The waiting game

I’m proud to say that I’ve had two interviews this year. The first was a medium sized school with great potential, but a long road ahead to get there. I was devastated when I didn’t get the offer because I thought I rocked the interview. In retrospect I learned two things. First, that I didn’t so much rock the interview as they let me drift through because they had already chosen their candidate, and second that I’m glad I didn’t get the offer because I would have taken it.

I would have negotiated hard, but taken the position, and it would have been the end of most things that I want to return to. Geographically it was all wrong. I would have survived, and worked hard, and been relatively successful in my career, but I doubt that I would have been happy in the long term. Happy to get a job, but how long would that have lasted? The money would have been nice though.

Now I’m waiting to hear from my last interview, which I don’t even want to think about. Again, at the time, I thought it was great, but now I am terrified. I don’t want to think about. But I will say this, the waiting for the call with an offer or rejection is horrid. Every time my office phone rings, my heart pounds. What if I am rejected? What if I get it? I just want it to be over. If I don’t get this job, I only have one other application still active out there. The year is done. My funding ends in May. I will soon be unemployed.

Either way, I am looking forward to some time off. I have projects that I could catch-up on. Camping and canoeing to do. Family and friends to catch-up with. Priorities are shifting for me, and that’s not a bad thing, but it feels bad. I think, ‘if I drop-out, isn’t this exactly why we have fewer women than men in academia’? Because I’m tired of sacrificing my personal life for my career? But then I think of the stress-induced health issues I’ve had the past two years, and I don’t think I have a choice other than die of a heart attack in 10 years. It’s the reconciliation of success versus failure and the life-work balance that I need.

Options or not; things will change

This year has more jobs than I've seen in the last three, and already I am long-listing it.
I feel really good about getting a job this year, which means when I don't, I'll be devastated!

As the stress builds again this year, I am reminded of the horrors I went through last year. Nose bleeds, chest pains, cat dying... And I feel myself getting closer to that stressed out state... but this year, I know it will end. I am pretty certain that come end-of-funding I will have options.

It's the options that both excite and terrify me. Some of these options may include going home, or very far away. I'm very conflicted about home. I'm sure anyone from a small town can relate. It's home; I miss it: I have life-long friends, it feels so comfortable - and that terrifies me. I am both drawn and repulsed by the idea of returning. It's kinda like government work; solid hours and funding, but somehow soul-sucking. To return would feel like failure. But how could that be?

I just don't know. It's best not to think about things. Just do.

So I started a new experiment. It's going to be way more involved than I first thought. It's only the first week and I am already exhausted. Too much on the To Do list and not enough time. My back hurts. Can't shut the brain down at night. I can tell my stress levels are up because my brain-voice is swearing a lot.

You know that crappy saying about the journey? It's about the journey, not the destination? I've always hated rollercoasters.

Ac-anaemia

There have been mornings, lying in bed, unable to fully wake up, with a slow but panicked voice in my head:

“Wake up!” “Wake up! – you’re not breathing!” “Are you breathing?” “You have to move, I don’t think your heart is beating” “Wake-up, you’re dying!”

Then my hair started to fall out. And the headaches, and chest pains. I thought it was stress. I’m sure the nosebleeds didn’t help.

So, I’m on iron pills. Getting ready to go home for a month. Major decisions have already been made, but will take time to play out. More jobs are being posted each day, but nothing I want to do, nor in places I want to live. But in my new realisations comes a weight lifted from my shoulders. I’m no longer going to worry about getting the academic job. I no longer care. I’ll apply for a few things that come up; but not sure I’d take them if they were offered. I’ll plan my experiments for the fall – the plan is to stock-pile a tonne of data, and then if nothing interesting comes along next May when my funding runs out, I’ll just go home.

I’ll write. I’ll run. I’ll take care of myself. Get healthy. Recover from the last 12 years of stress and hard work. Yes, I’m taking a sabbatical.

If I live cheaply, I figure I can survive for at least a year on my savings. In the mean time, I might pick up some contract or consulting work. I’ll live with my partner (I’ll tell him about this plan later), I’ll grow tomatoes, I’ll write my novel. I’ll write some grants with people around my home town, I’ll see my friends, I’ll do something. I don’t know what, but I’m not worried anymore. This feeling I’ve had for the past two years is slowly fading – and I wonder how much of it has been my career stress and how much has been anaemia. What if it was all just anaemia?

Too depressed to blog – it must be bad

I’ve been taking a break from all things post-doc because I’ve found the whole situation too depressing to think about. I’ve been here two years. I’ve published a few papers, watched the job market tank, funding dry up, and gotten new wrinkles on my face. I look old, I feel old, and I still don’t have a job. I live thousands of kilometres away from my whole life; and the whole time I feel that I am on the cusp of a break though.

In fact, I know I am. But I just don’t know if I can do it. And the straw wasn’t my entire lack of personal life (and sex for that matter), but a realisation that I was leaving behind research I wanted to continue with just to be employable. Yes kids, it stopped being fun. And that was the whole reason I did it.

I used to love my job. Now I’m writing review papers about plant-pollination system for botany journals (note: this is NOT what I do).

The only solace I have is a PhD student in my lab who wants to be a film maker. I’m trying to get him to drop out.

Part of what I need to reconcile with are my expectations of success. If I’m not happy personally, am I successful? Not really. Especially since the catalyst for my academic career was fear of being trapped in a job I hated. I can’t call myself a failure, so why do I feel like one? maybe because this is a weird, weird profession where the bar is always higher than you will ever jump because it’s attached to the top of your head.

Funding runs out in May. Something will happen then.

Life goes on (3)

New blog post. Finally.
Well, it took a while to move through the emotional state I was in after my pet died. I realised that I had been well entrenched in this mindset even before she died; that I had been experiencing grief, guilt, anxiety and loss for my old life since I’ve arrived here.

The job market has closed for the season (save one last posting), and I have nothing but two long lists and a phone interview to show for it. The last posting actually has the most promise for me, but whether I want it or not is another question. I want a job, of course, but, well, I guess I’m just scared. I know that regardless of the job, I need to apply; that an interview is a good thing for the CV, and that an offer is even better. Will I be able to do what I want within the context of this particular (or any) position, is up to me. What I am afraid of is not being able to live up to their expectations.

A while back I made a decision, based on comments on a job wiki, that it would be better for me to move onto another postdoc rather than a job I didn’t want, provided that the postdoc would produce high quality publications. But recent financial issues have cropped up, and I simply don’t think I can continue to postdoc. So, with that, I really want this new position, regardless of the location and their expectations. I can learn to teach anything they want me to teach. I can accept responsibilities that I have little experience for, and I can do it all while developing a strong research program.

I’m back to being excited about the future, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Today I’m up, but tomorrow…In the mean time, I’ll try to blog with a little more regularity.

Life goes on (2)

Things have been good and bad this past while.

I finally got two manuscripts out the door, and two more on the wing about to be submitted.
I applied for five jobs, and have a phone interview for one at the end of the month.
I’m not doing the science I want to do, but I know why I came here, and what I have to do to move on, so I’m doing okay.

On the down side, I’ve been living on the edge of sanity with only moments of clarity. My beloved pet died yesterday, and I feel like I’m floating through life with nothing to ground me.
The dynamics of the lab have shifted, and I’m excited to be there for it. I feel strangely calm.

Life will go on. I never thought I would be here, so I know my life is something I can’t plan.
It’ll be okay.
I’ll be okay.

What am I doing here?

A random assortment of manuscripts, projects, half starts and stops, crazy ideas, half-ass data, and intentions for the future. That is my professional life right now.

I thought that maybe if I were to get a faculty position, I would feel more dug-in, more settled, more focused, but now I doubt my ability to get a position, and even whether I am cut-out for academia at all. What I really want is to go home and resume my old life.

Why did I come here? It is still pretty clear. I came because I was offered the position, and it wasn't just any position. It was at the top University, with a department that is packed with leaders in my field, to work with a big name, who I know and like personally, in a dynamic and unique city. There was no way I could have turned that down.

But now, more than a year later, I realise that the dynamism of the city is lost on me as I only ever spend time at work. As for the advisor, department and Uni, it's still all there, looking very nice on my CV, but I have very little in the way of projects to show for it. Preparing for conferences that I have attended for the past few years, I also realise how far my research has strayed from the things that I am passionate about. I have nothing to present at these conferences.

How do I find a way, other than getting a faculty job and starting my own lab, to resume my old research?

Long-list

Why do the perfect jobs always seem like they were invented by the writers of Twilight Zone? The old, black & white, Twilight Zone.

Here is the job of your dreams – except the building you would work in smells really bad.
Here is the job of your dreams – except you would have to give up good coffee.
Here is the job of your dreams – except it is the furthest possible distance on the planet from everything you value in your life.

So, I made a long-list. They asked for reference letters. Someone, a group of people actually, found me and my research interesting enough to ask for reference letters.

Huh.

I still find it weird, but I’m oddly okay with it. In fact, I’ve made a break-through on my research (life). I have a direction, and a vision, and I think I’m ready to implement it. I’m ready to have my own lab. I know the equipment I need. I have several projects for students to start on, and for me to write grants on. I once again (Hallelujah) know what I want! It only took one year, to get back on track. Oh, it’s about time! I’m abandoning my advisor's projects, and going rogue. It’s the only way. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done which has made me any progress in life; in fact, I don’t know why I even attempt to work with other people anymore, or see things any other way than my own. (insert Sinatra soundtrack here).
Done.
I’m back.

Summer mania

Summer I get manic. I don’t eat; I don’t sleep; I talk incessantly; I have crazy ideas, and generally and sometimes literally run around in circles. This week though, I have finally been able to feel like I have a purpose in life. I am in the field, working on the project that I’m getting no data from. But it’s good. I get up early, I eat whatever I want without feeling guilty, I carry lots of heavy stuff, dig around in the bush and get dirty, then carry lots more heavy stuff out again. What can I say. It gives me something other than my pathetic existence to focus on for a while. And while I am here, I can ask myself the seemingly never tiring question of ‘how did I get here?’

I, of course, mean physically (geographically) as well as mentally. I am constantly amazed at where my life takes me and the array of highly contrasting experiences I have. I have a crazy life.

Awhile back I went on a trip to a conference with some lab-mates. We drove for hours upon hours. We told our life stories to each other. I skipped over most parts and just gave the highlights, but I realise that I’ve lead a very different life from most people (in academia anyway). Under-stated though, I think. But only because it’s complicated, and I don’t like to discuss too much of it. It's definitely an accumulation of events that have lead to this kind of crazy. I think the others in the car were a little reflective after that. I was told my story was “balls to the wall”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds painful.

Life goes on

Postdoc’ing is an emotional rollercoaster, like no other, I swear.
• Upswing – received major grant to continue research project for two more years
• Downswing – doing said research project means I live thousands of kilometres from family and friends
• Upswing – about to submit a Nature paper
• Downswing – said Nature paper and 4 other manuscripts have been in prep for 9 months because co-authors can’t agree
• Upswing – I get to keep my apartment
• Downswing – only get to keep said apartment until December when I’ll have to move in the snow (not that I own furniture I’ll have to worry about)
• Upswing – I get to go on a road trip to a fun conference all expenses paid
• Downswing – I hate my presentation, and so does everyone in my lab (they said so)
• Upswing – two more jobs are available for me to apply for
• Downswing – I didn’t get the job I really wanted for some pretty crappy internal hiring reasons
• Upswing – cat, left with parents, is still alive
• Downswing – said parents are dying
And life goes on…

Life as a singleton

Going home is always a dangerous situation for a post-doc. For me, I was dreading it, knowing that I would see the life that I left behind, and everything and everyone I was missing. And, it happened. I came to THAT point. The point where I have to consider that I’ve made some horrible life choices and that I am nowhere where I want to be in my personal or professional life.

Now I don’t regret my life choices, and it is easy to blame the recession for lack of jobs, and I’m sure lots of funding applications get lost…but that aside, my career is stalling, and my personal life is hanging by a thread and causing upset in everyone’s life. There is the realisation and recognition that if I don’t make some changes very, very soon, I will never be able to go back. Now I don’t mean physically or geographically here, I mean mentally to a place that involves other people – real people – in my life. I have lived alone for so long. I have spent more than half my life making sacrifices for myself and no one else. Telling myself that everything would pay off in the long run, and that when it does I can focus on other things. But I’m realising that the things I’ve always done, the way I’ve always done them, has not paid off, and I am failing in life.

I live this life that is so quiet and self-absorbed. I like being alone more than I like being with people. But I also want a home and a community, and to be with my partner. And I realise that if I don’t start making sacrifices for someone else, there won’t be anybody else. And I’m not sure if I’m not okay with that.

Waiting for NSERC

This is the month that we all hear about funding. The whole academic scientific community across the country holds it’s breath in wait. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But here it is regardless. My last chance for PDF funding. If I get it, great, on many levels. If I don’t, there are some serious decisions that need to be made. I don’t want to think about it.

I’m actually the only person I know, other than my advisor, who takes the funding situation really seriously. I talk to other PDF friends who have this laissez faire attitude. They say, “Oh well, if I don’t get it, something will come through”. And I agree, something will, but I feel like my whole academic future is riding on whether I get funding. And whether I get funding is riding on my whole past scientific career. And I have done everything possible to make myself as competitive as possible, yet it will never be enough to appease the queasy-stomach gods.

Okay, that’s not true. I chose to do research that’s cool over research that’s topical and fundable. I’ve worked in places I wanted to live rather than with people who would get me Science papers. I’ve actually made some bad choices in my career, always playing for the underdog and wanting to be the rebel. And I’ve paid the price in not winning scholarships before.
But not anymore. That’s why I live across the country from my family and friends, sacrificing the last years of my cat’s life, without possessions or a stable home. I’m here to get competitive. I’m here to get the big publications and eventually the faculty position. I know I won’t get that by standing aside and saying, “oh well, something will happen”.

Sunday was international woman’s day

A week or two ago I attended our departmental meeting. It was a special occasion as we announced the results of a job competition, and also the Dean was visiting.

We had six people short-list and interview for the position: two women and four men. My favorite was number 1 and was offered the job. The women ranked fifth and sixth. I was okay with that, because they truly sucked. Totally unrelated to that event, the Dean wanted to make an announcement about the official position on increasing the number of women hired for faculty positions. To increase the number of women, he was going to facilitate more spousal hires.

(I’ll let that sink in a moment)

WHAT?! What the $%@# does that mean? That’s not a policy to hire more women, that’s a policy to hire men’s wives!

I’m a woman. I need a job. Hire me.

Doesn’t work that way, but if I marry a man with a better career than mine, I’ll get a job.

Wow that sucks!

How soon we forget; how far we have come

I’ve been growing more worried about the ‘economic situation’ as I watch tangible things around me unravel; jobs dry up, businesses close, and yet home prices still way out of my reach. And while I have been hating my postdoc for what it is, a temporary, uncertain, low-paying position, I’m now glad that I have a position and an income at all.

I have been worried about money my whole life. My parents spent a lot of time worrying about money, and I grew up very, very frugally. I grew up like it was always a recession, if not a down right depression. And I was loaded with guilt if I wanted to spend money on something. My father grew up without shoes, and my mother remembers the war. If that doesn’t guilt you into eating your gristle, nothing will. Anyway, as a result, I now have financial (and food) issues. When I get stressed, I stop spending money. Sounds good eh? It’s not, because it comes with a worrying, nagging, guilty feeling that I’ve tried to escape most of my life, and have really only been successful in the past few years.

I also left home at an early age. I remember having less than 20$ to my name for many of those early years, and I remember not having heating or food as well. When I finally decided to get my act together and go back to school, I often sacrificed food for tuition, and would then wander the halls between classes looking for spare change under the vending machines, hoping to save enough money to by a cup of soup or bowl of rice.

So that’s my story. It’s old enough now, and I’ve been well fed for long enough that I don’t think too much of it until something reminds me. That happened very unexpectedly this morning. I was at the lab bench listening to a radio story about a group of friends who decided to crunch the numbers and figure out how little low-income people have to spend on food. They came up with $80 per month. And they decided to live off that for a few months and compare notes; a sort-of social experiment for them. The details of their story was enough to send me right back to my late teens-early 20s and the worry, doubt, guilt, desperation I felt living off a sac of rice. That pit of the stomach feeling wasn’t just hunger, but also fear. I was actually emotionally stimulated enough by the radio article that I had to leave the room and take a break.

Later that afternoon, as I was entering my office, it hit me again but in a different way. I have an office. My own office. With windows. Two of them. And food in my desk. And heat in my home. And clothes on my back. I am safe, and well fed, and warm. So why won’t this uneasy feeling go away?

Shattered and tossed and worn

I haven’t blogged in a while because I’ve been discouraged about my future.

The first position I applied for was cancelled due to the economic downturn, and I personally know about 10 people who applied for the second job; the job I haven’t even been allowing myself to think about because I really want it, and know that I’m not competitive enough to get. It would be “the” job. The job that I would have for the rest of my life because everything could fall into place, and I could live how I’ve always dreamed of. I’m too scared to get my hopes up. I didn’t tell my friends or family about the job because I also don’t want them to get their hopes up for me either.

But, in all that discouragement, I’m almost resolved myself to this current life. I am feeling better about being here. I’m making friends, albeit only from work. I trust my advisor and know that he wants me to succeed. My lab is coming to life, and if I could only get focussed and get back some of my past productivity I could make some good progress. I feel blah and numb most days, other days hopeful, other days kicked. That box full of my dreams for the future is still there, yet no closer after 10 years of working towards it. There are days that I think about giving it up, but the alternative wouldn’t get me any closer to the box of dreams either, so I plug on. I have another month before I find out about funding for the next two years. Between my advisor, and myself I can’t imagine that we won’t get funded, but, if I personally don’t get funded then I have to consider that I’m not going to make it in academia. The question then would be, do I drop out now or do the two years and wait for the random drift towards more uncertainty.

I'm a grown up?

As I finalise my application package for a tenure-track position, what I was so hyped on yesterday, is now becoming a freak-out.
What if I get it?
Can I pull that off?
Why hasn’t someone stopped me already?
Do I want to live there?
Do I want to put that much effort into teaching?
Am I ready to start writing the do-or-die grant proposals?
Grad students sound like a lot of responsibility.
Am I ready for this?
Am I ready to focus on the next big push towards tenure?
Does it ever end???

I am so naïve. I have no idea what I’m doing. My application package is okay, I think. I have the credentials, but I lack the experience – not of doing science, but of making what I do look all glossy and slick.

However, I know I’m not alone. Many successful scientists in my field that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and bonding with over beverages have, at one point or another, beckoned me with crooked finger, leaned in and told me the same secret. They have no idea how they got where they are, and worry that one-day someone will find out that they have no idea what they’re doing.

It’s funny though how you judge yourself over such short time periods. I never felt that I would succeed in my undergraduate, I thought that grad school would be so hard and I might fail, and now I compare myself to profs with 10 years experience and grooming, and think “I suck”. But, then things are put into perspective. I talked with a good friend over the holidays, an old roommate actually, and mentioned I was applying for a position at this University. She asked “what position” and was shocked when I said “prof”. Ha ha. She has no idea what I do for a living, and she thinks that since I still “go to Uni” I must still be going to classes and writing exams and stuff. When I talk to my friends about ‘work’ they always cock their heads and ask “Work? When did you get a job?” I had to ask her “You know I’m a Doctor, right?” Ha, ha. I’m grown-up!

That didn't take long

I went from zero to loathing in 3 months.
My feelings about postdoc’ing that is.
I was so happy and proud and excited to start this next phase, but now I’m screaming to get out. Everyone says your postdoc is great; no teaching, unlimited productivity, etc. But I’ve just come off unlimited productivity. I’ve been a whirlwind of productivity. I published eight first authored manuscripts in the last 2 years. I’ve been my own PI, with my own funding. I’ve initiating multiple research projects, attended 18 conferences, done paid contract work, and described a new species, all in the past three years.
I’ve been the poster girl for productivity.

I don’t want to work on someone else’s project. I don’t want to be the only person sitting at the lab bench every day. Knowing that I’m spinning my wheels because nothing will come out of the data for years. Writing up old experiments I didn’t perform just to be third or fourth author on a manuscript. Having all my ideas be circumvented through my advisor, transformed and then passed off to my honour’s student. What am I doing? I go to Uni each day, but I don’t really have anything to do. I’m losing momentum.

I want control again.
I want my own research again.
I need a faculty position.

It's so damn cold!

As I huddle down in the only room in the apartment that has doors and a working heater, and review what I’ve compiled for my job application package, I once again tackle the difficult question of “what the hell do I want?”

The possible future paths my life can take overwhelm me. I like to have a clear vision, and I’m simply unable to generate one now. I can isolate a few aspects of life that I want, but placing them into a specific context, I draw a big question mark. Further thinking about how to balance professional with personal life goals makes the future a limitless, unsolvable equation.

One issue I have is the degree to which my two professional choices are mutually exclusive; qualitatively I can do everything I professionally want in either, but quantitatively there are big differences. In one career I could work on the thing that I am most passionate about, and find deeply, truly fulfilling and pleasurable. This is the aspect of my research that people most associate me with, the stuff that comes easily and naturally, and in many ways, my so-called calling in life. Yet this is the area of my research that I refer to as my ‘secondary specialisation’. I want to be the world’s leading expert in this area and, already in the top ten and still under 40, I have the potential to be just that. But the actual job for doing exclusively this doesn’t exist yet, and maybe never will. Furthermore, if it did, I would be giving up most of my primary research, and all the hard work I’ve done to establish myself even a little bit in my field; thus I consider my passion to be a secondary specialisation.

The other career path, I continue my primary research, ask the scientific questions I want to ask, find out the answers to questions that often keep me up at night trying to solve, and overall get to contribute more broadly to a challenging field. I still get to work on my passion, but it really would become a secondary specialisation, as administration, grad students, lectures and pressures to publish in high-end journals etc. would consume most of my research time and energies.

When I was finishing my PhD, I gave a seminar to the department. I had one slide introducing my ‘secondary specialisation’ and the rest focussed on my scientific questions. Afterwards people who were not familiar with my research came up to me and told me how passionate I was about this ‘secondary specialisation’. I asked how they could tell with such limited discussion of it, and they said “your eyes lit up when you talked about it’. Okay, so why am I fighting it? Why not work the rest of my life on my passion? Why sacrifice the ability to work the rest of my life on my passion? Well, I have ego. I spent many years in a degrading job, being treated as worthless and having people expect very little of me. I still feel I need to prove to myself I'm not a loser. Career path two is more prestigious. Career path two is more likely to bring me geographically closer to family and friends (though still unlikely). And what’s more, career path two is the harder path. If I opt out of career path two will I always wonder whether I was good enough?

I do not play well with others

So, I’ve never been an academic lackey before. I know it’s strange to say that at the post-doc stage, but my grad career was a bit atypical. Sure I’ve done more work than what was expected of me for little-to-no recognition, but it has always been by choice; I’ve never been asked or expected to. In my previous stages I’ve typically been the PI of my own project, tagging names of supervisors on papers that they may or may not have read, edited, or commented on. But I’ve always come up with my own hypotheses (stolen from the literature, of course), designed my own experiments, carried out the experiment, analysed the data, and wrote the manuscript. I’m used to handing over a complete manuscript formatted for the journal I plan to submit to and telling my supervisor when I want his comments back. Okay, I’m not quite that blatantly bossy about it, as I usually let them know how the progress is going and try to coincide the delivery of the manuscript on their desk with a time when they are available to read it. But overall, this scheme has worked well for me, and them.

The current situation is the complete opposite. I am working on other people’s projects or having students run with my ideas. I have other people’s old data (and methods – ugh) and I’ve been trying to plow through and save an experiment that hasn’t seen the light of day for years. Then, just when it almost touches the surface, my advisor is writing to colleagues telling them I’ll have a rough draft by tomorrow. Um, it’s not ready. “Working draft, working draft…we understand”, he says.

I’m not sure they do understand though. I do actually have a full working draft written, that’s not the problem; the problem is that I’ve never had anyone see the little man behind the curtain before (a.k.a. my brain in action). I’m not brilliant, and I play with ideas and data in ways that are wrong until I figure that out and move on to what’s right. That’s why I typically work on projects for months before telling someone, giving the illusion that it was quick and easy for me. Now all that is going to be ruined by exposing myself to people who are smarter than me. I guess my biggest issue - as in life – is my issue with ‘control’. I like the comfort of my own control. I rarely to do as I’m told, and mostly do what I want, when I want. My justification is that other people may be ‘correct’, but my actions are ‘right’ for me. However, in the end, I still want to please new advisor, but being subservient to him makes me fight the rising “fuck you” in my heart.

Actual video footage

Lost it. I’ve completely lost it. Somewhere in my recent life shift I can’t find major parts of my existence. I’m not just talking about snow pants and a camera cord, even though I can’t find those either; somehow I lost a whole email conversation with a colleague. I get an email from him, after he received the returned samples I sent, saying “Did you look at them?” I remember writing a whole detailed, (and very, very interesting, I might add) email to him with my findings and asking whether I could use some of the information. Did I dream it? Am I crazy? Is he crazy? Did I send that weird email off to someone else? Did I press ‘Delete’ rather than ‘Send’? (I do that). Did I write it at all?!!! Not only is this email conversation gone, but so are the previous ones: our initial contact, our agreement for the conditions of my services, my apology for not replying sooner as I was switching labs, my new contact information…I’ve checked all the folders of all four of my email accounts (too much! I know), and there is no record of ever having contact with this guy.

Okay, so it got lost in the shuffle. I can accept that, I’m mellow and easy-going (ha). But now I have to email him back saying ‘yes I looked at them, and I swear I wrote to you months ago, but I’m a complete ditz and can’t actually remember, but you trust my diagnosis right?” It also doesn’t help that I’ve had this package on my desk for three months now, meaning to send it back. Not very professional.

I’ll get over it. What I did find though, in the bowels of my archived emails, were conversations with my current advisor before he became my current advisor. Those are embarrassing! I hope he’s deleted them. And on a completely separate, rambling thought, I’ve also realised lately (as Xmas and the inevitable Xmas parties are fast approaching, which for my department is apparently a time to embarrass your co-workers), that he has footage of me in the field acting like a crazy woman. In my defence, other than BEING a crazy woman, I was trying to outsmart mosquitoes while eating a sandwich. Of course you can't see the mosquitoes, you had to be there, so it's just a video of me running around in a circle, waving my arms, and eating a sandwich. Huh.