Jax

I realized today (between my anxiety about my paper getting scooped right as I'm about to submit it to arXiv) that I have a hell of a lot of professional confidence recently. The author who is going to submit first sent me her paper today to give notice that theirs will be released soon, and I went over it and noticed that she didn't cite my most recent (published) work, which adds context to their conclusions. So I flexed a bit and said thanks for sending over their manuscript, btw I wanted to point you to my prev work where we found a similar conclusion so here you go, consider citing it. It was a very dope academic flex, and it made me feel better about the fact that they will publish sooner if I at least get a citation out of it.

I also sent her a link to my publicly available PhD thesis which reports on the stuff I have done for this paper that she is scooping, so maybe she will cite that too if she feels any sort of way about it. The whole thing here is that, we met up at the IAU symposium in Oct last year, and I presented my findings. This seems to have inspired her to finish a student project that was in the works a few years ago, and suddenly within a couple of months this summer she found time to whip something together. Btw this person is an associate prof and I am but a recent grad (now postdoc) so tbh I think it's a bit bad form to only reach out NOW after you've seen my results at a conference and kept it under wraps ever since...

There have been other examples of my academic flex and I am not sure what changed. I think mainly, I am so much more financially stable that I am less stressed, and also because of this and not having to TA I am getting SO MUCH MORE RESEARCH DONE and being productive and people keep asking my opinions and expertise and it's DOPE. On that front, I am feeling pretty good about things.

It has been a long while and a lot of time adjusting to recent changes. The good news, I started a postdoc position ! The bad news, we moved back to the US. This change has been mostly positive though and I like the community and where we live. My partner is still working on securing a stable job (we moved here in Jan) and unfortunately this area is just such a small population it is difficult for him to get clients. At some point soon we will be more financially stable, and for sure it will be the first time we have been financially stable together. I am stoked for that.

Since I started here, it has been the expectation that I go into the office every day, so my days HAVE started getting more regulated. One thing I have been implementing since starting here is going to the gym after work, since part of my healthcare package is access to the College gym. But it is still a struggle, because:

My partner and I share a car, and the busses here are not reliable. They only run 1x per hour after 17h30 and in the mornings they are unpredictable. So if I go to the gym after work, I absolutely HAVE to get going by 16h30 so I can take my time and stretch and not be sore running to catch the only bus that comes that hour.

The gym I have been using is being revamped for eco-friendly reasons and is closed from mid June to end of August. The temporary one on campus does not have NEARLY enough equipment given the number of people who use it, and it has no airflow.

I have a gym at my apartment (it has AC and is nice because it IS just right here) but l am having a hard time going in the evening, unless I get there right as I get off the bus. This just means changing at work (and using the bathroom at the office, because weirdly this gym does NOT have a bathroom) and going to the gym on my way home, before I get inside and lose motivation.

So because of these reasons, I have been struggling to get back to the gym. But for a few months at least, I had a very regular schedule. I was even running up to 4x a week (just a short treadmill mile) before my workouts and I was seeing some nice results.