Sunday evening by the lake...

Lake Q is almost at its best...mellow and soothing. Quite lovely!

Ha!

TOI takes WTFness to a new level. But, on the other hand, it does make for interesting reading on a gloomy Friday evening. Makes you think...

1). Maybe there's hope!

2). Nah! Not really!

Life this week....

1).Cooking is therapeutic.

2). Washing dishes is most emphatically NOT. Though I am probably building up some good karma with all the dishes I have washed.

3). I have a most excellent, very helpful advisor.

4). Lately, I have been a most irresponsible grad student. This will change pronto. Now. Today.

5). Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice-cream is most definitely the best. Especially with gulab jamun. Yummy!

6). Apparently, 30 slides is NOT enough for a committee meeting. How many's enough? Guess I'll find out on Tuesday.

7). I make a mean salad. I mean seriously. I'm a good salad maker. Look..doesn't it look appetising?

8). My home looks mellow and quite beautiful in the evening when the sun is setting and there is a gentle breeze blowing and I have a hot cup of chai in hand. Bliss!

A few questions..

So the weekend was pretty foul, weather-wise. Rainy, cloudy, chilly. Not particularly nice weather to go outdoors. (Which I did anyways!) But come Monday morning, and its bee-yoo-tiful. Glorious sunshine, 65F. Not a cloud in the sky and all that. So...the question is, why?

Do the weather Gods not like me? I mean its winter 6 months of the year anyway. Would it be too much to ask for a summer sans the rain?And if you must rain, could you please do it during the week, when I have no chance of going out?

Why can't grad students have secretaries? I need a secretary to organize my notes and my data. I just want to do the interesting stuff. The cool experiments. I hate spending time collating data. Oh wait....thats a PI!

And God...please grant me a vestige of shame. I went 30 minutes late to a meeting with the boss. I hadn't planned on what I was going to talk with him about. I looked, felt and acted like a fool. I need to stop having fun in the weekends. Aren't grad students just supposed to kill themselves working? I think the rulebook says they have no right to a life outside the lab. I am breaking the rules left-right-and-center. Gotta stop having fun. Now. (But its summer...can't I have a leetle fun in the summer?)

Food for thought!

I came across this post on Scienceblogs today. Thought it interesting and thought-provoking. As a very naive grad student, when the time came to make a choice as to which lab to join, I just went with gut feeling. It has worked out well thus far. The advisor is a decent guy with a sense of humor. He is patient and willing to teach. No complaints there. I do know of students who joined labs just because the PI was really famous, and they thought it would be a fillip to their careers. Then they spent 6 years hating the lab they were in. Work sucked. PI was a jerk. Colleagues were terrible.Whatever. I have a classmate who switched labs after 2 years because she couldn't stand her advisor's temper anymore. Getting yelled at on a weekly basis was becoming more nerve-wracking than she could take.

I have to say though, that the best motivation to work is guilt. Your advisor doesn't need to yell at you. Just give you that disappointed look. The one that says, "You're capable of so much more! I have such hopes for you!" I have been shamed into doing things more often than scolded into doing them!

The one thing I do miss in my lab is someone to bounce ideas off of. Apart from the advisor. The other post-docs are nice people, but not particularly communicative. In fact, I'm probably the only one who talks. I think when/if(!) I leave the lab, my voice will echo in its walls for years to come. Its kinda hard to shut me up. And with my PI, the problem is that frequently he goes too fast for me. Then, I need to dodge his ideas faster than I can bounce mine off of him, if that makes any sense!

Finally, if you think the letter in that post was pure fiction, I can tell you it is not. I received an email yesterday from the Graduate director of my program requesting the pleasure of my company at a student's defense tomorrow. FYI, I was planning on going anyway..so I didn't need the gentle reminder. I produce the transcript for your perusal below. (It was sent to all the grad students in the department)

Hi all,
One of your fellow students will be graduating (presumably) this Friday. I think it is appropriate for the rest of the students to attend in support of your colleague. I hope you agree and will make every effort to attend. However, if you happen to disagree, I'd like to pass along the sentiment that you should attend anyway, after all, someday you will be holding a defense, and it will be nice to have someone in the room other than your parents and your committee.

Thank you, and I hope to see all of you there.

I happen to like my graduate director very much. He is on my committee. I have the highest respect for him. The fact that he would send out this email, tells me 2 things:

a). He has previously found that students don't go their colleagues' defenses. Which is stupid. You should go. You might even learn something. Plus, then you won't look stupid when you go to the mandatory party after the defense and enjoy the free booze!

b). He thinks mildly threatening emails might work!

When I received it yesterday, I just thought it funny. And it seemed relevant in the context of the post I linked to. So, I couldn't resist the temptation to reproduce it.

I'm off to drink tea and laze on my lawn in this gorgeous sunshine. Weekend's almost here...Yay!