Graduate School, Part the First - Ninety First Post

I write this post from the groggy depths of the third month of my first year of grad school. I have three weeks of ungraded lab reports and five weeks of ungraded quizzes littering the floor of my room along with a bunch of junk that needs to be cleaned up.
Grad school has changed me, man. I'm not saying that I'm the most socially competent person at the best of times, but I'm pretty sure that I've only gotten worse.
I usually have any number of conversation topics to which I can contribute: movies and TV shows I've watched, school, plans for the weekend, weather, books, food good and bad, love interests, nail polish and makeup, working out, etc. Now, however, I'm down to only a couple: Class, research rotations, students, and grading. Fortunately, I only hang out with other chemistry and/or biology grad students and my gen-chem students, so these topics are completely acceptable. I'm practically a socially competent person when I hang out with other science grad students. Other than school topics, I can kind of contribute to weather and food, but all my weekend and evening plans can be summed up as "grading and homework" and as far as love interests go, everyone I know is either already in a stable, long-term relationship or has no desire to complicate their life with that right now because OHMYGODSOBUSYGAH. I fall into the latter category. Honestly, I barely have time to take care of my fish, who needs to be fed about every other day, so how on earth would I have the time to devote to a romantic relationship? That seems like a massive time commitment that I'm just not in a place to make. Also, responsibility. Man, I feel like a kid again. I mean, I cook my own food and make more than $500 a month, but a distressingly significant subset of my high school and middle school compatriots are married; an even more distressing number have actually procreated.
I struggle to take care of a fish and a couple houseplants and still get all my shit done; kids?!


I actually have several first-year chemistry program classmates who are married and/or have kids, and oh, man. If I am stressed, how do they even live?
And stress: I've got the classic symptoms. I really do have things undone all the time, so there's always that on my mind; I sleep poorly when I do get to sleep; and I'm not just groggy from lack of sleep but also from a delightfully persistent head cold.
Normally, I can go to sleep and wake up around 8 hours later, maybe as many as 10, on my own. Last night, I fell asleep at 7 PM and woke up reluctantly at 7:30 AM when my alarm went off. Accounting for the brief interludes where I remember waking up and rolling over, I slept for no less than 12 hours and was still kind of sleepy when I got up. I blame this on the constant stress and the fact that I normally sleep fewer than seven hours a night.
I do sleep regularly during class, though. I'll be taking notes one second, then the next second, I wake up! Or I'll be taking notes and my eyes will shut all by themselves. At that point I usually give up and hope that I wake up before everyone leaves and that no one calls on me to talk while I'm still asleep.
As far as classes go, my classes are all literature-based. Literature-based classes are easy, from an "absolute minimum of effort required on a weekly basis" standpoint. The hard thing is taking in all the information and getting a coherent response to it ready in time for class. Then there's a mad rush to read a bunch of papers so you can write a paper summing up and extrapolating new information and opinions from the papers you were supposed to be reading all semester. Really, what you get out is proportional to what you put in, so I probably won't be getting a lot out of my classes this semester.
Well, that's not entirely true. I know a lot more about how to read papers and how to avoid falling out of my chair while napping than I did at the beginning of the semester, and I did learn things about proteins, DNA, and polymers from my classes, which is what the classes were supposed to teach me. But there are students who I know were super motivated and who read every single paper and who spent hours and hours on any homework assignments we happened to receive, and then there's me who read only the papers that we had to write papers about and spent maybe an hour on that homework assignment including research.

I feel bad. I feel like grad school isn't about scratching the surface, but it's what I'm doing every day. I scratch the surface with my gen-chem students, because what is gen-chem but scratching the surface of all fields of chemistry? I scratch the surface in class because I don't have the energy to fulfill my TA duties, complete homework assignments that aren't too bad, and also gain deep understanding of all the dozens of topics we cover in class. I scratch the surface in my research rotations because I have too many jobs (teaching, classes, etc.) to really get into a project. Finally, I only scratch the surface in my nascent friendships because I don't have the time to really get to know people.
And it sucks. I have a lot of introvert characteristics, like I hate making small-talk because it feels like a waste of energy and I only get close to a few people, but I feel like an extrovert right now because I do need those close friends to be happy. I need people to talk to, or I get all out of balance and can't focus on things.
This post was supposed to be funny, like "OMG grad school makes you crazy! Mad scientists! Lawls!" but then it turned into this depressing monster that has a funny gif in it.

Okay, positive thinking. I really do like teaching. I hate grading a lot, but teaching has been a pleasant experience so far. Since I'm a fyoung and relatively diminutive female (age 22 at the beginning of the semester, 5-foot-six in hiking boots), I was afraid that I would get douchebags in my class who would reject my authority and make trouble in class. However, all the guys are at the very least respectful to my face. None of the older, non-traditional students who I feared would have a problem with my age have posed any kind of a problem; they're typically the best of the bunch. I even have a couple students who really like science, which was more than I expected. Probably the best moment since moving except for when I found my favorite egg drop soup mix online was when a student brought her experiment over to me to show me that it was working. That same student once emailed me excitedly to tell me that she finally understood the material.
Here is a play-by-play of how these sorts of interactions go for me:
Student: "I am excited by this science!"
Me, internally: (dances with joy) YES! YES! A FLEDGLING SCIENTIST! MAYBE THEY WILL DO GREAT SCIENCE OMG OMG THEY LIKE SCIENCE! I WIN AT TEACHING! (dance, dance, dance!)

Me, out loud: "That's great!" or something boring to that effect.


Most of my subdued response is probably because of the fact that if I freaked out and started happy dancing in the middle of lab, I would probably scare all of my students and have to take drug tests.

Forty Third Post

It is... getting late. I have one final left, at 15.30 Friday. And then I am done with Fall Term 2010. Done with 2010, really.
And then, of course, I go home Saturday before 0700. I am not pleased, but I'll get home quickly, I guess.
I don't remember if I mentioned it, but I can't have stimulants in the hours between waking up and falling asleep. Otherwise, I'm up until 0400 wanting to be asleep so badly, but totally unable to shut down my brain. I also don't remember if I told you all about the time I unwittingly drank green tea with mint in it the night before a german exam, but mint is the one thing I've found that never fails to knock me out mentally. It turns my brain to mush (green tea makes me hyper, so I was tripping pretty badly that night) and allows me to sleep.
I have a small hoard of mint tea now. Just mint, nothing added. It does the job.
I had to have three cups of it last night. First, I just couldn't fall asleep, so I had to make another around 01.30. Then. Oh, then what.
There was a f**king fire alarm at 3 f**king AM.
By the time I got back to my room at 03.30, I was wide awake from standing out in the sub-zero (Celsius) weather in pyjama pants, tank top, jacket, and hiking boots without socks for half an hour. Obviously, I started texting my friends angrily about how I was planning to kill whoever woke me up before an 0800 final. Then I made another cup of tea, grumbling angrily, and eventually fell back asleep.
I'm also a bundle of nerves from the odd behaviour of my course handbook. I'm planning to study abroad next year, but that's tricky as a science major. I need specific courses, so I'm fitting my schedule around those that I would prefer to take. Sure, it wouldn't be the end of the world if I had to take Developmental Biology instead of Advanced Cell Biology, but as someone who wants to go into disease research, I care more about the cellular and molecular level of things than the thing itself. Advanced Cell is far more interesting to me that Developmental would be, I think. I'd still graduate, and I'm sure I could take all the cell biology I wanted in graduate school, but I'd rather take it now and be able to know for sure if this is really what I want to do with my life.
My handbook lied to me. It's been giving me the wrong semesters for classes, and that's really important. So I've been emailing some biology professors, usually around bedtime, so I get nervous about whether I have the prereqs or the proper semester picked to travel.
Whoo. We'll see how this all pans out.
In the meantime, I'm going to ignore the fact that I have a final tomorrow (for the time being) and go to bed.
Goodnight.

P.S.
I've taken to wearing my pyjama pants to every final, and I definitely had a "I'm wearing my purple plaid flannel pants to class and you (the world at large) can't make me change!" moment. I love these pants.

Twenty Eighth Post

Ahoy!
I did not get enough sleep last night. It was a long night.
I am not really that coherent, but "eighth" is a really weird word.
Also, hypogynous flowers have the petals below the ovary. Epigynous flowers have the petals above. Perigynous means the petals are around the middle of the ovary.
I have random shoots of knowledge in my head now. I remember bits and pieces of everything, but not really enough to say I have a good grasp on anything.
I got to do calculus yesterday- well, today, but before I slept- because my friend couldn't do it and asked me for help. I miss calculus.
This, see, is how boring I am. I think calculus is fun. Fun! FUN!
At least I'm better than the kid who hasn't slept in 72 hours. He stole my seat in biology. I was not happy. But he didn't notice my glare since he was trying to stay awake. He "sees" the shadows moving.
I was going to nap after the biology exam, but I wasn't tired anymore... so I'm just going to keep going until my karate final, at which point I will be on such an adrenaline rush that IT WON'T MATTER.
Then I'll be done with class.
Until September.
I'm just going to go hide under my bed now.

Fifteenth Post

You know those people that just grate upon the nerves of all who are around them? They answer all questions, whether or not they were meant to answer them, they insert themselves into conversations that do not involve them, they comment on things that do not require comment... I wish that my class was boring, since it would mean that she wasn't in there. This is why boring is better than exciting. It's exciting, alright, since you're never sure when she'll open her mouth next...

However, the rest of my schedule looks like it should be pretty boring, so my reputation is secure. Right now, I'm blogging when I should be sleeping in preparation for my 09:00 class, which is supremely boring. So now I'm going to go to bed, since I didn't really have anything to say in the first place.