This is what your weekends look like...

... when you have three jobs but also need to maintain affection-based friendships.

Friday night: Go home. Have supper and feed dogs. Go back into town with grand plans to do laundry while getting water while clothes are in washer, and go grocery shopping while clothes are in dryer. Find that laundromat accepts last load at 8:30. Fail at doing laundry, but go grocery shopping and get water.

Saturday: Get up at 6:32. Run dogs. Help at the First Lego Robotics championship until noon. Then do laundry while running back and forth between the laundromat and work. Grade last week's homework and work on next week's lectures until 3 p.m. on the dot. Go home and ski while it's light. Eat supper. Go see Lincoln with friends. Arrive home at 11:30. Collapse.

Sunday: Get up at 8:06. Meet friend to ski the Tanana:









Then drop off doggies at home. Go to Musher's Hall to cheer on a friend who is racing her sprint dogs:

(photo by Amanda Byrd)

Miss the race, but meet and pet her dogs anyway.

Return to work and write lectures and edit thesis until supper time. Then go home, eat, and get back to work from home! I intend to finish the next chapter of my thesis by tomorrow!

Then I will have two! Two chapters of my thesis submitted! And the third (and last) is already drafted! I will be Dr. Arvay by mid May!

Veggies for the week

Brussel sprouts! Fractal broccoli! Spaghetti squash! Carrots in two colors!

And here is the Alaska Range as seen from campus the other day. What a clear day it was!


Edited to add:

This morning around 10 a.m. I suddenly bolted out of my desk and realized that in riding down and gloating over my summer of triumph, I'd completely forgotten about a bunch of bureaucratic stuff that has to happen at the beginning of every semester. Such as:
*signing up for thesis credits for fall.
*going upstairs to the business office and picking up my next year's contract (yeah... getting paid would be good!).
*bringing a copy of said contract to the grad school so they transfer my fellowship money appropriately.
*getting a new parking permit for the new academic year.

A funny thing is, even after doing it three times, I don't recall how to do that last one. I think you need to fill out paperwork at the Department of Parking, but they won't accept your paperwork until you pay for the parking fee. But accounts services won't input a parking fee for for you (so you can pay it) until you do the paperwork with the Department of Parking. And I forgot the way out of that hot mess.

I must really be distracted, because after the first year, the following two years I knew exactly how to do this, but now I plum forgot!

Odds and Ends

1. Happy Odd Day everyone. Be sure to do something odd.

2. Working in a cold room makes you do odd things. I am the only person who wears a ski jacket and a woolly hat in the Summer. I walk the halls in between my lab and the cold room in this getup and hope no-one sees me!

3. Today is my third free lunch in a week. Yay for end of semester barbecues! Yay for being a member of two different departments and getting to eat both of their food!

4. I am almost done with my take-home final. It's due tomorrow, and I'm 90% done.

5. This weekend is the first farmer's market of the year. The only produce available will be hothouse cucumbers, but who cares? Berry pies and falafels! Reindeer dogs and moosetard! Lemon creme rolls and goat's milk soap! What's not to like?

End of semester goodbyes

Over the weekend was a farewell party for one of my friends, who was returning to his home country across the globe. He has been a very lively friend--energetic, flamboyantly gay, conversationally sharp, still entertained by his own research after years of detailed work and analysis--and I'm sorry I didn't get to know him better sooner. I wasted half a year of his acquaintance without fully appreciating him.

Part of student life is always saying hello, goodbye, as people come and go. As an undergraduate, this didn't hit me as hard, because I made most of my friends in my classes, and so we were all at the same grade level and would graduate together. But at the graduate level, people take classes at different rates, and in different orders. Very few graduate classes are prerequisites for others, so you can meet anyone at any stage in their education at any time. And because you often work so closely together on the most challenging courses, you grow intimate very quickly, and it feels as if you have been friends for longer than you have. But hello, goodbye, they leave, you leave, and you are both richer people for having known each other.

UAF in particular has been a good place for me, culturally. Most of the other grad students have similar personalities to my own. We are all ambitious enough to be in grad school, but not so high-shooting that we are in Ivy League schools. We are mostly science-oriented, since UAF is a science-oriented school. We are all interested in broadening our horizons and growing as people, since we all took a leap of faith to come to an unusual location, far from our native homes. And most of us are socially (though not necessarily politically) conservative. UAF is not a big party school, and it doesn't have a greek system, so social gatherings tend to be calmer and quieter than most stereotypical college parties.

Also, since the average age at UAF is older than most universities, most of my peers are at a similar stage in life as I am. I no longer have to squirm while listening to stories of other people's drug experimentation or alcohol binges or sexual adventures. These things do not bother me in and of themselves. I don't respect people any less who "indulge." I just think that such things should be kept private, and as people get older and more mature, they learn not to overshare, and people of different lifestyles can get along and enjoy each other's company. It's so darned civil.

As I've said before, I'm so darned thankful not to be twenty-one.

Misc Photos

Another day, another weather:


What a view of the valley!


Linden with her Papa. I could not get this shot with Autumn, because she would not leave my side. Dan called and called, but she just stood beside me and looked puzzled, like, "Uh, you're twenty feet away from me... why do you need to call me?"


A woodpecker on campus. I cannot say the word "woodpecker" without snickering. :)


The girls doing their best "Woe is us" look:


In other news, the new grad students are arriving this week. I'm not in on the engineering gossip yet, but the incoming physics grad students are unusually large in number this year--eight--and all boys. Physics seems to have had bad luck with girls the past few years. In 2006, it was one other girl and me, and we both left due to medical emergencies in our respective families. In 2007, it was one other girl and me, and we both changed our fields of study, she to do a master's in teaching, and I to engineering. In 2008, no girls at all. I know of only one that was offered admission. She came up to visit and was quite shy and self-conscious. I was sorry to realize right off the bat that she most likely would not come. On the other hand, a girl in a male-dominated field cannot afford to be either shy or self-conscious, whether it's in academia or industry, in a "wild" place like Alaska, a big sophisticated city, or a small town. I sure do hope she finds herself somewhere.

Floppitude

Here we have some lovely demonstrations of the husky flop:





I was told, before meeting her, that Linden was just like Autumn, only a little sweeter and a bit not as bright. I wondered how anyone could possibly be sweeter than Autumn, who follows me around like a second shadow and lays her head on my lap at any opportunity. Well, Linden wants not to be my shadow but to fuse into me and be my new body part. She smooshes against me instead of leaning against me the way Autumn does. She's also a touch less bright. Their former family told me that Linden is like that because she was unusually cute as a puppy. So, while her seven brothers and sisters (including Autumn) were out running with the other dogs and learning survival and social skills, Linden was generally sitting in some human's lap. So now today she is what she is--sweet and affectionate and dense! She also has NO idea that it might be possible for humans to want to cuddle Autumn, or the bunnies, or each other. When you try, she comes over and pushes against you and looks up at you like, "Um, I know you actually meant to be hugging me, right?"

In other news, this has been a good week for me because there's been some conference going on in my building. A catered conference. So my hallways have been lined with food. It is a maxim that grad students never turn away free food, and you cannot get them to attend any event without providing food. And it doesn't have to be fancy food. Sandwiches, pizza, cookies. Just put it out, and they will come. The thing is, though, I've found that this doesn't just apply to grad students. This applies to everyone, even upper level managers in Sili valley companies, who comfortably make six figures. It isn't even about money or being a "starving student" at that point. Any of them could easily buy themselves a dozen cookies from the bakery, but how much more joy is there in arriving at a meeting and finding a plate of them sitting there for the taking? Among my more memorable examples of this phenomenon is at my most recent Sili Valley company. We had just won a contract with McDonald's. So at the celebratory meeting, they served McDonald's. And darned if we didn't all rush over there to chow down on disgusting McDonald's burgers and fries and "chicken" mcnuggets! Even today, I happily ate two giant brownies when I normally don't even like sweets! It's free food!

edit: holy halibut!!

Awww! :*)

I got my TA evaluations back this week. The questions they were asked referred more to the lab in general than to me as a TA:

1) Was this class intellectually stimulating? Did it stretch your thinking?

2) What aspects of this class contributed most to your learning?

3) What aspects of this class detracted from your learning?

4) What suggestions do you have for improving the class?

Nevertheless, a quarter of them answered #2 with some variation of "Our TA! She's great with explaining things!" They actually said that! One person wrote "You're lucky to have her in your department."

Awwwww!! *blushing*

Losing the Suffering Game

I have to say that my most recent employers in the Sili Valley had pretty healthy corporate cultures for the most part, but a few before that... Well everyone played The Suffering Game. Here is an example. Monday morning, you bump into a coworker at the coffee pot. You exchange Good Mornings, and then ask, "How was your weekend?"

It is NOT okay to say, "It was great! I went for a long hike with my dog, and then went to the beach and cooled off in the water!" No, no, no! You have to have to say, "I had to work. I was here all day Saturday and then half of Sunday. The other half of Sunday, I had to stain the deck." You might squeek by if you rattle off a list of household chores, but only if you follow it up by intimating that this only bothered you because it kept you from doing *work* work.

I was reminded of this by one of my commenters, under my post Life is an Adventure:

"Just don't mistake adventure for purposely choosing to make your life difficult."

Because the Suffering Game requires authenticity, and playing the Suffering Game actually does sometimes entail purposely choosing to make one's life difficult. I honestly believe that none of us (and yes, that includes me during that time period) were lying or exaggerating our "horrible lives that were dominated by work." We actually got sucked into the real thing. It sounds crazy, but I bet my Sili Valley readers know exactly what I am talking about.

Thankfully, I had much better experiences at my later Sili Valley jobs. I had good bosses who actually did not play The Suffering Game themselves, and did not want to hear it from us!

I'm trying to think now whether UAF physics grad students play The Suffering Game. I think some do, but I feel fortunate to realize now that I haven't been. But I do have to guard against it, as it can creep up pretty easily!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

We are planning a quiet Christmas at home. Hope you all have a lovely one that is not too stressful. :)

If you ever find that Christmas stresses you out, may I recommend grad school? ;)

For us, Christmas is not stressful at all! Shopping, cooking? Psh! We just finished final exams, and we now have a solid month off, what's there to to be stressed about? :)

Wow! And a few miscellaneous thoughts

Have you ever seen such a beautiful bunch of broccoli as this?


That is my hand. And that is NOT an effect of camera angle. That is a big, beautiful broccoli. What shall I do with it? Hmmmm...

In other news, we finally start class tomorrow. It's only been a year in waiting, for me! Yay!

I went to the annual HR orientation anti-sexual-harassment rigamarole for TAs today, which was near the center of campus with the student union and bookstore and stuff. I was watching the students milling about, and I noticed with sudden surprise that they were all checking each other out.

I am used to working among people who are older and mostly married or coupled up, with or without children. Here, I find that people are scoping each other out, with wide eyes and inviting smiles. People are scoping me out, which shocks me at first. Not that I consider myself that much older or unattractive. It's just that it's been so long since I've been among so many people evidently bent on getting together.

A nice-looking guy beamed a warm smile at me, and I responded by my Silicon Valley habit, which is that I returned the smile and immediately began scratching my brain in a panic wondering how I knew him, how I had met him, what his name was. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't even remember meeting him, when it hit me that I didn't know him. This is just what people do at college campuses--turn up the wattage.

I guess I've forgotten some of the nuances of being a college student. But I am also supremely thankful that I am no longer twenty-one! Boys swagger with false bravado, girls glance at their reflections in glass windows and assess themselves and bemoan real or imagined flaws. And all are glancing around.

How we grad students are bonding

Here is our self-imposed to-do list!

Industry labs versus student labs

In the weeks between when my TA contract starts and when I start actually teaching and doing labwork with the undergrads, I am puttering around the lab, fixing equipment. And finding it rather frustrating. I have always known in a theoretical sense how grad student labs are financially strapped and that grad students are not in general the best caretakers of machinery and equipment. But I was still quite appalled to find that nothing was in its proper place, no-one cares if things are built inconsistently without regards for standard methods that allow for ease of later access and repair, etc. The other day, I spent two full hours fuming because I could not locate a basic flathead screwdriver and had to use my leatherman. I finally found a #2 philips screwdriver, only to find that the tip of it had somehow fused into a blobule of some sort.

I was describing all of this to Dan, and he said, "Well you know how grad students are! I bet that the screwdriver tip had been melted because one of your cohorts had decided to see what would happen if it were immersed in a high-temperature flame, or something like that!"

And then, well DUH! The reason that grad students aren't so organized or so meticulous with proper building techniques is because all of that is tedious and really, truly pointless (after all, they aren't building things for paying customers in industry, as I've been used to! they are building things that will only be used once until they get trashed due to something else! so I'm just being anal out of habit, but it's probably quite unnecessary and is also really a waste of time and effort in this situation. and is this the longest parenthetical comment ever? do you remember where I was in the interrupted sentence?). What grad students have instead of organization and good lab practices are enthusiasm and energy and curiosity in abundance. It's probably something we could all use an injection of every now and then!

Observation #1

So you know how they say that you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family? I think the same can be said of grad students. Even in a school as large as Berkeley, there are very few grad students in each department, and there are fewer still at UAF. And we have to work together, share office space together, and spend copious amounts of time together. We're pretty much stuck together, so we may as well get over the parts of each other that we don't like and just damned well get along.