Tomorrow is my D-day.

Recently I have been watching a few parts of "The Band of Brothers" mini-series. For those of you who are unfamiliar, this mini-series tells the stories of "Easy Company" of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. I have been particularly interested in Part 1 which shows the extreme rigorous training these soldiers went through and their anxiousness to participate in the impending Normandy Invasion (A.K.A D-Day). I feel a great inspiration from learning about stories like this.

Tomorrow I defend my Masters Thesis. I feel that I can relate to the anxiousness of the "Easy Company" soldiers given my own experience with the past 2 years of intense preparation for this event.

I know my experience is NO COMPARISON to these brave soldiers, many of whom lost their lives. But I gain solace in the idea that far more discomforting things have happened to many who have come before me and achieved even greater things than I.

The late nights with few hours of sleep, the heart-burn inducing stress, the seclusion from friends and family, hours upon hours of homework and reading articles... it's all a cake walk compared to the sacrifices others have made.

When considering things this way, I think I will do just fine tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Happy Easter... and WTF is a swieconka basket!?

I do hope that everyone who celebrated Easter had a good one. Mine was unseasonably cold!

I took the opportunity to make my own swieconka (pronounced sh-ve-yen-sohn-ka) basket to be blessed on the Saturday before Easter! For all of those who are unfamiliar, that is a Polish Easter tradition that my family has participated in for as far back as I can remember. What is involved? Well, some polish sausage to start (left). Then a butter lamb, some oranges, rye bread, hard boiled eggs and placzek (cinnamon bread coffee cake in this case).

Throw it all in a basket, cover it with a cloth and it's all ready for the priest to bless it. When that is said and done, set aside in the refrigerator. Come Easter morning you wake up, find your chocolate bunnies and Easter baskets and enjoy your swieconka basket for breakfast. Mmmmm... yummy!

I spent the holiday with Emily and her family. She enjoyed the swieconka basket tradition that I shared with her. We pretty much ate our selves sick with ham, potatoes, fruit, carrots and deserts. Look how Emily pretty much tired her self out from all the fun and eating (below). I think it was a good holiday even though we both were kind of miserable for having to do school work all weekend.

She's going to kill me for posting this picture! ;-)

The zen of being a graduate student.

So in my day to day wandering of the myriad of knowledge (and trash) the internet has to offer I stumbled upon this page listing rules that will help you live more like a Zen monk. I used to be into Zen meditation and practicing mindfulness in my day to day activities but over the past few years I have gradually gotten away from it. I blame it on the fact that I have been a graduate student because graduate school life is pretty much the antithesis of the life of a Zen monk.

Allow me to elaborate. Here's the list from the site referenced above:

1. Do one thing at a time.
2. Do it slowly and deliberately.
3. Do it completely.
4. Do less.
5. Put space between things.
6. Develop rituals.
7. Designate time for certain things.
8. Devote time to sitting.
9. Smile and serve others.
10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation.
11. Think about what is necessary.
12. Live simply.

Let's re-work this for graduate students:

1. Do at least 3 or more things at once. As a graduate student, multi-tasking is a way of life. Run at least 2 reactions while writing up results and reading a paper. If ever you are only doing one task... there is always something else you can find to be done. Do this as much as possible.
2. Do everything as quickly as possible. The set of experiments you are currently working on... well, your adviser needed the results for those yesterday even though he assigned the task to you today. Unless you know how to slow time down (or go back in time all together) speed is the key!
3. Do switch tasks and pursue tangents in research regularly. You will never manage to fully complete a set of experiments without stumbling across some bizarre finding or new question that will requite you to shift your focus and pursue a whole new set of experiments. If you ever do manage to fully complete a set of experiments… you likely did them wrong.
4. Do MORE. Pretty self explanatory, even for a lowly graduate student.
5. Put space between things... to do more things. So your NMR will take about an hour to run… set up a new experiment in the mean time. So you have a few hours until your reaction runs to completion… work through that pile of data on your desk. So your TGA will take all night to run… sleep while it’s running. (O.K. that last one it silly because you should not be sleeping while running an instrument… you should be running a second instrument!)
6. Develop [bizarre] rituals. If wearing your lucky lab coat, hopping on one foot three times and saying a prayer to the chemistry Gods before starting a reaction will insure a higher yield or better result in your experiment, go for it… just be sure to write those procedures up accurately in your notebook.
7. Designate time for research tasks only. Eat, sleep, and drink research. You only have time in the day for research… do not set aside time to clean your apartment, make your self dinner, spend time with friends, eating breakfast, leisure reading, etc.
8. Avoid sitting at all costs. Why sit when you can be standing in front of your hood setting up another experiment, or standing in front of an instrument gathering data? As a matter of fact… remove all chairs from your lab space and even get rid of the one in front of your desk. They are unnecessary.
9. Maintain a consistent frown and scowl. You are a graduate student, have been for years and you will continue to be for seemingly endless years… you have nothing to be happy about. Even when an experiment works… frown and scowl because you still do not understand what the result means.
10. Make cleaning glassware meditation. Unless of course you can pawn the job off on the undergraduate working underneath you in the lab. In that case take the newly freed up time to do another experiment.
11. Think about what is necessary [research]. Do not be caught thinking about what you are going to do over the holiday weekend, or when you will get to go out for a beer with your friends, or when you will be able to go out and enjoy the unseasonably warm weather… because all of those things are unnecessary and will be supplanted by research.
12. Live simply... because you have no choice. You get paid a yearly stipend… stipend is a Latin word that means you live off of Raman noodles and peanut butter sandwiches in a one room mold infested studio crap-shack apartment, wearing old out of style clothing and drive a rusted out sedan with +150,000 miles on it, a passenger door that does not open and it strangely smells of rotten cheese. You don’t need anything more than that (well… you get your notebook and laboratory space too).

Hippity-hoppity Easter's on it's way!

"Life is just one damned thing after another.” (according to Elbert Hubbard)

Yeah... I think he was on to something.

So here I am looking pretty exhausted. My "thesis beard" is coming in pretty nicely. What is a "thesis beard" you ask? Well, when all you do for a couple of weeks is sit in front of a computer and write about the work that has consumed your day to day life for the past 2 years you begin to neglect the unnecessary things in life.

For instance, there's no time and energy for shaving these days (hence the unkempt facial hair). When you open your kitchen cupboards all you have left is a few packages of Raman noodles, oatmeal and a bottle of mustard because you don't have time or energy for grocery shopping (and you actually try to consider ways to combine those ingredients into something edible). Laundry... well, that only gets done when you are down to one last pair of boxers, that last pair of socks with the holes in just one of them and the shirt you never wear because it has a distinctly visible stain on the front of it (and even then you are thinking that it would be O.K. to wear that outfit just one more day).

Yep... this is the life I chose as a graduate student. Funny they never included this in the brochure.

***Also... I will have you know that upon the request of a friend I turned off the moderator feature for posting comments on this blog. Now as soon as you post a comment it will be visible on the blog. Let's hope that this does not allow for spam to be posted all over the place now (f&$g SPAMMERS!).

Oh great! Something else for the church to make me feel guilty about.

I doubt anyone really heard about this gem of a news story because later in the day everything was overshadowed by allegations of NYS governor Eliot Spitzer being involved in a prostitution ring (!!! yeah... that one really took me by surprise), but did anyone hear about the new modern 7 deadly sins proclaimed by the Catholic church?

Click here and here to read more about it.

The new list of the 7 deadly sins are as follows:

1. Genetic modification.
2. Human experimentations.
3. Polluting the environment.
4. Social injustice.
5. Causing poverty.
6. Financial gluttony.
7. Taking drugs.

(The bold items I have particular problem with.)

It is things like this that cause me to have problems with the Catholic Church. I want to be clear that it is the Church I have problem with and not the Religion. The Church is run by man who is fallible and subject to political and social influence in order to establish Church doctrine as they see fit.

When I go to church on Sunday am I supposed to feel guilty now because I do not drive a hybrid car? Am I suposed to feel guilty because I am a scientist and believe that human experimentation and genetic modification has lead to advances that have helped improve the quality of life for millions of people? Am I supposed to feel guilty because I am working hard and have a job and am financially well off?

Hmmm... honestly, I don't think I am going to lose a wink of sleep over it.

I'm sorry Pope... I still believe in God and the Religion, but your Church is not going to have this sheep amidst its flock.

Wishes for goodwill and happiness from friends and family on my 25th birthday.

An e-birthday card sent to me from Jon with the following message, "The card says it all..."

He he he.

Thanks for the greetings and kind words on my birthday everyone!

Ohhhhh... the life of a graduate student as the gears grind on.

I think I found my new favorite website to go to for procrastination. They have this amazingly funny (and sad to say... all too true!) comic strip about graduate school. I can certainly relate to much of the topics. The strip above caught my eye because I did the same thing my self!

I can also relate to these comics because RIT is in its second day of its spring break yet I have barely even noticed. All I have done on these two days is put in long full days of research in the lab just like any other day as the gears continue unrelentingly to grind onwards.

VIDEO COMPLEMENTS OF PAT CONDELL: "More demands from Islam"

I have a desire to share this. I am not going to deal with accusations of me being a hate-monger or racist so I am not going to state my opinions on this piece but I encourage you to form your own opinions.