So, one of my blogs had a link for this:
Written?Kitten!
It proposes to cure writer's block by rewarding you with a new kitten every 100 words. I think it worked, check out my first 100!
"I love you so much. You'll never know, will you? Please take this gift with my regards and stuff it in your pants, sir. These are quality tested in our labs using only the finest of hams and cheeses. When you take an eye, and you cut it with a knife, just swipe the knife blade across and pop out the lens. Then pull up on the eye with your forceps and the retina will pop right out! Then you just throw that little retina in some liquid nitrogen, freeze it, and stick it in the minus eighty freezer. Easy peasy!"
If you can't tell, I was at work when I wrote that, thinking of love and eyeballs. And I was rewarded with this handsome siamese kitten. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3694657781/
Go get your own! :-P
My little corner of the world to get my thoughts out.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Monday, November 7, 2011
The Imposter
Its very common, so much so that it has a name--"Imposter Syndrome." Let me tell you my personal experience with it.
This grad school shit is hard....harder than I even thought. Before August, the last time I took a class was the spring of 2004. Anything I had learned from my basic Bio classes was mostly gone, and everything I had learned in my Biochem classes was toast. So, needless to say I was struggling a bit more than these 21 year olds in my classes that just graduated last semester with Chemistry minors (mine was History btw). Things that other people just breezed through, I was looking at like it was written in Aramaic. Tests that some people got 100% on I was failing.
So, I felt like I was pretending. Like I was playing a part, and people thought I was for real, but some day they were going to find out. My classmates would realize I was stupid and wouldn't want me in their study groups. My mentor would realize I wasn't going to make it and talk me into dropping out. Or, worse, I would just have to drop out because I failed everything. No one realized that I'm not supposed to be here! I can't be a real scientist! AGH!!!!
But, every once in a while something happens that makes me realize that firstly, I'm far from the only one feeling this way. I don't have the highest grades in the class, but I'm definitely not the worst off, and I'm probably right about average. There are things I understand much better than other people, just like there are things those same people understand more than me.
I'm not the only one with ridiculous acne from the stress, I'm not the only one losing sleep and accidentally napping during seminars. I'm not the only one trying to make excuses to get out of lab work so I can furiously work on my take home tests, and I'm definitely not the only one falling behind in my lab work.
Also...things happen that make me realize I am a real scientist. I just have to realize that I am a scientist in training. I'm not expected to be on my own yet. I'm just expected to be learning.
Anyway...I think I've started to ramble (blame the anxiety-induced sleeplessness). The point of all this is that I'm tres excited. I went to a seminar today by one of our collaborators from England. He's pretty famous for gene therapy trials in humans. I spent at least 6 months doing immunofluorescence on eye specimens that had been injected with his lab's vectors, and we published a great paper in which every single IF experiment was done by me. So, when I was introduced to him and he said that he remembered my name as the person with the "beautiful immunofluorescence imaging" I just about shit my pants with happiness (what, you don't crap when you're elated?). It was pretty much the proudest moment in my little scientific career. Maybe I'm not an imposter afterall...
This grad school shit is hard....harder than I even thought. Before August, the last time I took a class was the spring of 2004. Anything I had learned from my basic Bio classes was mostly gone, and everything I had learned in my Biochem classes was toast. So, needless to say I was struggling a bit more than these 21 year olds in my classes that just graduated last semester with Chemistry minors (mine was History btw). Things that other people just breezed through, I was looking at like it was written in Aramaic. Tests that some people got 100% on I was failing.
So, I felt like I was pretending. Like I was playing a part, and people thought I was for real, but some day they were going to find out. My classmates would realize I was stupid and wouldn't want me in their study groups. My mentor would realize I wasn't going to make it and talk me into dropping out. Or, worse, I would just have to drop out because I failed everything. No one realized that I'm not supposed to be here! I can't be a real scientist! AGH!!!!
But, every once in a while something happens that makes me realize that firstly, I'm far from the only one feeling this way. I don't have the highest grades in the class, but I'm definitely not the worst off, and I'm probably right about average. There are things I understand much better than other people, just like there are things those same people understand more than me.
I'm not the only one with ridiculous acne from the stress, I'm not the only one losing sleep and accidentally napping during seminars. I'm not the only one trying to make excuses to get out of lab work so I can furiously work on my take home tests, and I'm definitely not the only one falling behind in my lab work.
Also...things happen that make me realize I am a real scientist. I just have to realize that I am a scientist in training. I'm not expected to be on my own yet. I'm just expected to be learning.
Anyway...I think I've started to ramble (blame the anxiety-induced sleeplessness). The point of all this is that I'm tres excited. I went to a seminar today by one of our collaborators from England. He's pretty famous for gene therapy trials in humans. I spent at least 6 months doing immunofluorescence on eye specimens that had been injected with his lab's vectors, and we published a great paper in which every single IF experiment was done by me. So, when I was introduced to him and he said that he remembered my name as the person with the "beautiful immunofluorescence imaging" I just about shit my pants with happiness (what, you don't crap when you're elated?). It was pretty much the proudest moment in my little scientific career. Maybe I'm not an imposter afterall...
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