Monday

I hate those days when you absolutely cannot be bothered to do any experiments.

I'm having one of those days today. It's a Monday. I keep thinking about Office Space and shit. I've done very little actual work today. I've been pretty good about changing my screen to PubMed every time someone walks by. You know, gotta make it look like I'm doing something.

One of the post-docs here totally supports the loafing about. I mean, when it comes down to it, sometimes it is better to do nothing than to do something. For instance, there have been plenty of occasions where I just could not be arsed doing an experiment, I ended up doing it, but I fucked it up somehow. Now, if I had only waited to do it the next day, it might have been done properly. The particular experiment I am talking about takes about a week and a half to do from start to finish, so if I fuck it up I have actually wasted quite a bit of time.

So I think I'm sitting on my ass today. I'm fucking tired and shit.

I have a stack of papers about three inches tall that I should be reading. If I read them, though, I will pass the fuck out. The stuff I love can be so fucking boring sometimes.

It's like when I try to describe my research to someone outside the field - I get the glazed eye look. I try to keep it as broad as possible. "I'm in biomedical research." That is all I really want to say, but I am inevitably pushed deeper and deeper until I am talking about proteins and signaling. Then I get the glazed eye look from the person I am talking to, he or she is completely bored, and I have ruined a conversation. Fun, fun, fun.

I'm going to start saying that I am in the circus and just make shit up.

Fear and fear itself

Man, I start Grad School in a month.

I am starting to freak out a little bit. I mean, it's been almost two years since I have been in school, and now I have to get back in the ring again. Courses. Exams. Papers. They are all waiting for me.

Fuck.

I have been living the good life for two years. I'm salaried. I'm not expected to produce anything at this level, let alone publish. My lab is really well funded so I can do pretty much whatever I want, and it's beautiful. Beautiful! And now I'm going to have to put on a backpack? For reals? Fuck that! Fuck pencils and spiral-bound notebooks, man! I want to continue to be lazy!

One of the students who showed me around when I was interviewing at my school said that trying to grasp all the material in one particular intro course was "like drinking from a fire hose." I am jumping for fucking joy here. I can barely get my ass out of bed before 8am and now I'm going to have to digest information at that hour, after the one hour commute? I'm thinking no.

No coffee can awaken me to that extreme at such a perilously early time point.

Don't get me wrong, I am totally fucking stoked to finally be getting my ass in to grad school after all this time. It's just that I've been on summer vacation for a long ass time. The days are getting shorter and shit. I was never good at coming to terms with the end of summer vacation. On more than one instance, I spent the very last day trying to read each and every one of my summer reading books. It didn't go well.

Needless to say, I still harbor a hatred for Steinbeck.

I have a few weeks left, all of which will be spent frantically trying to get some kind of closure on my project. Amazingly, it is going very well, and I've produced some kickass data this summer. Unfortunately, there is no fucking way I'm going to get it anywhere near journal submission before I leave. This means that this fall, in addition to taking courses and doing a lab rotation, I will most likely be spending my weekends here in my lab trying to get my shit finished.

I need a life.