I got my NSF comment sheets, and it sort of sent me into a set of blues. No, it's not that I'm bent out of shape about not winning an absurdly competitive fellowship...it's about the frustration with myself that I'm good but just not good enough to be excellent. I knew that in applying, seeing my friend who has done teach for America in rural Mississippi, has 2 papers and 2 poster presentations, a Goldwater, and an absurd GPA and reading her essays along with seeing her qualifications that I just am not that awesome. I don't know how to change the fact that I don't have any publications...I don't think this problem will persist throughout my graduate career, but I also don't have a project that's a hit and run with it project right now and it's going to take a little bit of patience to get some of my shit to work. Like maybe a year. I don't know. Maybe things will start rolling this summer after classes are done. But it's just not bam bam bam falling into place for me immediately. Immediacy is rewarded in science sometimes (at least for the $$$), even if some of the most meaningful results are on a longer timescale and you have to fight for them more.

I've never been a fit the mold awesome student, and I've always ridden off of giving people the impression that I am passionate, competent, and possess skills that don't manifest themselves in the classroom but are ultimately the skills a scientist needs. But even this has yet to manifest itself in a publication (in my first year of graduate school) and while I'm trying to keep this all in perspective...well... Perhaps it's the fact that I keep the company of too many over achievers. My best friend is submitting his first first-authored paper to a high impact journal in his second semester of grad school. It makes me feel like, well, WTF am I doing with my life?

For my reviews I got a Good/Very Good and Very Good/Good. I know in this game, Good isn't Good enough; you have to be Excellent and Very Good. Actually, my weak academic record and lack of a publication record wasn't even commented on (although one reviewer commented that I didn't have any abstract or poster presentations). Actually the reviewers really had nothing but nice, even glowing things to say in the comment sheet. The only negative thing (besides the comment about poster presentations) was that my previous research statement could have more details in it (how could I fit any more details in 2 pages?). All the rest of the comments were on how strong and well written my proposed research was; how I had varied research; how my research in natural products carried into my future research; how my personal statement was good; how strong my letters were (and how one in particular said that I had incredible enthusiasm for science and potential for future success); how I demonstrated a commitment to outreach to elementary schools; how I demonstrated a commitment to mentoring undergraduates; how my international research experience is a positive indicator for collaborative networks and broad dissemination in my field; how I explained how my work is relevant to the scientific community at large.

Really these rating sheets are pretty much useless. They say that I'm a good scientist and have a lot of potential, but I am just not awesome enough to be competitive for awesome people fellowships for awesome people who deserve to get awesome amounts of money. I guess I should take it as a complement that I got this far?

angst

I'm starting my last year of college in the fall, and this is causing me more mental angst that it probably should. It stems from feeling unprepared for dealing with What Comes Next.

Senior year at Reed is a pretty hyped process. Everyone needs to write a senior thesis and the science seniors lock themselves in the lab and look haggard and depressed by shit not working and start prematurely behaving like grad students. They keep odd hours and are totally devoted to their thesis at the exclusion of everything else and thus whine-a-thon culture is encouraged by the culture of the school. At the end you need to give an oral defense and (in the chemistry department) an oral presentation to your classmates during one of the seminar days.

I have a lot of plans for next year, perhaps too many. I got in contact with a professor at a neighboring institution who works on polyketide biosynthesis so I can continue work in the area that I'm doing this summer because it fascinates me. I'm excited, but I have no idea what to expect and whether I've cut out more work than is strictly necessary in facilitating this project that involves a Reed advisor and an advisor from this neighboring institution. Hopefully I'll manage to arrange a project where I can have a Reed lab setup for instead of having to commute to the neighboring instution to do my labwork (I don't have a car) so that I don't loose time constantly, although I'm worried that our instrumentation is not adequate.

I'm also tentatively trying to organize a journal club starting in the fall, and trying to organize an independent study project in the spring on biomimetic synthesis. My rationale for the independent study (not a lab independent study, but a reading papers and writing a review-style document at the end sort of independent study) is that it's more interesting to me than taking a structured course and probably just as much work. I don't really like taking exams much, and I read papers all the time anyway, and it's in a subject that's not really related to what I'm probably going to do my thesis in (thus a bit of a mental break from that), but in a subject that I have a lot of interest in. But I suppose I might feel differently about it at the end of next year.

And I'm trying to figure out this whole grad school shit, while angsting about it and paging through professors' webpages and sending emails instead of hammering through GRE problems. I mean, I've little bit of GRE prep, but not a sufficient amount, and as the days crawl closer and closer to the academic school year, this is starting to stress me out more and more. The problem being, I guess, that I'm pretty caught up in my labwork here. Studying for standardized tests is boring, whereas labwork and paper reading is engaging. I fear this problem will be the exact same one I'll face in the fall. I also have to take a stupid analytical chemistry course that I know I'm going to abhor that will probably get pushed to the last priority.

I am so fucking tired. My god. I don't know how I managed to get this sleep deprived.

The semester goes ok. Physical chemistry is giving me some demons because I suck at math. That last stat therm test was pretty brutal. I hear Dan's tests are always brutal though. Anyway, it's just going to be something to get through.

I don't have much structured course-time as I am only taking one lab class but a lot of homework all the time. I'm also working on something in one of my profs labs so in between classes I'm usually running reactions and working things up and taking NMRs and so on. Squeezing in time in the lab on top of a full load of classes is a completely different matter than having seven or eight hours during the day to just do chemistry like it has been doing summer research. It's making me really excited for thesis next year, though.

I love being in the lab doing projects. What I don't like are class labs. It honestly just feels like a huge waste of time to spend eight hours taking data that no one gives a fuck about and has been done thousands of times before and will yield crappy results and then spend another ten hours writing some bitchy-ass stupid lab report where you have to anal-retentively propigate all the error and so on. It's just biochem methods and analytical that I have to get through still and then I am relieved from stupid lab classes. I guess I see why they are useful and necessary, but by junior year you just sort of feel done with it. I want to be in lab the doing research and not doing annoying pedigogical exercises. The exposure to lab techniques is good, I guess, but I almost feel like I'm at a point where I can pick up most lab techniques as necessary.

I've also been thinking more and more about applying to grad school next fall. Basically, I just want to be in a situation where I am discussing and learning about science at a high level and being in the lab. I've always thought I would take a break between grad school and undergrad but I'm starting to think that I'm ready to move on to that phase of my life.

Life plans

I've been thinking more and more about graduate school lately, and I'm pretty into the idea of going. I've spent a lot of time not marrying myself to the idea due to a lot of reasons (mostly including self-doubt, a low GPA, a keen awareness of how competitive the world is, and a certain resistance to the idea of doing something just because it's what you are "supposed" to do) and trying to convince myself it's not what I necessarily want, or that I shouldn't close myself off to other options in life or to the idea of not doing it. But when it comes down to it, I want to do science at that level eventually and I know that, and have basically been becoming more and more sure that I love science, I can handle being pushed to my limits with work emotionally, and that I have the drive to work on the sort of project a PhD would be. And while I'm not the best test taker, I have strong skills in other areas. I'm good in the lab, I'm good at communicating ideas face-to-face, I know how to retrieve I don't know quickly on the internet, I can talk about science cogently, I know how to digest the primary lit. I know professors who can attest to these skills.

But then I try to take things in perspective. I'm studying the hard sciences at a hard school. I know several profs who could write me good recommendations. I have a lot of research experience. And a really broad scientific background with a solid academic program. These things all matter too, right? Perhaps matter more than my GPA?

I don't know. It's hard not to worry, but I spend so much time consoling other people that I'm starting to believe my consolations. It is scary. We have this giant recession and everything worth doing, or so it seems, is incredibly competitive. Medicine and law and grad school in most other fields are more competitive, it seems, so maybe I should count my blessings.

But off of this "woe is me, can I hack it?" shit, I think I've finally figured out what I want to study, broadly. Basically, synthetic organic heavy-yet-still-interdisciplinary chemical biology. I want to do something more at the interface of chemistry and biology. The ideal program would be something like (ha! ha! ha! after talking about all this GPA woe) UCSF's Chemistry & Chemical Biology program. As far as I can tell, a lot of this interdisciplinary stuff is under all different labels, so my actual PhD could be in any number of things (including biophysics), it all depends on the individual labs I am interested in. I should start keeping lists of labs that are publishing projects I'm interested in that I come across in the lit.

So this is the plan right now: finish off this year (my junior year) strong, get a another summer of research this next summer (and prep for the GREs), take the GREs next year, then take a year off and apply to grad school during that year, and tech. I've also seriously thought about moving to the Bay Area after Reed, although possibly staying around Portland and trying to get a job at OHSU.

Okay, this moving to the Bay area thing is a recent idea, related to this whole actually I kind of want to go to grad school thing. I visited some friends there who were in biophysics programs at UCSF and Berkeley. Which basically was what made me come to believe that these were the sort of people I wanted to be around and the sort of environment I wanted to be in. We talked about science! Even when we were in the bar! And more science! Some people think this is sad and indicative of an utter lack of ability to fit in socially. Perhaps, but I want to be able to talk about science with my buddies when drunk. The facilities at UCSF blew me away, and the projects they were doing where just so spectacular. The sort of stuff you read about in Nature, but at a small liberal arts school, we just don't even have close to the facilities to do.

But oh yes, I was talking about why I want to move to the Bay after Reed. It's a bigger city than Portland, but one I have ties to. A lot of people I go to school with grew up there, but there are also a lot of Reed alumni who move there for work or grad school, and so there's the sort of safety net of being around Reedies, but the novelty of being in a new city. In addition, I was born there and lived there until I was 2 and a half, and my parents have a lot of family friends who live there, some of their oldest friends from before they were married. There are even a couple friends from high school who went to school out there who might be around. It's not totally restablishing myself in a new city as much as moving other places would be.

Also, as far as I can tell, The Bay area and Boston are the place to be for the biological sciences. There's just such a neat relationship between the academic powerhouses and the biotech industry in those locations that I don't think exists to the same degree elsewhere. I could probably find a job as a tech, people seem to, at least. So at least I could be connected to the science, because I think I would be really unhappy in a situation where I wouldn't be doing science to some degree. Also, San Francisco rocks! The city is gorgeous, the climate is great, there's plenty of hipster culture and coffee snobbery and all that stuff. It's still the Pacific Northwest, which I love. I love the West Coast, and I don't really want to move back to the Midwest or East Coast. It's just a vibes and personality mesh thing. The only concern is that it's expensive to live there and rent is expensive. On the other hand, it's just for a year, maybe 2; I just need to sustain myself, and I'm not looking to save money. I can live reasonably cheaply, and I don't want to live in someplace boring just because it's cheap to live there.

I love Portland. Portland is a neat place to live, and I only got tastes of what it is like to be a person in Portland and not a student who spends her whole life between the library and lab during the school year, but I spent a summer there and got a feel for it, and I really do like the city a lot. It's been good, but after 4 years it's time to see more of the world. The argument to stay in Portland is that I really do have a lot of friends out there and possible employment prospects. It's sort of a comfort zone thing. Also, it's really cheap to live in Portland, and Portland is far from boring, unlike a lot of other cheap places to live. Portland is a great place to be a 20something.

So anyway, that's my current life plan. Finish undergrad, take a year off in the Bay Area, go for the PhD. Narrowing down what exactly I mean by "synthetic organic heavy chemical biology" might be good too. Figuring out if those projects are in Chemistry & Chemical Biology programs, Chemistry programs, Biochemistry programs, Pharmacology programs...

What comes after the PhD? Academia, I think, although industry and a number of other paths aren't out of the picture either. This is a little more hazy. But seriously, I think academia is more my style. My friend and I have a running joke that if we decide in ~10 years and/or during our post-docs that if we're not feeling the academic route, then we're starting up a biotech company together; he thinks there's a 10% chance of that happening. So maybe it's making the big bucks in biotech. In any case, it's something, although I'm not quite sure what.