour, rather than the exception.

The faculty in our department wonder at the mystery of the "Graduate Students Who Don't Speak Up." There are often large department seminars, and during the presentations, perhaps one or two faculty will ask a question, but the audience is silent otherwise. Graduate students have been chided again and again by various faculty for not speaking up. For the majority of graduate students who are offered no respect, who are nameless technicians just implementing their advisor's visions, why would it occur to them to say anything at all?

As for me, I have the "disability" of being opinionated and snarky. This lack of mutual respect does not silence me, but it does have a detrimental affect on my own morale. Moreover, this lack causes me to wonder if other "top schools" have a similar environment, and if that's really where I want to be once I move on from this place.

The clearing

There's a hike I used to do in Oregon. It was 20.5 miles around Waldo Lake in the Willamette National Forest. If you follow the link, it will take you to a satellite photo, and you can see the scar in the forest. From so far up, it looks like a shiny pink scar on the human body. But it wasn't a terrible radio flyer accident that caused this. It was a forest fire caused by some moron who needed a smoke.

I generally took three days to do the hike. I would start at the southern tip of the lake, and I would reach the scar by the evening of the second day. The first five miles of the third day took me through that scar. It was fascinating to see the forest year by year as it began to recover. At 5500 feet, the hike was already moderately difficult for my little asthmatic lungs, but without the cover of shade, the challenge increased. Gradually, then quickly, evergreen trees would appear on the horizon, and then there's just 8 miles to go. It's still a reasonable distance more with all the climbs and the pack, but I know one of the most difficult distances is over.

Thinking of that hike now, I feel like I just came out of the, well, un-woods. I've mentioned here a "side-project" that's been eating up much of my sanity and my time, and today was a big milestone completion. My colleague and I enjoyed some celebratory hamburgers and shakes, and I watched two hours of television.

Self-Mutilation

This weekend was a roller coaster of feeling of hatred and warmth for GradShitTownVille and my own plight for a Ph.D. Friday evening, I went to see "Monster House" with the boyfriend. While lingering in the cinema lobby, I had the strange feeling that I was at some kind of techie conference. I whispered to the boyfriend, "Is it sys-admin night?" Later on, we realized that it happened to be same the evening that "Clerks II" was released.

One of my complaints about GradShitTownVille has always been how the population is made up of a limited number of social groups. Most visible to my day-to-day haunts are the sys-admins, the sorority girls, frat boys, and mousy-but-snobbish academics. Admittedly, most cities are made up of social groups, but they usually have more than four. Chicago has its hip gay men in Lincoln Park, Tokyo has its Gothic Lolita teens in Harajuku, and Portland has its grunge homeless kids downtown. Human beings are pack animals, so it's difficult to find an acutal American Melting Pot. It's more like an American Tossed Salad, and in GradShitTownVille, it's the same four veggies every night.

That said, Saturday afternoon I was blessed to immerse myself in a social group I rarely experience. Grumpy from sys-admin night, I went to the local Artsy movie house that was showing Krrish, a three-hour Indian science fiction movie. It's like Crocodile Dundee + Batman + Cinderella + E.T. + West Side Story but not like any of those at all. In the audience, filled to the brim, were some of the Indians that populate this town. During intermission, kids ran around and played while everyone else fought for the two stalls in the bathroom.

So, yes, it's partly my fault that all I ever see are sys-admins. But is it also my fault that I have become a workaholic in order to be successful in this place? Is it the place, or is it me?

To continue my efforts to do something new--and perhaps perform a little self-mutilation on my physical body that so often disappoints me--I biked 48 miles yesterday, from GradShitTownVille to Monty-Cello and back. I've been biking all summer, my rides longer and longer, leading up to this particular ride. Yesterday was painful at parts--especially on the country backroads where the corn fields are still the same after an hour of riding. Monty-Cello is a nice little town, with most folks on the outskirts having a horse or two in their back yard. I found a little forest preserve, and the burial site of a woman from a Native American Tribe.

Today, because of the ride, I feel a bit like I do after giving blood. It is the same feeling I have the day before I get a cold. I woke up late with a painful headache, attended two meetings, ate a late lunch, and I sit here very aware that Monday is almost over. I'll be back in the office tonight, as usual, but that does not help me to overcome my current bout of research-guilt. It's been eight days since I've made progress on my research, which is mostly due to a side-project that's eating my time away like moths eat at sweaters in woolen closet. The work--not at all related to my thesis--one year ago was exciting and hopeful. It has lately become a thankless and depressing weight. I push myself towards a self-imposed deadline of next week, so that I might start again on my research, towards actually getting out of GradShitTownVille.

I wonder why I do these side projects; the dance troops, the radio shows, the panels, and the gender research. Is it because I am a person with diverse interests, or is it because I hesitate to do what I need to do to get out of here? If my priority is really to get out of GradShitTownVille, then dammnit I need to act like it.

For a while, I had. I'd been keeping a timesheet of my daily work, making sure to do 6 good hours of research a day (not counting meetings and other menial work). But the side-project derailed me, and I have to really look hard at myself and figure out why I allowed this to happen. My own values are to give back to the community, to be kind to my friends, but these values do not match those of my department which values research over all else. For four years, I've watched an internal battle. Do I do what I think is important, or what they think is important? Over time, I see that I have started to become what my department wants me to be in order to be labeled "successful." Will I complete this metamorphasis, and will I be able to regain my old self afterwards? I doubt it, for life challenges like these mark me forever.

I remember having lunch with an old high school friend, and he said, "You've calmed down A LOT. A LOT." It wasn't really a sense of calm, but something heavy that had euthanised the goofy clown I used to be. Is this what maturity means?

Looking over my old e-mails, I found something I once wrote to Tony. I told him that I'd hit a wall in my research, that I'd become afraid of making intellectual risks. He asked me why, if I was afraid of what my advisor might think of my work, and I replied,

I don't really care what anyone else thinks. It's mostly the fear that I will try and find that I can't do it anymore. I will find that I've exhausted all there is to my intellect and that I cannot go any further. I will find that I have finally hit the wall and I will have
to leave school like so many seem to leave, not with a bang, but with a whimper.

And I suppose this--all this--is why I did not go home for the summer. It's a little more self-mutilation, self-punishment, for going home is always its own reward. But I'm here, I'm hiding out from family and friends, afraid and unable to explain that I still don't know when I'll be done, that I still have not taken my prelim, and that I still hate it here.

Scrollbar guy.

A new comic, in memory of Joseph Goguen.

I don't understand.

Why did she make this choice?