The bitch is back!

I've finally gotten around to updating the blog. It's funny, for weeks now, I've been thinking of all kinds of great things to write about. Now that I actually have time to write about them, I can't think of a single thing I want to write about. I guess I'll just give a rundown of what's been going on since my last post.

The biggest change is that I've advanced to PhD candidacy (I'm not waiting for the paperwork to go through to claim the distinction. God only knows how long that will actually take.). ABD, baby (thanks, Jamin)! So, I had my first committee meeting last Thursday to present and defend my research proposal. I was a little surprised at how long it took. My committee and I were holed up in the department library for nearly two hours. I only had 35 PowerPoint slides in my presentation, so I figured I would spend about 40-45 minutes presenting my stuff. No. When I finally reached my last slide, it was an hour and 26 minutes after I had initially opened my mouth to start speaking. Holy shit. Thankfully, I was only stumped by one question: what is the conductance of the water the zebrafish are kept in? No clue. I still don't know and, at this point, don't much care. Even better is that the PI of the fish lab (where I do my zebrafish experiments) didn't know either. I didn't get any criticisms and was told that I gave an "excellent" presentation. My PI said that it was obvious that I had read everything he thought I needed to and he said I did a great job. That made me feel awesome - almost embarrassed. This project is my boss's "baby" and I really wanted to make sure that I represented the project and him well. Comments from other committee members like, "you're a really good speaker and you gave a great presentation," and, "you didn't just tell us about your project, you taught us," told me that I nailed it. I feel like I have finally earned my place in the lab. All the teaching I did at EMU and WCC has really been advantageous to me. I am comfortable speaking in front of groups of diverse educational backgrounds, I know how to tailor a presentation for a particular audience - what background to include and details I can (and sometimes should) leave out. I've also gotten good at anticipating what questions might be asked of me. The one thing I really need to improve on is time management. I always wait until the last damn minute to do everything - to the point where it isn't unusual for someone to get pissed at me as a result. Oddly enough, putting the finishing touches on a presentation just minutes before I'm scheduled to give it seems to work for me. I prefer not to practice beforehand - I feel like my talk will be too rehearsed and lacking in spontaneity. I feel like I express enthusiasm more authentically the very first time I give a talk. Don't get me wrong, I don't go into a presentation unprepared. I scrutinize every image and line of text on every slide. I know exactly what information needs to be conveyed, but my preference is to figure out how exactly to convey it while I'm in the moment. I think many of these idiosyncrasies can be blamed on my attention deficit disorder. For optimum performance, it seems that my brain requires an absolutely ridiculous amount of stimulation. This comes in the form of pushing the limits of my superiors (how much will they let me get away with before they get pissed?), seeing how long I can put off a task before it becomes impossible to do by a certain deadline, things that cause me almost crippling levels of anxiety. It drives me nuts and I absolutely hate this about myself. However, I'm at a point in my life where I wonder if it's too late to "fix" me. I feel far too old to keep getting chastised like a small child. I also wonder if faculty would respond to me differently if 1) they knew I have ADD (I don't make this known because I'm convinced it will be perceived as a "convenient excuse" for why I  sometimes don't perform up to expectations), and 2) that I am actually 37, not 27 - also something I don't tend to publicize.

One more bit of self-reflection before signing off. Here's an enlargement of my new profile picture:

An early iteration of my "bitch face"

I'm three (possibly four) years old in this picture. Something I've been reflecting upon lately is that fish  have been a consistent thread running through my life - especially now. My astrological sign is Pisces, in this picture I'm wearing a swimsuit with fish on it while holding a dead bluegill that my dad - an avid fisherman - had just caught, and now I'm sitting here writing about the zebrafish project that has gradually come to consume me. A little freaky. While my father was alive, I never shared his love of fishing - although I did love to eat what he caught and cooked for me. When I was pregnant with Elliot, it was so hard to have to keep telling him that I couldn't eat his fish. Even with that temporary abstinence, I'm sure my body is loaded with enough mercury to make even the Mad Hatter cringe. Man, were those fish delicious. I miss them. And him. Now, I essentially go fishing in a barrel every week for my job - with a net in a full aquarium in a lab. I sometimes like to think that maybe, just maybe, he still hasn't given up on trying to get his youngest daughter to love fishing the way he once did. She's working on it.