it can't be good for you if you want it that much

Sitting in Halcyon, having just spent my entire day trying to grade one of the two essays on my students' exams. I have come to the conclusions that they do not actually get it. They're just good at pretending. I had three, yes three, perfect scores on that one question out of over eighty exams. Ah well. I can't make them learn it, I can only present the information. It's far later than I had planned on being out, but a "study date" with Jess is not a bad way to spend five hours.

Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about stress levels and what it's doing to my body. Suffice to say the situation is getting ridiculous. My overactive brain needs rugby. When I play everything else - and I do mean everything: stress, pain, worry - slips away. I have yet to find anything else even remotely healthy that does this for me. So I'm considering practicing next Tuesday. Probably not one of my better ideas, but I need to hit something. I really need to hit something. At least I can be fairly certain that graduate school causes this level of stress in everyone. All the post-docs and older grad students I've talked to about stress had their own chronic symptoms, from migraines to grinding their teeth. Unfortunately no one has a definitive way of dealing, either.

internet neutrality

Carly posted an excellent blog on the lobbying of major internet provider corporations for the right to limit access to the internet. In our capitolistic society I can't say that I'm suprised, but the potential of this bill is indeed alarming and maybe it's because I don't pay enough attention to what is going on outside of my little bubble of academic panic, but I hadn't heard anything about it.

Carly's article.
The MoveOn.org movement.
Article from San Franciso paper.

Best of the West Tournament

The email I sent Blondie at saturdayrugbyday.blogspot.com:

Saturday -
Pool 1 -
Austin Valkyries vs. Colorado Black Ice 17-0 (Valks)
Austin Valkyries vs. Boulder Babes 28-25 (Babes)
Black Ice vs. Boulder Babes 21-5 (Ice)

Pool 2 -
Harlequin Olde Girls vs. Oklahoma Roses 31(?) - 0 (HOGS)
Olde Girls vs. Alamo City forty something - 0 (Olde Girls)
Oklahoma Roses vs Alamo City - 34-7 (OU)

The championship game final score was 29-17, Olde Girls. It was a great game to watch and both teams played their hearts out.

In the social bracket the UT women went undefeated on Saturday against Baton Rouge and Texas State (Pool 4), then lost to NW Arkansas Iron Maidens in the social championship game. I didn't get to watch too much of their games, but the UT women were playing extremely well for a team in their first season. In Pool 3 (NW Arkansas, TX Women's University and a motley of Houston/Rice U/Galveston) the Iron Maidens swept.

Don't have scores for the rest of Saturday's games or any of Sundays, because unfortunately no one bothered to write them down. All in all it was a weekend of great rugby and great camaraderie.

Which, pretty much covers it. Saturday night's social was great with some really creative costumes. Denver Black Ice were snow bunnies, one of the coastal teams came as Hurricane Survivors, and another team, NW Arkansas maybe, were superheroes. Would have been better if the owner of Nasty's hadn't booked three loud bands to play and take up a good chunk of space, but nothing is perfect. And we did get to jam out to Joy's DJ skills all weekend long.

I spent the weekend running around taking pictures and watching the games and catching up with friends. I wound up working selling food and t-shirts for a while both Saturday and Sunday and just kind of made myself available to help out where I could. I am still undergoing rugby withdrawal, however, and it wasn't necessarily easy to be out there without playing. My kit bag, boots and all, was in the car the entire weekend, just in case. But in the end I decided risking my shins just isn't worth it. Common sense is sometimes unfortunate. One of coaches, a person whose opinion I value highly, keeps asking me when I'm coming back. A major compliment, and one that makes coming back even more appealing. She wouldn't ask if she didn't think I had what it took to become a good player.

short term solution

What Dooce said.

But add a carton of chocolate milk mixed with schnapps.

out the front window

I am trying to imagine that I am someone else,
a grocer, an aerialist,
a young viola player who travels
around the country in a bus full of musicians,

but difficulty lurks at every turn.
I am not really sure what a viola looks like,
plus, I have become so used to being me
that I have become an assistant professor of myself.

- 1st two stanzas of One Self, by Billy Collins

ovsg,swtwga

Shit. Why is it so hard to be good?

best of the wests

This week is a buildup to the Best of the West Tournament, hosted by the Valkyries here in Austin. Last I heard we had twelve teams confirmed, making for easily balanced bracketing. Plus, the final selections for West Select side coincides with the tournament and the temperatures are supposed to fall off from our current record breaking highs. (Texas weather still baffles me.) There are also going to be four out of town ruggers crashing on the floor and pull out sofa in my tiny little apartment, which will be interesting, to say the least. But, it's a prime location in relation to the Social.

I'm excited about the weekend, having never been this involved with a large rugby tournament. I have a feeling I'll be a bit lost with little to do since I'm not actually playing and I'm not helping with the organizational details. (It's a symptom of having been on the NJAA board) and will wind up buzzing around filling in and doing whatever I can to help out. Plus, the Lenten season is finally over, so I can participate in the revelry. Certainly makes wearing whatever off the wall costume the team comes up with easier.

they really get it

Discussion section today went well. Really well, particularly considering how low attendance has gotten. My students are slowly learning how not to expect to be spoon-fed the answers. Today I had a worksheet of problems based on the pathway genetic screen stuff that was presented in class earlier in the week. And they were getting it.

The bacteria grow because they need the final product. Yes!
They can't make the final product because there is a mutation in an earlier step. Yes!
But if you give them this particular intermediate they can grow. What does that mean? The mutation occurs before that step. Again, Yes!

Okay, so maybe I don't completely suck. And maybe pre-meds aren't worthless afterall. Or maybe the students who show up to discussion aren't pre-med.

i won't turn around

Today is one of those days that seems to occur in every graduate student's career. I'm not wondering whether or not I'm capable of doing this. I know that I can. I just don't know whether or not it's worth it, it being all the pain and suffering the pursuit of a PhD in molecular biology, or any field of study, entails. When does a person get to the point where they choose quality of life over being a ridiculously high achiever? Wherever it is, I'm not there yet, though sometimes I wish I was. At the end of all my complaints I know that tomorrow morning I will walk into lab as well as the day after that and the day after that one. Two years from now I will still be walking into lab every morning. Giving up and moving to a small coastal town somewhere warm isn't as easy as fatasizing about it.

Today it's one-way ANOVAs and everything that is involved with never having been exposed to them. Tomorrow it will be mice or RNA interference or microarrays. There's a lot more that goes a lot deeper to fuel my frustration, but for fear of being dooced I can't and won't risk mentioning it here. Let's just say I wish I could vent about work and not worry that anyone would consider it more than just venting. Ah grad school, where one professor's bad opinion could potentially ruin your career for life...

“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us
lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those
lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them.”

Stanley Lindquist

Atlanta Harlequins vs Austin Valkyries

What a bizarre week. I only started getting back to feeling normal yesterday. Then I screwed it up all over again by staying out late. It was worth it. Hanging out with rugby players is always highly entertaining. Drunk rugby players even more so.

Yesterday's game was a bit of a rout...for Atlanta. No one I've talked to is entirely sure of the final score, but it was a lot to a single try without a conversion. The score wasn't really indicative of the game, in a lot of ways, though. The Valks played a hard game and never gave up fighting. The scrums and rucks were pretty well matched. Both our forwards and our backs got in some great tackles. Of course, Atlanta did, too. The single try scored by the Valkyries was from a maul that moved across the try line. (In that way the Valks have come a long way from the game against NY at Pumpkinfest back in October.) Seeing our our 15, Heidi, get run down for the first time since she started playing for us was a bit of a shock. We've started expecting that once she makes her break no one can catch her. Well, Atlanta's back line is definitely faster than ours. That and the thousand other little things learned are why we play high level teams. Playing the other Texas teams just cannot prepare the team for high level play, though I appreciate it for the chance to get in some playing time. I may have gotten some yesterday if it wasn't for the shins, but it's also extremely satisfying to not be completely out of my league on the field as well. I plan on being able to hang with the competitive side eventually, but for now I'm learning.

It was a great experience and we truly enjoyed hosting the Harlequins. They are a fantastic, fun group of people. The picture above is my impression of rugby in general. The forwards recovering from the breakdown, while the ball gets spun out to the backs (you can see the ball just over #4's shoulder). I'd like to say we made a try on this conversion, but I think this was one of the many display's of Atlanta's excellent defensive abilities.

mediocre is not acceptable

The exam was set to begin at nine this morning. I gave myself plenty of time to deal with any disaster that may have arisen during set up, but everything ran smoothly, including the mock up to allow me to non-mirror my presentation (Thanks, Tim, you rock!). Heading into the exam I was relatively calm. The committee, track chair, and my boss trickled in slowly, even suggesting that I begin despite the fact that the third member had not arrived and was going to have to leave early. So I went through my presentation with them asking questions as I went along. I fielded some well, some not so well. There were a few things I couldn’t for the life of me remember, despite the fact that I knew that I knew them. They weren’t satisfied with my experiments. Hence the rewrite. And I am not satisfied with myself. So I’m sitting here in my apartment alone essentially stewing over the fact that I don’t live up to the expectations I hold for myself. Despite passing I still feel like a failure. Mediocre is not good enough. But I don’t know how to do what I am trying to do any better.

finished

Well, that's taken care of. I passed. Now all I feel is relief. No elation, because I need to re-write my proposal. Fortunately I agree with my committee that the proposal needs help and some of my experiments could be better. This is a learning process. I have definitely, definitely, definitely come a loooong way from where I was back in January. And I can kind of see where I need to go from here. Kind of. With help I will get there.

t minus twenty four hours

"Everyone told bleak stories of sitting wearily at their desk in the Widener stacks, wondering what folly had possessed them to undertake this particularly unrewarding piece of research in order to enter this poorly paid and little valued profession. Shoe salesmen, bus drivers, construction workers, and drugstore clerks all seemed the embodiment of calm happiness and contentment compared with the scholars who pursued this dusty quest..."
-Jill Ker Conway True North

Well stated, Ms. Conway.

At this point I'm just trying to dodge the terror that looms above me. I'll be okay. Inasmuch as I am going to pass. My ideas are sound enough that my as-yet unknown committee won't fail me. They might pile on conditions, but I will pass. That knowledge does not make the process any easier to undergo, however. There is no way around the fact that I'm going to be put through the wringer tomorrow morning, no matter how well prepared I am.

jess, you'll get a kick out of this...

So in my procrastinating I came across a friend's myspace blog of stupid quiz results. So I started doing them. Better than beating my head against a stubborn Powerpoint presentation. One of them gave me this result:

You Should Get a JD (Juris Doctor)

You're logical, driven, and ruthless. You'd make a mighty fine lawyer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

It made me laugh because I don't know anyone less suited to being in law than myself.