Frustrations...

I'm exploring fellowship, scholarship, and grant options for grad school, and it's very frustrating that so many have the word "young" in them as a qualifier... (generally means under 30, and sometimes under 25)....

Words of encouragement

I was told by a well-meaning grad student last night that I have enough in the pipeline now, as an undergraduate entering my 4th year, for a "shitty-to-average" Ph.D. project/thesis".  :-|

He really was well-meaning.... What he meant was, I already have enough project ideas and areas I want to explore to carry me through a Ph.D., so presumably by the time I finish my undergraduate degree, and I am 1 year into my master's, I'll be in a much better position to design a more comprehensive and thorough set of Ph.D. projects.  In essence, he was trying to tell me that I'm ahead of most of my peers right now.

Despite his odd way of expressing encouragement, he was very helpful in explaining the options for completing a Ph.D., and in particular, fast-tracking.  What he really meant was, for an undergraduate entering her 4th year, I was well ahead of the game.

The problem is, I don't know what I don't know - despite all my reading, there are likely many techniques and protocols that I'm not aware of that could further my research goals, and what we have at Carleton is decidedly limited.  Some of the lab techniques for exploring sub-cellular mechanisms that I know about now, and I'd like to do, aren't an option here...

"We child-proofed the house 3 years ago... but they keep getting back in..."

This spring, my oldest graduated from an honours program in geology.  It took him a few years, off and on, and a couple of false-starts, to finally settle on an education and career path that sparked his interest.   He completed the last 3 years of his schooling while living with me and my partner during the school year.  For the last 2 years we have attended the same university.  Sometimes he'd even acknowledge that he knew me. :-)  At one point, I told him that if he didn't get his ass in gear, I'd graduate before him (which I think mildly panicked him, considering I'm only 1 year behind).  Last year, we were both on the Dean of Science's honours list.  I think that's pretty cool: mom and son both make the Dean's List...  He also landed an unexpected job working for one of his professors, "Hey!  I got a job today."
"Really? I didn't know you had applied to anything."
"I didn't.  A professor saw my presentation and sent me an email offering me part-time work."

He lived here rent free, but paid his dues by cooking many meals, and he is an EXCELLENT/gourmet chef.
In fact, I jokingly asked if he would consider doing a master's degree just so we could continue to partake of his wonderful meals while I finished school (my sweetie thinks breakfast cereal or kraft dinner is an acceptable substitute for dinner when I'm not home).  But alas, despite the fact that he is one of the few students on the planet who graduated with money in the bank (thank-you Canadian-Rite-of-Passage, aka Tree Planting), my son had other plans, like a life, and an a job that earns a decent income, and living in Canada's mecca: Vancouver. And his girlfriend wanted to further HER career as well.

And then, two nights ago, after midnight, I get a text message from him, "you awake?".  I called him and found out that he received an email from his former professor, offering him a fully funded master's position.
Like the job, he didn't apply for this. The professor was just so impressed with him, he wanted to offer it to my son.   Now he has a tough decision to make. The exploration market for gold is in the toilet due to the low prices for gold, so his friends in the industry are telling him it's a great time to do a masters, PLUS the project would give him valuable skills in other exploration markets.  He's still trying to sort things out, because his girlfriend had planned to go back to school and do a law degree at UBC. Him coming back to Ontario to do a master's degree would throw a real kink in those plans.  Life is loaded with difficult decisions and compromises and I don't envy them theirs.

Of course, he's welcome back here if he chooses to do his master's, and I won't charge either rent if they are both on the school track.   Help out with food and do some cooking and cleaning, and I'm a happy camper. He's just damned lucky I didn't rent out his room... (I was THIS close....)

There goes the summer...

I had a bit of a break during May and June - just volunteer lab work and plus training and finishing up some EEGLab programming, but now that July is here, I can feel the summer slipping away from me.

In July, I started 2 half-summer courses (which means they are crammed into two months) with 3 evening classes that run 6:30-9:30pm (physics) and two 3-hour daytime classes on two of those days (genetics). The physics is the 2nd half of 1st year physics (Electrical fields and forces), and it's been a slow start because it's been 2 years since I took the first half of the course. I've forgotten a bunch of basics, like the formula for gravitational force between two objects and vector math... It's all coming back, but SLOWLY.  And of course, I HAVE to do every one of the prof's examples myself to make sure I understand, and of course SOME do NOT give me the same answers he got.  I hate that.  Then I don't know if it's my lack of understanding of a concept, or his bad math (It's his bad math, btw). And so, it's been slow going...

I managed to get out to the cottage a couple of times in May and June, and I caught some very nice fish (including a lovely 4.4lb Large Mouth Bass that I returned to the river for someone else to catch), so I feel like I got a bit of relaxation in. But I haven't been up there for 2 weeks now, and today I woke up at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep. All I could think about was the fact that I have a physics assignment and a physics lab to complete before Wednesday, and I have a genetics midterm on Thursday, after which I have to complete the online pre-lab quiz for the physics lab that night.  Oh, and minor surgery on Wednesday morning to remove a cyst on my neck that is threatening to become a second head...

Ok, it's not quite THAT bad, but still...  it feels like that.  (but then, I also felt like an alien was going to chew its way out of my stomach when I was pregnant, so I may be a bit over-dramatic when it comes to things like this).

In addition, I've foolishly scheduled to redo my animal handling training Wednesday afternoon, PLUS sit with a grad student to learn how to score the Forced Swim Test via videos she has taken.  And then I have physics.  

And somewhere in the next couple of months, I have to time to read a ton of papers that I have bookmarked and identified as relevant to my project.  In fact, there was a new study just published on the role of astrocytes in synapse formation that I think may be relevant, and I'm trying to determine if I can leverage those results. One of my greatest strengths is synthesizing information from disparate sources.  But it takes time to read, and assimilate and follow the information trail...  and then the threads need time (and space) to settle into ideas.  Right now my brain is crammed with course learning, and while it is foundational, I don't find it conducive to creative thought. 

I just keep reminding myself that all of this is in order to be able to graduate in spring of 2015 so that I can start graduate school next fall and start the REALLY interesting stuff.  And in the end, I have to say, as much as I loathe the testing, I still love the learning. Even physics.  :-)

Learning the ropes...

I've been incredibly fortunate to have an awesome grad. student take me under his wing. he's not only teaching me techniques and protocols, but also helping me understand things like grad school applications, study design, etc. Last fall I completed a round of stereology (cell counting) for his project, and we are hoping the paper will be published soon. (It will be my first publication in neuroscience!). Today he patiently spent more than two hours coaching me in an insufferably hot lab, as I laboriously (and unintentionally) mangled my subject matter in the course of learning how to do prep for neuronal cell culturing. More practice is required.

Tomorrow, another graduate student is going to teach me protein quantification, and I'll be doing some slide preparation. I feel very grateful to the students who are very busy with their own projects and yet take the time to help me learn the ropes. It's one of the advantages of working in a lab in a small institution - the people are great, and very supportive.  And of course, I'm open to any opportunity to learn something new. Every technique I learn now will be invaluable in my honours thesis project. (And if they need me to wash labware, I'll do that too, except that they now have a first-year student on a summer internship, so HE gets to do dishes!)

And on that topic, I also managed to develop some ideas for my project that will allow me to further explore the pathways involved in protein suppression that occur during major depression. This is a topic of particular interest to me so it's great that I have a supportive thesis advisor who is encouraging me to pursue my interest area and come up with my own research project. The downside is that my searches on google for "ketamine" will likely have me on every NSA and CSIS watch-list out there...

And I continue to finish up my work in the human behaviour research lab, finalizing software (written in matlab) and documentation for EEG data processing. (Oh Strongly Typed Programming Languages, how do loathe thee? Let me count the ways...) That professor (not my advisor) wants to pay me again just to keep me in his lab. He keeps trying to woo me to do my honours thesis with HIM, which is flattering, but I'm committed to Lab #1 for my thesis. I want to do work that elucidates the pathways involved in suppression of translational machinery during depressive states. If we can understand the pathways and circuits, we have a better chance of getting to the root causes of the neuronal synapse dysfunction and lost plasticity, rather than just treating symptoms.

At some point, I imagine this will take me back to human behaviour research, because I'm also interested in how cognitive therapies change brain biochemistry and alter these pathways (and when effective, they are as efficacious as drug therapies). Unfortunately, at this point, we don't have good tools/protocols for looking at those mechanisms in the human brain (And ethics wont allow us to chop people's heads off and look at what's going on, *sigh* ;-) ).

I'm now 2 years and 1 month into this new adventure and still loving it.  Okay, maybe not EVERY minute - exams still suck - but the majority of it still excites and enthuses me, and as a dear friend puts it, makes me "sparkle". 

Dear Mathworks, how to NOT "Do the right thing"....

As part of my student volunteer work for a human behaviour research lab, I was tasked with modifying some Matlab code that takes advantage of EEGLab (an open source suite that runs on top of Matlab).  The code is intended to simplify batch processing of participant data for students running studies.  In order to do this project, I BOUGHT the Student edition of Matlab.  Unfortunately, at the time I bought it, only the 32-bit edition was available in the Student version, though I am running Windows 8 on a 64-bit system.  I subsequently found out that I'm faced with critical "out of memory" errors, even though I have 8GB of memory.  Even more frustrating, the 6GB core 2 duo in the lab can run more files without memory errors, than I can...  The answer, I am told, is to move to the 64-bit version, which was released just 90 days after I had purchased my 32-bit license.

I emailed customer support and requested what I hoped would be a free upgrade.  They flat-out refused.

Ironically, their Mission and Values statement says,

Our guiding principle is "Do the Right Thing." This means doing what is best for our staff members, customers, business partners, and communities for the long term, and believing that "right" answers exist. It also means measuring our success, not merely in financial terms, but by how consistently we act according to this principle.

Dear Mathworks.  I actually BOUGHT my software.  When literally thousands of people out there are using ILLEGAL copies, I DID THE RIGHT THING.  Once upon a time, software companies used to give their LOYAL customers free upgrades if they released a newer version within 6-12 months of the date of purchase.  I really WANTED the 64-bit version, but you didn't have it ready.  Then, when you finally DID have it ready, a mere 90 days after my purchase, you want me to buy it again, even though there are KNOWN issues in terms of memory utilization with the 32-bit version running on a 64-bit system. Wouldn't it be DOING THE RIGHT THING, to allow your customers who are running 64-bit systems and have made a purchase in the last year a free upgrade to the 64-bit version?

Personally, this kind of "squeeze the customer for every penny" attitude is what is driving so many in the biological sciences (and economics) to open source systems like R.  I hope Mathworks wakes up and figures out what "Do the Right Thing" really means when it comes to treating their customers fairly, or they will continue to lose them in droves in the coming years.  

 

It's not about the money. REALLY.

This past week, I've been learning how to slice brain tissue (mouse), on a cryostat and then put it on slides and stain it.  Right now I'm just working on perfecting my slicing technique and being able to identify where in the brain I am slicing (striatum, start of hippocampus, SNC, etc).  I hope to be learning neuronal cell culture techniques later this summer.  I still keep my hand in the human behavior research lab, but my real passion is in the biological mechanisms that create and influence behaviour.

In my perfect world, I finish my Ph.D. and go on to do translational research in neuroplasticity and synaptogenesis as it relates to mental health, depression, and/or recovery from brain injury.  Unfortunately, research positions are pretty rare, so it's a risky path.  Of course, if that doesn't work out, I'll look at other options, but my primary interest is a research career where I work to increase our understanding of neurobiological mechanisms, and potential new treatments for debilitating disorders.

Given my background in programming, I COULD focus more on human behaviour research, and have perhaps greater opportunities of landing a position at Google, or IBM, or other another tech. company - after all, "neuro"-anything is hot right now.  And certainly I have some interesting ideas around sensory integration and technology, but it's not my first love.  I didn't quit my job to take the safe route. I quit to pursue a passion and a dream, so I'm going to go after that with everything I have.  If it doesn't work out, that's ok too, but at least I'll have given it a shot.

And it's hard to get some people to understand that. Just yesterday I had yet another conversation with a friend where I had to explain it wasn't about the money. She was convinced that with my entrepreneurial spirit and history in tech companies, I'd go on to invent something or start a company and make big bucks.  I reminded her that I LEFT a job making big bucks to go back to school - if I'd wanted to be assured of making lots of money, I'd have stayed in the career track I was in. I left because I love learning and solving problems and because I wanted to do something that inspires and excites me.  And that has nothing to do with money.  Yes, I ultimately want to make enough to live on, but my goal isn't to get rich. My kids are grown, our house is worth 4 times more than the mortgage, and money just doesn't drive me.  Working on solving really INTERESTING problems that have the potential to alleviate suffering, is what drives me.  Yes, I'll definitely leverage my computer skills, and they'll be a big benefit in my new career path but I'm not working towards a Ph.D. so that I can go back to a career in a high-tech company. At least, not at this stage.

(and I find it amusing that the grad student who supervises me refers to me as a "hippy" for this and many other reasons...)