2009 take 2

This year has not been great in terms of health and productivity. I have been doing some work, but my experiments haven't been cooperating and I've spent too much time using aimless websurfing as a way of self-medicating for the anxiety I feel when I think about my project. And while I've been trying to eat vegetables, I've been eating way too much junk food and I haven't even been exercising. My knee has been sore for a couple of months now, but I need to try to do something active, anyway. I have seen a doctor about it and I'm doing exercises to help it.

So, since tomorrow is the 1st of July and the start of the second half of the year, I'm going to start afresh. And to make sure I take it seriously, I'm going to donate $10 for every day I don't stick to The Plan for the next 30 days. I would pledge to donate to a cause I hate, but I think the money will be enough disincentive.

The plan is:

1. exercise
2. eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables
3. leave home by 9.30am
4. no internet without doing an hour's work first and then only for 10 minutes at a time
5. go to bed by midnight

I'm actually going to try something slightly different, but the above list will be my minimum requirements (with some adjustment when I'm travelling).

I went to an alternative careers workshop a couple of weeks ago and got discouraged because the person went on about how grad students have all these transferrable skills like time management and motivation. I really don't have those skills. So, I'm going to try treating lab like a job I don't especially care about, but have to do, in order to gain some of those skills. To that end, I'll try to spend exactly 8 hours a day at lab, without using any internet other than for work purposes. I'll let you know how that goes...

the cost of having an awesome email address

My email address is the real life equivalent of lucy at gmail.com so I get quite a bit of mail that's meant for other Lucys who presumably forget that they had to add a number or something to their username. Two years ago I got an email from Rosemary. It obviously wasn't spam so I replied to say I wasn't the Lucy she was aiming for and to please remove me from her address book. She wrote back "Lucy, it's me Rosemary", because apparently I might just ask everyone to stop emailing me without checking if I recognise their name. I wrote back again, asking if she was sure she knew me, because I was fairly certain I didn't know anyone called Rosemary and she never replied.

Today, Rosemary tried to friend me on facebook. She also commented on my profile pic, which makes me think (a) I missed a privacy option somewhere and (b) either I'm going senile and have forgotten ever meeting this person or she is, since she managed to look at my picture and not realise that she's never met me. I'm pretty sure it's her, but should I send her a message again to ask how she thinks she knows me?

OMG! Ponies!

In the wild!

Can you blame me for not being excited to be back to normal life?

I need less soul-destroying forms of procrastination

I had a reasonably productive day yesterday and apparently I had to make up for it today. Getting to lab meeting by 8.30am never helps, either. So, instead of dealing with all the samples I generated yesterday, I've been refreshing google reader and playing pointless facebook games.

For the past five months, I've been playing Mind Games. It's not a single game, instead you have a choice of three simple games, each of which pay out tokens which can be used to buy prizes. Once you've bought so many prizes and got hold of the ones that are awarded randomly, you can move up to the next level.

I've been annoyed at how pointless and arbitrary the levels are. And yet, I kept playing all this time. It's only now that I've reached the highest level and realised I'm now supposed to either continue with the same account to try to improve my win percentage, or start from the beginning again (which a fourth game available), that I've gotten disgusted enough with myself to remove the application. At least it's better than the very similar, but even more pointless version where you can drag a coin across fake scratch-its to get tokens, instead of even having to solve a sudoku puzzle.

Yesterday, after reading my post about skills I enjoy using, a friend suggested I could add Mind Games to the list. I was ashamed to have to admit that I didn't actually enjoy playing it very much. The pointless games I waste time on do say something about my motivations. I like positive feedback and making visible progress. Apparently it doesn't matter if the rewards and goals are mere pixels. I also like competing. I genuinely enjoy playing anagram games against worthy opponents, even though the solitaire versions bore me to tears.

Now that I've removed the Mind Games application, I have no illusions that I'll automatically get more work done. I would like to make my procrastination more worthwhile, or at least enjoyable, though. I know it's easier to waste time online while at work, because it looks enough like work to escape notice, unlike things I'd actually enjoy, like knitting or reading. Unfortunately, I do it at home as well. In fact, I just forced myself to stop so that I could finish this post.

I need to be more mindful of what I'm spending my time on. At work, that means doing my experiments so that I can go home earlier and do things I really enjoy, not just things I prefer marginally to lab work. But I also need to rebuild my ability to delay gratification. I would've aced the marshmallow test when I was a kid, but my self-control has been slowly eroding since starting grad school. Maybe I should start cleaning my teeth left-handed.

skills I actually enjoy using #1

A blogging facebook friend posted a status message asking for advice on a recipe today so I happily chased down the answer via google. This isn't someone I've had much direct contact with, so I kind of felt like a loser, or at least awkward, for being so eager to help, but I love finding answers for people. After fighting with apathy all morning when faced with my experiments (I have done some real work, too), it was nice to feel some enthusiasm and like I could be helpful.

Several of the career search books I've read include exercises involving identifying your favourite skills. I tend to think I don't have any useful skills, or at least any people would pay for, so I've had trouble making these lists. I'm going to try taking note whenever I actually enjoy something, though, even if I can't immediately think of a job that would use it.

So, number one on the new list is looking up answers to questions for people.

I know I have much more enthusiasm for answering questions that don't require experimentation. I think I also prefer answering questions for other people. I can follow google results or wikipedia entries out of interest for a while, but I lose interest much more quickly if I'm not trying to help someone else out. I like feeling useful, and smart, if it takes some thinking to find the right answer or the right way to explain it.

I've wondered about being a medical librarian since seeing it listed as an alternative to medical research in this article about why research is an over-rated career. It sounds like they might get to answer questions like this. I need to find out what that job's actually like. Someone on an alternative careers panel I went to years ago had a job doing lit reviews for a company that published them. At the time, I thought it sounded boring, but maybe something like that could involve answering questions for people. I might want to have more direct contact with the person whose question I was answering, though. If you have any thoughts about potential careers, let me know.

I often feel awkward for being overenthusiastic when someone asks for help, like I'm being needy and just doing it to prop up my self-esteem. I wonder if it's such a bad thing to try to think of careers that would complement my neuroses, though, instead of trying to overcome them.

on quitting (long)

I've been collecting posts about how quitting can be a good thing lately. I don't really want to quit, and yet these posts make me feel uneasy so I'm trying to think seriously about why I want to keep going and at what point it wouldn't be worth it.

From Sarahliz:

In some sense I “failed” but really only in the sense that I failed to force myself to continue doing something that was making me miserable just because I could continue doing it. I have no doubt in my mind that I could have successfully finished my dissertation had I wanted to. But ultimately it came down to the fact that I didn’t want to. And I couldn’t come up with a single good reason why I should put myself through something that was making me miserable in those circumstances.

This is close enough to how I feel that it scares me, because if that's really how I feel, then maybe I should quit. And yet, I don't want to give up. I'm worried that the only reason for finishing is to prove to myself that I can do it and so that the people I've gone through grad school with won't look down on me. I still have some lingering hope that I would enjoy research more in a different lab with a different project, too.

I said in my last post that I was originally excited about my project, and that's true, but even so, I've never been as passionate as the people who've really thrived in grad school. I was never excited to get up in the morning and go to lab, even at the best of times and I could easily leave all thoughts of research behind on weekends and holidays.

When I first decided I wanted to do research, back in high school, it wasn't because I was curious about particular questions (I actually thought I might like to do astrophysics until I took first year physics). It was more that I couldn't think of anything else that would be at all interesting. They gave us all a big book that listed careers and what study or training was required for each. Most of them sounded like they'd get boring very quickly, but I thought research would at least involve a variety of things. Figuring out something new would have to be interesting, right?

That sounds so naive, but I did have a decent amount of lab experience when I applied to grad school. I did work experience in high school and was lucky enough to be there at an exciting moment in a project. I did three semi-independent research projects in undergrad, and then honours, which is an extra academic year of full-time research after undergrad. My honours project started out very cool with potential for exciting publications and then ran into technical problems that meant nothing useful ever came of it, so I even had experience with failed research. I still enjoyed all that well enough that I thought I'd enjoy it as a career, so what went wrong?

I think one problem is that I was really motivated by feeling smart, rather than anything intrinsic to research. I was good at school and enjoyed it and this is as far as school goes. Unfortunately, it's not really school anymore. The periodic rewards of good grades and awards ran out after I finished taking classes. The research itself should be the reward now. And it might be, if I were getting results.

From DamnGoodTechnician:

I honestly believe this is an offshoot of the Impostor Syndrome, where you believe that you have failed because you just didn't try hard enough, and that if you were just a better scientist, you'd be happy at what you're doing. These people slog through, believing that that next piece of data, that next paper, is just the thing that will make them fall in love with science again.

Again, I worry that this is true for me. I definitely feel that if I tried harder and were a better scientist (meaning my experiments would work), I would be happier doing research. Every time I've expressed any doubts about whether research is for me, people have urged me to keep trying, because I've come too far to give up and everyone gets sick of grad school. People familiar with my advisor, especially, have tried to convince me I should try working in a lab where people actually publish before deciding to quit. It's easy to say I could do a post-doc and then quit if I'm still not enjoying it, but is it even worth getting to that point?

I haven't mentioned my struggles with depression and anxiety yet in this post. I guess my real hope is that I could get those under control, which would let me be more productive, which would lead to actual results and publications, which would make me excited about research again. I'm not quite convinced I can make an informed decision about whether I enjoy research enough without ever experiencing the satisfying part. Unfortunately, if doing something I don't enjoy is contributing to my depression, maybe I won't ever get to be productive enough to enjoy it.

In the comments to DamnGoodTechnician's post, Drugmonkey said "The key is to be very clear with oneself about what one likes/doesn't like about the current training stage and what one will like about being a PI." What I don't like is feeling stupid (which reminds me, I never posted my rant about that article on why feeling stupid is a good thing (the shorter version: the author is confusing ignorant for stupid; they are very different things)), the lack of obvious progress and the fact that a lot of my benchwork and cell culture is boring and mindless enough that a trained monkey could do it. Of course, I also have the problem that I'm bored enough to zone out and make stupid, but critical errors, which further reduce my progress.

So, what would be different if I were a PI? I'd have my own trained monkeys technicians and grad students to palm the benchwork off on, so that would be good. Maybe I'd be able to see the progress more, if I were looking at the combined output of a whole lab. There's always the hope that I'd be a better manager than my advisor and my lab would actually be making more progress, too, but I don't have any evidence for that. I'm pretty sure writing grants would make me feel stupid, but then, most things do and maybe I'd manage to improve my self-esteem by then.

Maybe I should be wondering what would be different about being a post-doc, since I'd have to get through that first. I don't think much would be different, aside from the pressure to get publications faster (theoretically with less guidance, but I think I already get little enough). So, that's not promising.

From Alisa Bowman:

When you run the right race, you feel drawn to the finish line. Yes, the race might be hard. ... But if you are running the right race, you will keep putting one foot in front of the other because doing anything less results in just one sensation: despair.
When you are running the wrong race, however, you might not have a single hardship, but you’ll still think about quitting. And when you do quit, you’ll experience one sensation: relief.

When my advisor recommended at the last minute that I not present at the conference I went to recently, I was frustrated and annoyed, but also overwhelmingly relieved. A post-doc in my lab has told me several times I should've presented, despited my conflicting data, in order to get feedback and be more visible in the field, but really the only time I even slightly wish I'd presented is when thinking of the line I could've had on my C.V.

Maybe work should not be so hard. Maybe I shouldn't have to force myself to show up to work every day, and I could do something that I would actually want to spend time thinking about, or that would give me some sense of satisfaction after a day's work. Although, I think my anxiety would get in the way of that in any career.

I feel like I've been convincing myself to quit as I write, which was not my intention. I'm left feeling that a big part of my motivation for finishing is to be able to point to the PhD as proof that I really am smart. And that seems pretty stupid.

The more reasonable part is that I'm still holding out hope that if I weren't so depressed or anxious and if I were making more progress, I'd enjoy it. Those are big ifs, though. I'd certainly be happier if both those things were the case, even if I did find out I still didn't like research. Hopefully some of my ideas from the previous post will help me test that.

If I do quit, I'm totally getting this shirt.

moving forward

I haven't contributed to Scientiae before because I'm not really a science blogger, but the theme this month is "moving forward", which is something I need to work on.

All year, I've been feeling like I'm moving backwards, not forwards. I've spent a lot of time paralysed by depression and anxiety and then every time I do manage to take a step forwards, I get dragged back two by conflicting results or experimental mistakes. A lot of my anxiety used to be about whether I was even capable of doing research, but I think I've come to the conclusion that I could do this well, if (a) I weren't depressed and (b) I were actually interested in my project.

I read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck recently and got very annoyed reading the part about depression. The book is about how intelligence isn't fixed and everyone has the potential to learn how to do whatever they want, provided they believe that's possible and are willing to admit when they don't know something. Unfortunately, instead of learning how to have that kind of growth mindset from reading the book, I just felt bad about not having one.

When talking about depression, Dweck claimed that people with a growth mindset still get depressed, but it doesn't ruin their lives as much because they keep moving forward, despite feeling miserable. However, feeling hopeless about the future is a symptom of depression so I would argue that people who can maintain the growth mindset belief that things can improve and they'll get better are not suffering from the most severe form of depression. Obviously, continuing to go to class/work and completing assignments is better in the long run, but saying depressed people just need to believe they'll eventually feel better is as insensitive and unhelpful as just telling them to just cheer up.

It's possible part of the reason I got so annoyed was that I know I should be doing more to help myself. I'm not so depressed that I'm incapable of moving forward, even though it's hard. I know I will feel infinitely better once I'm finished grad school so I need to make sure I keep taking steps in that direction, even if they're baby ones.

I'm currently reading Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression. The second step, after recognising that depression is a sign you need to make changes to your life, is to do the things you know make you feel better. I know getting enough sleep, exercising and eating more fruits and vegetables make me feel better, but I've been slacking on all those things. I have been making a manageable list of things to do each day at lab, but I need to work on starting the list earlier instead of wasting time online first.

Small steps can help in overcoming depression and anxiety, but I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that I really don't care about my project anymore. I've tried to find an interesting way of looking at it, but every potential point of interest has turned out not to be true. I started out working on a very cool project that was really too ambitious for grad school, but I didn't care because I was excited about it. Since then, however, technical problems and depression and poor advising and lack of self-esteem have all combined to crush my enthusiasm. I'm left with a boring sliver of my original project and no interest in lab work or research. I do wonder if I'd be more interested in science if I had a better project, but I've come to dislike doing experiments so much that I doubt it.

I've also been reading a bunch of books on choosing careers and jobhunting. That's been making me feel hopelessly inadequate, because I don't feel like I even have any of the basic time management skills or conscientiousness employers wnat, let alone any higher skills. I'm wondering if it would help to treat the rest of grad school as just a job I'm doing while I figure out what I really want to do with my life. Maybe that would make it easier to focus on getting things done and developing good work habits without my worries about the larger picture becoming overwhelming.

Of course, quitting grad school could also be moving forward, but I think that might be another post.

scientiae-carnival

things that are making me want to cry today

• Having to wait 10 days for an appointment to see someone about my knee that has already been hurting for two weeks.
• Not complaining about the wait.
• Taking too long to find my second elephant earring.
• Talking to a career advisor about alternative careers.
• Reading the CVs/resumes of all the overachievers in the materials she gave me.
• Missing out on a seat on the bus.
• Getting my samples all ready and then finding out there was no wash buffer left.
• Reading an article about selective mutism that says the goal of treatment is to "create an environment that assures the child that, “You are capable. You have interesting things to say. You are fun to be around.”" because I don't really believe any of those are true.
• Other people being in the kitchen when I went to eat lunch.
• Having to present at lab meeting tomorrow.
• This photo (and not even the fact that they were rescued from a fire).
• The fact that none of the anti-depressants I've tried have ever done anything so there's probably no point trying again.