firnafth

My current house: Smith House, which houses up to 10 people in 6 rooms (only 2 people right now)



Field adjacent to my current house:



Stream running nearby:




Birches, close up and at a distance:




In a week or so I'm moving to Lee Lovelace House, which can hold a lot of people; I'll be staying there for the rest of the summer.



Cary Institute road with hillside and landscape in the distance:

A little while ago I think I wrote a long journal entry, only to have LJ crash and lose about 4/5ths of it. I gave up on writing that entry, so a lot that I would have said was lost. Today I'll copy this into Notepad before clicking the "spell check" button just in case.

A month ago I crashed after I learned that the military will disqualify people for having mental health problems. I realized that with my recent history of counseling and the very careful background checks they do, I would likely not make it. This made me feel so terrible that I didn't get anything done for a week, just about literally. I was depressed and anxious and very antsy at the same time, and I felt even worse because that kind of meltdown is just the kind of thing they are trying to avoid. My family became very concerned because I took 3 mental health days from work. When Mom heard about it she started having me call her every morning and make goals for the day. I was supposed to follow up on the Air Force thing if I didn't hear from them, but I didn't because I felt that it would be dishonest for me to even try. I still haven't contacted them. I worry they will realize that I put this off and ask me why I didn't have my act together. After all, they want people with their acts together. I am having trouble finding the guts to call them back.

My thesis drags along with horrid slowness. I've been working on it for only about 2 or 3 hours a day. I got some sections written and made some graphs - but then I had to redo all of the analyses because I'd coded my variables in a way that wasn't the best. Then I remade some more graphs and wrote up some results. Then we realized that I could reformat one of the variables in a better way. That's what I did this weekend. It has changed my results again. I had to remake one of the graphs and another two are now not needed. I will have to rewrite my results after I finish the analysis my computer is running right now. It should finish by mid-morning tomorrow.

My car is in the shop. The power brake booster failed, I think. It is a $500 repair and the part had to be ordered last Thursday and was supposed to come in today. I hope that I will get a call in the next couple of hours that my car is fixed; that way I can drive to buy food (I am out of cereal with only Cream-O-Wheat to eat for breakfast) and guinea pig stuff and also take a trip to Target because my friends got me a gift card for there for my birthday. I will see about the mousepads that they have. I have not been using a mousepad - my mouse does not need one at all - but I have realized I am wearing through the varnish on my table in the region where I use the mouse. This is not good.

Last week I had some good social events, even though I was a bit lackluster about them. I held a birthday party and invited 4 people. Unfortunately, I was not as excited about the food as I once was in the past, and put it off for a bit too long and threw some dishes together with less care than I would normally. I somehow managed to get the appetizer, starch/vegetable, meat and soup on the table just as the guests arrived although the table was not anything near set when they showed up. I just completely failed to prepare the dessert. No big deal; we fried some apple slices in butter after dinner and put some cinnamon and sugar on them before serving them with ice cream. Quick and tasty. Other than my level of disorganization and lack of intense interest in the task at hand, things went well and I enjoyed spending time with my friends.

I also got together with Uncle Alex on Friday. I had been intending to drive to visit him on Thursday, but my car's brake issues stopped that. This was no less than the 3rd time we had rescheduled the visit, but it finally worked out. We went out to brunch, visited a local used bookstore, and saw a move (Midnight In Paris I think it was called). We had a good time, although I was lethargic for some of the day. We talked about nutrition, chess, and StarCraft with some other things like politics thrown in. Talking with Uncle Alex is always a lot of fun.

Two weeks ago I went bat-netting for my part-time job. This was not as horrendous an experience as I feared, but it was nonetheless stressful, reminding me strongly of times last year when I drove out to my field site and back, always sleep-deprived and always very tense. This set my recovery back (I had been just about to get my guts back to follow up with the Air Force) so that I felt much worse at the beginning of last week. Even now I do not think I have returned to my pre-bat-netting spirits. I did like seeing the bats though. And I earned some good money, which is however not coming for a while. This is not a big deal. I have enough money sitting in savings and in my normal bank accounts that I have loosened up substantially on my stingy spending habits, going to see a movie or two and not fearing going out to eat with my peers as much.

Clan and StarCraft stuff continue to be the things in my life I care most about, I'm sure everyone thinks for the worst but I don't care. I've been doing a good job finally in my leadership position, I think. There were a couple of mildly traumatic incidents a few weeks ago which I was witness to or vaguely involved in, but things have settled down again. My skill at the game is improving noticeably and I'm now just about average for a North American player.

The clan is undergoing a large reorganization of leadership sometime in September and I'm interested to see how it goes. I don't know much about what is planned, but this kind of stuff really interests me. I don't think my position or duties will change much, but we'll see.

That's all I have for today. Still no news from the car shop. I'd really like to get out and do some things this evening.

I am working on writing my thesis; I've drafted a Materials and Methods section and a Results section. Dr. Cameron has commented on the Materials and Methods so right now I am working on fixing everything he pointed out. I always forget to explain things well for people who do not know what I am doing. I will have to adjust the results based on some of the things I am changing about the Materials and Methods section.

Yesterday I finally got to do something for my part-time job; me an another person drove to a place 3 hours away to spend about 3 hours replacing batteries and memory cards in acoustic bat detectors. It was a bit difficult because we showed up and realized we needed tools we didn't have, so we had to go to the hardware store and buy them. It was also hot out and the batteries were rather heavy. (I insisted on carrying them, but the truth is I enjoyed it). We spent just a shade over 10 hours on this trip, over half of which was driving. The person I went with works full-time for the company, and based off of her comments I would probably have a tough time working with them; they are disorganized, sometimes work weeks are ludicrous and involve little sleep, and sometimes demands are made like "be at this place a 16 hours drive away tomorrow." So I do not intend to pursue a full-time job with them.

I am pursuing joining the Air Force. As an excessively educated person, I'd join as an officer. Apparently there is competition for these jobs, so that I will be submitting an application with resume and recommendation letters... This makes me nervous, especially since I don't know what their acceptance rate is. I talked to the local recruiter who sent my information to the officer recruiters (who are apparently short staffed right now) and I am waiting to hear back from the latter. I am not even sure what kind of job I want with them. Something that is not all day at a desk. If I get that kind of job I will go crazy. But I decided to go for this option.

I laugh at myself. I mentioned to several people that I was considering joining the military, and multiple people including some close family members and Dr. Thibault said they felt that moving in with Dad would be the best option I had for what to do next. I have considered this advice but I am now effectively ignoring it, because that is not what I want to do. Instead I am willfully attempting a path which made everyone say, "What??" I feel like this stubbornness is characteristic of me somehow.

So wish me luck with getting into the Air Force.

I'm pushing back the optimal time for me to go collecting mammal specimens for the Museum Center to later in the summer so that I can write my thesis a bit more. However, I couldn't do that this week anyway, because the curator had ordered the halothane (anesthetic used to sacrifice animals humanely) but the bottle it was in was broken on arrival. He had to get some more sent.

Clan stuff is fun and going well; lots of new members keep me busy as Team Leader of the Introductory Team. There's some exciting things going on in the clan, too - we are hosting an open tournament (this means anyone can join) which is arranged and played online. We have it split into North American and European sections and each has a $200 prize pool raised from donations from members. I will not play in the tournament because I am bad, but I hope to help administrate it. Although my readers probably don't care, the organizers of the tournament posted about it in a major StarCraft forum here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=245355
For some reason, I just find this really exciting. If nothing else, it is creating some good publicity for our clan so that more people will join and I will stay busy.

I made two trips lately, one to the American Society of Mammalogists Annual Meeting in Portland, OR; and one to join my family for vacation in Mankato, MN.

The first trip was hard. I was supposed to spend most of the four and a half days I spent there going to talks and poster sessions, but I had great difficulty sitting still and concentrating on the talks. I was really antsy and spent a lot of time just wanting to get up and move around. It was nice to see and talk to Dr. Thibault, and I also found a person I had spent some time talking to at last year's meeting to do things like go out to lunch with.

My presentation was on the fourth (last) day of the conference and it went well; Dr. Cameron was happy with it and I got some compliments from people I knew and also people I didn't know.

I returned to Cincinnati for a few days, which I mainly spent goofing off. The trip to the mammal meetings had been very hard on me and I wanted to try to relax before having to travel again. I tried to get my computer's wireless internet fixed to no avail.

Last Sunday I flew back out to Mankato to meet up with my family for vacation. I had a really bad trip out; My first bus was late, causing me to miss my second bus and thus miss my flight. I had to get on a later flight (fortunately, this was not hard) and reschedule my shuttle from Minneapolis to Mankato. I did get there in the end, however, and spent the rest of the day swimming and watching fireworks at a family party.

Other things I did on that trip included playing frisbee golf; lying in the grass in the shade on an extremely nice, breezy day; swimming; visiting Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis; seeing my Uncle Charles; and eating hot dogs. It was a good trip, although I was glad to return to Cincinnati and see if I could reestablish a schedule. I feel like a routine would make me feel less anxious.

I got what is in effect a negative response from the taxidermy job I applied to (they said they are looking at other candidates although my information is on file). I was expecting this so it hasn't made me feel very bad. In general though, I do not feel up to applying for jobs.

So, let's get this straight. I apparently gave myself wrist-extensor tendonitis in my right arm by gaming. (By the time I've been handling a computer mouse for an hour, my wrist solidly hurts). Now I have to
1) Take anti-inflammatory medication
2) Ice my wrist/forearm twice a day
3) Do wrist exercises to strengthen the affected muscles

I think this is hilarious. Half because I am relieved I don't have carpal tunnel, and half because I gave myself a sports-type injury by playing computer games. Seriously? I have to do special wrist exercises so that I can game without pain? Well, it's important enough for me that I'll do it - this is now my major recreational and social linchpin. But I still am laughing at myself for taking this so seriously.

Now, onto the real life stuff:
I got a part-time job here in Cincinnati at Environmental Systems and Innovations (ESI), an environmental consulting firm inhabited by (among other people) some former academics who Dr. Cameron knows. His contact with them got me the job. I have taken this job not because I need one now but because maybe if I work part-time for them, they will like me and give me a full-time job. They mostly do stuff with bats, going bat sampling to find out what species are found in places like wind farms and working on plans to mitigate the effects of these places on bats. My job (12 hours/week) is actually helping write a conservation plan. I found it very confusing and boring at first, but now that I've figured out what I am doing, I enjoy it OK. I like having an obvious goal, "Make this table," "Write this section," which I can finish.

I have also applied to a whopping one full-time job. This taxidermy job is for working at a high-end studio in Pennsylvania. I want this job really badly, but don't know what my chances are for successfully getting it. I've searched for other jobs available to me in the past few days but there really isn't much out there that I would be an excellently-qualified candidate for. I personally think I am very qualified for the taxidermy job, but we'll see how that goes.

I need to start applying to federal government jobs. So few of the jobs for industry seem good for me.

My computer does not connect to the wireless network in my lab. After consultation with the wireless network people, I had the computer's hard drive wiped. No fix. Then I called Dell Support and they messed around with my computer through their remote control program for two hours but no fix. They seem to think that I am trying to connect to the wireless using the wrong settings. I am 99% sure that this is not the problem, considering that the UC IT people and I have checked those settings many, many times.

Next week I am leaving to Portland to go to the American Society of Mammalogists Annual Meeting. I am leaving on June 24th and returning on June 29th. Dr. Cameron is also going. I am giving an oral presentation which I am working on today after much critique from Dr. Cameron. I am both very scared about giving this presentation and unworried because I know I can do a good job. I hope I do a good job answering the questions people will ask me, and that I make myself, Dr. Cameron and our department look good.

I finally got out a cover letter and resume to one person that Dr. Cameron actually contacted about me. Today I'm going to email another couple of people he gave me the information for. I'm stymied for the process of applying to online jobs still because I do not know how to address a cover letter when I don't know who the hiring person is. I tried (more than once) to get this answer from the career counselor last week, but somehow she never gave me an answer. She says I ask a lot of questions, so maybe it got drowned in my other ones.

I am too unconcerned about applying to online jobs in any case. The career counselor seems to think I can be successful in getting a job this way, but most of the other people I've talked to are not optimistic at all. I personally think that applying cold to jobs posted online is such a shot in the dark as to be nearly a waste of time.

I have been trying to contact the person she suggested I talk with about whether there would be any opportunities in the military for me. I have called him thrice and left a voice mail but to no avail. I'll try calling him another two times today.

I have a meeting with the statistician today. We were supposed to meet last week but he didn't show up. I should have emailed him right after he didn't show up but I didn't.

The biology grad students went out to an animal sanctuary last weekend; it's called Red Wolf Preserve. We got a tour. The leader of the tour was a distinctive guy who made me rather uncomfortable especially at first. He flirted a lot with one of my peers (who is much older than the rest of us and thus was close to his age), and even though she encouraged him, this made me nervous like he might do something like that to me too. If she hadn't encouraged him some of it would definitely have been sexual harassment. He drew constant parallels between animal and human behavior which were purposefully startling - like suggesting an animal standing out in the open is like a woman in a string bikini walking around in a dangerous neighborhood at night. He said something to the effect that anything that isn't dangerous is not a mammal - oh, did my hackles go up! But I decided not to say anything in retort. I didn't think I was going to win a debate against him.

He pointed out that I was one of the shy ones, once because I was in the back of the group and once because I started backwards when he jabbed his finger three feet from my nose. I am shy, but I wonder if he knew that his behavior made me much, much more wary than normal. I kept a distance from him on purpose.

This trip has caused some of the paperwork I'm doing - we can get reimbursed out of our Graduate Student Association budget for the food we bought for the trip. Since I am the treasurer, this is my job.

Clan practice has been tough. A week ago it was very helpful but painful, because I got a bad case of the nerves and played even more poorly then usual because I knew everybody was watching me. I was so embarrassed. And then I had to take criticism gracefully and there was lots of it. You know how proud I am. But I recovered quickly from that and was ready to go again. This week, however, there is another problem. One of the other teams is small and has no current leadership, so they have come over to join my team's practice so that they have more people to play with. However, they are all fairly good players and much, much better than I am. Watching them play and commentate on each other is interesting, but I don't want to play with them because it would probably be boring and painful for them and embarrassing to me. I also don't feel comfortable trying to make my own comments on their gameplay because I doubt they'd take me seriously because of my low status. Also, they mostly just want to play games and comment on each other. They don't seem to want to seriously work on improving their skills as much.

All of these things basically result in me feeling very left out, which is painful for me. I've also volunteered to take leadership of my own team because we were in total chaos and nobody else was willing to take the leader position. I actually like doing this, except for the directing practice part which I am currently weak at (I like the paperwork and making and posting guidelines parts). Part of me wants to throw the other team out if they try to come and join us or at least force the practice to split into two groups based on skill. Also, since my team is an introductory one which feeds into the actual established teams, I would like to join an established team myself, so that I can be with other people of similar skill for at least some practices. I'm going to see if this is possible.

Lately I've been working on a job hunt, so that I can afford to survive after I finish my degree (which would preferably be as soon as possible). I got my resume approved by the career counselor and during our last meeting we discussed how to write cover letters. It is still hard to explain to her what I am interested in. She knows I like mammals, but she often seems to think that this means I would be interested in doing medical research, even though I do not want to be stuck doing lab work for long periods of time. I've also had trouble convincing her that I want to take a break from self-directed research. I'd like to do something which involves a little less stress at least for a while. In any case, our meetings are still productive. Last meeting, I got a contact from her who I can ask about whether there are military jobs for people with my background and interests. I will call this person tomorrow.

I spoke to Dr. Cameron about my plans, and he was very supportive. He immediately came up with 4 or so people he knew who are part of agencies which might hire me, and sent me their contact information. He even emailed one of them recommending me as good for fieldwork. This last person has a consulting company that does a lot of work with bats. Now I need to contact him. It sounds like he may be hiring technicians for the summer, so I have to decide if I want to do work this summer, and if so how much - I also need to have time to work on my thesis.

The term is actually almost over, with two more weeks of classes left. For me, however, that effectively means one more week of classes because the last week in A&P is a practical week. I only have to teach 4 more labs, and also do 3 hours of open lab next weekend. I am looking forward to being done with teaching.

Last week I had a thorn pulled out of my foot at the on-campus health clinic. I couldn't get it out myself, and it was making my foot hurt a lot when I spent time on my feet (otherwise I would have just ignored it until it disintegrated). So I had to get a tetanus shot and lie on an examination table for over 10 minutes while a nurse poked around in the bottom of my foot. Eventually she got a helper and only then did they pull it out. It was only about 2 mm long and very slim, and I would have felt really stupid if it hadn't taken two nurses to extract it. How was I going to do it with just one me, bent into an awkward position to even look at the bottom of my foot because I am not that flexible?

I joined an online gaming club (really, it's called a clan), eXe (http://starcraftdiv.enjin.com/). This clan is very young, only 2 weeks old, but consists of about 250 people most of whom split off another clan which began restricting certain modes of gameplay. I have been to two practices and and got lots of good advice, and also chatted with another member last night through instant messenger about strategy. For some reason, this just warms my heart that people will chat with me.

I've got to go now. I have an outing with the Biology Graduate Student Association members today.

OK, this scanned weird - maybe I'll go redo it later. In any case, it was drawn with a ballpoint pen on scrap paper - that's why there's some text visible in the background. I drew it during a long and irritating TA meeting and during A&P open lab while nobody was asking me questions.

I think I've been doing a little better lately. My appetite has been better, and I haven't been quite as tense. I'm still often uncomfortable, though, and on Monday I was so zoned out that I missed two appointments (Research Progress, which I am supposed to attend every week, and an appointment to help set up for the second A&P practical). I seem to be coming back to Earth though. Today I ran some scripts in R and got the results approved by the statistician. Now I can run all of my models. I might even be able to include the results in my Research Progress talk next Monday, which by the way I haven't even started on.

I have two things to grade in the next day: Extra Credit, which I am a week late with, and practicals from this week. Grading the Extra Credit is horrible, and makes me so tense I get a sharply painful knot in my back. However, it is almost done. The students have not done great on it unfortunately.

Giving this week's practicals went OK; the practicals before these were miserable because I was so antsy during them.

It has been raining a lot in Cincinnati lately. I think this is the first day in two weeks which has entirely consisted of mostly clear skies. Local water bodies have been very high and some flooding has occurred.

Today I had lunch with many of the other grad students. We had a Cinco de Mayo potluck with much salsa, chips, and guacamole. This went OK, although I was feeling less than relaxed. I've been rapid cycling for the past couple of days - feeling euphoric and then feeling sad. It's really annoying.

There are lots of interesting things for me to do soon. 1) Make presentation for Research Progress on Monday. 2) Write protocol for small mammal specimen collecting. 3) Finish grading - actually, that's not interesting, but it needs to be done. 4) Meet with career counselor on Monday. After my appointment was canceled due to her illness a week ago, I was only able to reschedule then. 5) Pick paper for discussion when Lien (postdoc studying parasites of small mammals) comes to visit for next week's lab meeting.

I continue to play lots of online multiplayer StarCraft. It's so much fun! My latest wacky idea (which I won't act on yet) is to join a team. This sounds very appealing to me for some reason. Many teams are apparently very competitive/professional affairs but one which I found out about is accepting members for casual gaming subgroups. Because of the internet people in geographically disparate places can "get together" and discuss things, have group practice/coaching sessions and hold tournaments. It sounds like fun. Can you tell I'm still lonely?

This entire gaming thing makes me feel embarrassed and I'm afraid of ridicule. But I'm enjoying it too much to quit.

I haven't posted in a long time. Why? I've been fairly unhappy, unmotivated to do anything except watch movies, work on drawings, and play StarCraft 2. I appear to be recovering, however; my mood has improved and my motivation (although still nearly nonexistent) has been better.

For a couple of weeks, I refused to work on my research project data analysis because I was so ticked off about Steve changing the method I should use. Eventually I began to work on this again, although I am finding it difficult to find the desire to put much work into it. Part of me feels like doing so may not actually result in any success, at least immediately. After I finish this post I will go and see if Open Stats Hours for graduate students are still in effect: they posted a notice about this last term, and maybe I could get some more direct guidance.

I just bought my airline tickets for the Mammal Meetings in Portland, before they got really expensive. Coming back is going to be a pain because my flight leaves at 7:35 AM but because of the time change and a 2 hour layover, I don't get into Cincinnati until 6:30 PM. I'm going to have to get up at the crack of dawn in Portland, but this is preferable to finding myself downtown, even at the bus interchange, in Cincinnati at 10:00 PM (one of my other options).

Today I gave my third lecture on R to fellow grad students. We did a tough to understand at first but extremely important function today - looping - and I hope everyone else can find it a bit easier to understand after I explained it. I had to teach it to myself and I'm sure I spent over an hour agonizing over what it meant! Stats group appears to have been a real success, and people have really found my lectures to be useful. Next, another student who knows more about R than I do will take up the baton and give a lecture about data exploration and advanced graphics methods.

I got a rejection notice from Davis today, although I'd given up on them so it wasn't a shock (Dr. Cameron apparently had hopes, though). It made me sad, so I went online and lurked on forums until I forgot about it.

Considering how bad I've been feeling, and with motivation from my Dad, I decided to consider finding a job for next year - or rather, trying to find a job. Being here next year does not sound appealing to me at all. I met with a career counselor a week ago, and she gave me some ideas but I think I failed to impress upon her that 1) I really want to have a job requiring some outdoor activity 2) I really want to work with animals 3) I don't care if I have to move across the country 4) conversely I have no desire to go abroad. I have a meeting with her a week from today, and I will try to be forceful about these things - although maybe I should broaden my scope. I would like to shoot for some kind of wildlife biologist job, as I doubt I could get one just working with mice (it would be nice though). For unimportant "feeling" reasons, I'd really like to work for the military, even as a civilian. I'd better look into everything, though. Not that I have that much hope.

One more thing - two weeks ago I found the guts to try playing online Starcraft games in which you face off against other players across the internet. I quickly realized that this is really fun. Feeling unhappy about my current inability to excel in research, I decided that I could devote energy to becoming good at Starcraft: this might have a more immediate, tangible payoff. For now, actually, I am quite bad, but I am aware of many ways I could improve and I know I am slowly getting better both because I can tell and because my ranking in the system has improved. This has had the positive effect of making me feel like maybe I can accomplish something, which may actually be causing me to be a shade more motivated about research.