Well paint me green and call me a frog!

I have a defense date!!! Holy crap! I never thought this day would come. Ok, I knew it would but it always seemed like it was so far off. Now I gotta get me a fancy ticker for my blog to count down the days and to also give me a bit of an anxiety attack everytime I come to my blog to procrastinate. First though I need to finish the last few revisions and send my whole thesis off to my supervisor for final approval before giving it to my committee. Eeek. I feel the stress already. I've been kinda lacks for the last while since my supervisor seemed to be taking forever to set everything up so I figured why bust my butt to get everything done when he isn't. Now, however, I need to get my butt back in gear.

Things seem to be finally moving along

I found out today that the department put forward the request for my external examiner to the Faculty of Grad Studies. Yay! I only had to bug my supervisor about getting that done for two months now. I hope this means things will get moving along and I'll be defending soon. Now just to get a date set.

I've realized I really liked working from home when I was writing my thesis over the summer. However it was kind of lonely and it's nice to be back around the university more regularly. Although I blame the influx of students this month for my cold, which is still lingering and really starting to annoy me.

Speaking of the thesis, I am so sick of revisions. It's to the point that sentences are just getting re-worded and they end up meaning the same thing. Recently my supervisor came up with this idea for a new figure he thought would be good to add. It required me to do some analysis on my data, boring analysis by the way and statistics! Ugh. It turns out it wasn't so bad. I think that is partially because it wasn't more revisions and I actually made a figure, which is more exciting than re-wording sentences. I thought my supervisor was just being picky when he asked for me to add this figure but now that it's done I must agree it really adds to the chapter. I guess he is right some of the time.

On a totally unrelated topic, I want to change my Blogger template and add an image for the header in the new template instead of whatever is there. I've figured out how to add the image but my problem is that the title and description of my blog is still there and I want to remove it. My image has the title and description of my blog on it so I don't need the blogger one that shows up. Anyone know how to remove the title? Thanks.

The problems with grad studies - part II

Now that I'm finally getting over the cold that kicked my ass, as I lovingly refer to it, I figured I'd post part II of the problems with grad studies. It was either that or work on the revisions of a chapter my supervisor initially said was great and then when he re-read it he shredded it to bits. Umm... I'll take door #1.

The one big problem with grad studies is the student-supervisor relationship. The short version is, when it's good, things are great but when it's bad it could mean the demise of your PhD. A former grad student colleague of mine described the relationship between grad student and supervisor as "the most important relationship behind that of the one you have with your spouse and your parents". Come to think of it, she might have just said spouse. In any event, you work closely with your supervisor, they are your mentor (usually) and they essentially hold your PhD degree in their hands. At times it can seem like they are holding it hostage. Therefore, it is essential that the supervisor you choose (and yes it is your choice) to work with plays a huge role in your success as a PhD student. Most people going into their PhD know the importance of the supervisor in their success and some universities have even adopted the grad student rotation idea where new grad students do a short rotation in the labs they are interested in in order to choose the one that fits them best. Oh, they make it seem all so easy. The problem is supervisors know how to wine and dine the students they want. I call it the honeymoon period. Whether it's during a rotation or after you have started in their lab as their grad student, supervisors will make it seem like they are the best thing since sliced bread. Things can and do change.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that all supervisors are bad. There are some good ones out there and then there are those other one. The problem arises when you get one of those other ones or your seemingly wonderful supervisor ends up becoming one of those other ones. Then what? Well, let me tell you, from personal experience there is no then what. Sure, departments and universities will make you think that you have options when you are having problems with your supervisor but really it's all just talk. What's that? You say your department's chair of grad studies handles student-supervisor problems and your university has a grad student obudsperson? Hold a moment while I chuckle....

Okay, to be fair, yes at times these services do help, however, you do risk pissing off your supervisor by complaining to someone in the department or at the university level about the problems with your supervisor. And yes, they can mediate discussions between you and your supervisor to come to a mutual understanding but in the end you are the one that has to face your supervisor the next day and most likely they won't be too pleased knowing that you think they suck. Also, keep in mind that you need your supervisor to sign off on your thesis in the end. There's a fine line between resolving conflict and creating underlying turmoil when it comes to dealing with your supervisor.

However, what I want to get at here is beyond mediation and discussion. The bottom line is your supervisor has final say in whether or not you get your degree and even if he/she is being completely ridiculous in their demands or whatever, no one can make them do anything. In the end you are at the mercy of your supervisor. Sure you have the option to go to a different lab or even quit but either way you are at square one and have to start all over again. The reason why is due to intellectual property rights. Your supervisor's grants paid for your research, and/or your salary, and/or the space and equipment you used to conduct that research. This means they own your data. And because you did the work and analyzed the data you also have a stake in the intellectual property rights, which is why, by rights, your supervisor can't publish your work without your name on it. So the problem with switching labs is you need your supervisor's approval if you want to continue on with that project. Ya, like that's going to happen being that you left their lab because you had problems with them. As well, no other prof is really going to want to take you on. The reason being is you're there for, oh lets say 5-6 years, but your supervisor and the other prof have to work together for, oh perhaps another 10-15 years or more. You are just a drop in their bucket and they (and the department) don't want to end up with bad blood between profs due to one grad student. So in the end, you're the one that gets screwed. Either you put up with your supervisor and their crazy demands or procrastination on setting your defense date or you quit. Yep, those are your options. I once asked the grad student obudsperson about student-supervisor relationships and if you couldn't resolve your conflict with your supervisor were quitting or just sucking it up your only options. After a long pause she lowered her and quietly said, "yes". Oh now that's encouraging!

So after my long blabbering on, what I'm getting at is that this old school idea of grad students being solely reliant on their supervisor for their PhD is ridiculous. This is also the root cause of grad students being taken advantage of. Supervisors know grad students are at their mercy so they dangle that degree in front of your face and get you to do many mundane tasks that aren't at all related to grad school - can you get my mail? here's $10, can you go grab me a sandwich and a pop? can you photocopy these for me?. I'm sure many grad students have wondered the same thing I have at some point, is this grad school or personal assistant training?

As for a solution, so far I don't have one. Intellectual property rights leave grad students stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The problems with grad studies - part I

I'm sure there are many problems with grad studies, I have two in mind hence the "part I" in the title. Some may say I'm just a bitter grad student at the end of her program but I like to look at it as the rose coloured glasses have finally come off. All the hype professors tell you about how great a PhD is and how academic research is so flexible and that you can follow whatever your heart desires seems so wonderful in the beginning but the honeymoon phase is over.

I've been thinking about the numerous problems with academia for a while now. This is part of the drive behind my search for a non-academic career. A recent article in The Scientist titled Are We Training Too Many Scientists? reminded me of one of my bigger complaints with PhD training. The article goes into the statistics behind the number of PhD granted and the number of post docs and how the numbers have risen drastically, yet the number of tenure-track academic research positions have not kept pace. This leaves a lot of highly skilled and highly educated scientists at a loss of what to do next. Now I'm not going to focus or speculate why the numbers are different and how we could fix them. No, that article reminded me of my frustrations with leaving the Ivory Tower and obtaining a career outside academia. Besides the gasps and the comments like "well what are you going to do then?", "but you can't direct your own research there", "isn't it time you started having babies anyways?" (that one especially annoys me) very few people have had any advice on what jobs there are for those with PhDs who don't want to go into academia. For a while there I was getting so frustrated and stressed about how I took so many years of schooling and yet had limited career choices beside academia. This, however, is not true. Upon further investigation and speaking with a career counselor I realized I did have numerous option. However, I never realized these options existed until I actively searched them out. In academia your mentors are professors, usually your supervisor. These people live and breath academic research and to do anything else, in their mind, is somehow considered lesser. I realize mentoring a grad student is like raising a child. You want to teach them as best as you can and see them succeed. The problem is that most academics only see success as obtaining a tenure-track position. As such, they don't really counsel you in alternative career options. It could be that they aren't familiar with them or that they don't want to open all those other doors for you for fear that you will take the time and money they invested in you and do something that is considered, by them, to be of a lower standing. However, all schooling, whether it's a Bachelor's degree or a PhD, is about training people for their future careers. Why in the case of a PhD does that career have to focus on academia?

With the decrease in tenure-track positions and increase in number of PhD graduates you would think that training or career counseling in areas outside academia would be beneficial to universities. Potential PhD students wouldn't see a PhD as a dead end degree and many of those recent PhD graduates would not be so disgruntled and give up on science altogether. As I mentioned, I did seek out career counseling. Although it was through the university I still had to pay for it and it wasn't soley focused on science. It was just general career counseling. It was helpful although it would have been much more helpful to have career counseling focused on jobs you can obtain with a PhD in science. I've found that most of my knowledge on careers outside academia has been self-taught since the university has limited resources in that area.

A PhD program shouldn't just center on getting the degree but should include career counseling and specific courses to prepare you for a career, whether that be in academia or outside academia. This idea of [B.Sc. + M.Sc. + Ph.D. + Post-doc = tenure-track position] is outdated. Academia needs to change with the times and better prepare the students they are training so that when they graduate they can enter into successful careers in a broad range of areas and not just tenure-track or unemployment.

Damn writer's block

Why does this always happen to me? Whether it's a paper, a report, or my thesis, whenever I'm so close to the end I get writer's block. For my thesis I have about four pages of general conclusions left to write and I'm stuck. My main problem is I don't want to be repetitive. My thesis chapters are written as papers so each chapter has it's own conclusion; however, the thesis needs it own general conclusion. Every time I write something in the general conclusions I realize I've already said that in some other chapter. It's getting really annoying. Yesterday I tried the theory of just write even if it's crap. That usually works for me but this time not so much. I re-read that page today and it is not good. I just want to get these last few pages done but it's agonizing!

On a related note, my supervisor still is skirting the issue with respect to setting a defense date and an external examiner. I think that is contributing to my lack of effort in finishing the last few pages of my thesis. In my mind, I wonder why I'm putting so much effort in when he wants to put off my defense for months. I will spare you my endless complaints about my supervisor and defending because I could go on forever. The short version is that I'm sick of him prolonging and dragging this out so I'm going to talk to the chair of my department about my options. We'll see how that goes. This is the main reason I haven't updated my blog lately. I've been very bitter and as my mother always says, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all". I'm still bitter but I've managed to rein it in somewhat to appear cheery on the outside.

CV to resume

Being that a number of jobs I want to apply for are non-academic, I've decided it would probably be best to submit a resume rather than a CV. I figured converting my CV to a resume would be a pretty easy task. I thought wrong. It has taken me longer than expected to convert my CV to a resume and in the process I've realized that a CV is pretty easy to write compared to a resume. A few reasons why...

1. A CV is simply a list of your accomplishments. You list pretty much everything and anything academic related on it. The more the better. On the other hand, a resume is supposed to be short and sweet and highlight only your best skills and achievements. Picking and choosing is not fun and neither is trying to reword a sentence to include as many skills as possible but still trying to maintain proper sentence structure.
   
2. There is really no creativity in a CV, as is evident by the number of boring CVs I've come across. Now I know they aren't supposed to be flashy but at least some nice formatting instead of just simple lists in Times New Roman would be nice. Resumes are also not supposed to be flashy but you do have to format it in such a way as to catch the reader's eye and make it easy to read and concise.
   
3. In a CV you usually don't list skills or need to use descriptive words or so called 'power words' when talking about your achievements. Just a simple list will suffice. In a resume you have to list your key strengths but not all of them, just a select few preferably related to the job you are applying for. Therefore, you have to be pretty creative in order to squeeze as many power words into only a few sentences.
4. In a resume, simply stating you have a PhD (or a MSc or a BSc, for that matter) is not enough. You have to describe your skills and knowledge gained during your PhD. Sure it looks nice on your resume to state that you have a PhD but since PhD experiences can be so variable, simply stating you have a PhD really doesn't mean much when the person hiring is trying to determine whether you will be an asset to their company. Now this would probably not be necessary if you have work experience besides your PhD but I don't and neither do most new or soon to be graduates.
   

Reorganizing my CV into a resume was a good learning experience though. It made me think, "what have I accomplished during these last many years besides the soon to be title of PhD?". It made me put into words what skills, knowledge, and accomplishments I have gained from my PhD. However, it was kind of sad going from my nine page CV to my two page resume. I almost shed a little tear when I deleted all my publications, meeting presentations, and scholarships and replaced them with a few lines simply stating the number of presentations and publications and the fact that I received some scholarships. What is considered probably the most important entry on your CV behind your education has now been reduced to four lines on my resume. If it helps me get a job though, I'm all for it. One plus to making my CV into a resume - now at least I can list all those skills I gained from all the non-grad student or non-research related crap my supervisor has gotten me to do.

Here's my question...

What do you do if your supervisor edits a chapter in your thesis in such a way that you don't agree with? Do you put it back to how you originally had it or suck it up and do it his way even though it really doesn't make any sense?

The specific problem here is a section in my introduction which has an accompanying figure. He thinks that whole section should be taken out of the text of the intro and put in the figure legend, thus making my figure legend for that one figure a page and a half long. Plus the figure has two parts - A and B. You can't discuss A without referring to B and then back to A. So my lengthy text in my figure legend goes A) blah, blah, blah (for a page) then refers to B for a few sentences, then goes back to A. Then there is about half a page on B itself because it requires more of an explanation than what is in A but doesn't fit with the flow of the text for A. To me this whole page and a half figure legend just seems idiotic. Figure legends are not meant to be a page and a half let alone include info that should be in the intro text itself. I know my supervisor will be adamant about keeping it this way because he thinks including that info within the text of the intro will bore people. I think putting it in the figure legend will make me look like an idiot who doesn't understand the point of a figure legend. So, should I suck it up and have my committee wonder why I did it that way or fight with my supervisor on this?

Warning... supervisor rant ahead

Things have been going fairly well with my supervisor for the past while until now. I knew it had to be short lived. It started last week when he left me high and dry 45 minutes before a conference call with collaborators of ours. My supervisor and them are going to carry on my project, which is a nice compliment that my research is worthwhile to continue pursuing especially since my project started as pretty much a shot in the dark. Granted I know the most about my project but I'm really not sure the direction my supervisor wants to go with it so I was quite pissed off that he left me to carry our side of the call. Oh well, it went fairly well I think. Of course my supervisor wanted a recap of the phone meeting so I spent an hour typing out an email to him about it. I purposely only sent the email to him because although I didn't bash our collaborators or anything I did mention that some of the experiments they suggested I didn't agree with or didn't think they were necessary. Obviously if I didn't tell them that on the phone I wouldn't want them to read it in an email. Well guess what? My supervisor responded to my long email and cc'd it to our collaborator and her post doc. Sadly, I had a feeling he would do this so I did try to word things politely but still! The man has no email etiquette. This is similar to the time I sent him an email asking for the specifics of how an experiment was done since it was done by another lab. He proceeded to forward that email to the people who had done the experiment. Normally that would be fine but it wasn't a "hey can you answer these questions for her email". Instead he mentioned how I should contact these people and ask them these specific questions and how he cc'd them on this email so they are expecting my email. It was like I was 5 years old and afraid to talk to someone so I needed him to ease me into it. No, I just didn't know their email addresses!

In the last week or so I've sent my supervisor my intro and the revisions on two chapters. The ultimate plan is to publish three of the chapters from my thesis. This wasn't done earlier in my program due to the whole supervisor leaving issue and potentially getting kicked out of our lab so I focused on getting my experiments done and not publishing my results. Now, however, I really want and need those publications. I sent my supervisor an email saying we should really get on this and here's what I'm thinking for where to submit the manuscripts, etc., etc. I get an email back saying how he's busy and has other things to do and can't focus on my stuff 100%. Ok I understand that but the fact that the last thing he sent to me was almost two weeks ago I'm guessing he hasn't been working on my stuff much since then. Also, one of my chapters has been written since December and has pretty much just been sitting there with a few minor revisions here and there. My supervisor keeps saying he wants to have another look at it but hasn't. Dear lord! Now I know why so many former grad students in my lab left without publishing.

To top it off, I've been pushing to defend before the fall deadline so I don't have to pay tuition. My supervisor said he wanted to see my intro first before making a decision on a date. I sent him my intro a day after that conversation. I also told him that perhaps we should at least set up the external examiner since that has to be done quite some time before the defense. Has there been any more mention of this? Oh no. And by now there is pretty much no way I'm going to make the fall deadline so I'll have to pay tuition.

I've been extremely patient with him throughout the whole writing process and haven't really bugged him about getting revisions back to me. I even left him alone for the whole time he was writing a grant. At one point he was sitting on three chapters of mine but did I say a thing? No. Now with being so close to the end I just want to get done and not have this drag on forever.

Alternative Careers in Science

As is evident by my previous posts, I've all but decided that I don't want to go the academic route. The reasons for which are numerous so I won't bore you with that. Trying to decide what career path I would like to pursue outside academia, however, has been quite nerve racking. I really don't have anyone to turn to for advice who isn't an academic and most academics and even other grad students look at you like you've gone crazy when you mention that isn't the career path for you.

In a weird twist of fate, the other day while looking for some book or journal article for my thesis on the university's library website I came across a book called Alternative Careers in Science. I figured I may as well have a look at it since it seemed like the help I was looking for. It was actually already checked out so I had to request it and the other poor person looking for something other than academia had to return it. Funny thing was, when I went to pick up the book the librarian said that she is also trying to leave the ivory tower. That lead to a discussion of which would be better - joining Circ du Soleil or becoming a WestJet flight attendant. It was nice to hear I'm not alone in my quest.

Anyways, the reason I bring up this book is because I highly recommend it. I've only read a chapter and a half so far and skimmed through the rest of the book but so far this book is excellent. Each chapter is written by a different person who chose a different career path outside of academia. It goes into how they ended up there, why, and what their job is like, among other things. The little I've read so far has been very helpful. And it's nice to know that I'm not alone in all my confusion over what to do next and my guilt of not going the academic route. One of my favorite lines I came across when skimming the book was in the chapter written by Genevieve Haddad when she was talking about her decision to not go into academia and getting flack from everyone around her. She says, "[Everyone] thought I was crazy at best, a traitor at worst, for wanting something different... Why would I want to do anything else? It must be because I was a woman and not really serious about science". Yep, that about sums up my experience so far when telling people my choice of finding something outside academia.

So if you are confused like me and want something outside the Ivory Tower I highly recommend checking out this book. And good luck in your quest! I'm right there with you.

Referencing

Alright science experts, I need your help. I think the thesis writing has caused me to slowly lose brain cells. Where do you insert a reference if the whole paragraph you are writing is taken from one source? Do you put it where you first mention information from that source (so at the end of the first sentence of the paragraph) or at the end of the last sentence of the paragraph? I've Googled and so far haven't found the answer. Help!

Thesis writing = crappy summer

I've realized, now that it's August, that I really haven't done anything this summer. No real vacations, sure there was the odd weekend away here or there but those were mainly to visit families, go to weddings, that sort of thing. I didn't plan any vacations or anything for the summer since I knew I would be busy writing and at first that was fine with me since I did have a vacation at the end of April. Now that summer is coming to an end I'm thinking I maybe should have enjoyed some of the nice weather instead of sitting at my computer complaining how hot it was outside. I did think of working outside, which I did for a few days, but I would always been going back inside to get some paper or some book. Then the wind would pick up and things would blow around. Or the sun would be shining too brightly to really be able to see what was on my laptop screen.

Today someone mentions to me how it's a good thing there's a long weekend coming up and I'm thinking, "When?". How sad. Half the time I don't even know what day of the week it is. Oh well, I'm kind of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I've finished all my paper chapters with my results and data and now I'm on to the intro. It sounds backwards, doing the intro first, but it works for me. Plus, I got a chapter back from my supervisor today, too bad there was no attachment with the email. So, really I guess I didn't get a chapter. Whatever, I still have the intro to do so it's not like I'm at a loss for something to do.

A reflection

As I get closer and closer to the end of my PhD I find I reflect a lot and wonder if I had to do it all over again would I choose to go the grad student route? Honestly, there is no cut and dry answer to that. Personally, I feel I've been gypped out of the whole grad student experience and this leads me to a bit of resentment. With my supervisor leaving to take a new position three quarters of the way through my degree I didn't have the typical grad student experience. For one, he hated the job/people at the university I'm at, which was the main reason why he left. This attitude, of course, made our lab sort of the outcasts in the department. No a good way to start out. Plus, for the year or so before he left, when he knew he was going to find a new position somewhere else, he really didn't put much effort into anything. Sure, we would have meetings and discuss my results and whatever but this was also while he was checking his email, going through his mail, whatever other tasks he figured he could handle while still listening to me. In actuality, he really wasn't listening to me. I could stop talking and it would be a good few minutes before he realized it.

Now that I no longer have actual face to face meetings with him, everything is by email and sometimes phone. That's fine and actually I seem to get more of his undivided attention that way. Although I do feel a bit screwed over in the thesis writing department. Don't get me wrong, it has made me quite independent in my writing since I can't go over every little detail with my supervisor face to face but I still feel a bit screwed over. Also with my supervisor gone I am really not feeling the love from the department. Not that I thought I would but when the day after they kick us out of the lab I get an email requesting my key back it's sort of a slap in the face. Especially since I'm the one who got stuck with sending a bunch of my supervisor's stuff to him so I still need access to the lab to get all, what the department calls, "the crap" out of there. I so feel like handing in my key and when the department complains that all that stuff is still there I'll just say, "Sorry, I no longer have a key".

Don't get me wrong, doing my PhD was enjoyable at times. The people in the lab were a lot of fun usually, I went to a bunch of conferences, I enjoyed the research for the most part. I guess I just feel gypped on the last part of my PhD. No lab meetings to have scientific discussions, the lack of direction in my writing up, getting kicked out of the lab. That sort of thing. On the bright side, I have found the whole supervisor leaving thing has made me way more independent. At times I think I should get a PhD and a post doc out of this whole thing. That is also partly why I'm not so keen on doing a post doc. I feel like I've already been doing a post doc for the last two years.

Anyways, to answer the initial question of would I do it all over again? Hmmm... honestly, probably not. And if I did do it all over again, I would do it a lot different. Although that may just be my bitterness talking. Maybe when I actually have my degree I'll feel differently. I'll let you know in a few months.

What next?

As I get closer and closer to finishing my PhD I keep thinking, what next? So far, nothing, which when I think about it gives me a mini anxiety attack. I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to do a post doc. Why? Well, for one I don't really want to be a professor. Blasphemy, I know. A PhD who doesn't want to go into academia?!? So then what? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Perhaps a research associate or doing research for industry or government. I've applied at a number of places, had one interview but that's it so far. I'm starting to worry that maybe I should do a post doc. Not because I want to but because I'm supposed to. It's almost ingrained that you do the PhD, then the post doc, then get an academic position, then get tenure and live happily ever after. Ya right. I'm tossed up though. Even if I don't want to go into academia I'm wondering if I should still do a post doc "just in case". However, since I don't really want to do a post doc I would probably hate every minute of it and that wouldn't be good for anyone. Argh! Thesis writing, deciding what to do for the rest of my life... ya no stress at all.

I'm NOT a fan of statistics

I spent the better portion of my day trying to do statistical analysis on one figure. ONE FIGURE!!! I have never been a fan of statistics. I took two stats classes in university and do you think I can remember any of it? All I remember from stats class was that the funky cowboy was my stats prof. He was this short, skinny man who wore these western type shirts but they weren't any old cowboy shirt Clint Eastwood would wear. No siree. These were bright, colourful cowboy shirts. It was like Rainbow Bright puked all over Clint Eastwood or something. That prof and his shirts solidified my theory that anyone who likes stats is crazy.

So as I was trying to figure out if I needed to do a Student's t-test or a One-way ANOVA on my data and Googling what the heck those tests are, I came across a website about the Student's t-test. It had a little history thrown into the stats explanation. Apparently the student who came up with the test was working in a brewery and he developed this test to solve some brewery problems. I'm convinced he was drunk (and probably crazy). Anyhoo, turns out it's a pretty good test. I didn't use it though. Seems I needed a One-way ANOVA. Righty. More Googling I did go. Finally after hours of swearing and telling myself this stats isn't going to get the better of me I got it done. Thanks, in no small part, to Excel and it's Data Analysis function. It wasn't all Excel though, I did have to figure out what all the numbers it spit out meant. So much for getting a lot done today. Stupid statistics.

Hmm... what was so special about June 9th?

Well as you can tell I haven't been so good with updating the blog. I like to think it's because I'm so focused on writing my thesis. Riiiiight. I'll keep telling myself that. I figured I should check to see if my blog is still there since it's been quite some time. Then for kicks I decided to check out the Tracksy stats on my blog. That's right, Tracksy. I'm a loser who likes to see how many people visit my blog. So it appears that June 9th was quite a busy day over here at the Science Geek blog. Most hits from that day came from www.insidehighered.com. Could someone fill me in as to why? I'm all excited thinking maybe there was a link to my blog on that site.

Go Oilers Go!!!!

Normally the Stanley Cup wouldn't really affect my thesis writing but with the Oilers in it I have to watch now. Yes, I have been watching religiously since the conference final but haven't blogged about it at all because it isn't at all PhD related but since I'm sick of thinking about PhD stuff then the Oilers it is. Tomorrow is game seven. GAME SEVEN! Oh the stress! I really hope the Oilers win (of course) but not just because I'm cheering for them but because, although they have had bad games, they are able to pull it together and play awesome when need be. Also, and I may get flamed for saying this, I think winning the Stanley Cup means more to the Oiler's fans than the Hurricane's fans. The Oilers have such a hockey legacy. It would be nice to bring the cup back. GO OILERS GO!!!

Thesis writing distraction

I haven't been so good at updating my blog lately. I've come to the conclusion that it's because I spend all day writing my thesis... okay, perhaps not all day but I try. Anyways, I spend a lot of my time writing my thesis, which if you read my last post, you'll realize I find thesis writing kinda boring. So really, do I want to prolong the agony and write stuff on my blog about writing my thesis. Not so much. So, in an effort to not go insane with thesis overload my blog may diverge from the usual PhD related blabbing.

On that note, I am reliving high school by way of Beverly Hills 90210 coming back on TV in reruns. It's a nice thesis writing distraction and also provides me with some much needed humour. Sure the show isn't a comedy but the outfits and the acting definitely are. Just when I thought I would have no good TV to watch over the summer while writing my thesis along comes 90210. So the other day I'm watching it and it's some episode with the moral lesson of how you shouldn't discrimination, be prejudice, or racist. Oh, life lessons courtesy of Beverly Hills 90210. As I'm watching the show and they are getting to the end and wrapping up the life lesson I notice the black guy, who was cast soley for this episode, wearing a t-shirt that on the back had a list of terms that over the years were used to refer to black people. My jaw dropped when I first noticed the shirt because the word at the top was the n-word. I shit you not. They didn't show the whole back of the shirt but it was enough to make it out. The words continued down the shirt each getting more politically correct until it ended off at whatever term was considered most politcally correct in the 90s. Now, first off, why the hell did a black actor agree to wear that shirt? And secondly, for a show with the big moral conclusion of anti-racism, who in charge of costume design thought this shirt would be a good idea? It's a whole different world watching 90210 as an adult and not an easily influenced teenager, I tell you.

So slow...

I don't know if it's just me but I'm finding this thesis writing is going so slow. And b-o-r-i-n-g! I can spend all day working on one figure. I'm all happy when I'm done it but then when I realize that is all I've done all day it depresses me a tad. Plus, sitting at the computer all day is also boring! I'm used to moving around, standing, sitting a bit but never for too long. I've decided I need to go jogging to at least get out of the house. Problem is, the husband wants to go with me but not when I want to go. So far the jogging together hasn't worked out well. I want to go around 10 or 11am-ish. I find when I sit at the computer for too long in the morning I start to fall asleep so jogging mid-morning would be great. Problem is, the husband is at work. He wants to go jogging in the evening, after supper. I write best from about 8 pm until late so usually I'm working on my thesis when he wants to go. I think I'll just go in the morning and if he wants to go in the evening and I have time I'll join him.

Anyways, got a little off topic there. So thesis writing, boring! At least in the lab I could feel I accomplished something when I got the result of an experiment at the end of the day. Even if the experiment didn't work I still did it. One figure in a day! Dear lord. I'll be writing this thesis until I'm 80. I think I got a bit cocky when I made like five figures in one day a while back. Gotta love Photoshop and it's layers. Wonderful for making figures that have the same labeling.

Another thing about thesis writing I don't like - it's depressing. It's somewhat sad when you realize an experiment that took you almost a year to do fills up a page. A PAGE! Albeit I was doing other experiments at the same time but still. Writing out what I've done for the past six years and what it means is a tad humbling. Let's see... I did what seemed like a bunch of work and filled up almost four lab books and a few binders but put it all in some coherent form and it seems like I hardly did anything. Sigh. I swear this whole PhD process is just some mean initiation that started back in the day by some disgruntled professors.

PhD comics has once again hit the nail on the head

I hadn't checked out PhD comics for a while so when better to than while I'm sitting here thinking about writing my thesis. When I got to the May 22 comic I had to laugh. It's so true. As I was reading it I turned to check out my thesis outline I made a while back. Six chapters is what I have listed, which nicely falls into the 'not bad' category. I've got the freebies written in there too. Those were the easy ones. Stuff I did my first year is chapter two (no lit review in my area or at least it goes under the intro). I don't have any stuff I'm supposed to be doing now since I'm done it all so I'll call that chapter 'years 2 to now'. The make stuff up chapter, heck that's easy and fun at the same time. You just need to think what you would do if you had all the money in the world and endless technicians and undergrads to do the work for you. Easy peasy.

The last panel in the cartoon is priceless. I've lost track of how many times I've given that answer when someone asked me how my thesis was going. Now I can say I have an outline, a chapter and some of another chapter done. Yay!

I'm back... with a tan

Okay I've been back for over a week now so the tan has faded somewhat but you get the idea. The cruise was awesome as expected. A lovely week of no stress or thoughts of thesis writing. Sure I packed papers to read but those were soley for during downtime at the conference and yes, they stayed securely in my bag until then. My highlight of the cruise, holding a stingray in Grand Cayman. The cruise made me realize that I really should have gone into marine biology so I would have a reason to live in tropical places. Alas, highschool never taught me about how to get a job in a tropical location.

As for the conference, it was quite uneventful, research-wise. I've gone to this same conference for a few years now and every year I find it a bit of a different experience. Some years it's the talks that are the most interesting, some years it's the poster, this year though, it was neither. Although the conference was still good. I met a lot of people, networking some may call it, so all in all it was good. Being a conference in the US though, most of the networking involved people in the US. I, however, would prefer to find a post doc in Canada. I'm still keeping some of those names of people I met in mind though because you just never know.

Now to the important part of the conference, the hotel on the beach. It was an older hotel which I thought had a lot of charm and was quite nice considering the economical price and the location. Other people I know who also stayed there had a different opinion. To some, a pea under the mattress makes for a restless nights sleep. That's all I'm going to say about that but I'm sure you get the idea. Unfortunately, the conference kept me quite busy. With the conference every day, all day, then dinner and chatting with this person and that person after the conference meant I usually didn't get back to my hotel room until 10 or 11 at night so no beach. The last day though, I got back to my hotel shorty before 3pm, changed into my bathing suit in record time and dashed out to the beach and stayed there until the sun went down. It was a lovely end to the conference.

Now it's back to thesis writing. It's going slow unfortunately. I'm hoping this is just a slump and it will soon end. Also, the supervisor is back to requesting me to do time wasting things for him. Today I got an email saying that he wants me to move all his boxes (that he came months ago to pack up but never shipped) into our main lab because they need to clean out the other lab. I sent a reply asking if I would get worker's compensation when I throw my back out. I ended the sentence with a smilie though so even though I meant every word of what I said he will take it in jest. Oh the eggshells a grad student must carefully tread.