Thursday, June 24, 2010

Keeping the Crazy in Check

Well, for the most part at least. (The wine is probably helping me a lot right now.) Unfortunately, that has meant cutting out anything that isn’t necessary for making it through the day and that includes commenting and blogging. I’m starting to emerge from a period of just surviving, though, so I should be able to comment more.

Not sure about the blogging thing, though, because (1) I’m not feeling too interesting and (2) I’ve started to get hits from my institution. I’m not exactly pseudonymous (obviously), but I haven’t talked to my Advisor about this blog and I’m paranoid. I can’t imagine anything horrible happening because of this blog. I haven’t said anything bad about my Advisor or program or any of the usual things that get bloggers in trouble. So, I’m still up in the air about the blog.

With that out of the way, I’ve been busy. I had my committee meeting and I got permission to write. So, I jumped that hoop. It was fairly anti-climatic. I was expecting to be grilled and really work at proving my done-ness. However, it wasn’t like that. I presented most of what I’ve done and told my committee what I was planning to do. At the end of the meeting, they just asked me if that was all and where was the form to sign. And that was that.

And another big piece of news was that my interview was pushed back. Not on my side, but on the potential PI’s side. So, now Dr. Man and I are going there at the end of July. This means that I’ll have the majority of my experiments done and I’ll be more prepared. I suppose that expectation will be higher, too, but not much I can do about that. Does anyone have any advice about interviewing?

Oh! And I got another pseudo-offer for a postdoc. (Can I just say that this is totally not how I saw this postdoc hunt going? I really thought that I wasn’t going to find anything at all and would have to beg someone to allow me to work for them.) It’s contingent upon funding, but I think the funding has a good chance of coming through. Does anyone have any advice on deciding on postdocs?

And that’s all that’s going on with my life. And it just occurred to me, is it sad that everything in my life is related to the lab?

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for checking in. I've been wondering how you're doing.

    Congrats on permission to write and the potential postdocs. It sounds like things are going pretty well!

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  2. as of the "all your life sorrounding the lab" - sounds like it was for me in the end of my PhD... it's rough, sorry. I hope you can see it as the end stretch of a long run and not the entire life is that run... just for now.

    And I hope all goes well. Congrats on the writing and if you can, I hope you can get some day off before the post doc interview and just sit down and relax. You're good and this is just the ending of a long phdrun.

    I agree with EGF, sounds like things are going well!

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  3. 1) Woohoo you're writing up and no its not sad that your life revolves around the lab, it is the joys of trying to finish, get that paper out ec..

    2) totally get the whole outed thing. Its hard to blog when people around you are reading your stuff

    3) yay on the potential post-docs. you'll rock that presentation

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  4. Maybe blog content will change, maybe we'll see you elsewhere on the internets. But overall, the writing & postdoc things sound like good news!

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  5. Great news about the post-doc pseudo-offers -- as for the whole anonymity thing, I hear you. I wish that line were easier to see, write around, establish ... after a while, saying something is "unbloggable" gets dissatisfying. But where to go with all the things you'd previously enjoyed/gotten relief blogging about?

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  6. Congrats on the progress- the interview, the writing, all that good stuff! It's a bummer about the over busy-ness and craziness and blog issues-- I'm in the same boat and it's frustrating (well, my liquid of choice is beer... but still!). Good luck in those last few hoops!

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