Mind and work realizations

I haven't posted in a while because I've been alternately busy and depressed.

I don't have much to be depressed about, of course--it's just February, and even though where I'm living now is warmer and sunnier than anywhere I've ever lived before, the shorts days are bumming me out. I get to sunset and I feel like the day's over (even though it's not) and I haven't done a single worthwhile thing (even though I have). I've done this enough times, and my fiance's seen me do this enough times (albeit from afar in previous years), that it's no longer a crisis. I treat it like I would treat any chronic illness. Flare-ups are dealt with as smoothly as possible, I try not to expect to be perfect in dealing with it (this one is the most challenging!), and I get back into the swing of things as quickly as I can, making certain to find ways to work around and through the down times instead of sitting around uselessly hoping to feel better or expecting things out of myself that I know I can't give.

Anyway, with THAT little explanation off my chest, I've got a couple of things to say about life at work lately.

First of all, I'm making some interesting progress, and I'm excited about what I'm doing. I do wish I had more lab space, and--more importantly--more supplies. The reaction vessels I use (also known as the places where I store my samples for several months to observe them) are on backorder and have been for nearly a month. Nobody at SRU has any. So, until I find a suitable substitute, there's not much I can do. We don't seem to stock anything else that would work, either.

Second, I had a hilarious moment this week. As background, Dr. GE has been out of town for a few weeks, so we haven't been having group meetings. He's due back sometime this week. So Dr. TX emailed me this message at 7 PM:

Tomorrow there will be an overview of your reactions at 3 PM. Be prepared. Is that okay?

We needed to meet to discuss what I'd do next, as Dr. TX wasn't around for our meeting earlier that day, but 3 PM the following day was generally group meeting time. I looked at the "be prepared" and remembered how, at the last group meeting I went to, the presenter had only been given one day's notice that he'd be presenting. I realized that he must mean that I'd be presenting my research so far to the group. I knew from previous conversations that group meeting presentations were to be as well-researched and professional as humanly possible, as preparation for general public presentations.

Ack! I emailed to ask for clarification and immediately set about making sure I understood every bit of the chemistry I was doing (I didn't, as Dr. TX has never given me more than a hand-waving explanation of what it is I'm supposedly doing, which is not quite enough as I'm doing exploratory synthesis work, but I figured out a plausible explanation and decided to ask about it the next day) and threw together a presentation on everything I've done so far. HG pampered me, making cookies and tea for me and giving me lots of hugs; though I didn't deserve it, it was nice, because I HATE doing things at the last minute, even when it's not my fault.

And then, finally, after three hours of work, I got an email from the postdoc clarifying that he only meant I was meeting with him to discuss future work. I can only assume he was using "be prepared" to mean "be there," since I left the day before when he was an hour and a half late.

I think there might have been a time when I would have been kind of annoyed about this, but as it is I think it's funny and good for me. I learned how to talk intelligently about my work earlier than I otherwise would have--I've been falling into labmonkey mode a little too easily since I'm being overseen so strictly by Dr. TX at the moment. And I figure if I'm not up for occasional high-caffeine-content nights with massive amounts of new knowledge consumed, I shouldn't be in grad school.

Thirdly, and lastly, I've finally had that "a-HA!" moment where I truly realized for myself, rather than just being told or just knowing intellectually, that being insanely deferential and self-effacing to everyone around me isn't the best career move. This was a work-related realization, but it did come on the heels of a related personal-life talk with HG in which he pointed out (kindly, and in a relevant context) that my idea of how I should treat him while he's working or busy more closely match the ideal behavior of a well-behaved child than that of an actual partner. I'm sure the two are related, but they did have to be separate thought processes, and I'm glad both happened.

Anyway, I'm going to poke my head into Dr. TX's office soon, because he's currently running 45 minutes late on when he said he'd come find me and talk to me today. Thank you all for reading and for your advice on the last few entries!

A very early career crisis

The last few weeks I feel like I've been exhausted non-stop. I think a lot of it is getting over a pair of illnesses that really wiped me out for most of January, as well as getting used to working a job that requires me to stand most of the day after a month or two of unemployment. I come home and I do my chore-like things and I read my bloggers and then... then I don't want to do anything else. I can't even imagine how I'll eventually build up the ability to do this with kids.

Anyway, I've been also quite emotionally down. I've been reading a lot of blogs of early-career female scientists with great fascination, seeing how they like their lives, or don't. I thought I was doing all right with all this new data; I thought through my career plan again and thought, okay, I can adjust to spending longer in a post-doc position I won't really necessarily enjoy than I expected, etc.

And then yesterday I kinda fell apart. I sobbed all over HG at the prospect of going 5-7 years between my one required teaching year next year (I'm on fellowship the rest of the time) and getting a teaching position after my postdoc(s). I wanted this degree so that I could teach. I like research, but doing only research I lose the spark eventually unless I'm also talking about chemistry--even if it's not about my research. When I'm teaching I remember what I love about my work and it really invigorates me.

As an undergrad I was a TA who convinced people to switch majors to chem or just put more effort into the course simply because, as they put it, they "like how much [I] love it." I get excited about chemistry. I'm passionate about teaching it both to the people who love it and to those who hate it, but will give it a shot when I'll help them along and am encouraging. (I couldn't actually pick which of those two I enjoy more. Both are good. Naturally those who refuse to put in effort are a downer, but very few are like that all the way through if there's someone consistently encouraging them, and those few, well, I don't take them personally. I've never been responsible for the content of a course, so maybe that will change. Maybe I won't like teaching as much then. But I do know that the idea of going that many years without teaching is terrifying to me.

HG suggests a few things, including:
-Trying, in the long run, to get tenure at a school where teaching is the focus, or at least where I could be rewarded for good teaching and not only for my research. (These places exist, right?)
-In the short term, trying to teach at the local CC.
-Teaching high school either long-term or short-term, where I can be near the front lines the battle to keep women from leaving (or, rather, not entering) the sciences.

Meanwhile I don't like the option of teaching high school, though I'd do it if I had to. This is going to come out badly, but--I want to show women who are interested in science a career they might be more likely to be interested in. It seems to me like more people go from "I want to teach high school" to "I want to teach high school science" than from "I want to be a scientist" to "I want to teach science to high schoolers." But that may just be my own prejudices--I have to admit that my own misgivings about going into such a criminally underpaid profession might not be present in some of the people I'd be reaching out to, and thus the "I want to be like my teacher!" instinct that gets a lot of people interested in a subject might actually turn out useful.

As for teaching at a CC here while enrolled in grad school... I'm not sure. I think I might get overcommitted very quickly. However, it does sound nicer than not teaching for what feels like a very very long time to a youngster like me. And on the bright side, if I find I really enjoy teaching at a CC, I suppose I could have a shot at just stopping my schooling after my MS, depending on what that market is like (I'm really not sure).

The long-term suggestion is, of course, my preference. It doesn't help me now, though!

Anyone have any advice? Am I doing the wrong thing--getting a PhD in chemistry--for what my passions are? I should stress that I really, really do enjoy my research. It's just not what I primarily want to do full-time in a career. I do believe that original research keeps teaching fresh, so I also wouldn't want to give it up entirely if I could help it, but I'd rather do all teaching than all research, if I had to choose. Thoughts?

Sigh. Maybe I need to quit reading so many blogs--sometimes it all just feels impossible, and I wonder why I'm even here.

Research is taking off

Without getting into too many details about what I do researchwise at SRU, to continue my anonymity--I do synthetic chemistry of one sort or another, and it's basically exploratory. The same was true of my undergraduate research at WLAC, actually, though my CIT research was very focused on a certain end goal. Sure, I have a general aim, or at least an ideal goal, but anything new and interesting I make is good news, and because I am not externally funded by an industry partner whose specific goals must be accomplished (unlike at CIT), I get to pursue whatever comes up, at least to some extent.

So anyway, yesterday while going through my samples I've made in the three weeks (okay, four, but I was out sick the second week) I've been at SRU I found that I'd made something that appears, from my first type of scan on it, to be new! I'm terrifically excited by this, as are Drs. TX and GE. It's interesting--in all my reactions so far, of which there are nearly 100, I've failed to make any known compounds, but I do appear to be able to make a family of new ones. The best I hoped for was occasionally making something known so that I could understand what factors influence the formation of these known compounds.

Speaking of having made almost 100 samples and filled up a third of my first lab notebook: it's weird how different this setup is from my undergrad research. There, I could make two samples at a time. Each took about a week from start to finish before analysis, with about ten hours per pair of actual time spent in lab over that time, plus an extra hour or two for analysis. This stuff? I can make four samples at a time, and from start to finish it's under two and a half hours for all four. Plus I don't have a lot of other obligations at the moment, which really helps. But the contrast is startling!

Anyway, I'm still celebrating making something new. This is what I really enjoy in chemistry, and it's wonderful to have a reminder of that. I've missed it since WLAC.