epic

This was a momentous week. First day of kindergarten, first week of graduate school.

This also happened to be the most traumatic week of my life. 

Let's start with the good.

Nana and pops couldn't stay away on the first day of school. They came to visit us at the bus stop. The bus was 20 minutes late, but, whatever, we're rolling with it.  

L won't take a serious picture with me. 

The good kind of ends there. L had a great first day of school, except at 5 o'clock, as I'm leaving school to go pick her up at afterschool, I get a call from the bus driver, who has reached the last stop on her route, and still has Lena left on the bus.

...

The short of it, Lena is ok, she was always safe (however unaccounted for for two hours), but I put on my mama-bear skin and went to go fuck some shit up at the school. Not really. I was super pissed (obviously), but I decided instead of playing the "How the FUCK did you lose my kid" card, I played the "I'm a single parent, I'm just trying to get by, and oh by the way I am really good at crying" card. That card worked awesomely I am happy to report, and I got to meet the principal of L's school. 

The second day of kindergarten was an operation.

Pops met us at the bus stop. I texted Nana when she got on the bus, and while I headed off to school, Nana headed over to the school to make sure Lena got to her class ok, and to remind the teachers that she goes to afterschool. The texts we went each other all day were hilarious. "Package is on the bus" "package was delivered" we would be an awesome secret service team. When I picked her up today I sent the message "BABY IS IN THE NEST. REPEAT: BABY IS IN THE NEST."

She's not really a baby anymore though, is she. 

OH, so the next thing that happened:

Lena had the most epic of all nosebleeds. It lasted twenty minutes and thank goodness I had a friend to capture this occasion. "Remember when..." Mikey was a rockstar, Lena was a rockstar, but twenty goddamn minutes?? This seemed way too long for a nosebleed. Also apparently you are supposed to pinch the nose that entire time. And keep your head forward. And if you do get any blood in your mouth, spit, don't swallow. (heh.)

This is not to even mention my first week, which was so amazing, humbling and exciting. I love my new lab, I love my classes, I love the opportunities that I'm going to have here. I'm thinking a ton about everything. I want to write a post about computer science and Anna Karenina. How I programmed a turtle to draw a spiral. How I'm reading so many papers and things are just starting to click into place. It is very, very cool. 

It's also really hard. In ways that I didn't actually expect. It's hard because I think, on some level, I do want it all. 

Over the summer, I had to 'sneak out' at 5 every day to get Lena. I dreaded this every single day. I was always the first to leave, and even if I had been there before 9 in the morning, I just felt absolutely horrible about it. Like I wasn't doing enough. And I was embarrassed, so I would sneak around my PI's door like a chump. 

Now, I actually feel the same way. I'm dreading leaving at 5. Because I am having a really, really good time and I don't want to leave. I didn't expect to feel like this. It's really really awesome. But, it's all awesome, really. 

work hard, play hard

Orientation for the entire duke grad school was yesterday, and I'm trying so hard to be positive and I swear but I still somehow feel that I conned my way into duke, it still doesn't feel quite right, and I really miss not knowing all of the shortcuts through buildings and secret parking spots. Oh and if I see a Plumlee brother I'm tripping him.

Orientation was hard because it was the same thing about the honor code and collaboration for the hundredth time, and how duke is so different from other universities, because it's 'so prestigious' but 'not as cutthroat as harvard!' barf. 

The other thing they kept saying over and over and over again was, "work hard, play hard". Like, have fun but you can't get less than a B otherwise you're on academic probation.

"Work hard, play hard."

I've been thinking about this a lot. Last night I said out loud, "There really isn't really a 'play hard' for me, is there?" Thinking, for me, it's work hard, work hard.

I have homework already, complementation and tetrad analysis which makes me just want to die. (Seriously. I have to reteach myself, redraw everything out, re-remember that there's the replication before reduction in meiosis, refigure out who the parentals are in the parental/nonparental ditypes...) So, I did dinner with my parents last night, so while Lena was in the bath, I stayed downstairs at the kitchen table banging my head against double heterozygous crosses, hand-writing out complementation groups from those little charts with all the plus minuses. But then I realized, I'm happy doing this. Because, this is my job.

I get to learn genetics! I get to learn tetrad analysis from some of the smartest people in the world. I get to study whatever I want to study. Learn what I want to learn, be a student, and that's. my. job.

So really it's, play hard, work hard.

That was the thought as I went to bed last night.

Lena takes a really long time to poop in the mornings. (Sorry I try to not say super embarrassing stuff about L on the internet, but this is relevant.) And while she poops, she sings. This morning she was doing the Queen of the Night aria from "The Magic Flute".

(I mean, Lena might as well be singing in German too, but you get the gist.)

I had to stop her. I mean, this kid is completely tone deaf. And I love her to death but I kind of find this song annoying when it's in tune. So I found the next best thing, and I have no idea why I never thought of it earlier. Disney songs. On Pandora. Oh, yeah.

L and I sang our way through the morning.

It also just occurred to me why I have to reteach myself tetrad analysis. My brain is saving a lot of space for such high quality songs as, "Part of that world" (The Little Mermaid) and "I'll make a man out of you" (Mulan).

I drove back home, windows down, still singing, to work more on my homework, to start organizing a lit review and finding some more readings, and then it hit me:

Play hard, play hard. 

Bring it on, world. Let's play. 

the calm before the storm

I'm having this weirdly intense dilemma. I've been rolling around town with a flash-pack--the bare necessities strapped to my back. Notebook, pen, water bottle, wallet, keys. Light jacket for the unpredictable NC summer weather. A paper I'm reading for a rotation.

The problem is that I've been using one notebook for everything. Random thoughts, things Lena says. Grocery store lists and blog post ideas. Science ideas, fellowship proposal ideas. Short stories and imagined monologues. Poems and notes on papers I'm reading. You get the idea.

The 'problem' happens when I open up a page for notes on the dopamine pathway with a professor I'm working with, and on the page before it is a short story about a one night stand that I've been working on.

I'm pretty sure this means it's about time I have two separate notebooks.

Y'all, grad school starts next week or so, and I've found my home. I'm sitting at Open Eye Cafe deriving the Michaelis-Menten equation, and I forgot that I LOVE MATH and writing things out. And getting stuck and getting myself unstuck. I'm reading a paper and I'm literally rewriting every equation in the paper until I get it. I'm not moving forward until I completely understand each figure, and how they derive their model.

I can't tell you how awesome this feels to be learning something. I mean I 'learned' a ton when I was a tech. And I know that grad school, it is work, and things like that, but right now I am so excited to be learning something and to be going back to school. What is demanded most from me right now is learning. And I love that. I love that!

Well, so also it's kind of a lie because I'm actually sitting at Open Eye right now and writing a blog post. but I also ran out of loose-leaf paper in order to derive all of my equations, and I was just thinking about how I might have to move to the notebook, but it seems really weird to be thinking about kinetics right after I've written something like this,



There is nothing new under the sun.

You are not the first to hide money in your bra. 

It has rained when someone else has been sad, too.
The weather did not choose you, as the first, to reflect a mood.

There has been a beautiful sunrise for someone else, before you.

We were not the first to be harmed, humiliated and confused.
(If only we were the first to harm, to hurt, to break a heart)

Hearts have been broken before this, yes.

You, poet are not the first to write a poem.
Not the first to pluck words like flowers,
hold them gently in your hands
then give them away.

You are not the first to hope that your words reach someone other than yourself.

You are not the first to discover water,
to cross a desert,
to climb a mountain. 

We are not the first to have loved, and lost, and loved again.

broader impacts

I am getting super excited about grad school right now, and I'm starting to think about the fellowship proposals that I want to apply for, etc etc .

I just went back through my folders, and found the reviews I got back from my last submission for the NSF GFRP, and I reread my favorite line:

Under my "Overall Assessment of Broader Impacts", the last sentence from my first reviewer was this:

"She will bring unique perspective on the challenges faced by women scientists from single mother with young child. The personal statement is vague on her involvement in broader community activities."

When I first got this back 6 months or so ago, I thought, passively, "broader community activities? I'm a single parent, when am I supposed to participate in broader community activities?" And then later, slightly indignantly, "You just acknowledge that I am a single mother with a young child...and you want me more involved in community activities how?"

Now I am going to kill this question with resubmission. I mean, yeah, I'll work on the broader impacts section, but I'm going to make sure in my personal statement that I say, very clearly, in extra bold letters, You want to know my broader community activities? I'm raising a kid, by myself, that is about to watch her mother kick ass in graduate school. That is possibly the broadest community activity I could possibly be engaging in. 

I did go back and reread my personal statement. I mention Lena (or the idea of her) so briefly in the last paragraph. (because I was too proud? Because I thought I had to do this without her?) I'm putting her front and center from now on. Sometimes I forget how important raising her is. And even how hard it's been. Sometimes it's the nicest thing in the world to hear someone say, I don't know how you do it. Because I don't know either. But it's so nice to be acknowledged. And for the people that don't get it? *cough*reviewer one*cough* I'm going to make them see that raising a smart, kind, inquisitive kid is probably one of the most important things in the world. Certainly the most important thing I'll ever do.

Impacting the community. *snort* I'll show them impacting the community. 

little posts

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you may ask yourself, how did i get here

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In case there was any confusion, the Talking Heads were talking specifically about me, 25, pushing Lena in one of those bullshit huge shopping carts disguised as a race car in the grocery store. And me again, being so utterly inspired and excited about science, and life, and words. And me again, every day I wake up.

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L comes out with these gems of phrase. Some of which I know she's repeating from books, which makes my heart swell more than anything, and some where I have no idea the origin. In the car the other day she says, Mom, trees are flowers for giants.

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7 or so years ago I had this boyfriend that wanted to replace my car stereo. I didn't let him for a variety of reasons, one of which he really liked exerting control over my life and I could tell that was what he was doing with my car, but now, 7 years later, I have the shittiest car stereo ever. Any volume required to listen to music with the windows down yields this crazy static-y crackling noise which drives me nuts. And also inexplicably this tapping sound? As if there is some part of the car that is tapping along to the beat. And I secretly sometimes think, you know, I ended up with a kid anyways, couldn't I have at least got a new car stereo out of it too?

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The summer is almost over, and I can't think about kindergarten, so don't ask me about it.

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My first rotation is almost over, and between you and me, it was tough. A few weeks ago I was falling asleep at about 9, and sleeping hard until almost 7 the next morning. I thought I had mono or something. But now that the end is in sight, and I am so. freakin. excited. about my next prospects for rotations. I've been not exhausted when L falls asleep, which means I can like, read a book, read a paper, write something down, relax. And then boom, I am waking up at 6 AM with ideas and questions, being generally excited about life.

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Which is funny, because Aspen wrote recently on her blog about listening to your body, and letting it rest, and giving it space, and like, yeah.

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Got a few more secrets, a few more stories in my pocket. Until next time...