pd

This is an angry musing targeting no one in particular. I’ve been in graduate school for 10 months now, and I don’t think I’ve grown or matured in any significant way. This is not good, depressing even. I’m not contemplating on leaving grad school or anything; I’m brooding over what went wrong. I can cut myself some slack by reminding myself that there’s a certain lag phase, like the growth pattern of bacteria, that needs to be overcome to reap any real benefits. Admitting that I am going through a lag phase isn’t something I want to do though because it makes me feel like all the training I received in my undergraduate years were for naught. And if you think that undergrad doesn’t matter because you learn everything in grad school, you are wrong. How does that logic work? I got accepted into grad school precisely because I already had that training to hit the ground running in grad school. Yet, here I am stumbling and grasping for failed opportunities to prove myself.

I’ll bite the bullet and say I’m in a lag phase and there’s no escaping it. This is reality. Lag phase doesn’t have a zero slope. Rather, it just has a very small positive slope. If so, how can I increase it ever so slightly to reach that point/time-period where I can truly excel? Are there negative stressors in my life that are making it harder to reach some sort of enlightenment? For the latter question, the answer that comes to mind is time management and extra-curricular balance. Frankly, I hate my current extra-curriculars besides the iGEM work I am doing. The only thing I am gaining from the leadership roles I take in the grad student exec for my department is the social circle I’ve created for myself. And one could argue that that’s more than enough, and I agree. It’s not enough to keep me in these roles though. The work is monotonous for me because I’ve done it before so many times in undergrad. The most annoying thing is that none of that really matters anymore. I’ve left that legacy behind at UW. Coming to UofT means I need to make a new reputation.

I guess this is the silver lining to my melancholy. I have a chance to become someone different from my UW self, perhaps better. Back then I was known for participating in a lot of different extra-curriculars, but that doesn’t mean I need to continue doing that in UofT. And I shouldn’t. What was the point? None of the professors at UW even recognized how much I was doing. No body cares, and it’s important that people who do this much at least get some recognition from the faculty and administration. Am I jaded? Yeah, I am pretty jaded because I did so much to improve student experiences and to help fellow students, but none of these profs cared. They don’t have the time to care. They’re busy people, I get it, so only the students who manage to significantly stand-out from the crowd will get their attention. Oftentimes these are the students who fit that “perfect student” mold. I don’t fit into that mold whatsoever, and I hate that I can’t. I hate that I’m apparently not smart enough, and I hate that my personality doesn’t connect well with professors. I fucking hate it so damn much I want to cry sometimes when the smallest experiments fail to yield insightful results. What the fuck am I doing here?

It wouldn’t be grad school if there wasn’t a challenge. I was part of boy scouts (there were girls too, in fact there were more girls than guys at one point). I grew up with it, and with increasing age I changed ranks. The final rank I finished with was Ventures, in high school. The Venture motto is Challenge. It’s like an omen haunting every career move I make. Challenge. I’ve overcome many, but there’s so many more to go. I know it will never stop, but how do I overcome this current insecurity. How do I stop feeling like I’m not good enough? Recycling previous solutions is no longer the answer for me. Involving myself with so many extra-curriculars has proven detrimental to my research and the quality of work I do for each extra-curricular. I’m spread thin.

What I need to do is to quit stuff. I need to quit thinking that rising the ranks in these student execs is what I need to do to prove myself to these professors. I need to stop caring so much about these awards for “Future Leaders” and whatever else there is. Who cares if I get this award named after better men and women. The people who get them probably deserved them, but I don’t need this external validation. I don’t want to want them anymore. I’ve never received it from any faculty or staff member, so what does it matter. Fuck NSERC and fuck OGS. I apply knowing I’ll never get it. I write these applications with all my heart as if I could seriously get them, but I’m not. My snowball will never exist to leverage the snowball effect. Applying to these awards is as wasteful as gambling. Instead of risking money, I am risking my time. I think I know what to do instead.

I need to quit my extra-curriculars and rid myself of these responsibilities. Forget the titles of the positions, or the instantly gratifyingwhen profs know I am “getting involved.” I need to focus on what I want. What do I want right now?

I want to help build iGEM at UofT into a gold-winning team, and I want them to be able to spread the word about the importance of synthetic biology to undergrads. To build this community.

I want to be an expert in heavy metal bioaccumulation and be able to confidently refute these arguments made against it. I want to demonstrate why mining will need it and it’s a mistake to not capitalize on developing this technology.

I want to be creative. Maybe even culturally avante-garde in the academic setting. If I’m not aiming to be a professor, or to excel in the traditionally-academic sense, then I need to re-define my goals and de-prioritize the pressures pushing me to do more boring extra-curricular positions (at least boring for me; I’m sure others like them and that’s great).

Community building. Field expert. Artistically creative in a rigid environment. If these are my goals moving forward, then I am excited. Let’s see where I get with this new focus.

I think academics and intellectuals tend to carry themselves professionally, both in how they think and how they look (i.e. how they dress). This is important because, socially in the scientific community, we expect other scientists’ papers to be concise and formal. Consequently, we also tend to dress formally to represent the state of our work. This creates a barrier of sorts for students and other non-scientific/-academic people. Here we have a professional-looking person trying to convey a complex scientific concept, and often this works, but the audience can’t relate to the researcher. They get that the science is cool, but they feel no personal connection to it. Scientists tend to cater to other scientists, and not the general public population. Esoteric terms and incomprehensible jargon hide the true value of a lot of science.

To scientifically convey our research, it’s also important that researchers make themselves look like the general public, or at least the general audience. The professional appearance is important for older audiences because they have grown to appreciate that aesthetic, but younger audiences do not typically relate to this. Very few science students/ life science researchers that I know of dress stylishly or care about their fashion. They tend towards professional appearances that cater to the older audience, but they lose their youth in doing that. And it isn’t even about fashion, it’s about dressing like a student if you’re going to present/discuss/chat about your research to fellow students. 

So I’m taking a first-aid course right now that teaches advanced first-aid material. I think this is a really amazing opportunity. It’s an opportunity I didn’t think was possible because I never imagined I’d be recruited onto the team in the first place. In the training today, our instructor said something very elegantly: as humans, we need to share our painful experiences to get past them. I realized I was taking my current partner for granted. I remembered the time where I asked if I could rant to her for a few minutes, and that helped me get over the situation I was in. 

My partner is unique to me, as a person in my life, because the way she responds to my stress is quite naturally tuned to handle me. People ask why I need a partner, or why I’m always in a relationship. They suggest I stay single and explore around. I agree that this is a life style worth exploring, but it’s a question of value. Is exploring around worth more than my current progress towards my aspirations? No, it isn’t. I was able to make it this far with the support of family and friends, but most importantly, my previous partners. 

My previous partners are great people, and our relationships at the time reflected my maturity and my needs. Even now, my partner is a clear reflection of my maturity and needs. The problems I face now are the problems I use to hear my upper-year friends talk about when I was in first year. There has been lots of growth, so I now need someone who synergizes with that growth. My partner and I are both pursuing professions related to healthcare. She and I are both on the Campus Response Team, and we both study science. Moreover, the relationship is close-distance.