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Feb. 6th, 2007 08:32 amI was doing so well. I had almost a couple months there with no drama. I was involved in the drama of others, but at least I hadn't created or walked into any drama of my own. And then recruitment weekend goes and happens, and suddenly I'm left wondering if there's a cosmic setting for me somewhere that's been moved to "chaos" again. How do I keep getting myself into these sorts of things? I must be a lot more naive than I think I am.
I feel a strong desire this morning to talk about something, anything, normal, to forget all about the cadre of guys occupying most of my brain energy, and to focus on something a little more mundane and a lot less complicated. Like Cofactor Dynamics and Sufficiency in Estrogen Receptor-Regulated Transcription. Thank the gods, all of them, for Advanced Eukaryotic; I think that class is keeping me sane right now. It's hard but not ridiculously so, and the required reading is only one paper every week and a half, so it's certainly not like it's taking up a lot of my time. Plus, it's fascinating. Well, this particular paper wasn't fascinating, but the last one was, and the lectures have been pretty good too. I feel lucky to be able to take all these classes this semester; it's the first time I've ever been allowed to take real electives, and with the pressure of needing two H's gone, I'm just concentrating on enjoying the work and only worrying about not looking stupid in front of classmates.
Last week I worked a couple of 9 to 5 days in the lab. I think they marked my first ever 9 to 5 days, and for the first time in my life I understood the whole "hard work feels good" mentality that old men are always preaching. It's not that hard work itself feels so good, it's that spending a whole day working on something you enjoy and find to be a noble cause feels good. If you feel like your work is worthwhile, and you don't hate it, then it feels good. Lab is so much more enjoyable in grad school than it was in undergrad! I love that I get to choose what I'm working on; I love that I know enough about science to be able to choose what I'm working on. I love understanding what the other graduate students are doing. I love seminars and lectures and lab meetings and reading papers and UNDERSTANDING what's happening. For the first time, I really feel like science has lit (litted? lighted? litten? dude, wouldn't litten be an awesome word?) me on fire, and I actually WANT to work, I WANT to go to lab in the mornings. It's such a strange, wonderful feeling. Man I love grad school.
Please remind me of this post in two or three years, when I start to become bitter and exhausted.
*sigh* All right; I have an assignment due in Euk in about three hours, and I should try to get to lab before then, so I guess I'd better go do my homework. Last time I wrote a page, single-spaced, and I got it back with a little note on the top that says, "double-spaced in the future, please," which I think is hilarious, because it took me all of ten minutes to write the single-spaced page. A double-spaced page only gives me enough text to say, "This paper was AWESOME. The authors are BRILLIANT. If they follow up on this they'll win a Nobel."
Anyway.
I feel a strong desire this morning to talk about something, anything, normal, to forget all about the cadre of guys occupying most of my brain energy, and to focus on something a little more mundane and a lot less complicated. Like Cofactor Dynamics and Sufficiency in Estrogen Receptor-Regulated Transcription. Thank the gods, all of them, for Advanced Eukaryotic; I think that class is keeping me sane right now. It's hard but not ridiculously so, and the required reading is only one paper every week and a half, so it's certainly not like it's taking up a lot of my time. Plus, it's fascinating. Well, this particular paper wasn't fascinating, but the last one was, and the lectures have been pretty good too. I feel lucky to be able to take all these classes this semester; it's the first time I've ever been allowed to take real electives, and with the pressure of needing two H's gone, I'm just concentrating on enjoying the work and only worrying about not looking stupid in front of classmates.
Last week I worked a couple of 9 to 5 days in the lab. I think they marked my first ever 9 to 5 days, and for the first time in my life I understood the whole "hard work feels good" mentality that old men are always preaching. It's not that hard work itself feels so good, it's that spending a whole day working on something you enjoy and find to be a noble cause feels good. If you feel like your work is worthwhile, and you don't hate it, then it feels good. Lab is so much more enjoyable in grad school than it was in undergrad! I love that I get to choose what I'm working on; I love that I know enough about science to be able to choose what I'm working on. I love understanding what the other graduate students are doing. I love seminars and lectures and lab meetings and reading papers and UNDERSTANDING what's happening. For the first time, I really feel like science has lit (litted? lighted? litten? dude, wouldn't litten be an awesome word?) me on fire, and I actually WANT to work, I WANT to go to lab in the mornings. It's such a strange, wonderful feeling. Man I love grad school.
Please remind me of this post in two or three years, when I start to become bitter and exhausted.
*sigh* All right; I have an assignment due in Euk in about three hours, and I should try to get to lab before then, so I guess I'd better go do my homework. Last time I wrote a page, single-spaced, and I got it back with a little note on the top that says, "double-spaced in the future, please," which I think is hilarious, because it took me all of ten minutes to write the single-spaced page. A double-spaced page only gives me enough text to say, "This paper was AWESOME. The authors are BRILLIANT. If they follow up on this they'll win a Nobel."
Anyway.
