my old, nerdy and quirky power couple

I think maybe I under estimated how busy I would be these days leading up to a PhD defense... it is still quite far off, but I find that I blink and days have gone by.

But recently something has made me take a step back. A professor in my department passed away. It was very sudden, and the hole left in the wake of her passing is larger than I would have expected. I did not know her well, but I know her husband.

I had always thought she was a little out there... very strange. But then again, we fellow Californians can always sense in each other that strangeness that comes from The Golden State roots we never lose, no matter where we end up settling down. I know I told a joke at her expense from time to time... mostly about how, when I became an old professor, I hoped that I would retain a sense of fashion that seemed to escape many faculty in the department, her included. Sometimes about how she never seemed to be able to keep it straight whether or not she knew me. Some days she would, others she wouldn't. Of course, they were jokes never meant in cruelty... and yet, now I feel bad. Guilt that that is mostly what I spoke about when I did talk about her, because there was a lot more to her than just her surface oddities that were easy to poke fun at.

But then again, I guess the things I admired were not her individually. As I said, I did not know her well as a person, but as the spouse of another faculty member in our department, I knew her as part of a couple I looked up to.

Off the top of my head, there are at least four married couples in the faculty of our department. Let me just say, the outward appearance of married faculty relationships can be incredibly odd. And maybe some of them ARE just plain odd. But a lot of times, I think it is the married couple doing their best to stay EXTREMELY professional in the work place to the point where it seems they are indifferent to spending time with their spouse. I can understand the importance of a professional facade when you are a big-wig professor managing grants and graduate students and a position at a research university... but being recently married to a purely academic creature myself, I am looking into my future with my husband at a life of academics as well. And so, the married faculty in my department are people that I look critically at, trying to gauge what my life may end up being like.

Let me just say, I hoped it would be similar to the relationship I saw between the late professor and her husband. At first glance, one would say their relationship was odd too. In summers I would see the two of them gardening around the department building, cutting back ivy growing up the walls and tidying up the planter boxes in front. When I would work late at night on the weekends, I'd see the doors to their offices (right next to each other of course) propped open, they would be in their respective offices working on whatever... they were apart, but together in their nearness. My understanding is that a lot of the research they did over the years was also collaborative. In fact, my office being the next door down from their offices and their graduate student offices, I am still unclear after 5 years, which graduate student worked for who. When they were the host for an invited speaker in the department, they worked feverishly together to give them an over the top, warm welcome. They even got the marching band and cheerleaders to come welcome a good friend and fellow professor who came to give a seminar at our department once. They were the only couple in the department I'd see regularly having lunch together, talking together in hallways, in general, outwardly showing that they enjoyed each others company.

Let me just say... I hope my husband and I can have such a marriage, years down the line when we are old tenured professors.

They didn't let departmental pressures suppress their preference to "hang out" together... and I have seen it happen. One of the married couples in our department were hired in my first year. In their first months at the department, I'd see them sit next to each other in seminars, go to lunch together... things one would expect a married couple to do. As the months rolled on, they no longer sat together and I would often see them eat lunch separately with other faculty members. But years into their marriage and into their jobs as tenured professors, my beacons of hope were still dutifully polite, but sweet with each other, day in and day out, even at work. And so, what might seem odd at first glance, I came to realize was genuine love and devotion to each other. They loved spending every moment together, they loved their jobs, they loved working together...

And so I guess I feel her loss more in the sense of, the loss of my power couple. I feel her loss in the pain I know her husband must be feeling. I know there is not much I can do but hope that he has people near him to comfort him in such a hard time. And to her memory, I will say, that I hope I am lucky enough to have such a close and wonderful marriage with my husband as I saw between the two of them.

the mental struggles of a PhD student

I am an inorganic chemist. I use solid state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) to study ... well, basically to study dirt.

While "chemist" is my chosen profession that I know and love, I have always struggled with gauging where I should be, intellectually speaking. The problem with striving to be an expert it something is that you are likely surrounded by other people striving to be experts in their own little interests, and they somehow always manage to seem far more expert than you. At least, this is how my experience has been.

When I finished undergrad, I felt a sense of having missed that expected culmination of my great intellect. Graduation felt more like attaining a certain amount of points to get to the next level in Tetris. Ok, college is a bit more complicated than video game, but admittedly, only the highly skilled make it to the end of the entire game. But basically, at some point along the way in undergrad, I was handed a degree and declared knowledgeable in my chosen field of study, and that point had nothing to do with my corresponding level of confidence in my expertise.

So, on to grad school. I figured HERE is where I will gain my great knowledge and, along with it, an awareness of how vast that knowledge has become... and THUS, I would solve important world problems.

My first year... Mostly hopeful. HUGE expectations of fixing world problems with one fell swoop of my resulting PhD super smart influence. Global warming? GONE! Energy crisis? GONE! Pollution woes? GONE!!

... etc, etc ...

My second year... Mostly fear. Comparing myself to all these REALLY smart people from great schools in my grad year, all the more advanced grad students who seem like they know more than I could ever possibly fit into my head, and professors whose intelligence and high ranked achievements can only be explained if I believed they were actually part robot.

My third and fourth year? Good question... a fuzzy sense of the passage of time blurred by monotony of labwork and the realization there is much to do if one ever wants to exit grad school and enter the real world again.

And now in my fifth year. I guess fear again. I have realized that I don't feel much different from when I started, despite the fact that rationally I know I have learned many things since starting here. But I am also more acutely aware of the things I don't know and that has only served to engender insecurity in my abilities as a professional. I have also established many Plan B's, the latest being opening a bagel shop far far away from here. This is not entirely helpful for someone looking to graduate soon and find a job.

However, in spite of all the fifth year fears, there is reassurance from various postdocs who speak candidly about their experience. That, even in their postdoctoral work, they feel the same as when they were grad students, worried about not knowing enough about anything.

Whew! Well at least I am not the only one...

But it does beg the question, how does one know they are doing the right thing with their life if there is no sense of mastery in their chosen profession? I know with even the greats like my adviser (for which I acknowledge I will never be the mastermind scientist that she is) that they must constantly read the latest and greatest articles published in hundreds of scientific journals out there. These top-dog scientists are always perusing abstracts and seem to have a mental filing system in which important and relevant articles are stored away, only to be plucked from their brains mid discussion, producing a sense of inadequacy that you cannot do the same. It doesn't just come to them like a heavenly calling (at least, I think). They work for it. They are good at it, REALLY good... but they work for it, for sure. And I have come to believe that even the greats feel some level of inadequacy, comparing themselves to their peers, their intellectual equals. There really is no point, especially in science, at which one says, "There! I have learned it all. There is no one out there who knows more than I do!"

Then, I ask, to be one of these big wigs of science, where do they find time? I devote time in my life to a number of things such as sleep, cooking, cleaning, tv and general brain zoning out time... but these people... these role models I have... they all seem to be science, science, science, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Perhaps if I were to strive to be "one of the greats" I could do just that. I believe that the potential is there somewhere in me. I would devote my entire life to keeping up to date on all aspects of various fields that might tie in to my work so that I could keep a constant stream of collaborations and ideas and grant proposals supporting and funding the work I choose to do.

But I think my choices up to this point have already shown me that this is not the life for me. I have hobbies that I enjoy (I LOVE yoga and biking) and my brain needs to vegetate in front of the tv every so often. I'm married and I want to spend quality time with my husband... one day I'd like to have kids. When I meet to discuss my work with my adviser in her office, I notice her sad little neglected cactus plant slowly dying, unnoticed by the window... I want to be able to keep plants and pets and children alive.

And this debate that goes on in my mind as I round the corner into the second half of my fifth year, it all feels a bit like I am trying to convince myself to settle. What happened to all those big plans to fix the entire world? Not feeling smart enough is not a good excuse - I should just apply myself more like my adviser does, thus ending global warming, the energy crisis and pollution problems, etc etc....

But I think the more accurate perspective is that life happens. Priorities shift over time and a more realistic view of what one's life must be in order to include what is important to feeling content. Big problems like global warming and energy crises don't have simple solutions that can be outlined by one person's research. Certainly the "greats" can make huge and important strides in helpful innovations, but these are issues that must be attacked on many scientific and political fronts. And, importantly, one can still contribute significantly to these causes without it consuming all other aspects of life.

I've decided the best I can do is graduate and pick a job as a postdoc in something that seems interesting and worthwhile. Maybe it will turn out that that is not for me. I might have to make a second attempt at another postdoc in something different. And maybe in the end, I will even decide that research is not for me. Perhaps my contribution to these causes will be teaching and inspiring a new generation of hopeful scientists to find new and inventive ways to attacking these issues.

In the end, I have to be content in the fact that I do know something after all this, and it is enough to find a career in my life that I find fulfilling.

Reclaimation of The Bright Side

I forgot about my blog. I used to write a lot of posts at one point, back when I was in college. It was only today that I was reminded of it when I found an interesting blog online that I wanted to follow and I somehow found my way back to my blogspot page. It's been 6 years since I last posted here.

I started reading through my posts, some were amusing, some were annoying. A lot of posts were about silly trials and tribulations of a UCSC undergraduate student flopping her way through relationships with all the wrong guys. But a fair amount were about figuring out life after being a minor... when you are out on your own and starting to think for yourself for the first time. Never the less, it kind of read like a teenager's diary. So I saved them all on my computer, but I have deleted them from this blog for the sake of moving on.

I am reclaiming Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life, 6 years later as a 5th year grad student in Chemistry. I haven't played the trumpet in years, I don't draw much anymore (but I hope that changes once I graduate), and I can't wear flip flops as often as I used to (Long Island, NY gets a lot colder than Santa Cruz, CA). But, on the bright side, I am married, I am a yoga and biking addict, I have become a food snob (an inevitability when married to an Italian man), and my greatest desire after I graduate is to finally learn to speak Italian... oh, and finally get to live with my husband... oh, and get a real job!