Passion

I've been meaning to write a Decade in Review post since the end of December, but, well, y'know. I'm lazy and all.

So. Some quick summaries, with vague highlights as they stand out in my memory. I'd look things up, but all my paper journals (dating back to freakin' 1992) are still in Reno in my parents' shed in the backyard. So yeah, all from (terrible) memory.

2000
The end of my freshman year of high school. Finally got over my first love. Had the whole David not-dating saga. Slapped a boy for the first time. Got flowers for my 15th birthday from Michael--the first time a boy ever gave me flowers. Taught archery to other girls at summer camp. Joined the yearbook staff. Met and fell in love with George.

2001
Sophomore/junior year of high school. Got braces. Turned sweet 16 and had a Renaissance-themed birthday. Went to France with my mother (best two weeks ever). Became Assistant Editor of the yearbook and really did the job of editor-in-chief. Had alcohol without parental supervision for the first time--didn't like it.

2002
Junior/senior year of high school. George at one point said something nice to me and I got teary-eyed. To cover, I told him I was a sentimental sap and cried at everything, including stupid commercials. Confused, he looked at me and said, "Canned peaches, on sale now." I laughed and pretended that yes, this was the sort of thing I would cry at.
George graduated and I spent the entire ceremony sobbing. Afterward we met up and he said he had a gift for me. I was trying to hide how upset I was and was presenting a smiling face, until he pulled out a can of peaches and smacked it down on the concrete wall next to us. "Look, a can of peaches!" I burst into tears.
I became editor-in-chief of the yearbook. Mom took me to visit colleges. I fell in love with Santa Cruz. I remember very little else of this period.

2003
Senior year of high school. Got my first kiss in January. Cried when I got my acceptance letter to UCSC, which I opened in the yearbook room, where I lived. Braces off. Convinced George to come home from college to take me to prom. Graduated. Sobbed to be leaving.
Spent the entire summer working 60-hour weeks at the video store. Made barely $2k.
Kissed George.
Failed to learn to surf.
Started college.
Met Jamie. World changed forever. Lost innocence.

2004
End of first year of college. Was... 19, in so many ways. So immature, so full of passion, so very confused about life.
Got first lab job. Fell in love with organic chemistry. Changed life plan from marine biology to biochemistry.
Took a class with Harry Noller. Fell further in love with molecules and biochemistry.
Spent Christmas with Nanny.

2005
Nanny died. World changed forever.
Nearly failed physics, a subject which to this day still does not make sense in my head.
Mom got pregnant. I had surgery to see if I had endometriosis and if my uterus was actually functional.
TAed for a high school program at UCSC.
Worst summer I've ever had.
Got back together with Jamie. Ran in the First Rain Naked Run (so glad I did that-definitely a Life Experience). Applied to graduate schools.

2006
Got into Yale. FREAKED OUT. Sister born. Broke up with Jamie for NO GOOD REASON.
Had best spring quarter in the history of the world--climbed, drank local beer, learned photography, spoke French, casually flirted with amazingly hot French guy but never got anywhere. Turned 21.
Graduated from college a full year early. Bought a car and left everything I loved behind. Moved to Connecticut.
Had completely disastrous attempt at normal relationship.
Started graduate school. Hated it. Loved it. Could not make up mind.
Saw New York for the first time. Fell horribly in love with it.
Developed crush on guy both my close girl friends dated before I could make up my mind about whether I wanted to or not.
Learned to cook a turkey.
Learned to knit.

2007
Continued to hate and love graduate school. Got very, very depressed.
Joined genetics lab. Still not sure why.
Enjoyed a six-month-long secret relationship that ultimately went nowhere but was a great experience anyway.
Was convinced to qualify early. This went badly.
Started a real relationship.
Bought a cat.

2008
Decided to drop out of Yale. Spent six months actually working up the courage to do this. Was convinced to go on medication for depression--was horrified and relieved when it actually worked.
Went off medication as soon as humanly possible. Was relieved to not relapse into depression.
Left Connecticut, breaking ties. The day I left Connecticut is etched very painfully into my memory. I remember the temperature, the colors, the sounds... Mike, Eliz, Kristy, Emily, Andrew, I miss you all so much.
Drove back across country. Burst into tears when the Rockies came into view. Mountains!
Was taken in by amazing aunt and uncle. Got job in local university bookstore. Wondered where the hell life had gone wrong and what the hell I was doing with myself.
Got depressed.
Fell in love with Jim.

2009
Fell further in love with Jim. Uncle diagnosed with all kinds of cancer. Moved to Michigan for lack of anywhere else to go. Got job as medical editor.
Wondered where the hell life had gone wrong and what the hell I was doing with myself.
Slowly got life back on track in my head.
Applied to graduate schools.
Managed not to destroy relationship, which still baffles (and delights!) me.
Knit 18 feet of garter stitch and learned to knit lace.
Started to feel like an adult.

Goals for 2010?
Get into UCSF. Knit more lace. Knit for other people. Stop being so selfish.
Hit quarter-century mark. Have giant party.
Move to California. Buy house. Be deliriously happy.
Start graduate school over again. Be incredibly stressed out. Drink coffee. Love every second.
Convince Jim we should get second cat.

It just occurred to me I have been MIA for a while.  Let me catch you up on why.

First off, November is National Novel Writing Month.  Many of you know of this already, and are participating alongside me.  For those of you who don't know, I am trying to write 50 thousand words in 30 days, between November 1st and November 30th.  I tried last year and made it to about 11k before giving up in favor of spending hours on the phone with my new boyfriend (speaking of which, we just had our one year anniversary! yay!!).  I'm trying the same story again this year and am doing much better.  So far.  It's about pirates and interdimensional travel (which ended up meaning it's got some time travel in it, drat--I did NOT want to write about time travel problems, but there they are, and what are you going to do) and the main character is so far the least interesting person in the story.  Except for maybe her love interest.  Sigh.  Anyway.  I don't know if I will make it to 50k, but I really want to try.

I was going to do my dad's biography instead of the pirate thing, but I realized it just wouldn't be possible to meet the word count every day if I have to call him constantly to ask him about stuff.  That is high on the list though, so maybe I will tackle it in December/January.

The second ridiculous commitment is graduate school applications.  They are all due December 1st, but all I have left to do now is write my final draft of my statement of purpose, pay the app fees if I can't get them waived, and make sure all three of my letter writers actually upload their letters.  Getting the three recommenders was a HUGE ordeal, but I'm not sure it's something I should post on a public journal, so if you want the sordid story in all its dramatic glory, let me know and I'll email it to you.  It's definitely exciting.

The third horrible commitment is knitting.  I'm in this group on Ravelry that has 3-month-long "terms" composed of "classes" that last 1 month each.  So each month there are six "classes" offered, and you have to knit at least one of them--they're things like "knit something cabled" or "knit something in a plant fiber" or "knit something embodying love".  This month there is one to clear a "weed" out of your project basket and finish it up--guess which one I have chosen?  Yep.  The wedding blanket o' doom, for my favorite cousin, which should have been gifted to her, oh, I dunno, maybe BEFORE her first child was born.  The nice thing is that if I get this finished, I get bonus points for things like the project having reached "mythic" status (i.e. the intended recipient no longer believes it exists) and for a video testimonial.  If I am diligent and actually accomplish this--plans are to do it this weekend--I am pretty sure I can bribe aforementioned cousin to do a short video testimonial for me.  Right, K la?  Right???  (I promise it won't take more than two minutes away from NaNo.  It can be a 10-second video. Really.  I will beg.)

So the last stupid thing I'm doing in November is also knitting. For the same group.  It's supposed to be a project that takes the entire 3 months of the "term", and I decided to do something ambitious back in September, not realizing that everything would all be due on November 30th at the same time.  So I'm knitting this. It's a lace shawl (my first lace).  It's huge.  It is on tiny needles.  The "hard" part (the center) took me two months.  Now I'm on the "slow" part--knitting 5,000 beads into the netting on the outside.  I'm about 1,200 beads into it.  Putting the beads on entails sitting for an hour or two (while watching tv or something) and dipping a beading needle repeatedly into a bowl of beads, then locking the cat in the bedroom and unstringing hundreds of yards of lace up and down the hallway and pushing thousands of beads down those hundreds of yards until there is about three inches in between EACH BEAD, and then re-balling those hundreds of beaded yards so they don't tangle.  And THEN knitting with them.

(I'm in love with it, by the way.  I do not at all mind the effort that goes into the beading. I'm so in love with this shawl it could kill a man and I would forgive it.)

So yes, if you've been paying attention, all of this is due at the end of the month.  Gigantic beautiful shawl, Wedding Blanket o' Doom (9 seams to go...), fifty thousand words, and, most importantly, grad school applications.

Oh yeah, and I work full-time.

Oh, and did I mention we're spending the last week of November in Reno with my parents?  So I'll be finishing all this stuff while having Thanksgiving and trying to be social with my family.

I'll see you in December. If I'm still alive then. 

(Thank goodness Mom's 50th birthday is at the end of December and not the end of November.)

(Note--reading over this post makes it sound like I'm whining.  Oh man, so not whining.  All of this stuff I'm doing by choice, and I'm having a blast.  I'm just exhausted!)

I'm going to reapply to graduate schools this fall.  UCSF, Berkeley, Stanford, UCSD, maybe UCSB as a backup.

I could write about six pages on this subject at the moment, but for now I think I'll just leave it at that.

Kara,
After I copied the message to [new Registrar lady], she called me to correct something that I wrote to you. If you withdraw from the program, you can apply for and get an M.S., but if you are taking a leave of absence you can not. If during the leave, or at its end, you decide to withdraw, you can apply for the M.S.
Best wishes,
[Mr. Evil Director of Graduate Studies Man]

Aaron
that seems wrong. if you qualify for the masters, you should have it whether or not you stay

Kara
yeah

Aaron
who is this woman?

Kara
she's our new registrar
SHE sent me an email too
hers said
Hi Kara,
I am looking into this right now. I will get back to you by tomorrow. Also, what are your dates for LOA?

Thanks,
[new Registrar lady]

LOA being leave of absence

Aaron
fair enough

Kara
can I kill someone?
I want my fucking degree, I earned it.

Last night I had a dream about Clark. This is weird, because I have only had dreams with Clark in them on a few occasions, and I can't even remember those dreams clearly. I'm beginning to think that Clark signifies my conscience or my "voice of reason" in my dreams, because basically the only thing I remember about the dream from last night/this morning is that he was asking me, in a manner not unlike the one in which Jess questions Rory, whether or not I really wanted to be leaving school. "Are you really sure?" he asked. In that tone of voice that suggests that of course I'm not really sure, because it's a terrible idea and he's going to say I told you so in five years.
Actually, I also remember thinking, "I'm so glad you contacted me," (and in the dream I remember it was over AIM, and the chat window was all familiar and it was kind of comforting) and wondering if I had been too hard on him when we stopped talking, and if part of my anger with him wasn't really anger at myself and general frustration at my current life situation. I don't think he deserved all the wrath I heaped upon him, although he certainly deserved part of it.

The weird thing about making lots of friendslocked entries is that, after a while, it gets to be nerve-wracking to make unlocked posts. It induces paranoia.

I went climbing tonight and there was great music and I had good new climbing pants and of course the company is always excellent, and I felt like, "hey, this is santa-cruz-y and I'm okay here. I should climb more often." But something niggled in the back of my brain, saying, "This is not what you're missing, this is not why you're unhappy; more time spent climbing is not going to make it all better. This is not your solution." And I thought, "Yes, you're right." But it's interesting how I can have good moments--I had a great weekend too, with Aaron and with some of his friends and a few great rounds of a card game called Munchkin--and be generally okay and still be absolutely miserable. I really am absolutely miserable. And it's really just getting worse, despite everything I'm doing to try to force myself to dig in and put down roots and adjust, damnit (I just got a cat, for crying out loud, and the small furry thing, while I adore her, is not making everything better--I mean, not that I expected her to, but this sort of indicates that it's not an easily fixable thing, you know?).

Anyway, point is--subconscious, or Clark: I am unhappy and I don't know how to fight it without leaving. Fighting it here is not working. I think the unhappiness is inherent in the graduate school at Yale part. It's the being young part. It's the... it's all that. I don't know.

I'm very young and very miserable and very confused. But at least I have new climbing pants.

Wow, I really haven't updated in ages.

Qualifying was meh. They gave me a conditional pass. They loved my proposals and said they were well-written, creative, and interesting, but I lack a general knowledge of biochemistry and I need to know things "cold," so in order to receive a pass on my qualifying exam, I have to take an undergraduate biochemistry course next semester, write a 10-15 page paper on the structure and function of the ribosome (due end of March) and have another oral exam at the end of May, after grades come out (I must get a B in the undergrad course).
To some extent this really, really makes me angry. I have a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and there's no reason I shouldn't have been able to answer their questions, had I known that those topics would be covered. Ten minutes of review would have freshened all that stuff in my mind, and I would have been fine. I just wasn't prepared emotionally, and after the first two questions I was too thrown off to recover. *sigh*
On the other hand, this means I can't TA spring semester (THANK GOD). It also means I get to take another class (even if it's one I've taken before), and I love classes. I'm good at classes. This will be ridiculously easy for me, but who knows, I might learn something new. And lastly, this gives me a real chance to slow down, take a deep breath, and do some science before I qualify again in May. So what if I was the first person in our class to start qualifying and I'll now be the last to finish? I'm still a good two years younger than most of my classmates. I have soooo much time. The whole idea behind coming to Yale and not going to UCSF was that here I'd have a chance to slow down and be a real person, outside of science, in addition to being a graduate student. I have time, and an excuse, to breathe now. And furthermore, I didn't feel like I was ready to qualify, and I think that if I had passed I would have felt like I'd somehow fallen through the cracks and hoodwinked my committee. So at least now I don't feel like an impostor. The "worst" has happened--they've found me out--but they haven't asked me to leave. So I'm relieved.

Anyway. I will talk no more about this subject. For at least a few weeks. I'm so sick of the "q" word.

Turns out my packages have been being delivered down the street. The previous tenant of our house requested that we put a sign on our mailbox saying she'd moved to such and such a house, and apparently the FedEx people don't bother to read the names on our mailbox versus the name on the sign, and as soon as they see the new address they just march the boxes on down the street. So my books (and a bouquet of calla lilies!!) have been found, and all is right.

Okay, I'm doing a bad job of updating.

The weekend was awesome. I drove to Woods Hole to visit Ann. Apparently, though, just driving to Woods Hole would have been too boring for me, so I "decided" to drive to Boston first. I didn't realize where I was until I was almost ten miles past Boston. I stopped, turned around, and drove back south to Woods Hole, where I met up with Ann and some of her friends and we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on this gigantic screen in their student lounge thingy. Saturday morning we slept in, then went kayaking. "Kayaking", for Ann and me, means "paddling out to the buoy and proceeding to throw one another out of the kayak until it drifts far enough back in to shore that we have to paddle it back out again, repeating until covered in bruises." It took about two hours before we wore ourselves out enough to stop trying to throw each other out every time we got back into the kayak.
My right knee is still a bit swollen.

Sunday morning I drove back to New Haven so I could go to my lab's wiffleball game. Now that I and the other first-year have joined, about half our lab makes up about a quarter of the wiffleball team. One of my labmates was hosting this week's game, so we got a bit tipsy at her place first, then trekked over to the local high school and set up a game in one of the empty fields there. We had fifteen people show up. Our team was down 5-0 for most of the game, but in the last two innings we made a comeback to win 6-5. Then we all went back to the house and stuffed ourselves silly. My labmate makes the best ribs I've ever had.

And now, for some comic relief: I've been reading about sperm production and whatnot, because it's tangentially related to my thesis. I came across this figure today, in an old Science article:

Science, vol 316, pg 405. (Click to see a larger, clearer, version.)

It is a diagram showing that tissue from a small boy's testis can be cryopreserved, whilst he throws a baseball to his future self, who receives a sperm transplant while concurrently catching said baseball.
WTF.

Also,
I'm so jealous.

I hate it when I feel like I desperately need to write, but I don't know what to write about.

I sort of picked my qualifying committee today. If the scheduling works out among all three faculty members (and all three say yes to my request that they be on my committee...), I'll start qualifying the second week of September. I'll then read for six weeks instead of five (to accommodate one professor's travel plans), write for 1.5 to two weeks, and then take the qualifying exam the first/secondish week of November.
I'm no longer freaked out about the process. I'm more sort of...tired. Thinking about it just makes me tired. Part of me is really excited, but it's a really tiny, really far away part. Hopefully, as the beginning of the exam draws nearer, my enthusiasm will increase. After all, I'm in graduate school, and in this lab, because I love science, right? Because I love ribosomes? Even though that makes me super weird?

Does anyone have any good book recommendations? I'm looking for something in science or in current events. Definitely not fiction. I'm feeling particularly uninformed lately, and I'd like to read a book on something other than genetics. So anything mathy, physicsy, or current eventsy should do it. Anyone? Anyone?

What a week--what a summer.

Travel has completely worn me out. It feels good to be home, even if that home isn't quite the home I'm used to. The last 24 hours, since "home" and "Eliz and Ali's" became the same place, has felt a little surreal. I'm sharing a room here, and it feels a little more like camp or dorms than having an actual apartment. I dunno. Maybe going to lab tomorrow and coming home to this place will help make it feel real.

Yesterday was actually a pretty good day. A ton of people helped me move and clean, and we were actually done by 6 pm, which was a lot sooner than I'd anticipated. I took a long nap afterwards, after which Emily and Ali and I went out for drinks. It was nice to go out and feel social. We drank martinis and came back late and I slept quite well, despite the fact that when I woke up this morning I had absolutely no idea where I was.
And today was good too--mostly I lazed around and read Harry Potter 6. And now people are here and we've watched The Departed and are an hour into Children of Men (which I've seen before, and just don't quite have the energy to pay 100% attention to, since it's a pretty intense movie). I love lazy Sundays.

And now that the last few months have sunk in--my decision not to transfer, and to allow myself to settle in Connecticut--I think I'm 98% happy. I'm really enjoying grad school. Lab is going pretty well, even if I've only been back for a week, and I think I'm going to qualify this fall. I'm not even very scared of it anymore. After so much struggling and such a ridiculously awful year, the okayness of this summer feels almost startling. It's a nice contrast, and I hope that in the next five years I'll be able to keep feeling like I'm okay. Even if I'm not, I'm actually pretty content right now to just enjoy this summer for what it is, and be happy that I'm happy. Life is good for the first time in a long time, and I feel okay about 98% of it. Now, if I just knew how to stop worrying about that last 2%....

I haven't touched my knitting needles in days, but I've decided to make this (another link here). I should really work on the wedding gift instead....

P.S. I also have a thesis project! Hurrah! Ask me about it!