Nickle and Dimed

Being a PhD graduate student is like being on welfare. Almost. It has a few advantages over welfare, but the similarities are striking. For starters I am living off of the government. That’s right, Uncle Sam cuts my checks. Secondly he does it once a month. While I don’t have to wait in a soul-crushing line to get my incredibly inadequate monthly allowance, the first of the month is still like a holiday.
Most of my money then goes to addictions. Well more like hobbies than addictions since I guess crack-cocaine and backpacking aren’t equally as self-destructive, but hey are we splitting hairs here? With whatever meager wages are left after feeding the monkey I have to price shop for ramens. Seven for a dollar just doesn’t cut it any longer, I have to hold out for the 12 for a buck deal.
The factor that sets us apart is the future. At the end of my suffering is a light, while true welfare recipients are most likely born into an overwhelmingly inextricable situation that highlights the unnecessary separation of wealth in this nation. Welfare is designed to help people pull themselves up a bit, but when the entire system is designed to keep them in their places it becomes obvious that the program was designed to placate the masses and give the appearance of compassionate governing, when exactly the opposite is true.
I know that I am insanely fortunate to be where I am and have the future outlook that I do. Besides, I’ve got M. the MD (money Doctor) while I will be just a PhD (poor hungry doctor).

 

Say What?

Today’s group meeting was progressing as usual: someone at the board leading us through a derivation of some sort, everyone listening, or at least nodding as if they were listening, every few lines someone asks a question …

But then this happened as a postdoc was leading us:

Postdoc: So P is real and Q is real. OK, good. Everything is real.

Advisor: Keepin’ it real.

Say what? Where has arguably the whitest man in america picked up the phrase “keepin’ it real” from? I realize that no one race can claim its own language and that there are regional vernacular differences as well as socio-economic influences on various dialects, but my advisor is too white and too comfortably upper middle class to have ever heard the phrase, “keepin’ it real,” or more importantly to know what it means when not applied to complex variables. I’m befuddled.

B ut he fancies himself funny, which means by default that everyone else under his direct authority fancies him funny, or more accurately acts like they do (yours truly not excluded). So I winced and laughed, bringing me one day closer to graduation.

 

1, 2, You Know What To Do …

Ok here’s a holiday recap since the ratan death march. Spent christmas eve with 3/4 of the Improbables as well as 1adam12 and The Scrapple King, a.k.a. Iron Stone Jake, always a pleasure. We were just too cool for our time and place. Did a bit of programming while everyone was at work. One of the main features of being a theoretician is a mixed blessing. My work can be done just about anywhere, which is great. I’ve theorized everywhere from noisy clubs with live music to isolated mountain tops on the Appalachian Trail. But irregardless (sic) of the setting or leisurely time of day, it is still work and it is still hard. Harder than most people’s occupations. Just because I don’t have to be in a specific place and punch a clock at a certain time does not mean my work is on par with someone’s vacation. People think I have it easy. But I work hard, and hold long hours to do it. Anyway. Drove to N. Jersey to spend some christmas cash. I cannot explain the pandemonium that is route 17 in Paramus. Had probably the first uneventful flight of my life. Actually landed in Seattle 20 minutes early. Did christmas and new years there. At 1:30 in the AM on new years day a heavily intoxicated woman knocked on the door. I let it go, chalking it up to a case of mistaken apartment number. A second knock followed by, “I\’m not a cop!” Well let me tell you, now I feel safe. At 1:30 in the morning on new years eve/day in one of the largest cities in the world the only person I would open the door for is a cop. Oh how the times have changed. The girl mumbled some story about a missing purse. I shooed her away while trying to wrestle the cat back inside. Now I’m on the train back home. Something either died under my seat or the man in front of me smells. Bad. Like dog pee-soaked, mouldy oak chips and a touch of ben-gay. It is horrible. I may vomit soon. I’m off to the dining car for some epicac to expedite the process.

 

Thanks, doc

M. saved my life. I received an email a few days ago notifiying me of an electrical shutdown in buildings A, B, and C on the 14th and 18th of december. This would be fine if I wasn’t a month and a half into ANOTHER set of calculations. And if I wasn’t leaving for the holidays on the 17th, rendering me as helpless as a newborn sea turtle in a raccoon’s nest. Needless to say I was incredulous, unable to fully express the cosmic injustice. Just as my face was reddening, my blood pressure skyrocketted, and that stroke nearly reared its ugly head, M. reminded me that I am in building D, diverting all disasters.

 

Best in Show

Went to a thesis defense last Friday. The herd is thinning. One of the committee members (who also happens to be on mine and fell asleep at my advancement to candidacy) spent the whole time reading a paper, while the committee chair colored his copy of the thesis with a sharpie.

These things are useless. Everyone has the opportunity, and is instructed, to raise any issues with the candidate a week before the defense anyway. They all have a copy of the thesis, and should be at least somewhat acquainted with the student. To deny the degree during this last hoop almost never happens. It’s a waste. Berkeley doesn’t even bother anymore.

While watching the AKC dog parade today, I had gruesome flashbacks. It wasn’t such a dissimilar experience for the student. Especially when they lifted his tail and inspected his rump. But hey, I got some chocolate cake and sparkling cider out of it.

 

Change is supposed to be good. Right?

If my advisor changes my project one more time, just once more I’ll, I’ll, I’ll…    I’ll probably just do what he says.  It seems the equations that I’ve been moaning about for the last year, saying they’re too long are, wait for it, TOO LONG.  Imagine that.

 

Always look on the bright side of life

Had lunch with our annual special physical chemistry seminar speaker today, a big-wig in US science policy and a professor from UT Austin. Lunch was great (Laad Naa), and the conversation was fairly encouraging regarding the future of science in America, and for me in particular. He said that more and more universities are starting medical schools based in large part on the fact that a growing number of young faculty members are married to medical professionals, and hey we may have fancy degrees but we still need jobs. I brought up the topic of women as an untapped resource in scientific research with somewhat antagonistic motivations. He is from texas after all. But it seems that he fully recognizes the challenges facing women scientists today, and is committed to addressing them in the proper forums. He actually raised several issues that I had not been aware of. I asked him if he sees any changes happening currently and he said that, yes, there are changes, but it will take about 10 years or so before they manifest themselves.

On another note. This is sub-titled: why I don’t use proprietary software willingly. This is not a diatribe against microsoft. Too often people mistake poorly written non-ms software that is designed to run on windows with the real thing.

Windows based software sucks for research. It is over engineered. While casual PC users make up the lion’s share of consumers, there are still a few of us who do not so casual things like writing manuscripts with 3 page long equations in them. By trying to make the use of their products easier for the general public, they have made them a royal pain the the a$$ for me.

The great thing about open source software is that it is so rudimentary to the point of having to tell it exactly what to do, that when you have an exact idea of what you want it to do it is very easily implemented with a few lines of code. No auto-complete, no spell-check, grammar-check, or cryptic tab settings. If you want an equation with the third line indented 1/16 of an inch more than the rest it is easily done with about 10 keystrokes, rather than 10 hours of clicking, highlighting, dragging and searching through the most non-intuitive labyrinth that is windows help features.

I realize that windows is not designed for this type of use in mind. That’s why I use Linux. But my boss wants word documents. So word documents he shall get.
But for anyone with a choice, take 30 minutes to learn Tex and Bibtex, and save the lifetime of self-inflicted punishment that is trying to get word, mathtype and endnote to jive.

 

Electricity Scares Me

The local water and electric board saw it fit to shut off everyone in my neighborhood’s electricity for 4 hours this morning. They chose the incredibly convenient time of 8 am – noon to do it. For the early risers this isn’t an issue, but for normal human beings like myself this is a problem. I had to take a cold shower, and then dress in the dark. And now that I’m looking at myself, it’s pretty obvious I dressed in the dark.
But there is a bigger issue at hand. I almost logged in to our lab’s server from home to start the next series of calculations last night. Almost. It was actually one of my finer moments, I was contemplating leaving early (8 pm) and just starting them from home, when I decided to just suck it up and get them going before I left. It’s a good thing, too. No power at home = computer off = remote login session killed = no calculations.
I have been traumatized by power outages before. This summer the university experienced an unexpected blackout due to failure of the cooling system at facilities services. Again, no power = computer off. I just happed to be about a month into a 3-4 month calculation. We received emails saying that the outage was a fluke and it was safe now, it would never happen again. Whatever. I restarted the calculations. A week and a half later I come in to find the server off again. ” WTF,” I said in the unabbreviated form. Another outage, same reason. The Patron Saint of Graduate Students was not looking after me this summer. And then two weeks later we had an annual campus wide electrical shutdown (a rarity among universities). So those two weeks were useless. This wouldn’t have been a problem had the original author of the program (not me) written in some periodic safeguards against unexpected terminations. But this is like kamikaze code, all or nothing. I guess I could do it. But I hate coding. Also, It wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t take 4 months to run to completion. It’s got to be the most inefficient code ever written.
Power outages at a research institution can be devastating. The series we suffered could have had catasrophic effects. Lasers down, servers down, STM’s and TEM’s down. Not to mention particle accelerators. The time it takes to get everything up and running again is a phenomenal waste of person-hours. It put me back at least 6 months. And I’ve got easily resumable research. It takes a long time to catch up to where I was when things stopped, but it’s almost effortless on my part.
Now I am deathly afraid of power outages and am scared to start more calculations, only to have them terminated resulting in my premature stroke.

 

Professor Borat: Class is in session

Had a great weekend with M. and M. in town. A word to the wise: avoid the sutton motel like the plague, or you may end up with some.

We saw “Borat” and it was a masterpiece. It was a diamond-tipped harpoon thrust straight into the heart of America’s deeply seated bigotry. A real eye-opener to anyone who thinks racism as well as cultural and religious elitism are absent in our country. Some parts were more disturbing than others, like when Borat was being smothered by his 300-lb, naked producer’s nether regions and was told to, “eat my anus!”

Well, back to grading. And I may even get to read a paper or two. I’ve got a great one about lattice mediate non-reversible chemical reactions in organic crystals that has been half-read for a good week now.

 

Like Flies on …

If you ever need to lure a graduate student out of the lab (or into it, depending on the situation), you only need one thing: FOOD. Free food. Free sugary or fatty food to be precise. Sometimes we have to make vital decisions concerning time and money management, a real-world risk vs. reward analysis. And let me tell you buying and eating food usually comes in somewhere between folk guitar lessons and psychic readings. My time and money can be much better spent.
We are like vultures in an arid desert, and when food presents itself in the form of a seminar, lecture, or club meeting, we swoop in for the kill. I’ve been to lectures on speech pathology, logging policy, and The Who just to name a few, all in the name of free food. Today was a relevant lecture on quantum control of atoms and molecules, though, so I don’t feel as bad. What am I saying, I never feel bad. It’s a jungle out here.
And faculty, despite their meek, salt-and-pepper bearded, pacifist appearances, will mow you down in a hearbeat for the last jelly-filled tea biscuit or cup of stale coffee. Today while (stupidly) waiting in the jumbled mess of a line at the refreshment table, a 200 year old emeritus with mild parkinson’s standing behind me said, “You have to have patience around here.” To which I responded, “Yes, and strength.” We both laughed. Then he said, “This is where the strength comes in,” and knocked me around like a rag doll and stole the macaroon I had been eyeballing. By the time I recovered and got to the table the only things left were an apple and half a cup of decaf.