A new start

The good:
I have a new computer (MacBook :) )

I've been offered a post-doc position at university of rochester, which I accepted. I was also offered an interview at the NIH. But I think the guy at Rochester is going to be a better fit.

I got to go to AZ with Dave, Missy and Bobby to cheer on my Dad when he did the Hike For Discovery for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I had never seen the Grand Canyon before. Pretty spectacular. The Michigan chapter raised almost a 1/4 of a million dollars (with many thanks to those of you who helped with that!).

The Bad:
I'm not exactly sure I'm ever going to graduate or even get any publications to make it seem like the last 7 years have been worth anything.

The Ugly:
My relationship with my advisor: I e-mail him research questions. I get no reply. I e-mail him again. No reply. I e-mail him asking for a letter of recommendation. I get a reply saying he hasn't gotten any updates on my research and is obviously not happy with me. I send a pissy e-mail back. I think things get worked out. He says he'll pay me for the summer and that I don't have to move back to CA since it's so much cheaper and efficient to stay in MN.
- But he still hasn't written my letter of recommendation for the aforementioned post-doc. My funding can only be granted once they receive the letter. I've been asking since the middle of April and I was offered the position in the middle of May.
- I continue to e-mail him asking him to register me for classes. But, so far as I know he hasn't done it. He has to approve my registration before the registrar can do anything about it. Until he registers me as a student (which I've been asking him to do for me since the end of May...I called the registrar, the departmental assistant and the grad office to find out what I needed to do and did all the paperwork fom here), I cannot get paid and I don't have health insurance.

That's right folks, I'm UNEMPLOYED, sans health insurance, working on my relatively unsuccessful research as a volunteer.... I'm living with a friend who has been kind enough to share her townhouse with me and my cat. I've saved up enough money to pay my rent and the credit-rating determining expenses through the end of July (I think). But none of that includes getting to see Dave, any emergencies or things like food and taking my cat for her annual check-up. I guess it's time to start accumulating more debt again. (and btw, the computer was purchased under the assumption that I was going to get paid this summer...never ASS-U-ME anything).

I'm continuing to send my advisor e-mails twice a week and I will call him at 5 AM CA time (which is when he usually gets into work) next week when he gets back into town.

In other news (or lack thereof): Dave and I have not set a date for the wedding. Dave is still working on getting a job.

I'm terribly homesick for my friends in/from CA, so instead of calling them, I'm avoiding contacting them, because it's just going to make me sad. I know this sounds horribly selfish, but I'm starting my 8th year of *&#^!@? grad school and many of them just walked after 6, 5 or 4 years. I'm depressed about my lack of success to say the least. I'm sincerely ecstatic for them, but in my head I'm reliving last spring when I saw all my college friends at my ex-boyfriend's wedding. I had just been rejected from 15 medical schools, was still grieving over mom, and basically couldn't see through the mucky present to the future. I grew up only knowing success, so experiencing this many set-backs/failures, big and small, is kind of tough for me.

I Quit...

I quit my thesis project

I quit trying to deal with my thesis advisor

I quit this country

I quit teaching people who don't want to learn

I quit long-distance relationships (but I don't quit Dave)

Thesis Project

I've been working on this family of proteins longer than anyone in my group has worked on a set of proteins. I know that in some ways my family is more challenging, since I have bigger ligands and since they bind lipids, not polar molecules (we use the hydrophobicity of our helices to orient them, but my entire protein is sort of hydrophobic so that does me no good). But, I'm a senior graduate student - I should have been able to get this project done a long time ago (yes, I know most of grad school was a string of extenuating circumstances what with all the death and disease and comas), but I used to be really smart. Not just above average smart, but really, really smart. Now, I don't know when or if I'm ever going to finish my thesis because I seem to suck at research and if I do finish it, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a piece of crap.

I really shouldn't be posting this - I've sent off two applications for post-doc positions. The last thing I need is for potential advisors to google me and find this rant about myself or the one below about advisors. But, if I don't finish the thesis, I'm definitely not going to be able to do a post-doc, so it doesn't matter :-P

My Advisor

I sent him an e-mail with a detailed list of questions about my project and my thesis. This detailed message was sent because he didn't reply to my last e-mail with questions. Have I gotten a response yet to either of the e-mails? No. I can't really do any work on my thesis until I hear from him (and from someone else in the group).

Now, I don't know whether this situation (about to be described) is my fault or my supervisors' fault. But I spent a huge chunk of time trying to dock my ligands without the extracellular loops on the proteins. Despite my intuition that the extracellular loops had to be involved in the binding of my ligands. But my supervisors kept telling me that trying to dock with loops was a waste of time. I should have just done it behind their back. Although I did try that and when I brought preliminary results to them, they told me to push it aside and work on what they thought was more immediate. I guess I should have stood up for myself better. Because, now, many people in the group are questioning whether we should be docking with loops or not. Usually when someone in our subgroup posts a general question, my advisor responds to it. This time, when someone posted a question/concern about docking without loops, I replied and one other grad student replied. Did my advisor pipe up and give us his opinion? No. I know he's got a conference this week, and that he's a very busy man. But I need his help and his input, and it's just not there.

This Country

I don't want to go into a long political rant on this blog, because I don't really have the energy for the discussion that might ensue. But, it physically pains me to listen to NPR in the mornings, so I don't think I can avoid the rant any longer. Not that I dislike NPR, but the opinions of some of my fellow citizens send me into a tizzy. Do I think the government has a responsibility to fight terrorism? Sure. Should they do whatever they think is necessary willy-nilly? No. Our government was set-up under the assumption that checks and balances are necessary. Hence that whole trifecta of governing bodies. Yet, there are Americans who think that warrantless wire-taps are just A-OK. Eh, who the hell needs the judiciary body anyways, right? They don't do anything whatsoever, right? Politics, government, legal issues: All not really my cup of tea. But when some people go around saying that our country is great and tout their patriotism and then reject some of the fundamental tenets of our government - the very things that make this country great in my mind - I just can't help but get riled up.

And then there's this whole issue about a Christian being tried for converting from Islam. A potential penalty is the execution. I agree whole heartedly with the idea of freedom of religious expression. But there are people in this country and in our government who are outraged by this trial in Afghanistan but think that it's a great idea for our government to regulate that marriage is only between one man and one woman. And the argument for this legislation is sometimes (often?) religious in nature. So who/what someone worships shouldn't be subject to regulation, but who someone shares their life with should be? I don't know that my logic is very clear here. Maybe I'll be able to explain it better later.

The last two points above are more self-explanatory. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to quit the long-distance relationship without quitting Dave, so I guess I'm an indentured servant to long distance relationships for the time being.

Now I'm going to quit my bad mood :)

In the long list of Rudds recently engaged or married, Dave and I are tying the knot. No idea when the wedding might be; earliest will be spring 2007, we imagine.

Maybe one of these days I'll write a real post that takes some mental effort.

A huge congrats to Peter - His research made the headline story of nature news today.

Here's the article on Red Herring

Robin's post just reminded me. I've gotten so caught up in forgetting that it's Valentine's Day, so that I don't miss Dave too much, that I forgot what V-Day has meant to me for the past couple of years.

Happy V-Day Everyone! Until The Violence Stops!!!

Okay, maybe not speechless, but pretty darn close. I know some of the most amazing and generous people on the planet.

Thanks to those of you who have donated! I really, truly don't know how to express my appreciation. Literally, I've got tears in my eyes (the good kind of tears) and goosebumps.

Not that it's just Rudds who have donated, but I've been thinking about Ruddock an awful lot lately. It was a fantastic house (but all the houses are great houses...) and I don't know that I could have been anywhere else that would have helped me grow up and figure out who I am as much as Ruddock did.

Wow.

My dad is participating in the Leukemia
and Lymphoma Society's "Hike For Discovery" this spring. The Hike for Discovery is a fundraising event where participants hike
through the Grand Canyon in honor/memory of someone afflicted with
leukemia or lymphoma. My dad will be hiking in memory of my mom who
died in August 2004 from complications of her chemo therapy.

I know many of you aren't in a position to financially donate, but I'd
like all of you to keep my dad in your thoughts as he trains for this
adventure and supports this cause that is very important to our
family.

My Dad's Site

I kicked 2/3 of my class out today for not coming prepared. I don't regret the decision, but I had a really hard time doing it and doing it without apology. I know that it was completely my prerogative, but I'm still not comfortable with being on the other end of the power dynamic that I've been part of for 24 years.

Wow - as I type this, I'm watching the Colbert Report and he's interviewing Norah Vincent. If you don't know who she is, she's a lesbian who dressed as a man for a significant period of time and actually developed some emotional issues from the experience and ended up receiving intensive mental health care. Anyways, she just made a comment about one of the big differences between her female self and her male alter-ego was that "Ned" didn't apologize for everything (like returning the wrong order of food at a restaurant). I'm oh so familiar with that issue - I can't stop apologizing.

Sorry, I'm too tired to write anymore :-P

I can't really think of anything to write, which is a little weird. But I've been missing everyone from California so much that I figured I should post and inform people that I'm still alive.

Summary of my life:

Dave and I are still together.

I am still teaching at Gustavus

I bought a couch this month.

I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

I've been crocheting a lot.

Ummm.....that seems to be it. I've realized that I really need a more stimulating environment than a small town. There really is nothing going on in my life to write about.

I don't know that teaching is for me. At least not at a school like Gustavus. So many of the students are just here to go to college not really to learn. Maybe I'm idealizing my student-self, but I remember being really excited about learning new things. Maybe I'm just a really bad, boring professor. I don't know, but as excited as I was about my Fairy Tales class...the students don't seem that excited. They have this look on their faces that says "I'd rather be at the dentist than here thinking about feminist (ewww...I can't believe she uses the word feminism so often) theory as it relates to children's literature." Wait, their expressions don't say that...their expressions are too blank to say that. Friday is the last day of the Jan Term. Then I get a week off, during which I NEED to work my ass off on research. I'll go to Rochester for a couple of days that week to spend my birthday with Dave. Then, spring term starts - I'm teaching Organic Chemistry lab (ICK - I don't know whether it's going to be more painful for me or for my students...Organic was not my strongest subject), Quantum Mechanics and Chemistry in Context (chem for non-majors). Only one person signed up for my quantum course (apparently taking Thermo with me was, in fact, as painful as I feared) so it's not going to be a typical course - more like an independent study for the student.

Okay, my grammar sucks and I don't have anything profound to say, so I'm going to go grade other people's writing. I miss you all and am going to try to post more often, especially since my life is going to undergo some not so minor changes over the next few months.