Inspiring Scientist!

Whoa! A white dude big-time scientists doing his part to expand oppotunities to underserved minorities! Click the link people!

Yay! (Aritcle found via Green Gabbro )

Counting is Fun

20 days, 22 hours until my proposal defense/qualifying exam.


6 days, 22 hours until my written proposal is due.


3 brownies consumed by me last night.


45 minutes of running this morning, starting at 6:30 am (or so...:) ).


1 cup of coffee consumed this morning.....so far.


9 American Idol contestants remaining.


You know, important stuff.

"No-Complaining Tuesday"

Welcome, friends, to the first of what may very well be a series of installments in which I attempt to focus on the many things which are right and good with my life as a grad student. Take note, however, that your intrepid writer is: 1) extremely flaky and 2) extremely busy. A character trait and mitigating circumstance that may render today's post the first in a series of, well, one.

First, I have two supervisors/comittee members who are REALLY looking out for me. True, they might casually pile on 20 hours worth of work at a moments notice, but it is for my own good. They don't want to see my choke at my qualifying exam which is less than a month away!!


Second, how cool is my future husband? The T-dawg has been busy transforming our yard into a garden, cooking me dinner, reminding me to not drink too much coffee in the afternoons and has just plain been believing in me.

Third, I am almost halfway finished with my dissertation proposal that is due in immaculate form two weeks from Thursday. And I can friggin see the light at the end of that tunnel! Sorta.

So, it's not all bad here in the Lone Star State.

dude, go for it

'You rise as high as your dominant aspiration,

You descend to the level of your lowest concept of yourself,

Free your mind,

And your ass will follow.'


-the one and only Funkadelic

Outta my hands!

I sent off the manuscript yesterday, and, of course, I immediately started thinking of ways it could be better. Oh well, that's for the reviewers to decide.
In a way, I can't believe that I actually did it. Despite the hours of work, it almost feels like it wrote itself, in the sense that I pretty much had all the ideas--it was just soooo hard to start writing.

Next up is my disseration proposal, due in less than a month. I have at least started outlining that sucker and next week is spring break! (which means that I get to work uninteruptted for a whole week--isn't in funny how priorities change? I'm excited to work uninterupted for a week. That's why I'm excited for spring break. Yikes.)

Till next time, mucho amore.

learning curve

So, back to my manuscript, my first 'science baby.' I've been making progress, but it's more of a treadmill, or a windy road, than a nice, easy path. Not that I really though this would be easy, per se. But I thought the process would be more linear.
It's like I can see where I need to be, and I know that I'll know when it's finished, but the finish line never gets closer and I just keep working and working. Or I'll tweak one aspect of an argument or description, but that means I have to go back and tweak something else, or add another figure, or look up another reference.
As frustrating as this all is, I'm trying to at least learn from the process and trust that it'll get easier--or, at least, that I'll get better at all this.

After all, that's what I'm here for.

Right?