I have survived... and made it to D-Day +4.

I SURVIVED! I am referring of course to my thesis defense. I succeeded in delivering a great talk that my committee enjoyed (though I thought it was lackluster at best). I faired well in the 2 hours of cross examination and critiquing that followed. I received a large mass of recommended thesis revisions and now have until April 21 to get it all in order. The whole ordeal was very exhausting and I am glad it is over.

I may have won that "battle", but the "war" still wages on. in the days that followed my defense I took Wednesday off (completely... leaving all paperwork at my office and going no where near it) and then I hastily prepared to present my research findings at the ACS national conference in New Orleans... which is where I am writing this!

Here's a picture of me on the River Walk in New Orleans by the Mississippi River. It's the first time I have seen it... and she's a mighty river I tell ya!

This is a picture of "The Spanish Plaza" (Sidd admiring the fountain). A few minutes before I took that picture we witnessed a guy go down on one knee and propose to his girlfriend... no joke! (She said yes and received applause from the passers by.)And of course, what would New Orleans be without a trip down Bourbon Street. Pretty damn cool how they let you walk right down the middle of the street (all car traffic is blocked off at night) from bar to bar with open alcoholic beverages! Sidd and I are fitting in very nicely.

This is going to be a fun week! Hopefully I will be able to keep you all posted as to what's going on. Wish me luck for my talk on Thursday!

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!