Still here!

Dear blog/blogging friends,

I have not forgotten you.

However, I have been super busy. Bossman is....on a wee bit of a crazed boss cycle lately. I work loads. He scolds. I work more. He scolds. I am aware that this is directed at everyone in the lab.

Crazed Bossman is due to several things:
1. One of my labmates who has done AWESOME things got rejected from Science on a paper they'd been working on for months. Bossman really wants a Science paper.
2. Another labmate is now in the "running up against the departmental finishing time" zone. He is not ready to graduate. Bossman will not pay him after December but will not fire him. This is gonna be awkward.
3. We should hear back about the NIH grant for my project soon. We were right on the edge of "safe" with our score. This is making everyone nervous. (I will be fine on funding either way, but yeah, totally have already spent the pretty pretty money in my head.)
4. My mentor/the only other grad student on my project is supposed to graduate soon (aka by March)/is looking for jobs. She is fantastic, and he is cranky that I am not as fantastic.
5. The other second year has pretty much stopped working. Bossman has only barely given him crap.


I have also just recently obtained an undergrad!!! She is awesome. And is one of my former students that I really wanted. And it is so much fun/work having her.

I have three large projects. And yeah, they are eating away at me. We desperately need another grad student on my project. We will probably get at least two grad students---neither on my project.

I have been busy. And stressed. And I haven't been able to run recently due to injury/laziness/how damn tired I am in the morning and evening.

I am in lab trying to sort through papers that will get me least yelled at for when I give a short lit talk for group meeting.

Still loving the lab, the research, and even Bossman (despite his crazed tendencies), but I need a breather that I will not get for awhile.

And damn, do I want to be able to get a paper soon.

And I miss my friends and profs from undergrad. I miss Lab Mom tons. My personal life has been awesome, but yeah, nostalgia hit hard recently.

So yeah, please excuse me for the lack of posts recently. I'm busy pre-panicking about quals this winter.

Love,
BotR

Publication the second!

Hooray! Lab Mom emailed a paper out today that has me in a prime position. Very, very small journal. But still! My undergrad thesis is *almost all published.* And according to Lab Mom, she's still trying to publish more of my thesis/undergrad work.

And it gave me an excuse to give Lab Mom a call. :)

Now I have two publications! One high impact journal where I'm in the middle of the author list (from my summer rotation here) and one low impact journal where I'm second (after Lab Mom). Perhaps I should try and apply for NSF GRFP again? I got pretty good marks last time, and my project proposal would be even better this time since I actually have had a decent amount of time to think about it (also, a lot more people care about my project as compared to the other project---the broader impacts are definitely not so hand wavy as before).

Hrmm....

Blast and hell.

It's hard to be mad at someone who is SO EXCITED to see you.

Yup, that's right---I'm in UndergradCity, doin' lab stuffs. Long day of GSULab, drive, and UndergradLab. Tomorrow I will be in my old lab in the wee hours of the morn and will likely be there until the late hours of the night. And then driving back to GSU in the wee hours of the morning.

Saw Lab Mom. She nearly ran into another car and parked possibly in the worst manner you can when there are 3 empty spots in front of you so she could jump out of the car to give me a hug. Yeah, my irritation disappeared pretttty much instantly. And then she bought lunch for me and the poor undergrad who is now in charge (and who is forced to put up with me for the next 24 hours so I can train her), so any last bits of anger faded when she showed me that she *actually* wrote up a manuscript (her "I'm totally writing up a paper" bit lasted for a year before I figured out that she was just using it to motivate me). In fact, she's written two manuscripts. And both have my name! My baby paper has me as second author after herself (she writes the whole thing/has some of her sabbatical experiments in the paper) and the other paper I'm sitting at third. Not bad.

And then she emphasized that she's prioritizing these experiments now. Which is nice to hear---I mean, it would have been a lot better if she prioritized it months ago. But at least she's prioritizing it now.

But yeah. She's even planning on trying to see me before I leave at 7 on Monday morning, asked about my life, and made me feel like she actually misses me in more than a "I wish I had you as my student still because you work ridiculously hard" sort of way.

This is why you need an "it's complicated" facebook-style status for your research advisers.

Lesson learned.

Don't go to grad school within 3 hours of your undergrad when your PI doesn't trust the people she has working for her.

Major points of the past few days:
1. Passed exams! :) I don't have to take any undergrad classes, but...
2. ...this means I have to take 3.5 grad classes in a 10 week period. I am officially staying in my summer lab for my first rotation, which is good.
3. During an orientation activity, I see my lab mom calling. I call her back, set up a time for today to talk about paper related stuff, and nervously wait for today's phone call.
4. We talk about all of my project related stuff. She tells me there are two manuscripts with my name on it. One of these is due to approximately one week's worth of stuff that I did. The other is due to my thesis: the two projects that are completely new techniques that I tried, troubleshot, and after lots of struggle and effort, got to work. As well as a technique that I perfected for our lab over the course of the year before. Of course, it's the second paper that's in trouble due to a few experimental controls.
5. We talk about who could do the experiments. Essentially, one of the people who I taught is very bright, but doesn't give a shit. She's been switched to a completely different project (hilariously, like I told Lab Mom to do) while the second person who is also very bright and definitely cares, wasn't taught that particular technique because Lab Mom wanted her to learn a different technique from me. (Again, ironically, I will be teaching her this technique this weekend.) The conversation goes like this:

Lab Mom: There really isn't anyone who has been taught this technique?

BOTR: Well, I taught Labmate1. But she's been switched to a different project. And Labmate2 doesn't know it. And it would probably take Labmate2 a few runs to get it down.

Lab Mom: Yeah, and I can't write anything after two weeks.

*awkward silence*

BOTR: Too bad I can't do the experiments.

Lab Mom: *laughs* You sure you can't?

*conversation continues, feeling of being trapped overwhelms BOTR, and she makes plans with Lab Mom to come back this weekend and do the experiments*

Lab Mom: You agree that my points are valid though, right? There won't be a paper unless those experiments are done.

BOTR: Yup.

Gahhhhh. I feel so irritated. If she'd prioritized this project with one of the summer students, they could have gotten it done. And she hasn't really kept in touch despite my frequent emails, and when she has, it's been pretty much all business. Which makes me sad. And I'm pretty sure it's a somewhat cultural thing/she's really freaking busy and that's fair. I just feel used. And I know this is good for both of us, but I know that she was playing on the "your project will die" aspect that she knows drives me nuts. I wouldn't have trained so many people for her if it was going to turn out that she wouldn't trust them and will instead guilt trip me into coming back. Don't get me wrong---I still love her. I just wish I hadn't expected this outcome.

Damn it, I hate that I feel like I don't have a backbone. I think that's the real problem here. I can stand up for myself when it comes to my mentors, but when it comes to PIs, my backbone disappears because I so desperately want to get papers because I really want to have an outstanding grad career to get a fantastic postdoc to be able to get a TT job.

Anyways, I need to go pack for tomorrow. I'm going into my lab at GSU and then driving two hours to go into lab at my undergrad. I probably won't be back until Monday morning. Hopefully things go well and this weekend in undergrad lab isn't a waste.

Visit to undergrad.

I really enjoyed visiting my undergrad. I got to see a lot of my friends, including a few class of 2010 people that were in the area.

It was definitely kind of odd though---very bittersweet. I do miss a lot from undergrad, but in a way, going back sort of confirmed my thoughts that I was ready to move on. I miss my friends and profs, but I realized that when talking to a friend and describing why the metalloprotein I'm currently working on is super interesting---I'm really happy to be working on something I'm passionate about. I love biophysical chem and metalloproteins, and at undergrad, I didn't get to work on either.

It would have been a better weekend if I could have seen Lab Soulmate and Lab Mom, but neither was possible. I saw a lot of good friends, got some work done, and had fun. Though staying up watching Spirited Away (very enjoyable movie, by the way) with friends until 4 AM was probably a bad idea when I was meeting up with a friend for breakfast at 8:30. But yeah.

Anyways, back to working on my group presentation that has now actually been firmly scheduled for Tuesday. Wish me luck!

Lab homesickness.

So I'm in lab still. Rapidly approaching another 13 hour day (f****** protein purification days).

And a terrible case of lab homesickness has swept over me.

I miss undergrad. I miss my lab. I miss my Lab Mom. I miss my friends. I even miss the model organism that I used to work with.

And most of all, I miss being independent.

My grad student mentor has been sick for the past two days, so I've been by myself/working with my other grad student mentor. But the terrible thing is that while I've really enjoyed the "freedom," I hate that this isn't my project, so when I screw stuff up, I feel like a terrible human being. These aren't my materials/time to waste, this is his protein and his time, even when he's not here.

I feel like I wasn't really meant to get here. There was clearly some sort of mistake.

I'm now convinced that I'm going to try my damndest, but that I won't be able to do it. I won't get my PhD, I won't get a good postdoc, and I'll never be able to teach.

I admit it---the fact that the chances of me ever getting a tenured position are so slim gives me this bleak outlook. And it breaks my heart. I really want a position where I can have my own lab/teach. My happiest daydreams are when I'm thinking about what I want to study in *my* lab someday.

I'm just so terrified for the moment where someone discovers that my effort/passion for the field doesn't measure up to my talent. And it's bound to happen sometime soon.

Sentimental Moments

I had lunch with my thesis advisor today. It started out as a "Biochemist on the Run wants to know what she can do to get our paper out" meeting, and she clearly wanted to hang out after we were done. So we went to lunch. I realized that she really, really is my lab mom.

We sat outside for at least a good hour or so, just talking and enjoying the weather. I really have been so lucky to have her as a mentor. While she can have her moments of crazy (just like every mentor), in the end, she's a wonderful role model and example of who I want to be. She's incredibly hard-working, and possibly the most humble person I have ever met, despite her ridiculously long list of accomplishments. Even after working in science for many years, she is always optimistic and believes the best of her students. She has encouraged me for the past 2.5 years, and today (for the first time), we discussed my development as a scientist. We discussed her high-school age daughter, we discussed her husband, we discussed my parents.

Man, I'm going to miss her. She'll be my lab mom forever.

Speaking of sentimental moments, it's time to go to my last TAing of ochem lab (potentially ever!) as an undergrad. I'm going to miss my wombats!

How is your relationship with your first lab PI? Do you still keep in touch?