For the days when I feel ugly...

I'm guessing you've all seen this Dove Real Beauty Sketches thing? If not, it's worth a watch.
It's worth a watch, and it's worth really thinking about the message:

You are more beautiful than you think. 

I think what Dove did is really cool, eye-opening, and interesting. And I'm guessing for most you, the message is true (It certainly is for me): You are more beautiful than you think.

But here's the thing: It DOESN'T MATTER. Or, at least, it shouldn't matter.

Your value is not determined by what you look like. 

I'm going to repeat that, because it's important, and it's easy (for me) to forget.

Your value is NOT determined by what you look like. 

For every stick-thin girl who's been intentionally insulted by the phrase "real women have curves". For every pre-pubescent girl who smiled patiently every year while back-to-school shopping while grandma sighed and said "maybe this will be the year you develop a figure"...and then years later, still smiled patiently when grandma said "it's too bad you never developed a figure".

For every little girl who was ever told not to raise your hand so much in class because "the boys won't want to date you if they think you're smarter than them".

For every young woman who has gone on extreme diets, severely cut calories, purged, and obsessively worked out.

For every one of us who goes home and gets more questions about our haircut and if we've lost weight and than questions about our school/work.

For all of you who have felt and/or been called fat, ugly, or any other insulting name.

I need to say this again, for all of us:

Your value IS NOT determined by what you look like. 

It's hard, but stop listening to those messages. Our society (and often, our family) drills this message into our heads from a young age: that what matters is being "pretty", being "beautiful", being "thin" but having a "womanly figure", finding a man and getting married and looking good forever.

But THAT ISN'T WHAT MATTERS.

Stop. Think about it. Is this really what matters in life? Looking "good"? NO!

Be kind. Stand up for what you believe in. Work hard at what you do.

There are so many things that are more important than what we look like. What we look like has nothing to do with our intelligence, our value, our ability to do our jobs (with a few exceptions).

This is something I've been struggling with lately.

I have a lot more to say about this, but this is already getting to be quite long, so I'm just going to say this one more time and be done:

Your value IS NOT determined by what you look like. 

Maturity

It seems that, generally speaking, in our condo complex maturity is almost inversely correlated with age. Or, at the very least, that past a certain age, maturity just drops back down to middle school levels ( Crazy Neighbor and his wife seem to be accelerated on the immaturity scale).

We recently had our annual HOA meeting, and it was all sorts of crazy. There was the normal bickering we've had every year- people whining about a tree that got cut down, a dumpster that is ugly to look at, the Board of Directors spends too much money on repairing the parking lot, and so on.

But then, things got more crazy... two grown adults resigned their positions (one an actual job, one a member of the Board) and stormed out in the middle of the meeting after shouting about their grievances. Because, you know, that's how one should always resign: publicly and after shouting at people for a bit. (Actually, I know a lot of people have sort of a fantasy about doing something like that, but very few people would actually act on it)

Then, a newly elected member of our Board ranted and raved about this new bar that has moved in just on the other side of our fence, trying to get everyone to sign a petition and fight the renewal of their liquor license - because the bar is patronized by "the wrong kind of people". According to the (younger) woman I was sitting next to, when the bar first moved in they put speakers outside, and it was very loud. The police were called, the bar got a noise violation, the bar moved the speakers inside, and no one else has a problem with it anymore. Except this one older lady, who went so far as to hide in the bushes to tape the people coming in and out of the bar one night, to show us how loud, disruptive, and "wrong for our community" they are. The people coming in and out were acting as you might expect - talking loudly (though it's hard to judge their actual volume on tape), some were swearing, in one case a few were yelling at each other.

But here's the thing: our city has no zoning laws. There's no legal recourse for "this place of business doesn't belong in this neighborhood". And also: NO ONE else has a problem anymore. People our out in our own parking lot talking loudly and yelling from time to time (*cough* Crazy Neighbor *cough*)... so why would we be so concerned about people outside of our control? And yet, we held up the meeting for over half an hour discussing this (non)issue.

It's nonsense that instead of having serious, calm discussions about things that might actually help our community, the older owners have shouting matches about trees and dumpsters and businesses outside of our control.

Oh, and Crazy Neighbor has been acting up again, but that's another story for another post...

2012 books

I haven't moved the books I read in 2012 off of my books page yet, so I'm finally getting around to it. Here are the books I read last year, with a few small comments.

In 2011 I read 7 books, so 13 is quite an improvement! (Well, 14 if you count the dog book, but that isn't really the same).

Anyway, on to the books:

January

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë - on my iPhone - very much enjoyed. 

February

• Retired Racing Greyhounds for Dummies by Lee Livingood- making sure we know what we need to know before we get our dog :)  We still refer to this book when we have a question about Pod! Highly recommended for anyone thinking about adopting a greyhound! 

March/April

• Emma by Jane Austen - on my iPhone - eh, I didn't really get into the story until the end of the book, but I didn't hate it, either. 

January-May

• Microbe Hunters by Paul De Kruif - borrowed from the lab "library", which mostly consists of textbooks, but for some reason also contains this book. I found this book fascinating! It took me a long time to read, because I didn't want to carry it around and damage it, and it's conveniently broken up into little sections (about each scientist, plus there are chapters within each section), so I'd often read a little and then not read again for a few weeks when I was busy. I'm planning to write a blog post (here) about some of my thoughts on it, or one of my thoughts, at least! 

May

• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum - on my iPhone. I need something shorter, and a change of pace! The Wizard of Oz is my favorite movie of all time, so I was a little hesitant to read this book, but it was really fun. It was interesting what was changed for the movie, and I'm glad I actually read it. 

June-August

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - on my iPhone. I read the beginning of the book when I was in middle school (I think?) on the plane on our way to a family vacation, but then didn't read while we were actually on vacation, and didn't feel well on the way back, and decided just to return it to the library when we got back...I don't think I would have appreciated it as much as a kid as I did now as an adult. 

August

• The Time Machine by H.G. Wells - on my iPhone - something a little shorter, and a change of pace- I thought this book was fun, and I read it quickly because I'd actually take extra time in the evenings to read another chapter. The idea of what humans will eventually evolve to was interesting to think about, and I was happy with the way it ended. 

September

• Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montomgery -on my iPhone, as a light read between reading A Game of Thrones at home. It's fun to re-read these books! 

September-October

• A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin - Ryan bought the series in paperback, and I've finally decided to start reading this. Why did I not read these books sooner? I know I really have myself to blame, but I sort of wish someone had told me to read more sci-fi/fantasy stuff when I was a kid. 

• A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin - clearly I've been reading more lately! 

• Anne's House of Dreams by Lucy Maud Montgomery 

November

• A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin 

• Rainbow Valley by Lucy Maud Montgomery - I never read this far in the series when I was a kid, just the books centered around Anne. I didn't feel as much of a connection to the "new" characters now, but maybe if I had read all of the books as a kid I would have. Still a nice, lighter read to keep up between the Song of Ice and Fire books, which are amazing but a little bit stressful...

December

• A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin - Now I have to actually wait until the next book comes out :( It's so much more fun to just move right on to the next one :-P 

• Rilla of Ingleside by Lucy Maud Montgomery - Had to finish reading only at home instead of on the bus, because I kept choking up! I'm such a baby!

I'm hoping to read even more in 2013, but I also need to devote a little more time to reading for work, I think, so I need to work on being more efficient with my time. As always, I'm open to suggestions of books! I have a massive list that I'd like to get to, but many are at the library and not always available, so I'm always re-ordering the list! 

Roller Coaster

Life has felt like a roller coaster lately. (At least it's not a ferris wheel!)

A lot has happened at work since the meeting I wrote about here, but I haven't figured out how to write about it without going into too much detail. I'm not sure whether it matters, I just don't want to write too many details that "out" me if someone I know finds this. I mean, I'm pretty sure the pets would give my identity away to anyone who knows me, but that also makes it difficult to share too much about the situation. Things are progressing, though, and I think it's all going to work out. I'm certainly not quitting or anything like that, but questions still remain for post-grad school future.

Remember when I talked about things not to do on grad school interviews? Well, our program just finished up interviews, and for the most part, I thought all the students presented themselves well (during the part when they interact with us current students, anyway). One observation both my friend and I made was that a lot of the students didn't have other interviews at top programs, which was unusual. Usually it seems like a good proportion of the students are interviewing at the same programs, but this time a lot were interviewing at programs sort of one tier below ours. It will be interesting to see what comes of this class.

Anyway, back to that post- there was a student that crossed a few lines, apparently pretty badly. I wasn't actually there (see below), but Ryan observed one of the incidents, I've heard about that incident and the other incident from a few friends with different perspectives. Again, it's hard to talk about this without sharing too many details, but it's led to some interesting discussions amongst our group of friends about what should and should not be considered when reporting about the interviewees. How do we find a balance between being "thought police" and looking out for the best interests of our diverse group of classmates? (In this particular case, we had all the students who observed the incidents report their "side" of the story to our program and let them handle it how they wish).

The reason I missed most of one of the interview weekends was because my best friend's mom passed away that week, so I flew up to Michigan for the funeral. I was so glad I could be there, but of course it was also a difficult time. I also didn't sleep a lot while I was there, and I did a lot of driving and being outside in the cold, which made me kind of achy and extra tired. My flight back got cancelled, so I ended up having an extra half-day with my family, so that was nice... except I also had to reschedule a bunch of stuff for lab, so that sucked. I did get to see most of my mom's extended family, and I wouldn't have wanted to miss the funeral, so overall I was really glad I could go.

On a lighter note, a friend, Ryan, and I went to see Muse when they were here. AMAZING show (as always). Seriously, I would highly recommend seeing them live if you like Muse and have the opportunity. Going in the middle of the week didn't do anything to help my (already screwed up thanks to traveling and DST) sleep schedule, but it was TOTALLY worth it.

Ferris Wheels

I HATE ferris wheels.

We drove past one a few days ago that was set up for the rodeo, and I shuddered (this is how deep the hatred runs) and said "I hate ferris wheels".

"I know" said Ryan, "[cousin] rocked the seat when you were kids, and it scared you".

I reflected for a few minutes, then realized something interesting.

I was scared when my (late) cousin rocked the seat on the rickety old ferris wheel at the festival...but not terrified. We were invincible, you see, my cousin and I. We used to make believe we were in all sorts of crazy situations and had to save the day. Like in A Christmas Story, when Ralphie imagines fighting off those would-be burglars? Yeah, that was us.

It's not fear that I remember best when I think back to that day. Not fear of falling, anyway.

We got yelled at by the ferris wheel operator (duh) and our parents. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and afraid that we'd never be allowed to come back.

To this day, I'm not afraid of heights, and I don't have an irrational fear of falling. I've always been a rule-follower though, and hate getting in trouble. My cousin was one of the few people who could convince me to break rules (or in the case of the ferris wheel, rope me into his rule breaking unwillingly), and although one could definitely argue that rocking a ferris wheel is dangerous, he never let me break "big" rules, or get in any real trouble.

Happy belated birthday, cousin. I would have liked to see you this week...

Reading the Right Things

It's sort of funny - I started this blog because grad school was stressing me out and I felt like I needed an outlet for that. Somehow, though, rather than find other grad student or postdoc blogs to read online, I migrated more into the personal finance community.

Don't get me wrong! I love you guys, all of you who I read about and tweet with, and who leave awesome comments here, whether you are PF or not so much. Seriously, you are all awesome friends. Plus, we would never have started saving for retirement yet (or paying so much attention to our finances) if I didn't read all these PF blogs.

But...with few exceptions, I am not reading other science or academic type people. I think I've tried, on and off, but many of the blogs I find are professors, which I can't really relate to very well, or disappear shortly after I begin reading. So I sort of gave up.

In light of my recent "soul searching", though, I started looking around for more science blogs. Along the way, I came across biochem belle's post about shooting down her ideas before sharing them. Hooray for not feeling like the only person in the world who doesn't spit out ideas instantly!

I have a lot more thoughts on my current situation, many of which I would like to share but haven't gotten written out nicely enough yet... hopefully soon. I need to meet with my program director soon, and I'd like to have my thoughts all nice and organized before that happens.

In the meantime, I really need to finish getting ready for my committee meeting on Tuesday, because even though it will be a short one (yay for new deadlines forcing me to have 3 meetings in 9 months!), I kind of need to get things back on track.

Soul (or Mind?) Searching

I had an... intense... conversation with my boss on Thursday. Basically, she expressed concern that for this point in my "career" as a grad student, I do not share ideas or thoughts or questions enough. There was much more to the conversation, I got very emotional and I left with my mind going a million miles per hour, not about science, but about myself (and subsequently hid from my rotation student for the next half hour so he wouldn't think something was wrong).

Thursday night I cried, pouted, whined, and generally didn't do anything useful or productive. I didn't really eat a good meal, and I didn't really get much sleep, so on Friday I didn't feel very well, and kind of went through the day on autopilot. By Friday night I had sorted out the two possibilities that I think could explain the situation:

1) I am not sharing my ideas because I am very introverted

or

2) I don't have good enough ideas because I'm not smart enough or not thinking enough.

I've been pondering these things last night and this afternoon (volunteered this morning, thankfully my co-volunteer took the lead because I was exhausted!). I'm supposed to go have a meeting with one of my program directors over the next few weeks, and then a follow-up meeting with my boss, so I'm really trying to figure out what I think.

The confident, I just gave a great talk at retreat, at a conference, and was the first choice to represent my department in recruiting part of me thinks possibility 1 is the issue. I AM very introverted. I am exhausted by social gatherings, I hate small talk, and most importantly (for this issue) I THINK EVERYTHING TO DEATH before I say it. (I also don't think a lot of people realize just how introverted I am, because I've devoted a lot of time and energy to being more outgoing, being personable, being a better speaker, etc)

Of course I don't share my ideas enough, this option says, because by the time I've thought something through enough to be ready to share it, the moment has passed.

I'm still thinking about possible solutions... (ahem. thinking. things. to. death).

The second option scares me, a lot. The insecure, impostor syndrome feeling part of me feels like everything is crashing down around me now because it was inevitable and I'm not smart enough for this and maybe it's better that this is happening now while I'm still young and can find a new career path.

I'm not currently in danger of not graduating, and I honestly don't think it will come to that - WORST CASE SCENARIO for one project completely failing still leaves another project that should result in a co-first author paper in a journal with an impact factor of ~10...which is not ideal, but certainly something I could base a thesis off of and would meet my graduation requirement.

There are other options out there, I just need to decide what plan B is, or whether plan A should still be plan A...

2013 Goals: January Progress, February Plan

My goals this year are more like areas of focus than goals, but I've decided that I don't care ;) 

Here's my progress so far in January and what I'm hoping to do in February.

Personal/Health

• Stay hydrated. I do okay at staying hydrated on days when I'm not busy at work, but not every day. For February, I'm planning to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee to start the day out right, and just try to focus on it more when I get home too.

• Sleep. Eh... I've only been doing okay at this so far this month. I've been getting myself into bed at a reasonable hour most nights, but not falling or staying asleep. I don't know what to do about this... maybe I need to try keeping a sleep journal and see if there are any patterns I can pick out. 

• Work out. I worked out 17 times in January! I (re) discovered blogilates on Jan. 1 when I was looking for Pilates videos on You Tube (since Netflix got rid of their workout videos!)... I think someone may have linked to blogilates.com at some point, but I didn't stick around because I didn't love the website- too many LOLs and exclamation points and "totes" and such for my taste...but I realized this past month that I LOVE Cassey's videos! Her teaching style really appeals to me...AND she posts a calendar each month with a workout plan already in place. Awesome! More on this later, but my goal for February is to work out 19 times (baby steps! plus Feb is 3 days shorter)

Lab/School

• Stay ahead of deadlines. Eh... doing okay for being prepared to talk to recruits (today), committee meeting (2 weeks away), and actual paper...not so great on the review. Just gotta keep trying! 

• Keep working hard, but work to avoid burnout. I've been feeling pretty good about going into work each day, so I think this is a pass.

Finances

• Open a rewards card. er... haven't gotten around to it yet. Should do it in February! 

• Max out 2012 Roth IRAs and be on track to max out for 2013. We each need to contribute $1,000 more for 2012, and have budgeted $500 each for February and March, so barring any unexpected budget derailment, we should max out our 2012s in March. Perfect! We'll have to work hard to max out 2013 too, but it should be do-able. 

• Be prepared for student loans to come due. We made progress! We opened an Ally savings account (higher interest! Woo!) and transfered all of our short-term/float money (which we were just building back up after getting our PMI canceled) , plus some of our Christmas money to it ($3,000)... and then another Christmas check because we wanted to test out the phone deposit thing to the account. This account is going to get our extra money over the next year or so, with the goal of saving up enough to pay off our student loans when we graduate without accruing any interest. So... in February and beyond, we need to keep finding ways to save money or make more money so we can fill this account up (goal: ~$13,750)

Additional February goal: finish the 2 books I started in January. 

PMI is Finally Gone!

Okay, this is actually kind of old news, but I never told the end of the story (you can read the beginning of the story here and continuation here).

After I sent a letter by certified mail asking for our PMI to be cancelled since our loan-to-value ratio was below 80%, it took about a week and a half for someone to sign for it.

A week later we got another letter telling us the same information as before: pay down to 78%, or get an appraisal to prove the value has gone up and the LTV ratio is now 75%. At this point, I had about given up and was about to start filing complaints, even though I figured nothing would happen.

Then, a few days later, I got another (rather condescending) letter. This one, though, actually had useful information! Well, sort of. This letter explained that in order for WFHM to cancel our PMI at 80% LTV, we would need to get an appraisal to prove that the value of our home has not gone down, so that it truly was below 80%.

This is actually in accordance with the Homeowner's Protection Act, but previously everyone has told me that we'd have to prove the value has gone UP, not that it has remained the SAME. That is a BIG DIFFERENCE!

At this point, we realized that we didn't HAVE to pay for an appraisal, and it would be a huge hassle to have someone home for an appraisal... and we don't have to pay PMI, but we DO eventually have to pay our full principal, one way or another. We were about a month away from having enough "cushion" savings to pay off the principal to 78% without completely draining our non-emergency savings, so that's what we did.

To my pleasant surprise, just a few days after the payment cleared I got a message from WFHM saying that our PMI had been cancelled, and our next payment due would reflect the lower escrow payment now required. Hooray! That was a really welcome reduction after spending so much money on the darn thing :)

So, I can't really tell you how to cancel PMI with WFHM at 80% LTV... I'd start with writing a letter, probably, because the people on the phone really don't seem to know what to do, and ask specifically in the letter how to set up a WFHM-approved appraisal.

In my experience, though, once you hit 78% they will handle the cancellation quickly and efficiently, which is a nice change from our previous dealings with Wells Fargo.

What Not to Do: Grad School Interviews

The other day I was discussing our upcoming recruitment season with my rotation student, which got me thinking about things I've seen students do wrong on interviews... I'm posting this with the hope that someone out there will read it and go into their interview more prepared :) (Also kind of hoping that no one who interviews here will read it and identify me!)

*Please keep in mind that I am a grad student, and have no experience actually making decisions regarding grad school admissions. I'm just giving my perspective from being a grad student in a biomedical sciences PhD program, seeing which students get in and which don't, and hearing feedback from professors*

This advice will mostly be about the general interview days, not necessarily the actual interviews with professors -  their questions, in my experience, vary widely, and I can't begin to know what they are all looking for.

What I DO know, based on being friends with the student representative on the admissions committee (everything is sworn to secrecy about individual candidates, of course, but there isn't any rule against sharing information about the process in general) is this: once the committee has discussed the "meat" of the candidate's application (GPA, test scores, interview forms, etc), they also look at feedback from the graduate students. Most of the time, the grad student feedback probably won't matter, unless there was a MAJOR red flag, but for students that are border-line, grad student feedback can help set the order in which candidates will receive an offer.

So, onto the advice...

• Don't hit on current students (or anyone, for that matter). There is a time and a place for romantic behavior, and grad school interviews are not the time. Just don't. 

• Don't dress inappropriately. At least make sure nothing is hanging out before your interviews...(true story: I gave a girl I interviewed with a safety pin because she forgot her camisole and her boobs were hanging out of her shirt. She's lucky I had a pin!) We also have students-only meals that are really casual, but we don't want to see too much of you, inappropriate slogans, or dirty clothes. If our first impression of you is a bad one...we're probably not going to end up giving you good feedback. Harsh, but true. 

• Don't ask stupid questions. You should definitely ask questions! Lots of them! But... do a little research first. Don't ask what students do on their "summers off" if you're interviewing with a PhD program that doesn't have summers off. Spending an hour grilling people about the safety of the city, or only asking about "bars where you can pick up chicks" is not going to make a good impression. Safety is important, and wanting to know about the bar scene is totally fine...but don't get so caught up on one topic that all of the students just want to be rid of you so they can stop talking about it. 

•  Don't admit to "enhancing" your application (or, you know, just don't do it in the first place!). If you admit to lying on your application or getting someone else to write your research statement for you, we WILL tell on you. Period. 

Those are the big things I can think of right now. You'd think they wouldn't need to be said...but I've seen enough these last few years of interviews that I realize some people don't seem to get it.

Anyway, if you're interviewing this year, good luck! Have fun! Find a program that is a great fit! 

I'd love to hear your interviewing horror stories, grad school or otherwise :)