Things Lost in the Fire - A New Life List

This seems as good a place as any to start a new life list. My old one was lost in the great macbook explosion of 2004 and I've always just thought that I might haphazardly stumble across it on a random blog or email. Well, I've searched high and low and it is time to start a new one. Although, it really would have been satisfying to cross "pet a wild squirrel," "swim in a hot spring," "get a bachelor's" and "run a 10k" off of the list :S

So, without further adieu, I present: LIFE LIST #2
(bear with me folks, I'm aiming quite high here and I expect to be updating this quite frequently)

• Write a popular-science book
• See the aurora borealis
• Explore the deep sea in a submarine
• Create a scholarship
• Swim across the Chesapeake Bay
• Run a half marathon
• Run a marathon
• Hike Angel's Landing in Zion National Park
• Learn to field-dress wild animals
• Take a tour of CERN
• Make someone's life easier than mine by teaching them something I had to learn the hard way (this is more of a tally than a cross off)
• Win a Nobel Prize
• Go somewhere cold enough that my eyelashes freeze
• Visit Antarctica

And Now We Wait...

"Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act." - Paulo Coelho

Okay, I'm just going to admit it - I'm terrified. This waiting is so very difficult. I want to prepare and plan and start my academic life. But, the bottom line is, it still may not happen. I know the best I can do is stay positive and hope that my personal statement and references make me stand out. I feel like I'm kind of "faking it til I make it" as far as confidence that I will be the one they possibly select out of four. There is this crazy balancing act I seem to be attempting with how often I can bug people who I've tried to get advice from. I just seem to have no idea what I am doing. I'm applying to an internship at a marine biochemical institute to try to get some lab experience should I get in. I'm not sure how this is going to work, given I work close to an hour away and a 8-4:30pm schedule. I may be willing to work several nights of the week and on weekends in addition to my schedule, but I doubt those who work there will. I want to email people again and ask them what they did in the months before graduate school to prepare them - what books did they read? internships? seminars?

I'm also attending the Mid-Atlantic Malacologists meeting at the Delaware Museum of Natural History on March 31st. I feel like this is a networking opportunity for my potential advisors, but I feel awkward emailing them to ask them if there is anything they'd want me to inquire about. Is this tacky? Is it brown nosing? I feel like I don't have anyone to ask these questions... there isn't a single person in my family who went to graduate school, no one among my friends in the sciences (save one I am continually bugging), and my professors from undergrad seem constantly busy. Should I just bite the bullet and shoot out a few emails or will I be shooting myself in the foot? Am I meant to struggle through all of this alone as some sort of test of my judgment or do most people have a mentor/support/guidance through the process?

I also plan to contact some professors at TU to see if I could be of assistance in their labs at all. I'll be working on my resume/cover letter today and tomorrow for the internship as well as to send some professors. Sometimes I just hope for someone to take pity on me and take me under their wing. I know I can do it alone, but I'd love to be on top of the curve for once instead of scrambling to figure everything out. I have the motivation! Let's do this!

It's Still Fantasy!

More waiting now. I received word from my advisor:

Great news…but one more step. You have not been offered a Taship yet, this will be decided by our GA committee sometime in the next month or so. So, the university has accepted you, but Biology has not made an offer yet. This does not mean that you cannot come; it just means that you do not yet have secured funding.

I do know there are quite a few applicants (I have 4 for my lab alone), that are pending, but I will try and keep you posted. Peter Houde is the chair of that committee, and he usually lets the faculty know about the ranking of the students after the committee meets (it also depends on how many slots we have open in the fall).

So this means I have some more waiting to do. I definitely jumped the gun with telling people, I think. Something felt amiss. Oh well. Now, I just have to stay positive and hope for the money. It's going to all come down to funding, so let's hope I have lots and lots of good karma from bad money luck in the past :) :)

Is This The Real Life?

I've been (somewhat unofficially) accepted into my top PhD program! I received an email "congratulating me again" for my acceptance when that was the first I'd heard of any final decision. I waited a day or so to send an email asking what was the deal and got a response on Sunday that I had indeed been accepted and should be receiving mail within the next couple days. I still don't have any mail and I feel like my correspondence with my possibly-soon-to-be advisor is being put on hold until I get solid confirmation and hopefully word also from the other school to which I applied. All of my former professors told me that I need to visit the campuses before I make a final decision, but all I seem to want to do is just give a big resounding YES so that it is a done deal and I can start some serious planning. I am still not sure how to approach this with the program - what do I say next? I'm sure I will figure it out, as I've felt in the dark this entire process about communicating anyhow.

Honestly, this acceptance doesn't feel like a big deal, even though I KNOW it is, even though it was not something I could have imagined happening to me despite all of my hard work. I got into a PhD program!! It doesn't feel real and at the same time I am waiting for it all to blow up in my face. Driving home the other night, I had this overwhelming thought that something will have to go wrong for this to go right and at the time I thought I knew what that would be. I feel very burdened worrying for and assuring two minds that this move will be fabulous. A piece of my heart still lies in the desert and I know I will have no trouble finding it again - no matter what. I have pieces of myself spread out in many nooks of this world and I hope to keep finding places where my heart explodes in the abstraction that defines any given place. I've also surrendered a piece of myself to another soul and feel quite vulnerable in the stochasticity and comfort of such a fleshy depository. Maybe the solution is to move those feelings into reserves, to the same place where the desert and where Finland now reside and where the Eastern Shore will reside soon.

An adventure awaits me, a bonafied independent existence. Who am I kidding? I am absolutely thrilled. I guess my biggest fear is that I will lose that thrill or get my hopes too high and never make it out of here or to the life of discovery I've always dreamed of. Lord knows, I've tried to cut my path so many times, in so many ways, through so many places. It's all gotten me to here though and you better believe I'm going to run!