I bleed for my thesis: Part I

No, really. Throughout the course of research for my dissertation, I have endured a wide variety of physical maladies, ranging from mild to fairly serious, all directly related to teaching, field work, greenhouse maintenance, etc. As I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel for my dissertation, I'm going to record all of these events for posterity. Here I will begin with the first, and perhaps most notable, experience.

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My second field season turned out to be far more exciting than I intended. I had done some plant collecting in southern Missouri and was meandering around central Arkansas looking for spiderworts. I found and collected from an absolutely amazing population in the middle of nowhere and got back in my truck to head to a nearby campground. I was driving down a narrow rural highway, dropped a wheel off the side of the road, and it blew out. I spun all the way around in the road and turned over upside down in the ditch on the other side (better than the alternative, which was a fairly steep, long hill).

You know the theory about drunk people not getting hurt in an accident because they don't have fast enough reactions to tense up and cause skeletal damage? My incredulity at having caused such a horrible accident likely kept me from getting hurt in much the same way. I remember the truck spinning, my shoulder slamming against the door, and my world turning upside down. It was only

when I hung there, wondering why the airbags didn't deploy, that I realized the full extent of my predicament. The week old camper shell on the truck apparently saved my life, as the cab was barely compressed. I unbuckled my seatbelt and fell to the glass-littered bottom/ceiling of the cab. I crawled out of the passenger side window and emerged into the sunshine, feeling like I had been reborn.

The pickup following a half mile behind me pulled over to help. The family didn't quite believe I was alone in the truck; apparently my collection and camping gear was far too much for one person. I grabbed my purse out of the pile of glass at the bottom of the ditch and found my cell phone. Although I was assured no signal would be available, I managed to reach emergency services and they dispatched a state police officer and ambulance.

After several more attempts to connect, despite crappy cell coverage, I finally talked with my boyfriend at the time. Nearly 6 pm, and he was hungover and at work. All I told him is that I was in a car accident, and that he should get in his car and start driving to central Arkansas. I was in the process of attempting to contact a few additional friends and family when I realized I was standing in a fire ant nest. I extricated myself from that travesty, and started picking the glass out of my arms and legs a safe distance from the domiciles of any biting insects.

The emergency contacts took their sweet time getting there. I apparently should have specified more about the severity of the incident. I refused medical treatment, and supervised the tow truck as it pulled my vehicle and possessions out of the ditch. I stared dispassionately at the mess, and contemplated pitching a tent in the adjoining field to stash my gear. I glanced down and spotted a flash of purple amid the small chunks of glass. My mother had given me a chunk of amethyst to keep in my car "for protection," and it sparkled poetically amidst the wreckage of my vehicle. I plucked it up off the ground and pocketed it, not sure if it had done its job, but instead hoping to reclaim everything possible.

A nice woman who volunteered for emergency services and lived a mile up the highway came by and offered to transfer me and my belongings to a hotel in nearby Glenwood, Arkansas. At that point, I had collected nearly 50 live plants, each of which were ensconced in their own large ziplock bag and placed carefully in huge tupperware boxes. My new friend stared at the jumble of plants in the ditch and said, "You're gonna have to go back and pick all your pretty flowers again." Yes, indeed. We loaded up all non-plant materials in her car and placed the plant tubs in the back of the sadly crumbled truck.

We stopped off at my friend's house to feed her dog, a dachshund aptly named Pecker. She then dropped me at a hotel in town, where I spent the next few hours shaking all of my belongings free from glass and grass. I touched base with my mother, father, and a few of my best friends while I periodically directed my boyfriend to the speck of a town I inhabited. He made the eight hour drive in record time, ending up at the hotel in the wee hours of the morning.

We slept a few hours, stopped by the tow yard to claim the rest of my belongings, and made the drive back. The boyfriend humored me by stopping to collect some plants near Joplin, Missouri. I tallied the final damage when I got back home. Truck was totaled. My shoulder was bruised, and my pride even more so. I had to cancel a professional presentation about my research to a university along my collecting path, and the rest of my collection trip was delayed. My arms and knees had numerous small cuts, and my legs had fire ant bites. But none of my equipment, including my laptop, was damaged, and all of my plant collections were salvageable.

My mom helped me locate another pickup within a few days, and my insurance payout covered most of it. The camper shell salesman didn't even bat an eyelash when I was back only a few weeks later with a different truck and a request for another shell. As soon as I was able, I drove straight to Texas to finish collecting plants. My research persevered, and I emerged wiser. The repercussions were relatively mild, all things considered, but there were some interesting side effects in my personal life....but then again, that's a whole other story. Suffice it to say that this was the first time I literally bled for my research.

All about R

I'm an evolutionary biologist. Right now I happen to work on genomes, and I really like the way the world looks from this corner of biology. These days, though, evolutionary genomics involves lots and lots of bioinformatics and computation, so I'm gradually honing my skills in Terminal, on servers, etc (I'm a Mac girl).

My latest obsession is R, which happens to have a ton of awesome packages for evolutionary analysis. I was lucky enough to be featured on my friends' blog, Teaching My Wife R. I'm Princess Trad! I'm almost useful! I'm learning AND teaching, hooray! If you're even more of a glutton for punishment, you can also check out some of the cutting edge development in evolutionary analysis in R.

My new career plan.

Inspired by recent events in my personal life, I've decided that a backup plan (in case this PhD thing doesn't work out) will be to design greeting cards. Here are some ideas for invitations to a divorce party:

1. We don't love each other anymore, but we still love you! Come celebrate our divorce!
2. Our marriage is trashed, so come get trashed with us!
3. Come celebrate our divorce by drinking some liquor that was aged longer than our marriage lasted!

Genius, right?

I *heart* gmail

I've talked before about my love for Google, and they introduced another awesome reason why today. I composed an email to some fellow TAs explaining an attached powerpoint file for class tomorrow. I hit send, and gmail popped up a window:

You wrote "I've attached" in your message, but there are no files attached. Send anyway?

Forgetting to attach files is one of the major annoyances in my life. I am so glad gmail is looking out for me.

Compete or be nice?

I'm participating in a program this year sponsored by the MU Graduate School called Graduate Colleague Circles. I'm serving as a mentor/facilitator of monthly meetings with three other senior grad student mentors and 15 first year graduate students from science departments on campus. The goal of the program is to give new students a little extra help to facilitate retention after the first year of a doctoral program in particular departments.

I really like the idea of the program. I really like to talk about science, life, teaching, learning, etc with other peers, particularly those from other departments. I'm not going to discuss the relative success or implementation of this particular program right now, but it is the premise of the set-up and a meeting we had earlier tonight that sparked my interest in the issue of competition among scientists.

First, I must admit to personal interest in this issue, as I've recently had some eye-opening experiences with a few of my peers regarding their interpretation of my behavior and comments in class and the lab. Suffice it to say that I have a strong personality that I apparently do not sufficiently temper enough to put some of my colleagues at ease while working with them in a professional setting. However, I'm starting to think about getting a job after I graduate (May 2011? So soon?!?), and that means dispassionately evaluating where I am in my education and career development, where I would like to end up, and who I am as a scientist. Inevitably, that means comparing myself to my peers to see how I will stand out in a stack of applications.

How do I compare? Well, that's for me and my insecurities to battle out later. What I can say, though, is that my exposure to the mean side of competitiveness and criticism has been miniscule compared to what other students may experience. Case in point: a senior grad student from a biomedical-type department detailed his recent experience giving a seminar to his department. He said he was grilled fairly hard-core for 10-15 minutes afterwards in the question-and-answer session by a half dozen professors, all of whom expressed seeming displeasure or intense criticism of his research. Afterwards, though, they all came up to him, smiled, and said he did a good job.

Yes, I used italics, because this observation is so important to me. As scientists we are taught to be critical, and sometimes that criticism is not happily accepted. That does not mean, however, that the criticism is provided with malice, and sometimes we need a critical view. Another student revealed tonight a philosophy that I had not encountered: if labmates are too nice to each other, they must not be in a competitive or successful lab, because there is not enough criticism. This was revolutionary to me, that there were people who thought like this! While I believe one should be nice while providing their viewpoint, I sort of believe that constructive criticism should always hurt a little bit.

Here's what I really think. I can be pretty durn snarky at times, and while I don't intend to be rude to other folks, I think sometimes my head gets pretty far up science's ass and it's difficult to moderate the more harsh aspects of my personality. In other words, if I'm really thinking about a scientific question, enough of my brain power is committed to the problem at hand to make playing nice even more difficult. To me, that's good. I like that I'm committing that much brain power to an issue. It's efficient, and it doesn't mean I'm trying to sound smarter than you. I promise.

But it's only efficient if the receiver of said criticism can handle it, and can separate emotion from science. Easier said than done, and I speak from experience: that one's taken me years, and I still fall off the bandwagon sometimes.

Science, learning, and playing

I've got a pretty big crush on a blog new to my reading list, ProfHacker. I read other blogs about methods and programs to help with teaching, learning, academia, and science, but I like ProfHacker because it is written by folks from humanities and other areas not engrained in science learning. What is the difference? These academics are interested primarily in teaching students to read, interpret, and analyze literature and other texts, rather than attempting to instill large amounts of "important" scientific content into young minds.

One of the most intriguing (to me) items mentioned on ProfHacker lately include the value of multiple choice, website-administered quizzes required for each lesson's reading. The rationale? Students feel the push to read and think about material prior to discussing it in class, and the linked article also mentions framing appropriate directions for student inquiry with properly worded questions.

Even more interesting to me, and the impetus behind this entry, is the idea of incorporating games into academic lessons. To me, the idea of getting students to play is a great way of parameterizing an informal learning environment. Especially when teaching undergraduates grooming themselves for professional/medical programs after graduation, students are often afraid to take intellectual risks and instead prefer to have content handed to them to be memorized. Games provide a low-risk (i.e., no grading involved?) environment in which to explore the content at hand. That's not to say games can't be graded, but just the idea of calling it a game seems to make it more appealing to students.

These issues are especially interesting to me, as the class I'm TAing this semester (plant systematics lab) is traditionally heavy on memorization and light on creative thinking. There are some great ideas previously developed by other TAs of the course, but I'm really hoping to re-evaluate the format as the semester progresses so we can implement other approaches next year.

Bill's sweater

There is a rumor amongst knitters that a relationship with a boy is doomed to fail if the knitter makes him a sweater.

Bill and I have been going through an especially stressful time lately, and when I'm stressed and don't know what else to do with myself, I knit. I figured, we're already married, and a sweater can't hurt, right?

Emboldened by some offhanded comments by Bill (i.e., "This yarn would make a nice men's sweater"), I set to work. This is a vintage pattern for a men's Irish fisherman's sweater. It was a pretty fun knit, made from Lion Brand's Fisherman's Wool, my current fav affordable, naturally colored wool. It turned out pretty nice, and it fits him well. Lots of texture, and a cute little cable running up each side of the button band. My first saddle shoulder construction, as well as the first pieced sweater I've done in a long time (knit the button band separately? really? well, OK...).

Apart from the usual knitting thoughts, I learned several things from this sweater. Bill is both apathetic and quite opinionated about various issues related to garment design. He really preferred a three button cardigan, but he didn't care what it looked like. He was also pretty worthless when it came to picking out buttons.

But now he has a nice wool sweater. The yarn is pretty inexpensive, and rather than being a work of art, I see this sweater as a production piece. At the risk of sounding too ego-centric, I think I knit this sweater more for me than for him. I don't mean that I'll wear it more than him (although I might steal it occasionally, especially if it smells like him). I mean that I knit when words seem to fail me, and when I don't know any other way to convey my concern, love, and support. I knit when I hear about babies being born, I knit for birthdays, I knit for friends who are ill. I hate greeting cards, and sometimes my words don't sound right or are misinterpreted. But a sweater? Pair of socks? Any other knit? You can bet that I thought about good wishes for that person with every stitch.

I've already picked out Bill's next sweater. I'll use LB Fisherman's Wool again, but the darker, chocolate brown color. The sweater will be the awesome Cobblestone Pullover from Interweave Knits a few years back. I figure, we made it through one sweater, so the risk is worth it.