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?

Ack.

Ack...cough cough. What's all this dust? Mrs. Havisham, is that you? Oh my goat! I haven't posted in over a month. Gonna have to get some lemon scented pledge.

There have been multiple forces keeping me from this little electronic journal. Mainly, a paper rejection that demanded I rewrite the whole thing in two weeks. That was fun. What made it more fun were the incredibly constructive paper reviews that I got. Thank Mary for this scientific community in which my work can be peer reviewed and I can improve as a researcher. Let's take a look at some of the gems I received.

The paper is well-organized, well-written, and derives from a study based on a toy car environment that I would love to have in my basement for my children to play with and program (seems like a good Logo application).

This is wonderful. I had no idea that my work could positively impact the lives of children.

On the other hand, you have your experience, and I have mine. (I still think time and the number of systems I have dealt with -- including telecom systems and aerospace software -- are on my side.)

It is true that I have significantly more experience with people who attack me personally than I do with Boeing 777 software. Unfortunately, when I contacted Boeing about getting a peek at their code, they turned me down. Thankfully, this review has helped me to realize that unless I've built an actual rocket that has flown to space, I shouldn't bother submitting papers. I guess I've got some work to do.

The paper is full of trivialities. The importance for "criticality", "restart" and "migration" look pretty obvious; even my netflix system should have them

I...I...I'm sorry, I can't do it. It's really hard to feign chipper appreciation in the face of this kind of useless, faceless animocity.