packing, logistics, and insurance

This trip requires a bit more logistical legwork than my scouting trip required last year.

First of all, I'm bringing a lot more stuff. Last year I think I only had 45 pounds total, and I think this year I might have 45 pounds of books and paper alone. I really have no idea yet since I'm still waiting on some of my equipment.

Bringing all of this equipment isn't without risk. I contacted the insurance agent who handles our renters insurance policy and I was able to add everything except my computer. I can't insure my computer under our renters insurance because it technically belongs to UBC. Everything else, as long as it is 'mine' (no matter which grant funds were used to purchase it), are covered.

I also just bought travel health insurance for myself and Jon. My student health insurance would pay to evacuate me but does not cover any out-of-country medical expenses. Better safe than sorry. I used Multinational Underwriters for both of us. Their application process was simple and it was recommended by someone in Chip's lab who had the misfortune to have to use her travel insurance a few years ago.

Thankfully, I'm not going to have to handle all of this equipment alone. Someone from the local university will meet me at the airport so that I can drop off most of the equipment there in a safe place. I'll have to spend at least a few days in the city to get my paperwork sorted, and then my two local field assistants will come meet me in the city to help me get everything out to my field site. It will be such a relief to have them with me while I travel with all the equipment.

Two days until I leave. Tonight Jon and I are hosting a visiting scientist and tomorrow my interdisciplinary cohort is meeting with him all day. I'd better get a move on.

procrastinator's punishment

Crap. I waited too long. This was really dumb of me. I've been delaying purchases of most of my equipment and supplies while I tried to sort out how to pay for everything. Most of these things will arrive on Wednesday and Thursday this week. I leave on Friday. Eek! Jon will bring with him in June whatever doesn't come by Friday. But for one thing I've really screwed myself over. They need 8 weeks lead time, and I've only got 4 weeks until Jon leaves. Crap. I don't think we can trust this equipment in the mail to Ukenzagapia, so I'm not sure what to do. There's a possibility that someone else may be able to bring it to Ukenzagapia later in the summer but at that point it may not be worth it anymore. Why did I wait so long?

On the bright side, this equipment isn't essential to the first part of my project. This equipment was just going to be used to pilot a newish method to work out the kinks before I really invest in it. I told Sam I wasn't even going to worry about testing this particular aspect this summer but he urged me to go for it so that the Ukenzagapian students would be able to start working with the equipment too. Crap. Now I've got to tell him it's a no-go (or a seriously provisional go), and he intimidates me over email. Blah.

backup plan

I thought I'd share my plan for backing up my computer and important data. This is really critical since I'll be traveling and collecting my first real data this summer.

Right after I started grad school I wrote a post with the same title. My backup plan has become more sophisticated since then. I still have my 1 GB flash drive.

My computer is a 320 GB aluminum MacBook. A few months ago I purchased a 320 GB iomega eGo external USB hard drive. This hard drive has stayed exclusively at school (less likely to burn down). I'll bring this hard drive with me so that I can continue to back up my computer competely while I'm in Ukenzagapia. I need serious backup capabilities because I'll be working with some memory-intensive data.

While in Ukenzagapia, I'll back up my computer each night and store the portable hard drive in a separate place from my computer. Ideally both of these places will be protected by lock and key. When I carry my computer with me to an internet cafe, I will not bring my external drive in case I am robbed.

Just in case a thief strikes and takes everything, I will frequently back up the very most important data on an 8 GB flash drive and carry it with me when I am away from my computer (e.g. when I'm in the field). I'll also bring my 1 GB flash drive for the same purpose.

Jon is coming to visit for a month in the middle. When he leaves, I may send back data all of the data collected so far in multiple formats (CDs, on his computer).

I also purchased a 500 GB desktop hard drive to keep at school since I'm bringing the other to Ukenzagapia. My entire computer will be backed up to this drive before I leave.

Jon purchased an identical hard drive that he will keep at home to back up his computer. I'll back up my computer to that drive as well before I leave.

This way, my data will be able to survive:

-a fire at my office
-a fire at my apartment
-theft or destruction of my computer
-theft or destruction of my portable hard drive
-theft or destruction of my flash drive

...as long as not all of them happen. I think it's a pretty good plan.

in for the night

I'm in for the night. In my office, that is. I'm not going home until I finish this paper, so I'm prepared to spend the night on the comfy couch in my office.

I'm about 2 pages into my 10 page paper. I don't think I've procrastinated this much on a paper this big since college. I'm out of procrastination practice, I guess. I used to write 2 day papers or pull nearly all-nighters all the time in high school and college. I'm glad that I don't do this much anymore. This is my last paper of the semester, grant proposals aside. I just want to be done with it already so that I can finish doing all of the preparations for Ukezagapia.

I can think of a few reasons that I may be procrastinating more on this paper than others I've written in grad school. Let's explore them while I procrastinate writing my paper by writing about not writing my paper.

1. The expectations and format are vague. The instructions were largely "Write a concise 10-page double-spaced paper about a method new-to-you that can be applied to your research."
   
2. I'm outside of my comfort zone. I'm writing about a method with which I have little experience. This is my second time this semester writing a paper like this. The first one was even further outside of my comfort zone, but I planned better for that one and didn't procrastinate as much.
3. We just finished learning about this method in class on Friday, so I was waiting to start my paper until after that class. Obviously, in hindsight, this was a bad idea.
4. Compared to writing a grant proposal or finishing the 1000 things I need to do before I go to Ukenzagapia, this paper just is not that important. Time consuming? Yes. Critical to the success of my research? No.
   

I think this is one of those times when it's important to know what is "good enough." This paper just needs to be good enough for me to get an A in this class, which shouldn't be too difficult. I can't spend hours agonizing over small details or obscure references. I just need to do it so I can get on with everything else that is more important.

Here I go.

out of practice

Wow, I have hardly blogged at all in the past month! April 2009 was my lightest blogging month practically since I started grad school. I guess I've fallen out of the habit. It hasn't helped that I've had a bunch of personal things (like a wedding) taking up time and energy. There are a few things from March and April that I still want to blog about, but I just haven't been inspired.

I've probably lost all of my new readers. Whoops. Maybe this was a bad month to be MIA in the blog world. My feed reader is back up to 1000+ unread blog posts. I'm hoping to catch up in Ukenzagapia. I'll be working hard, but I also won't have many distractions in the evenings.

Speaking of distractions, I should wrap this up because Jon and I are going to play a game of Agricola so I can procrastinate on all the important things I have to do.*

*I.e. write a 10 page paper due on Tuesday that I haven't started yet. Yay...

We're married!

Our wedding on Saturday and was fantastic. The weather was great, our marriage certificate was beautiful, the ceremony was wonderful, and the reception was a blast. Thanks to all of my readers who were there and helped make everything go so smoothly!

Many people have asked if I'm changing my name. I'm not, so I guess that makes me Mrs. Karina Anirak until I become Dr. Karina Anirak. I like the name Anirak and I've published under it (barely) so I'm content to remain an Anirak. Jon likes being Jon Rene and is keeping his name. We'll cross the what-do-you-name-the-children bridge when we get there.

Photo added May 27, 2009

why travel agents are still useful

Friday was  a total whirlwind in which I ran all over the place, including through the airport.* Now we're in Jon's hometown finishing up the wedding preparation** and trying to iron out important details for my upcoming trip to Ukenzagapia.

Last year on my way back from Ukenzagapia I flew some insane path on a non-refundable ticket that took more than 36 hours and resulted in my bags being severely delayed. I have vowed  never to fly that way again. I've raised my standards for international flights. I just can't risk losing my bags because this time their contents will be even more valuable.

My higher standards (among other things) have resulted in higher ticket prices this year. Someone at the museum who frequently travels to Ukenzagapia recommend that I contact a travel agent. The power of the internet and plethora of cheap airfare sites makes travel agents seem unnecessary, but this travel agent saved me $300 on my ticket and my fare is refundable. Amazing. I think that it is worthwhile to consult a travel agent for international travel, especially one that specializes in the region where you are going.

Jon got his tickets through the same travel agent, though his are more expensive since he's flying at abusier travel time than me. Now that we both have our tickets to Ukenzagapia, we submitted all of the necessary paperwork for our visas. I leave on May 15!

*We made an embarassing public transportation mistake followed by a bad decision that resulted in us checking our bags only 30 minutes before our flight. Only one of the bags made it at the same time we did.

**It is supposed to be beautiful and sunny on Saturday with a high of 80° F. Fantastic!

April 15? Really?

Last night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep I realized suddenly that I am leaving for Ukenzagapia again soon. It has felt like such a far-off event for so long that it just hit me last night that I'm leaving in a month.

In the next month I need to:
-Get a visa
-Buy tickets
-Order equipment & supplies
-Submit grant from my prelim proposal
-Submit grant I've been sitting on for months
-Send my endless review article somewhere
-Figure out how I'm going to answer the research questions I need to answer this summer

I think this would be a busy month with these things alone. Add onto that the fact that Jon and I are getting married in 10 days and that we'll be away from Big City for a week... and I'm trying not to be completely overwhelmed. I have so. much. to. do. Better stop blogging and start working.

I GOT IT!!!!!!!!

I just got an email from NSF-- I GOT THE FELLOWSHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's all for now, and I promise not to use that many exclamation marks again.

enjoy the wind turbines while you wait

In the past two weeks, my blog has been visited 311 times as a result of 69 different keyword searches containing "grf" or "graduate research fellowship." This accounts for 45% of my blog traffic during that time, which doesn't count those of you who are now regular visitors waiting to see if I've heard. I'm not expecting to hear anything until Friday or maybe even Monday.

In the meantime, here are some photos I took of wind turbines a few weeks ago on our way to Joshua Tree National Park.

As far as we could tell here, it was wind turbines all the way to the mountains.

All of those blades spinning looked kind of eerie through the haze.

So. many. wind turbines.

inapropriately addressed

I just got an email that went something like this:

Dear Sirs,

We are writing this email on behalf of Professional Society Outside of My Discipline to invite posters and presentations at our upcoming annual meeting. Could you please forward the following information to the students, post-doc fellows and researchers in your department/program?

Sincerely,
Student Chapter Committee, PSOMD
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Colleagues,

[Relevant conference information]

Sincerely,
PSOMD Conference Committee

This is disturbing for a few reasons.

1. The first part of the email assumes that all recipients of this email are men.
2. The first part of the email is from the STUDENT committee! The non-student committee used the more appropriate and gender-neutral term "colleagues." Aren't the students supposed to be the ones challenging the status quo?!
3. I am sad for the women in this particular field who have to deal with such asinine assumptions.
   

In a less offensive incident of mistakenly addressed correspondence, I am still receiving letters from my IACUC regarding my animal care protocol addressed to "Dr. Anirak." I suppose the title "Dr." is a safe assumption since not many grad students here are PIs on their own protocols.

we've got a project

Several months ago I wrote about the challenges that my cohort of interdisciplinary fellows faced in trying to design a project that combined all of our areas of expertise and strengths. On Friday, we finally committed to a project!

It is exciting to have identified a project, and even more exciting to see how each one of us fits into it. We will be working with several other individuals on project at a public institution.We will finish our part of the project in the next year, and the rest of the project will continue, hopefully better for our involvement.

How did my taxes get so complicated?

This is a horrible year for taxes for me. All I have is a W-2, a 1098-T, and a 1099-INT which seems like it should be easy enough. I have been doing my own taxes for years and I have no clue if I've got it right this year. None. Nada. I don't want to pay someone to do my taxes because I think on principle that I should be able to do them myself, but now I'm just not sure.

The main problem stems from my fellowship and the fact that UBC did not take taxes from my paychecks. Other people in the same situation at UBC have received all kinds of varying tax advice, including some very liberal interpretations of qualified educational expenses. Most of the students ahead of us have not paid taxes on the fellowship. My cohort is totally confused.

Tuition waivers further confuse the picture, though those are clearly qualified educational expenses. But, it appears that my waivers and my stipend both appear on my 1098-T. I have no idea how to interpret my 1098-T.

In addition to the fellowship and tuition waiver confusion, I received $3,000 in grants last year that were given to me personally, not administered by an institution. Apparently these are taxable. I have no idea how to deduct the research expenses that these funds were used for, or if I even can.

I'm 99% sure that I am supposed to pay income tax on all of the above, except for the tuition waiver. However, when I calculate my taxes using one of those online filing services, I only owe about 25% of what I set aside in anticipation of paying taxes. How can this be right?

Why can't I figure this out myself?!?!? Help? Suggestions?

On the bright side, I have only lived in one state this year.

Southern California highlights

A couple weekends ago we attended a wedding near San Diego of two of our friends from Small Friendly College. Here are a few photographic highlights.

Botanical Building in Balboa Park

Outside the Museum of Man, also in Balboa Park. The whole park is like museums a la carte- spend the day there and visit a bunch of small museums of your choice all within easy walking distance.

This photo doesn't look like much, but this happens to be the view of the ocean from my friend's desk in her graduate student office. I think I'm at the wrong institution. The best I can do is cover my ciderblock walls with scenic calendar pages.

It's amazing what people can do when they water a desert. On the right: dry and barren. On the left: green and lush. In the middle: the water that makes green possible. Oh, the policies and politics of water in the West.

Cacti in Joshua Tree National Park

More cacti in Joshua Tree

A dead tree in Josha Tree, but not a Joshua Tree.

Wind turbine photos coming later.

teaching professional conduct in correspondence

Earlier this week I blogged about a fantastic student of mine for whom I wrote many letters of recommendation. Just yesterday I was contacted by a different student. Her email went something like this:

Hey Karina!! It's Student X...you know, one of the trip to the museum Students? haha. Ok so I have a huge favor to ask of you, like the subject line says...will you be willing to write me a letter of recommendation???? I will owe you my life! haha. It's for an Unusual Internship with Unusual Employer...random, I know, but I graduated in January and my dream of becoming a [Job Kids Dream About] right away hasn't been going too well so I'm just looking around for anything that will benefit me. It's cool if you don't want to do it, I won't hate you :) but if you are willing to help me out I will send you my resume and the link to what the internship is about so you have a clue on what to write. Thanks for taking the time to read this rambling email! I hope your semester has been going great! Another Student always tells me how she sees you at the gym. I miss BioX!!!

Sincerely,
Student X

At first I wasn't sure how to respond. Clearly she needed some advice on etiquette for professional correspondence. After much consideration I replied:

Hi Student,
Wow, that internship sounds quite unusual! As one of my most enthusiastic students, I am happy to help you however I am able. I may be able to write you a letter, but I need to know what the deadline is to know if I have time. In order to write a good letter, I need as much information as possible. Also, I highly recommend reading this page that talks about asking for letters of recommendation. Even in asking for a letter for Unusual Internship, professionalism goes a long way! Especially in this awful job market, you should always err on the side of formality, courtesy, and standard composition. You can start practicing in your correspondence with me. :-)
Cheers,
Karina

I decided to add the smiley face, even though it's a bit ironic considering the context. Apparently, my advice was very well taken. She replied:

Dear Karina,
Thank you very much for helping me out! I will try to be as professional as possible in this email after reading all of those guidelines you sent me. I'm going to keep that because it's very helpful! [Many internship details] I really appreciate this! I'll let you know about the deadline as soon as I find out, and if you can't make it, I'll understand :)

Thanks!!
Student X

What a huge improvement! I'm so glad that she demonstrated that she's capable of higher standards of correspondence. Seems like it should be common sense or at least previously taught, but apparently not. On the bright, this bad habit in students is relatively easily corrected (assuming they actually do know how to write in complete sentences) and a little advice may go a long way in helping someone develop essential professional skills.