| so uh, |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|11:10 am] |
anyone hiring?
thought not. |
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| Contrary to public opinion... |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|11:17 am] |
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I'm just gonna come out and say it; Barack Obama better start delivering results to go with all this hope. |
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| your favorite ever LJ posts |
[Oct. 29th, 2008|12:16 pm] |
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if you've read this for a long time and really thought a post here was especially well-written, please let me know. I'm trying to find a writing sample for a job and the vast majority of my professional writing is not eligible. |
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| Et Tu |
[Oct. 8th, 2008|01:47 pm] |
One of the things that I dislike most about this year's election campaign has been the prevailing opinion that retribution is somehow equivalent to rebuttal.
The Republicans have been escalating attacks on Barack Obama that on the surface seem a little flimsy, but will ultimately sway some voters. During the late 1990's, Obama served on the board of a charity organization with Bill Ayers, a 1960's radical, yawn. He once sat in church while a pastor got a little too high on his horse, yawn.
But rather than dismiss this strategy as what it is (a baseless smear campaign, distraction tactics, and most importantly completely irrelevant to the issues of this year's campaign) the Democratic surrogates (though, it should be mentioned, not Barack Obama himself) have attempted their own character smear by suggesting that McCain is also associated with Ayers through the charity that Obama served with, and relating McCain to the 1982 Savings & Loan scandal through Charles Keating. Slightly more on-topic with the latter, but still yawn.
Conventional wisdom states that if you're defending yourself then you're losing the election. But I'm not sure if the maxim holds when it comes to mudslinging. The more important problem here is that by reflecting the smear rather than attempting to devalue it or even simply ignoring it, the Democrats are tacitly accepting both smears and muddying the waters of the election. Since supporters of one team will only listen to their team and not their opponents, bickering back and forth over who sat next to whom on the bus in 1983 just supports the all-too-common notion that neither candidate is trustworthy because everyone has skeletons in their closet. This attitude only serves to increase voter apathy and decrease turnout in an election where turnout will play a large role.
I'm mostly convinced that Barack Obama is doing the best thing here (just ignoring these problems and deflecting rather to the issues) and his surrogates are doing him an unintentional disservice. |
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| Backwards |
[Sep. 23rd, 2008|02:29 pm] |
An 11-year old in Colorado was suspended today for wearing a shirt saying "Obama: A Terrorist's Best Friend" and claims his first amendment rights were being violated for being asked to remove the shirt or face suspension. He may be correct about that, but he's definitely being insufferable and there's more than one reason cases like these ruffle feathers.
My biggest problem with this line of discourse is the convoluted and frankly silly argument that the child is making with that shirt. This child (or rather, this child's parents) probably thinks that because Obama would take a more cooperative approach to international relations, he's a terrorist sympathizer.
I think he's got that part backwards.
The terrorists in question aren't attacking their best friends, they're attacking US, and a little understanding and cooperation might go a long way to addressing and solving the root of the problem. Indeed, if Barack Obama were actually any terrorist's best friend, that would seem like a convenient way to reduce anti-United States terrorism, but this little brat would rather get on the local news for wearing a shirt that proves that he doesn't think about the world beyond what he's taught. |
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| Moral Politics and Rationalism |
[Sep. 17th, 2008|12:00 pm] |
I heard a lecture by a cognitive scientist named George Lakoff this morning. George Lakoff is a professor at Berkeley and head of a progressive think tank, and an unashamed liberal, but has made attempts to characterize the thinking of both political liberals and conservatives in scientific terms.
The lecture itself was good, but I would say not overwhelmingly so. The main premise of Mr. Lakoff's theory is that modern political liberals and conservatives in America subscribe to different world views, with two very different moral hierarchies based on analogies to the family unit. Conservatives subscribe to a world view consisting of a moral authority somewhat akin to a strict father (that is not to be questioned), where the role of the "father" is to dole out punishment and reward, and through proper subjugation to this authority, people can attain discipline that allows prosperity. Liberals subscribe to a world view where parents are nurturing and the role of the "father" is to support people and be fair, and prosperity comes by ensuring equality. Authority may be questioned, in fact this leads to openness and honesty.
When it comes to addressing the opposing world view, conservatives get upset with liberals because progressive social programs conflict with the authority structure by rewarding those who failed to attain the discipline that brings prosperity, and liberals get upset with conservatives because the strict father view implies social dominance and rewards inequality. Lakoff cites James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family and exceedingly popular columnist and commentator) as a major reinforcer of these beliefs.
To me as a fellow liberal, this theory makes sense on the surface and does seem to explain the political tension in America, but my gut reaction to it was that it's more of an analogy than a thorough explanation of the conservative psyche. I've certainly heard people saying (through various outlets) that the government shouldn't be giving money and health care to the poor because they should get a job and have the pride of doing it themselves (blah blah), but do these people really see the government as the strict father figure here, or are they literally judging the fathers of people on welfare? I think that the theory de-emphasizes the role of self-interest in the political decision-making process: every person you put below you on the totem pole means you're up one place, and conservativism universally puts others below you on the totem pole.
This argument wasn't the most interesting thing about the lecture, however. He made a handful of arguments that I thought were far more compelling and less related to political thought, but more related to the current weakness of Democratic Party. (the de-facto liberal political party in America) He first argued that Hurricane Katrina demonstrated exactly why conservative policies are failing America. Global warming, he argued, is widely dismissed as human-driven by conservatives, and can contribute to increased intensity of tropical storms. FEMA was dismissed as excessive federal government and removed from the cabinet. The disaster that followed showed that the president but also the policies themselves, have disastrous consequences when implemented.
This was interesting (but the lecture was from 2005, so less powerful to me) but the real killer moment of the lecture happened only a few minutes in; Democrats are as handcuffed to their belief in rationalism as Republicans are handcuffed to faith and irrationality; and people in America don't vote rationally.
Progressive thought is tied irrevocably to the age of enlightenment and the idea of reason. Feudalism and monarchy don't give much room for opposition and major economic and political theories hadn't yet been fully imagined. People had very few rights, very little money, and very few opportunities to change any of that, so progressivism didn't take hold until these things came about. Science became less of a curiosity and more of a driving force, and reason ruled the discourse. Rationalism is the appeal to reason; the belief that reason can trump other modes of thought.
Democrats being slightly more liberal than Republicans, they embraced reason and frequently used it as their platform. People should have equal opportunities, the rich make a lot of money and can thus afford a higher tax rate. Equality. Freedom. According to George Lakoff; the Democrats believe that if they could only present people with the facts, they'd see it their way (sound familiar?), and the flaw here is that it's just not true. It's unfortunate, but patently false that in the world we inhabit, reason can overcome other modes of thinking.
To extrapolate the argument, Republicans nominate candidates that represent personality archetypes, and the Democrats attempt to point to facts and convince you that you're worse-off with the Republican, but time and time again the voters decide that they aren't interested in the facts. They vote against their self-interest because they either don't know or don't care about the facts. They vote based on limited understanding of the facts, based on what versions of the truth get distilled in what form through media coverage. They vote according to their emotional connection (or lack thereof) with the candidates. They hear from every conservative that the liberal facts are just theories, presented by ivy-league-elitists. They hear that their small-town values are real and the Republicans care about you. And the Democrats respond with more facts. I would argue that the next great Republican leap in this line of argumentation would be to establish a culture of anti-intellectualism and the culture war is doing just that.
I think the lesson from the lecture was that Democrats can win elections but they can't do it by spouting facts as a counter-argument to appeals to emotion. A progressive platform should appeal to a large majority of the American population but identity politics counteracts this advantage, and the progressive retort to the policy-free charismatic conservative cannot consist of a further barrage of facts.
To synthesize things then, what is the ultimate incarnation of a progressive candidate that could appeal to both progressive appeal to reason and conservative appeal to emotion? What would the liberal Ronald Reagan look like?
It's not difficult to make emotive arguments for progressive ideals, and frankly it's surprising that it's been so long since anyone tried. (I do think Barack Obama is trying, for the record, and I can only assume he's heard this advice.) Explicitly state that your neighbors aren't necessarily losing their homes and jobs because they're lazy! Let's blame it on the policies that allowed things to get this bad. You don't become prosperous as a nation by allowing people to fail, you become prosperous by ensuring that the most number of people become prosperous. Yes, you can be selfish and act only for your own benefit, but how would you feel if all your neighbors did the same?
Could someone argue for social programs while fitting the authoritarian father paradigm, and appeal to emotion first, and facts second, but hopefully keeping both on our side? If that's what it will take to live in a progressive society, then I sure hope so. |
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| Culture War |
[Sep. 11th, 2008|05:07 pm] |
I fully did intend to keep politics out of this as much as possible, but I'm not sure it's possible to avoid politics in America right now.
In case anyone did manage to avoid the news about the RNC last week, the Republicans spent a good amount of time mocking (in no particular order, but as pointed out beautifully by the Daily Show): Barack Obama, community organizers, "Liberal Washington," a "do-nothing Senate," "European Ideas," the "Liberal Elites," the "Critics and Commentators" and San Francisco. What can this possibly be construed as except a full-on rekindling of the culture wars of the 1960's?
(Let's ignore for the purpose of this argument that there are very very few "liberals" in the US government in the last eight years. There are Democrats, which are barely liberal, and even Democrats have only been in power for two of the last eight years and the Senate can't do anything when the President vetoes everything they try to do. Let's also ignore the fact that Europe and San Francisco are great places to live and both are doing just fine with their more progressive policies. Let's also ignore that it's critics and commentators jobs to be the watchmen of society and most media outlets are corporate conglomerates and big business hearts Republicans.)
With a convention mostly devoid of any real strategy, but long on personal attacks and constant us-versus-them vocabulary, the Republicans are re-drawing the line in the sand. The Republican party is the righteous and valiant party that cares about about "small-town values" like abortion and gun ownership. The Republicans stand up to those liberals in Washington (Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich are scared somewhere) and their folksy small-town values aren't good enough for you, then you're an ivy league baby-killing liberal elitist, so you should just take your iced mocha latté and move to France already, you whiny euro-faggot.
Some of the emphasis was mine, of course.
The argument is bullshit from the ground up (Why the hell should the "small government party" care what people do in bed?) but it's effective and if you need further proof, look at an electoral college map since 1960, and follow the red. Look at predictions for the 2008 electoral college, which basically replicates the maps of 2000 and 2004 with a few minor differences, and wonder why the popular vote could possibly even be close in this election. It's deeply entrenched blue-state/red-state tribalism and it's due to the full-scale embrace of the culture wars.
The end result of all this madness is that US presidential elections move from tepid choices to life-or-death decisions for the population. It's not just about political positions left and right of center, it's that 51% of the population elected their preceived ally in the culture war, and 49% of the population is now being governed by someone who doesn't "get" them and lies outside of their accepted group of people. In 2000 and 2004, we elected the Republican, and across the country people went ape-shit one way or another, it was either the third horseman of the apocalypse or the gleeful light at the end of the tunnel for citizens of the US. I don't really think this has an endpoint; liberals are furious with the current state of affairs and if things finally change for the better conservatives will be up in arms.
Barack Obama is my candidate this year but he's being too idealistic on one of his talking points: We're indeed called the "United States" but it's foolish to act like there aren't two Americas. And let's face it, they're not really on speaking terms when it comes to election season. |
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| on debate |
[Sep. 10th, 2008|09:42 am] |
One of the more infuriating aspects of following the news lately is their total failure to identify outright lies and distortions of reality as such, in the name of remaining unbiased. It's poisoning the current presidential elections and I'm afraid it's doing much worse than that. Let's take evolution, one of my favorite examples of this problem.
I hate to break it to you all, but evolution is a fact. It's overwhelmingly supported by any and all evidence to date, and it's never been refuted by any evidence ever. It is probably the truest thing in modern science, and yet 40% of the country believes it's incorrect. Why does 40% believe it's not a fact, when there's absolutely no scientific debate?
It's in no small part due to the mainstream media treating even plain facts as opinions. If I were invited to a discussion of evolution on a cable news network tomorrow, I'd be sitting across from the host, and next to a creationist fuck with little to know science education. My dismissive argument that there's really no debate about evolution as a fact would be immediately followed by his argument that it's a theory and I'm wrong and both theories should be taught in class next to one another. In this debate, the facts contradict the false reality of the conservative populace and thus reality has a liberal bias.
In the interest of not portraying a liberal bias, the news media is not only dismissing opinions, but also facts that simply contradict a conservatively-biased view. If this keeps up, we're on an express train in the wrong direction, and evolution is just the start of it. |
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| Delusion, Part 2 |
[Aug. 26th, 2008|02:39 pm] |
There's many ways that one might respond to my previous entry.
I'll give you some starter ideas for free. For one, it's very easy to criticize decision-making by powers of authority when presented with very limited and likely biased information; I'm certain that the CEO of General Motors knows he could save billions by killing Buick and Pontiac but he'd also be putting thousands out of work. It's also easy to say that you could have done something better when it's literally impossible for you to have done so; in the case of being President, I'm ineligible because I'm not 35, so even if I were a politician (potential future update topic: noted) and sucessful there's no way I could have been in George W. Bush's shoes. Or one could point out that blaming leadership for the failure of an organization is not necessarily fair. As a bonus, one might point out that it might be much worse to be in a position of leadership but be unable for whatever reason to act on your decisions.
It's not just a god complex. I mean, everybody wants to be in charge for certain but there's more to it than that. It's about right and wrong, and how I have the tendency to see in those terms. One of the more interesting things that came out of that entry was my accidental but perhaps quite telling equation of right and wrong with my decisions and those of others.
Without getting too political, let's take an example: it seems like every major politician today opposes gay marriage. I disagree with them and don't see why it's even an issue anymore. I see this as a moral right/wrong situation, in that there's a potentially discriminatory but non-inflammatory position and a nondiscriminatory position, and most politicians take up the discriminatory one. Thus, there's an opinion and a moral judgment here: my opinion is that gay marriage should be allowed and my moral judgment is that people who oppose it are doing so in a discriminatory fashion.
Thus, to relate to the original post from yesterday, the entire argument goes something like this:
1) many leaders in this country have adopted a discriminatory position on gay marriage
2) If I were in a position of power I would choose to support gay marriage and by doing so, oppose the discriminatory position.
3) All other things being equal, a politician who espouses a discriminatory position is less morally valid than one who does not.
4) All other things being equal, a morally invalid politician is not as good.
--> All other things being equal, I would be a better politician.
You could rewrite this slightly for the presidency, the CEO of GM or anything else really, but that's the gist of it. But basically, what it comes down to is a very strong and somewhat subtle link between my saying "I can do better" and my thinking "you're doing the wrong thing," not "you're not doing well" or anything like that. It's really sometimes the case that I look at a situation and wonder how anyone could make the decision other than the one that I've made, and the reasons for this in some cases ultimately boils down to a clearly correct and clearly incorrect decision.
I never thought of myself as Immanuel Kant or Noam Chomsky, but the entire thing could probably be summed up as my frustration that my own moral absolutism is not specifically applied to decision-making by powers of authority. |
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| Delusion |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|10:51 am] |
One of my more persistent personality traits is my sometime-obsession with being in charge. It's not fascism or any sort of constant authority struggle or something like that, but I almost always find myself frustrated with situations I have no control over, knowing that I could do things better.
It's not restricted to any particular walk of life. I devoted this journal for years to bashing poor decision-making by our government. I ran for president of my fraternity because I wanted to see it take on a broader role at Syracuse (and I lost, and I never felt exactly the same way about it afterwards). I'm certain I could do a better job than the CEO of General Motors or Chrysler (and for a tenth the salary). In my mind, I'd be the winningest coach in New York Giants history. Even in science, which I've tired of and count the days until I can leave, I have a feeling that I'd make an excellent professor, if I could only stomach the ten or more years of postdoctoral work and as an un-tenured faculty member.
In all of these situations, I've commented at one point or another that if I were running things we'd all be better off. One third of my brain knows this is true, and one third of my brain knows it isn't true. The last third of my brain thinks it's true, but that factors out of my control prevent me from being in charge.
Alas, it's a meaningless argument, tinted by hindsight and my own self-righteousness and it will be a long, long time before I'm in charge of anything. |
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| Weekend Update |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|09:42 am] |
This weekend Sara and I were inspired by the nice weather to try a short getaway. We decided after a bit of deliberation to go up the coast a bit and check out the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods, then the Mystic Aquarium (which we'd visited about five years ago but didn't remember too much of) and Newport, Rhode Island.
The casino hotels were booked up and sort of expensive so we stayed at a Hilton in Mystic. We left mid-afternoon and arrived in Mystic around 4:30. We shopped a bit in their touristy-type boutiques and then returned to the room, changed and headed up to MGM Grand at Foxwoods. After ignoring google maps and attempting to follow the signs which bring you about 10 miles out of the way, we arrived there and were immediately surprised at exactly how non-Grand it was, size-wise. It was a very nice casino, but you could see across the entire casino floor, and all the shopping and both of the sit-down restaurants (yes there are only two) are right off the casino floor. They don't use the regular MGM players' club cards and it's basically just the north wing of Foxwoods, so we were glad we didn't plan the trip around staying there.
Being mostly underwhelmed we went over to the main part of Foxwoods. Foxwoods is the opposite of MGM Grand @ Foxwoods, it's got unimpressive and borderline trainwreck decor, but a much larger casino and more restaurants and shopping. We had a nice dinner there and then strolled back over to MGM which was on our way out to gamble a bit.
Gambling didn't last long, but for different reasons than it usually doesn't last long. Sara played some video poker which killed a while but $20 didn't earn anything. Then I went and found the simplest slot machine I could find. It was a one-line $1 machine. I put a $20 in and lost four pulls, then won like $6 on the fifth and won $60 on the sixth. It literally took 30 seconds. I was ready to leave, but Sara took my ticket for $81 and was going to play on another slot machine two machines to the right of my winning machine. She lost one pull for $1, and then gambled $3 on the next pull and won $300. Net gain for one minute of slot machine play: $362. So we left.
Having paid for our dinner and the hotel we went back to mystic via a sort of scary but way way shorter route. We drank some of the worst champagne ever bottled (and that's saying something considering we can drink André) and went to bed.
Saturday was aquarium and Newport day. We drove across the street and went to the Mystic Aquarium. It was as nice and as small as we remembered it, we saw some penguins getting fed and Sara touched a stingray and we did the rest of it in about two hours. After that we drove through downtown Mystic (cute but crowded) and got on the highway for Newport.
Newport was kind of a mashup between the Connecticut coastline, Jersey shore and Quincy Market in Boston. Which kind of makes sense geographically. We strolled, browsed some shops and ate at a surprisingly reasonable tourist trap restaurant. After lunch we drove around to see some of the mansions (they each require separate admission prices to go inside) and turned around for home.
The rest of the weekend was full of Arrested Development on DVD. Holy shit how did we miss this show until now.
It was a good weekend. |
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| also |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|12:43 pm] |
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It was time for dcbphoto to die. I was never in love with the design and honestly I don't need anything that free photo hosts can't give me. |
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| Dream Update |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|09:34 am] |
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also I had really horrific dreams last night. I'll spare you all the details, but I'm fairly certain I don't even want to type it out anyway. |
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| Actual Update |
[Aug. 19th, 2008|08:43 am] |
I used to love science. I hate it now. I've hated it for two years.
Back as an undergrad, I enjoyed research, and I spent a lot of time doing it. I used to work 10 hour days in lab because I cared enough to, and even as a first- and second-year grad student I tried hard at this. I blew through my qualifying exam with no fear and may have even been excited to start working in lab full-time. My first project tanked but it only took about nine months and its failure was largely due to technical reasons. Nonetheless, we'll call it strike one. My second project was already queued and waiting for me, and I was eager to start off anew.
I checked back in my livejournal to find out exactly when things went wrong. The first mention of science sucking is actually several years before (as early as 2004) but the first time I was really just beyond frustrated with the whole entire mess was May of 2006. There's a few entries back then about being generally upset about the pace of things, a few posts about the requisite financial insecurity of being a student at age 26, a bit of oscillating about whether or not to quit outright, take a Master's and run for the hills. This subsided a bit because of some degree of determination mixed with natural cyclic variation in the quality of day-to-day life in lab; some days are better than others and I was only a few years away from a PhD and greener pastures.
Things were easier to take back then. I decided to stick it out, but science never treated me any better.
My second project continued to crumble, and then I was scooped in December of 2006 by a Japanese group that my advisor didn't know and had never interacted with. (In fact, they weren't even a nematode lab. The nematode world is fairly tight-knit, so unlike other biological fields, getting scooped by insiders is really rare, and considered rude and overly aggressive.) For the time being, we decided to continue on with my research as it was and attempt to get the second paper on this particular gene, as we'd already missed the first. We would "publish around" their work and hope to have more of an impact with the more relevant findings. Six months later, we realized that wasn't going to work out either.
On my birthday in 2007, my advisor (boss for the non-academic crowd) informed all of us that he would be leaving his position in academics and moving up to administration. He took a job as the associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Central Florida. This was near the end of my fifth year in a program which traditionally takes 6 years to complete, though that doesn't exactly reflect real-world graduation time which is skewed a bit and slightly more complicated.
At the time my choices were to find another lab at Yale as a "foster student" or look for a lab somewhere else. Having just signed a 15-month lease and paid for CT license plates and registration for two years I wasn't in the mood to move, so I stayed at Yale, working in another nematode lab. The best choice scientifically for me was the lab I'm in now. My advisor in Florida would leave administrative duties on my grant to my new advisor. This grant would expire in May of 2009, leaving me two years before my graduate education became someone's financial headache. As for the project? I'd been on it since 2003, and it was still being evasive. I couldn't fit it into a pathway, which was the big project goal, and though we hadn't completely exhausted every possibility, it was getting close to running dry. We decided that it wasn't going to work out, which meant that once again it was time for something new. Strike two.
My advisor, seeing that the project was dying, decided to publish what we had in tandem with other related findings from another graduate student in the lab. I assumed on hearing this that I would be a second author (second by order, essentially third by rank), which meant that the publication would barely help me graduate. In a move that I still don't entirely understand, he decided the paper should have two first authors (placing me tied for first in order and second in rank) and meaning that the paper could eventually help me graduate. It was a gift. He must have known I wouldn't get another one.
Since the lab was dissolving, I had my choice of projects to continue, and of course, hopefully one that I could finish as soon as possible and graduate. The idea was to graduate by May of 2009 (just before my funding would expire) with this third project making up an unequal half of my eventual thesis. I chose to take charge of a genetic screen that had been ongoing in the old lab. The new lab had a bit of expertise in dealing with these type of projects, so it seemed like a logical match. With my assigned graduation date (May 2008) already impossible, there was no time for a backup project anymore.
At first the main problem with the new project seemed to be that everything was confirmation of previous findings. I didn't start project number three, I just had to finish it. In the science world, that makes it difficult to entirely trust results; different sets of hands doing the work and different sets of eyes interpreting it mean different things. The first summer in the new lab was mostly spent confirming the old results, mixed with a lot of distractions; planning a wedding, doing paid photo shoots during the day.
After a few months it became clear that things weren't going to pan out. I got back from my honeymoon in November, not much further along than I was when I joined the lab in July. I was running out of time in graduate school. I used to say that the best- and worst-case scenarios each had me graduating in May of 2009; on one hand I could hit a home run with my project and graduate the right way, and on the other hand I could completely fail (again) and get a pity degree. In December I felt that having my project in its current state would almost certainly preclude me from graduating with a successful thesis because there just wasn't time remaining for that. Nonetheless, there was a chance of things breaking open any day and I had to continue.
My advisor in Florida meanwhile was getting busier and busier as an administrator, and his response times to my emails grew and grew. I continued work on the third project through the winter and spring. I had to explain to the graduate school exactly how much I wanted to finish this project successfully for "extended registration." I had a committee meeting in May of 2008. Their consensus was that a brief characterization of a handful of the mutations that came out of my screen was possible by December, which would give me a chance to write my thesis and submit for the May graduation deadline. I'm not sure why exactly they thought this was possible in hindsight.
This brings us to August of 2008. The first publication is still hung up in revision and has yet to be resubmitted after a fairly favorable review. I haven't heard about its status in a few weeks. It will eventually go through, but one paper is shaky as far as PhD accomplishments go, especially when it's virtually handed to you by your advisor. There's been little to no progress on the goals of my most recent committee meeting. If I got past the initial phase one tomorrow, I couldn't finish project number three in time to have another publication before my thesis would need to be submitted. Most of my experiments have bottlenecked at one particular technical difficulty and the way around that technical problem is to learn how to artificially inseminate nematodes (not kidding). It may be early, but let's just call this strike three.
I raised these concerns with my new advisor. He confirmed my fears, there's no way it will be published before my graduation date. His proposal was that we should forge ahead until December and then re-evaluate the project, ask to graduate in May and then continue beyond graduation to some logical endpoint. (This would of course require someone to pay my bills after graduation.) He suspects my committee will still clear me to graduate in May without the progress we had hoped for. My response to this was that if my committee wants a half-completed thesis I can write one of those today, and I don't need to waste everyone's time until May.
My co-workers in the new lab continually attempt to convince me that somehow the way things went over the past six years isn't my fault. They're strictly correct in that there's no way I could have predicted that I'd go through three projects and two labs and still have next to nothing to show for it. But it's impossible to fully separate bad luck from bad performance when the final project is judged as a whole. I certainly wouldn't claim to have had good luck with anything in the last six years but all my projects and the ways in which I responded to the hardships of graduate school were my own decisions.
Then there's the issue of my degree. PhDs are research degrees, but I've come to learn that it's precisely the research that I can't deal with. I can see what needs to be done, and I can teach people how to do it, but I just can't do it myself. If I end up getting a PhD in genetics, it's unclear how that will actually ever help me. Companies aren't interested in hiring someone that they'd have to train like an undergrad but pay much more money. And I'm not interested in working as a postdoc, continuing the job I dislike so much for $40,000 a year when my friends with bachelors degrees make nearly twice that after a few years in the workforce.
Despite my previous tough time in grad school, things have definitely been worse lately. As you might imagine, I've had a hard time staying interested in something so entirely frustrating and futile. I can't get a real job until I finish here and the rest of my life is waiting for me. I worked hard and failed for years, for a degree that I'll ultimately only get out of pity, that won't help me all that much in the real world anyway. I've cut my hours in lab and don't work weekends as much, and I waste more time when I'm here now (this mammoth update, for example) than ever before. The motivation is completely gone. I'm a mess. I hate virtually every day that I have to think about science and lab, and it doesn't ebb and flow this time. The co-workers that helped me two years ago have moved on. The advisor I like is incommunicado in Florida and my new advisor is never around.
I've been prone to bouts of moodiness since I was a child, but if what I'm currently dealing isn't actual depression it's really close. |
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| August 2008 |
[Aug. 18th, 2008|01:03 pm] |
The last time I updated my livejournal with anything besides a list of bullet points or a youtube video was 9 months ago. That is to say, my livejournal's been dormant for a considerable amount of time.
Today I went looking for an entry I wrote several years ago about the political polarization of America, sparked by a conversation in lab today. This ended with me reading a large number of entries and remembering how much time during the last six years (as frightening as that concept sounds) I devoted to semi-public disclosure of my thoughts and musings.
When this livejournal was created, you still needed an invite from a friend to join. It started fairly small, with the usual e/n ramblings about my lab and class work and occasional memes and inevitable complaints about landlords, moving to, and living in New Haven. Once the appeal of e/n blogging wore off and the vague failings of the Bush administration turned to international aggression and the traditional news media became an unreliable source of news, I turned my livejournal into a sounding board against our country's mistakes. Looking back at what I wrote back then, it was even fairly good at various times, and it helped me to know that like-minded others agreed with me on many issues and voiced support.
Once my frustration with the direction of this country required too much emotional investment, I started writing heavily about music, mostly 'indie' and similar-sort-of artists. Unfortunately, most of my new music sources at the time were of questionable legal standing. Once my sources of music were slowly choked off, I again turned to writing about my frustration with graduate school and science in general, which I alleviated by turning to photography, first as a hobby and then as a part-time job. And once the magazine crumbled I wrote a 17-page recap of my trip to France, wrote about a few dreams, and then decided it was time to retire livejournal for good.
For those that might read that last sentence as foreshadowing, I haven't fully decided what to do with this. |
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| been a while |
[Mar. 5th, 2008|10:45 am] |
1) livejournal: delete account or just let it fade away?
2) Hillary Clinton will lose a general election to John McCain. I personally think she's great, but other men and young people would rather have John McCain than Hillary Clinton, and we'll see a Republican president in November if people keep voting for her.
2a) while we're on politics, any foolish thoughts that there's more than one political party in this country can be dispelled by going to CNN.com and trying to find any reports about anyone besides McCain, Obama, and Clinton.
2b) President Bush "hadn't heard" about $4/gallon gasoline in a recent interview.
3) Sean Kingston needs to go away, like yesterday.
4) I wish I'd never even heard of graduate school and I pretty much regret the entirety of the last six years of my career.
5) Lost is pretty good this season.
6) In the Hollywood round I briefly thought this season of Idol was going to be better than previous ones, but it's not.
7) I don't really like memoirs. I have no delusions that anyone ever cares to read anything I write. Livejournal included. |
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| heheh |
[Jan. 9th, 2008|12:58 pm] |
Jaye: Sometimes it is there there's just larger more insurmountable obstacles.
Eric: Something can't be more insurmountable, it's either surmountable or it isn't.
Jaye: The point is, obstacles. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 19th, 2007|10:48 am] |
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Britney Spears' 16-year old sister is pregnant. |
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| oh come on America |
[Dec. 19th, 2007|10:39 am] |
MTV is doing another season of "A Shot at Love" with a different girl.
Italian hearthrob Domenico Nesci is going to get a spinoff called "That's Amore!" |
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