Grad student malaise

I think that in general, the grad students in my program aren't very happy with "the program". They tend to like their lab or their advisors (in some ways, at least), but there's not a great sense of camaraderie across the department as a whole. (Or if there is, I'm obviously out of the loop). I think a big part of the reason is geographical- people live all over the city, our offices are spread across buildings, and even within buildings the offices can be very isolated.

Perhaps it's just the stage of grad school I'm in, but I know a lot of my friends and acquaintances in the department don't really feel like they're being advised or mentored by our "advisors". We all feel like we're quite a bit on our own to flounder or flourish. One of the reasons for this is probably that very few people in the department are supported by grants from their advisors, so the fates of advisors and students aren't so closely bound. I'm not the only person who is primarily mentored by someone who isn't at the university, which leads to students also spending a lot of time elsewhere.

I feel like grad students in my department need something, but I'm not sure what that something is. Do we need a heavily attended, regular happy hour? A graduate-led informal seminar about career issues? A what-did-you-do-for-your-dissertation-this-week accountability club? I feel somewhat obliged to try to get something going (or strongly support other people's efforts in this realm) because, well, I think I'd be good at it, and someone should do it. Whatever it is, I think we need more opportunities specifically created to interact with and informally mentor each other.

If any of my readers have things to share that they really *liked* about a graduate program, I'd love to hear.

Dissertation envy

One of my friends is about to do her prelims so I've read her proposal and I just watched her practice her prelim presentation. I think what she's doing is really cool, and I've got some serious dissertation envy!

I'm not jealous of her in a negative way, but rather I find myself thinking, "How can I make my research more like hers in the future?" It also makes me think "what if" I'd made different choices in my Ph.D.

I've mentioned before that part of me wishes that I had done local field work instead of flying halfway around the world. If I had done field work here in Big City, her project has all of the elements that I would have liked to include. It's interdisciplinary and just awesome.

Maybe for my postdoc.

Which conferences?

After truly catching up on email for the first time in over a year (omg), I've been corresponding with Dr. Evenbigger who is interested in one of my projects. He thinks I should go to a conference in [beautiful place]. I'm going to the big ecology meeting this summer, but I should go to at least one other conference since I'll be "on the market" this fall (OMG!). I don't know which one yet, but there are 3 on my radar. I've got to balance the networking potential and relevance to my career interests with the cost of getting there. I can cobble together a few hundred dollars here and there but attending meetings is expensive.

I'm also curious, how many people attend the BIG meetings that you go to? 1000? 4000? 10,000? I just have no idea what a really, really big academic conference is.

More great advice

During a conversation that started out something like, "So, do you know what you want to do when you finish your Ph.D.?", a friend of mine recommended I look up Peter Fiske. He has written extensively about how scientists' skills can be used outside of academia, and how to emphasize those skills to potential employers. If this sounds even remotely interesting to you, download this pdf and read it.

Resurrected project

I thought my interdisciplinary project was done for good, until my #1 collaborator emailed me this morning and said, "I know I said I was done with that project in 2010, but I've been thinking maybe we should resurrect it." An hour and a skype conversation later, we have plans to try to submit it for publication after all. She's going to take the lead on it for now, but I think we could have it sent off in the next 2 months if we stay on it. I'm limiting the time I spend on it to Tuesdays, because I don't want this to distract me from my dissertation. We already did all of the analysis and writing, so we just have to find the right audience and how to pitch it. This is exciting. Maybe 2012 will be my Year of Publications. Maybe?

Biologist's nightmare

In November I opened up a box of my data sheets for the first time since I packed them up in Nyota and saw a teeny little beetle run and hide between the sheets! I searched between every sheet, paperclip, and postit to find and squish two beetles. Now almost 8 weeks later, I found a similar looking beetle (or is it larger?) hanging out on the edge of my mug, probably in search of water. I have encased this one in scotch tape.

Ack! I hope there aren't any more. We don't need any more invasive species.

Looking forward to 2012

I regret not defining my goals on the blog last year. I fully intended to, but time slipped away from me as I got a grant in early January and then busted my butt to be in the field just 3 weeks later. I thought about it when I was in the field, but then it just felt silly to be writing about my 2011 resolutions in March- or later. I probably should have done it anyways.

Looking back at posts I've written about goals has really inspired me. I reviewed 2007, 2008, and 2009, part of 2010, and defined goals for 2008, 2009, and 2010. I've had several good goals in the past that I want to revive/continue this year, as well as some new ones.

Academic/Career
Get something published in 2012. I've got two things submitted right now. Hopefully they'll both stick this time and get accepted without major revisions (please?). I seriously need to have something that can be cited as Anirak et al. (2012). I choose not to be discouraged by the fact that I don't have anything yet because being down on myself won't help anything.

Submit Best Project for publication. My last project I started is probably also my best. This is my #1 priority this spring, because getting something published on this is probably going to help my career more than anything else.

Conceptualize my dream job(s). Speaking of my career, I'm not going to be a professional student forever. Someday in the not too distant future I'll be "on the market", and I'd like to have a better idea of my goals. I've got a collection of job announcements from ECOLOG that have caught my eye over the years, but I should revisit and reflect on what aspects are appealing and what my strengths and weaknesses would be. I should also answer these queries I made up for myself a couple of years ago.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. I can definitely do this. I'm not sure what the second conference will be, but there are possibilities.

Do an outreach project. I've got a plan for something awesome, but I don't think I can blog about it because it might just be that. awesome.

Update my webpage once a month. I should just schedule a couple of hours once a month to work on it. I have photos I want to share, videos to upload, stuff like that.

Fitness
Do a sprint distance triathlon and one other race. I loved the triathlon I did last summer, and I think it would be fun to do another race that involves some kind of obstacle course. I'd sign up for lots of these except they are expensive. We'll see what the budget allows.

Exercise 4x or more per week. If I commit to doing a triathlon, then I've got the incentive of trying to improve my time to motivate me to exercise. I've also found that if I just tell myself I have to go to the gym every day that I'm on campus, it helps get me there. It works best for me to go in the middle of the day because I'm not much of a morning person, but if I wait until the end of the day then I just want to go home (and it's slightly in the wrong direction from home). Going in the middle of the day gives me a mental break, and then I go back to my office feeling good about exercising. The one day a week that I'm at the museum it's harder to exercise, and I often don't on the weekends unless I take the dog for a run.

Do yoga once a week. I was super excited when I learned that there are tons of free yoga video podcasts on itunes. I've never taken a class- maybe I should try to do a few? I did yoga fairly often in Ukenzagapia and I'd like to get back in the habit.
 
Go dancing at least 12 times. I love dancing, and there's no shortage of opportunities here. I've even got a couple of dancing friends now who I can carpool with. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to get out once a month to go dancing.

Home
Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna recipe. For some reason I just never think to make lasagna, but it's an easy food that non-vegetarians can also enjoy that I could bring to gatherings. Suggestions welcome! I also want to learn a good mushroom quiche recipe. I've got a great spinach quiche recipe from my mother-in-law, but I'd like to switch it up sometimes with the quiche.

No more ugly houseplants. I hate to throw away plants. I really do. But I'm tired of having ugly plants in my house, and that goes for their pots too. I'm going to figure out what size nice pots I need to get, and buy some pretty ceramic ones. Ugly plants/pots are going in the garbage, to someone else, or to my office.

Get the dog to walk better. Our dog is really wonderful at most things (she sleeps in, doesn't chew things she isn't supposed to, doesn't steal food, doesn't beg, rarely barks, stuff like that). Walking on the leash is not one of her strong suits. She often pulls and it's kind of annoying, especially since she's big enough to pull me off balance (though not Jon).

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. Jon and I made a list of things we want to do before we leave this place. If I finish in summer 2013, we've got a year and a half left (assuming I get a job/postdoc somewhere else). It's time to do all of those fun things we've been putting off!

Offset our carbon emissions. This was my goal for 2010. I only did it for half of 2010, and didn't do it at all in 2011. I think this is far more important now that we own a car. I probably need to find a way to do it automatically every month based on an estimate of our annual emissions. Does anyone else do this?

Blogging
Blog at least once a week. I have plenty of interesting things to write about. This shouldn't be difficult.

Label my posts and keep them labeled. When I was in the field I did email posting so I have dozens of unlabeled posts. I need to stop email posting now that I have fast internet, and go back and label all of those posts.

Metagoals
Review goals quarterly. I want to revisit my goals and comment on my progress about every 3 months. I think this will help keep me on track.

Make weekly agendas for myself. I want to have more clear work goals each week and cooking schedules at home. I think taking a couple of hours each week to plan these kinds of things will keep me from wasting time trying to decide what to do.

I think this is a record number of goals for me! I'm excited about all of them and I don't think that any of them are unreasonable. I'll keep you posted on my progress- quarterly.

Happy New Year!

2011 in review

I never reviewed 2010 on my blog or posted goals for 2011, which I regret. I'm not going to make that mistake this year!

Although I didn't write it down, my biggest goal for 2011 was to finish my field work. CHECK! DONE! COMPLETE!

I presented at a big conference which resulted in useful connections and feedback.

I also managed to get two publications submitted in December, one of which has been in the works for 2+ years, and another that is just a short little thing.

2011 was a light blogging year (only 57 posts counting this one). When I fall out of the habit, I write less. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

It has been a busy year. By my calculations, I've spent 2750 hours this year doing work, which I define as things I wouldn't be doing if this wasn't my career. That works out to an average of ~53 hours/week across 52 weeks of the year. I excluded my plane travel to and from Ukenzagapia because that adds dozens of hours. I think I had about 5 weeks worth of "vacation" where I wasn't working much if at all (a week in the spring, 2 in the summer, a week in the fall, and a week at Christmas). Spending 5.5 months this year in Ukenzagapia really pushed up those numbers since I work crazy 65-90 hour weeks in the field.

I keep track of how many hours I work for a few of reasons. When I'm in my office, logging my hours helps me keep track of when I'm really working and when I'm just reading crap on the internet or at the gym exercising. I aim to work 8 hours a day, 5 days per week when I'm not in the field or on vacation. In the field, I do it to help combat the feeling that I should be doing more. Finally, I figure there might be a handful of people out there interested in my quantification of this aspect of life as a scientist. I'm sure I've missed some things here and there, but I think it's a pretty good estimate of how much I'm working.


2011 has been a pretty good year. I'm halfway through my FIFTH year of grad school now! It's hard to believe. Thank you to all of you who are still reading my ruminations, and I hope 2012 brings more peace, love, and joy into your lives.

Good news

Sam received the fellowship that I helped him apply for. It's exciting, and a little bit daunting. Although I'm not being funded by this, I play an integral role in making it happen and it will involve a lot of collaboration and management of different people on my part. Hopefully it will also advance the database that we started working on 3 years ago.

I really feel like a true collaborator now with Sam. I'm pretty sure that he would not have gotten this fellowship without my help!

Revolving door of manuscripts

Last night Sam and I submitted another manuscript. This one really, truly is a short natural history kind of thing and he did most of the writing. By my calculations, I only spent 15 hours on this one. I think it's likely to get published, albeit in a small journal. This morning we already heard that it's in review. Yay!

This morning we also found out that our other manuscript was rejected by the editor (this is journal #3). It isn't a good fit for the journal. I had my concerns about this, so I am not surprised. Sam suggested resubmitting to another similar journal, but I think it would also be rejected there without review. So, we just Skyped for 45 minutes discussing the pros and cons of various alternative journals. We've settled on another that reaches a good audience. In my heart of hearts, I still think the best place for this paper is journal #2 (where it did get reviewed) but they won't reconsider it.

I was looking forward to settling my books from my last trip to Ukenzagapia today (just how much did I spend?) and other post-season work, but this has to take priority. We want to submit again today or tomorrow, so now I'll be re-crafting this for journal #4. I. must. publish. soon.

263 hours

Tonight Sam and I are submitting a manuscript. Well, kind of. We're sort of pre-submitting a manuscript. We're sending it the editor to ask for feedback on what type of piece it should be submitted as. He'll either say: (1) Thanks, but no thanks. We won't publish this type of thing. (2) Cool. Submit it online as A/B/C so it can go through the review process. Or (3) Um, maybe we might take it as A/B/C but first you should do XYZ before you submit it.

Since I got back from Ukenzagapia a month ago, this has been my priority. I. must. publish. something. asap! I wrote the first draft of this manuscript more than 2 years ago. It was submitted twice and rejected twice (once with review, once without) in 2010. The amount of data has tripled since the first submission, because every time Sam or I have gone to the field we've collected more data. I originally called this my "short note". Ha!

By my calculations, I've spent at least 263 hours on this manuscript. In 40 hour work weeks, that's 6.5 weeks. That doesn't even include data collection. That does include some data entry, writing, reading relevant literature, revising, corresponding with Sam, finding references, some analysis, making and reworking figures, and formatting citations. I don't know about you, but I think that's an insane amount of time. This is my first real paper, which everyone says takes a long time (no kidding).

Just for kicks, let's turn those hours into dollars. Based on my stipend of $2500 per month, we could estimate that it cost more than $4000 in my labor alone to produce this manuscript (that's assuming $625 per week just for the sake of simplicity). And that's not counting Sam's time, which is much more valuable than mine! Science is expensive.

But the real kicker is that it's not over yet. The manuscript is likely to be rejected from this journal, which means it will have to go through more revisions before we can send it somewhere else. I'll just keep counting, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.

Reimbursement

Today I finally got reimbursed for some of my expenses for the conference I attended FOUR MONTHS AGO. These things take a long time. At least I did manage to get some money.

What? Where did November go?

I can't let November end without posting anything. For those of you who don't know me in real life and might have been concerned I was lost forever in Ukenzagapia, never fear! I have returned! I have a couple of posts I want to write about field-related stuff. Here's hoping my muses and my free time coincide more often.

On thieves and plans

When we have to leave research equipment in the field, we use a cable lock to secure it around a tree. These types of locks are not common (or available at all, as far as I know) in Ukenzagapia, and B and T covet them for locking their motorbikes. They asked what these locks are used for in the U.S. I said some people use them on bicycles, but you can't use it on a bike in Big City because people will just come and cut it to steal the bike.

T, after a brief reflection, made a keen observation.

"I think, in Ukenzagapia, the thieves are many, but the plan is small. And in America, the thieves are few, but the plan is big."

Keeping your belongings, I've learned, is largely about preventing crimes of opportunity because, as T so nicely put it, "the plan is small". People don't have bolt cutters or hacksaws. If you make it difficult to steal something, they might try and fail, but they generally won't go out of their way to do it.

All that said, people do have machetes. I don't know what exactly happened or how much planning was involved, but this week we discovered that some of our equipment was stolen. They cut through one of the cable locks and in another case broke the equipment to steal it because they failed to break the cable. I have a glimmer of hope that we might be able to recover some or all of it, but I'm not holding my breath.

Just keep swimming...

In spite of living alone this time, I still haven't had much urge to blog. I think I'm getting a lot of my thoughts out on facebook instead. I have less than 3 weeks left in Ukenzagapia! This is it! The end of my field work! I see the light at the end of the tunnel!

It's been a good trip so far. I've had some exciting discoveries (natural history observation type discoveries) that will probably turn into a few minor publications. The electricity has been, dare I say it?- excellent. The weather? Pretty crazy, but I was gone for most of the craziness. I met up with another UBC student and we traveled a bit- kind of a biologist's pilgrimage :-) It was fantastic!

Sam is always thinking of new things for me to do, including setting up a pilot project for a grant of his. I've become the de facto manager for this project because I'm here. Thankfully, I just found a way to simplify the gargantuan task he saddled me with. So, things are rolling along. I'm not panicking yet.