It's true. It never ends.

Things have been very busy the past few weeks. And by busy, I mean that the clock has been literally crammed up my ass and using its arms to puppeteer mine.

Let me break this shit down.

Thursday, I had my first committee meeting. Holy fucking shit does it take some acrobatics and persistence to get four extremely busy people to agree on a time to sit in a room. My boss - by far the busiest of all due to her administrative duties - took one for the team and missed something important to go to this meeting. Man, she is the best.

Back in August, when I did my defense, I proposed a big stinking impossible pile of shit that I knew was a piece of shit. They all expressed doubt, but let me proceed. In the months since, I came to the conclusion that they were right. It was, in fact, far shittier and impossible than I had imagined. So I started a new project.

The boss then gave me one week to write a revised proposal. Two days later, she asked me to review a paper for a big journal. And I have to give a departmental seminar in two weeks. FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU!

The knife just kinda sat there, twisting slowly in the gaping wound around my liver.

Anyway, I got it all done. Although I felt thoroughly prepared, I was slightly nervous about my committee meeting. Dr. Impossible Questions didn't show up, we were in a shitty, tiny room that was awkward for presentations, but I went ahead and started my presentation.

It is a wonderful feeling to take a swing and feel like you hit it out of the motherfucking park - and that's what it felt like during the presentation. I'm a perfectionist. I wish I wasn't, but I am. I always want to be the best that I can possibly be, because why do something if you're not going to do it all the way? And man, this was the first time I have ever been perfectly satisfied with one of my presentations. They told me they wish they could bottle up my enthusiasm and distribute it to the other grad students, and that I've set the bar higher for what they expect. Holy fuck man, I was fucking proud of myself. Even better, I let myself be proud of myself. It felt so amazing.

I'm not trying to boast here or anything. Things have been going great in the lab, but I've still felt in limbo. Am I a real scientist? How much longer do I have to go? Do I have what it takes - the ideas, the balls, the luck - to be one of the guys that everyone knows? Will I ever feel competent enough? I don't know. But I do know that I fucking nailed my committee meeting, and I'm one step closer. All the hard work is actually starting to pay off.

I wish I could bottle this feeling up and give it to all the nameless faces fighting the good fight along with me. But since I can't, I will tip back a few beers for everyone who needs a boost after this long winter. The spring is coming. I promise.

Gettin' my defense on

So the defense of my research proposal is over, and I fucking passed it. Awesome.

I was worried going in, because I was absolutely certain that one of my committee members hates me and another gets bored easily and lashes out with impossible questions. Dr. Impossible Questions did not disappoint - I spent the first twenty minutes of the defense explaining to him why my research is important. He just kept saying "Who cares?" Finally, another committee member came to my rescue, said word-for-word what I had said, and Dr. Impossible was satisfied.

Now my presentation differed in that I had data. I turned in my proposal three months before I defended it - and I wasn't just sitting on my arse the whole time. Halfway through my presentation of my first specific aim, they stopped me and said they didn't want to see any more data. In fact, they told me to forget about the presentation and just started firing away with questions. I tried not to look crushed that they were dismissing a presentation that took me two weeks of hard work to put together.

Now since I am a person who writes things like this little blog for fun, I try to make what I write sound good. One thing I do not like is repeatedly using the same word over and over (and over!). As a result, my committee spent ten minutes making fun of me for using "I believe" instead of "I hypothesize." I totally get why they harped on me for it, but the ten minutes were maybe a tad overboard.

Once all was over, they told me that I passed and that I did a good job - but I need to work on my writing. I knew going in that my proposal was a festering turd of a writing exercise and I thought I could get away with it. So uh, so far I am 0 - 1000 in trying to get away with subpar shit. You'd think I might have learned something by now, but no. I fucking hate scientific writing. As a lover of writing it pains me to say that, but I really do. Fuck passive tense!

It feels so fucking good to be an official PhD candidate - to know that there is just one more major hurdle to getting my PhD. It felt good immediately, and I still feel good about it. Several times, I've mistakenly thought that a milestone would give me some validation. For example, I thought that successfully passing all of my classes would make me feel different somehow. It didn't. This totally did, and it's fucking great.

The Proposal Returns

I submitted my research proposal on June 9th. I had these grand plans for its total awesomeness, but in the end I'm kinda ashamed of it. It's embarrassing for me to read. However, this is mostly due to the constricting format and page limits. I mean, how am I supposed to talk in-depth about several large research projects - with an introduction - in fifteen double-spaced pages? I can't without sounding like a moron.

So flash forward to last week, when I was on vacation. I get the email saying that my proposal was approved to move to the next stage: oral defense. Man, I am not looking forward to this.

As is typical of my university, I've spent the last week trying to wrangle together my oral defense committee (ODC). This is not easy. Apparently, this is never easy. A week after my initial emails went out, I still have yet to hear from one member. My defense is in one week.

It's good that this came along, because I was starting to feel like things were actually running smoothly.

So I'm working on my presentation. Or, rather, I'm looking that the screen intently while I slouch in my chair with my hands in my pockets. This is the phase where I try (unsuccessfully) to make everything come together with the power of my mind. It never works, but I have to do it. This also means that I will have to move in to the next phase some time this afternoon, where I curse and hate my life a little more than I do right now.

Here is what I like to call, My Exact Response to Everything I Have to Do, or The Five Stages of Lab Grief:

1. Denial. "Oh I have to do that? No problem. That's fucking easy."
   
2. Forgetfulness. "Wasn't there this big thing I was suppose to do?"
   
3. Aviodance. "Oh yeah, that thing. Uh, I have this experiment I better do first."
   
4. Desked. "I'm working on this! Really hard, like right now! Wait, I have some email to check. Oh yeah, and what was that thing I wanted to buy? I better go to Amazon to browse until I can remember it. Who was that chick who was in that movie last night? Better go to IMDB. Hey, I have a intro slide that just says "Introduction". Man, I need to take a break. But I'm working hard when I get back. For REALS."
   
5. Mania/Depression. "Oh fuck I only have the rest of the day to finish this. I'm going to work my ass off! I have to! I work better under pressure, man! Yay!". Then: "I hate science. I hate my life. This presentation is embarrassing and shitty. I'm going to look stupid like I always do. Why do I always leave things until the last minute? I swear I will never, ever do it again."
   

Rinse with beer. Repeat ad nauseam.

So I am scurrying to finish my presentation today for a practice run in front of the lab tomorrow. At least the whole affair will be over soon. I think.

I swear, I have spent nearly the entire time as grad student - now at the beginning of the third year - totally shitting myself. So really, grad school is a long, drawn out process of tempering homicidal and/or suicidal instincts mixed with the constant feeling of shitting yourself, feeling lousy and retarded, and being poor.

Sign me the fuck up!

Some good news

I have successfully passed written comps. This is fan-fucking-tastic, because I was pretty sure one of the professors was going to fail me on one section. So, yay! That is the last exam I will ever have to take, which is awesomeness to the power of Avogadro's number.

Even better is the fact that they are giving me 4-6 weeks from today to write my proposal, rather than 4 weeks from the date of the exam - which is what I thought. So I got a ton of stuff done, very early. Now I can take a few days off to relax and celebrate! Woohoo!

Also, I submitted the vomit paper. Finally. I know it's supposed to be bad luck or something to disseminate the actual submission to the zero people that read this, but it has to be said. It took almost a year longer than originally anticipated, but it's fucking gone. For now.

I'm probably getting rejected, but I don't care anymore. I hate the vomit paper. It must die.

The Desk Months

Well, the qualifying exam is over. I think. And by that, I mean I am not too sure how I did on one section. I was essentially told to study a recipe for making bread, and all related bread-making technique and theory, then asked to come up with a cake recipe for the exam. The questions on this particular section had nothing to do with the papers I was given.

Fun.

Anyway, it's been nearly two weeks now and I still don't have my results. I was the only one taking the exam. So, yeah. These professors have never been very good at getting exams back in a timely manner, so I'm not sure why I'm so surprised. But I am! Because I am incredibly naïve!

So now I have two weeks left to do my proposal, which is a load of fun right after finishing my paper. The past few months have really been a nightmare. Paper, quals, proposal, not much bench work, gum-chewer returning to the lab to sit next to me. It's so much fun. All I want to do are experiments - but I can't. I have to write. Shit.

I can't wait until it's all done. I feel ready to leave, but that means I still have a few more years ahead of me. Of course.

Quals

I am on the eve of my qualifying exam. I've spent the last two weeks studying like a crazy person. I chained myself to a desk in the library and poured over the seventeen papers I am to know back and forward. Since I am to have "broad expertise" in these subjects, seventeen papers turned in to something over thirty once I printed out selected reviews from the reference section. If I'm being honest, it's probably the most I've prepared for in exam in the history of me taking exams.

Yesterday I had to give a seminar to my fellow students. I hadn't slept the night before because a) I hate giving seminars, and b) I was thinking about the exam. I sat in the library, bleary-eyed and nodding off, my hand clawed around various coffee delivery systems. I had so much caffeine that I nearly spazzed out during seminar, and I talked so fast that I don't think anyone understood what the hell I was talking about. No one cared, though; we all wanted to go home.

Despite all of this, and the fact that my boss is on my ass about submitting my paper, I felt a sudden calm wash over me. I went to the library again today, only this time I was only there for about thirty minutes before I started nodding off. I decided it was time to come home.

I can't possibly look at these papers anymore. I am sick of looking at them. I've decided to say no to more studying. Tomorrow I will have to sit from 9am-12pm, then 2pm-5pm, and then I get to do it all over again on Friday. No, I am not going to study any more. There is no way that I could keep all of this information straight in my head - there is just too much to know. Something is bound to fall off the bookshelf if I stack any more nugs of information in the ol' brain library.

I am done.

So this afternoon I came home and I watched Amadeus. I think I might take a nap. For I am starting to actually believe, for once, that everything is going to work out ok. This is, after all, the last exam I will ever have to take. I've spent the last five years preparing for it. If I pass, I will deserve it. If I fail, I will deserve it. But right now, I am starting to feel tired - and I will not feel the least bit guilty if all I do for the rest of today is sleep. And you know what? Even the idea of it feels pretty damn good to me.

Disaster at a temporary pause

Right. I was postponing writing about the end of the semester until I received all of my grades, but that hasn't happened yet and I've already started a new semester. So here it goes.

Fall semester.

This was the single worst semester of school I have ever experienced - and that is saying a lot. I got kicked out of school three times my senior year in high school, so there was some pretty tough competition on that front. Seriously, I've tried to convey the horror here but I am incapable of finding the right words.

See, my education means a lot to me. I feel a little silly sometimes when I take bad teaching so personally, but then really everyone should. I'm only going to go through grad school once, so in my opinion it better fucking count. But the majority of professors in this school are horrible and are making class pointless.

Let's say someone gives you a lecture on how to make a batch of cookies. You follow along, understanding why things are added when. It all makes sense. Cooking is, in fact, just chemistry. But then you are tested on this lecture. It's a multiple choice exam, and the questions are asking how many millimeters across the dough mound should be and about the type of heat that is delivered by your oven. Are both of these points important? Sure they are. But do they truly further your understanding about how cookies are made? No.

This is what I am talking about. I am being taught stuff, but not learning anything. It's horrible.

Anyway, the first semester is over. Thank fuck for that. No more complaining about that shit. This semester, instead of taking seventeen credits, I will only be taking fourteen. Or twelve. I haven't really fully decided on this one class, so I'm going to wait and see how that goes. It sounds interesting, but it's on Wednesday evening and gets out after 5pm. This means less time out of the lab. Tricky.

Maybe it's that I'm fresh out of a break, but things are good right now. I'm writing my paper, finally - but that is another story.

Finals

So I'm in finals week.

This semester has been horrible. At first, I thought that the classes were too easy - and they were, in a sense. For instance, I have covered DNA transcription in no less than four courses. But I had to cover it again here in the Biochemistry course at the University of Hell. By this point, transcription is easy. Somehow, though, I ended up with Ds on all of my exams. Ds! Me!

I've been panicking since that second D, thinking that I would have to take this class over again. There is absolutely no way on earth that I could do that. I am done emotionally. I am filled with rage at the condescending manner in which the professor speaks to me and the other students, at the level that the material is covered, but most of all because all the exams are multiple choice.

I seriously think I would have transferred had I failed. But then, I probably wouldn't have been able to transfer if I failed. Fuck me, I cannot wait to get these dumb classes over with and continue on with the real reason that I came to graduate school - to do fucking science, man!

I have three more finals left, none of which pertains to anything that I am now doing in the lab or anything in which I am remotely interested. I have no motivation. I am probably going to end up on academic probation.

But I am back in my home lab now, and much happier for it. My overall mood is improved, my experiments are working, and I'm writing my paper. I have to say, it is really strange to think that these pictures of blot membranes and graphs that I quickly put together so as not to be late for lab meeting will one day be in print. It's bizarre. My shitty little science might actually mean something.

Maybe this is all worth it after all.

Misery

Can you believe it? Things are still shitty!

I have decided to stop complaining, though. There is literally nothing that I can do to remedy this situation. I have thought about transferring to another school, but then I would have to go through another year of courses. That will not do. So I am stuck here, in Dumbshit University, for all eternity.

The medical students here are, in a word, ridiculous. I don't think they are aware that they are out of college, or maybe even high school. They are very, very loud and obnoxious. To top it off, they are also very stupid. I mean, all you do in medical school is memorize shit that other people have figured out. A monkey could do that, given enough time.

Seriously, if this is the state of medical schools across the country, then I am completely afraid for my future health. Maybe they just learn everything during residencies. I'm pinning my hopes on that. These dumbshits have less than shit for brains.

I think though, that the landscape might be different at state schools. This is a place of privilege, after all. Some medical students go here just for the name. I'm sure a significant chunk of them did so just because daddy went here too. At state schools, though, there are people who have busted their asses their entire life to get into medical school. I'm sure they take things more seriously there. They have to, right?

Anyway, I'm becoming more and more bitter. It has nothing to do with these retarded medical students talking loudly in the library while I am trying to study, or the fact that my academic adviser has yet to show up for our morning meeting and it is now approaching 1pm. It's that I am becoming less and less like anything that my friends and family can relate to. I have nothing to offer but shitty scientific dribble. My life is school and lab. And rage.

I am so fucking boring.

This weekend, I stayed in and wrote a damn term paper. I didn't even leave the house once! In fact, I can't really remember the last time I did anything fun for the sake of fun. It's really sad.

Yay grad school!

Fun, fun, fun

Well. The comedy is over. My statistics professor spends a great deal of time talking about her cruise of the Mediterranean. The class is so easy that I don't even know why I bother to show up anymore.

In my Molecular Biology course, there are people who don't know the difference between sense and anti-sense DNA strands. I wonder how they got in to graduate school. I wonder why the fuck I thought coming here was a good idea. I wonder if I threw my career trajectory away to keep my apartment.

A long time ago, I went to this lecture on "The Imposter Syndrome." A lot of smart people think they are imposters, that they don't measure up and are secretly really stupid. There was a grad student from MIT in front of me. I was afraid of that, so I sold myself short. I didn't want to get ass-raped by intense courses.

I thought grad school was going to be fucking brutal no matter where I went. It is not. I swear that I am not that smart - it is just that this shit is mind-numbingly easy.

It depresses me. I am depressed. Poor me, school is too easy. My rotation lab is working me like a slave. I am pretty sure that I hate everything right now.

Day One

The first classes were today. I felt like an impostor when I put on my backpack, like I was too old or something. It seemed as though there was no possible reason on earth that a twenty-seven-year-old person should leave the house wearing one. I honestly was looking around for people staring...

But they weren't, of course. At least, not for the backpack.

Biochemistry scared the shit out of me for some reason. I don't know why, but I just hate thermodynamics. Every time I tried to do that stuff in the lab, like working with calorimeters and shit, I always fucked up. But there they were on the first slide - entropy and shit. The horror! I really, really hope this is the last fucking time I have to deal with this shit. Every time it comes up, I think it is the last time. But no, the punishment never ends.

I have a slew of other courses as well. It seems I am no longer capable of taking less than seventeen credit hours a semester. I know I am setting myself up for wrinkles and gray hair and shit, but I am willing to sacrifice that in order to get these dumb courses out of the way in the first year. I want them done. Over. Now.

Oh yeah, and I'm still not registered. Awesome.

The Last Day of Freedom

So I start class tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I do not know what classes I will be starting. I had orientation on Friday, but I was told that I would not be able to meet with my program director or advisor, and that a special meeting would need to be set up. I was supposed to receive word about this later Friday afternoon, but I have not yet heard anything. Hooray, things really are starting out well. I think I'll just randomly show up to classes that I think I should be taking. Or something. I don't even have my ID yet. I am officially shitting myself.

It appears that I will have to be in my first class by 9am every day, even Friday. Ugh.

Last week I had to take radiation safety and lab safety courses. These are the same ones that I have taken at every single institution I have ever been at, so it was mind-numbingly boring. However, as I sat there, I realized that it felt good to be sitting in a classroom again. Sadly, I must admit that I really enjoy taking courses. I am such a nerd that I don't even really read fiction books. My bookshelves are lined with science-based books and texts on philosophy and stuff like that.

I can't believe people hang out with me.

Disasters, etc.

At one point in time, I loved my project. I conceived it. I nursed it through infancy. I fought for it to be liked by the other projects in the lab. We were pals. Symbiotes.

Sometime between preparing its debut on that first poster and last Christmas, I began to get a little tired of it. My ill-conceived experiments began to show holes. I thought it was something that I could patch up.

Uh, no.

Those damn grad school interviews. As I explained my project, it became very clear to me that I am working on a pile of shit that has no relevance. Hooray! I have been and will continue wasting my fucking time!

So yeah, clearly I don't have that PhD yet.

Then again, I don't think I could have had better preparation for grad school. In nearly two years, I have been through the ups and downs. I've hated my project. I've hated myself. I've lost all motivation, then had it unexpectedly come back, then lost it again, over and over.

Essentially, I have been dating science all this time. We've had some fights, but it was still all new and fresh and unknown and sexy. We just got engaged, though. I've chosen my grad school. Now it's serious. Very soon, we will move in together.

I'm already soliciting counselors.