Paris!: Random Tuesday Thoughts

This week I'm doing my own edition of Random Tuesday Thoughts.  It's no longer Tuesday where I am but that's okay.



I'm currently in Paris, France, enjoying a vacation.  I've been here for four days now and have another three to go.  Paris is interesting, to say the least.  There is a lot of history here!

Frostbite hurts.  I do not recommend getting frostbite.  How do you know you have frostbite?  Not sure; my feet were simply cold, then numb, then I couldn't feel them, and when they started warming up they turned multiple colors and got really itchy and water that was slightly tepid was burning.  In other words, painful.

I expected the star marking the center of Paris to be much larger than it actually was.

The center of Paris, France.  Little, no?

Napoleon has a really large tomb!  Really, really large tomb.  I saw a couple of pictures of the tomb before I arrived but they simply did not do it justice.  Plus there were no tourists in the pictures (for a visual scale) so I thought it was a normal sized tomb, not one that is well, I can't find the dimensions of the sarcophagus that he's buried in but it's seriously gigantic.

I have a hard time looking angry/fierce while roaming the streets.  I found that if you smile, especially around the Pompidou Center where the fake deaf and dumb people are they will chase you down asking for money.

My sleep schedule is very messed up.  I'm on the wake up early (7 am - this is vacation after all!), get breakfast (9 AM), explore the city (till 4 or 5 PM), nap (till 9 PM), dinner, stay up late (it's after 2 AM here now).  Much sleeping.  That was fine the first day or so but now the number of days left is less than the number of days completed and my list of things to see is still very long!

I can't handle the mustard.  I'm very weak.  At the table of most little restaurants is very spicy mustard.  Now I ask for ketchup right away.

If you plan a trip to Paris, I recommend going during any season but the winter.  Planes are delayed.  Can't see the Eiffel Tower (oh please be less cloudy/foggy soon!).  And my feet are cold.  Despite all that it's still rather lovely.  A nice break from school / work!

Women Leaders

I ran across this article today (I think from a tweet by Felicia Day) and thought it was worth mentioning here.

The video is from a TED event for women and features Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook.  In this talk she shares her experiences being a female leader and says there are three very important things women can do:

1. Sit at the table
2. Make your partner a real partner
3. Don't leave before you leave

I'm guilty of violating number one; last week I wrote about how I feel about what I'm doing and I did not give myself credit.  Lunch with the VP of my division today made me feel better and help me realize that I'm awesome. 

Anyway, watch the video, it's really good.

Finals Week (or Wordless Wednesday)

Today was the official start date of finals at my school.  Got home from work at 5:30 PM.

Prepared for finals by cleaning my desk off.

   

Presentation Thursday, final exam Friday. Homework due next week Tuesday.

Workstation setup.

Time to get to work.

Women in Power

Friday I ran across an article about an interesting woman in power.  Technically it was just a brief interview with Diana Tremblay, the VP of Manufacturing and Labor Relations at General Motors, but one thing she said really stuck with me; which also happened to be the main point the article seems to be drawing attention to as well.  Diana said:

I have never felt that I was given an opportunity solely because I was a woman, but I also know that it helped at times because it made me unique. 

I don't know if I can say the same for myself.  It's a question I was wondering a lot last year as I was trying to figure out what to do after graduation.  I was finishing my bachelor's and master's at the same time, working on my master's thesis, looking for a job, and working 24-32 hours a week.

My undergraduate degree is closely tied to the construction industry, an industry that was not doing so hot last year, and I wasn't getting a lot of call backs for interviews.  I finally asked the company I worked for about a job and originally they mentioned relocation to an operating unit in the Carolinas to do renewables.  The boyfriend was upset ("why can't you find a job here where I am?")  so I kept looking around.  Another month later my company asked me if I'd ever considered going to school for my Ph.D.  It wasn't something I'd ever considered before, Dr. KB?  I don't know.  But I didn't seem to have a whole lot of other options.  Fast forward a couple of months and I am looking around universities for a research group to work with for my doctorate.

Many days that summer I wondered if the opportunity I was given was because I was a female.  My company has mostly undergraduate co-op students and they have a strict policy about only hiring those with at least a master's degree, though everyone they'd hired in the last four years had their doctorate.  I was an intern (not a co-op) who was just supposed to be there for one summer.  On my last day one of my projects wasn't done and my project team asked the director if I could stay.  The director talked to the VP of the division and my internship was extended indefinitely.  Why did they let me stay?  Maybe because I was providing support for a lot of projects, maybe because I was cheap to pay (who needs money when you're in school?), or maybe it was because I was close-by compared to the other co-ops from Madison.

It's a question I've never voiced out loud, perhaps because I'm scared of what the answer will be.  Some days at work I feel on top of the world: I'm accomplishing mini-projects left and right, I feel helpful, I feel like I'm contributing, I'm pulling my own weight.  It's those days where I feel like anything I've achieved is because of my own merit, not because another female engineer was needed.  Then there are the days where my stuff deforms, my coating fails, I spend too much time on a task because I can't figure out something simple. It's those days where I question why I am where I am.  It also makes me wonder, am I the only one who feels this way?

I wonder if young engineers (male or female) who are just starting their careers feel the same way occasionally.  A combination of "I don't know enough!" and "I taught my co-workers something new!"

I think I'm going to put "work on self-esteem" for my New Year's Resolutions list.

Dead Grandmothers

It's no secret that a student claiming a grandmother has perished close to midterms, finals, or the due date of a very large project has a high percentage of being made up.  Numerous people have written about this phenomena before; they're typically professors who have had the excuses given to them.  I happened to enter my college years with two grandmothers and graduate with none.  In fact, I had four close family deaths while I was in school but none of my professors questioned me when I said I was going to be out of town.  

My first grandmother died while I was a junior.  It was after midterms and rather sudden, but she was 96 years old.  The next grandmother died my senior year during a really busy time of the term.  Later that spring my surrogate mother for a summer passed away very unexpectedly and it was a rough couple of weeks.  And it was during my fifth year (year two of masters) that my cousin died.  Hers was the only funeral that I could not attend because it was short notice and during the middle of the week.  My professors never asked me for documentation (though I could have easily provided it) and were very kind to me during those rough patches.

One of my grandmothers and my cousin.

The reason I'm bringing this up?  Next week is finals week.  My boyfriend's grandmother has been in a very critical condition since last Saturday and it's not looking good.  My boyfriend and I have been together long enough where I've seen this grandmother practically every holiday.  While I'd love to think there is going to be a happy ending and his grandmother will get better, no one is holding out much hope.  I'm just hoping that if it is a sad ending these professors will be as understanding as the ones at my old school.

Holiday Spirit

While Milwaukee finally had its first snow fall this past weekend it still doesn't feel like it's time for the holidays.  I'm not into it this year and getting my decorations out has been a chore.  Could be lack of sunlight, could be depression.

Even school doesn't have much in the way of decorations; just these things they stick in the planters.  Of course they're all covered by snow now.

I need to put up my tree.  Maybe that will help.

I am not a Corrosion Engineer

I am not a corrosion engineer.  I do not have a materials engineering background.  In fact, I had one materials class.  My freshman year of my undergrad studies.  What do I do now?  Why I am an engineer in the materials department at a manufacturing research and development facility.

It's not so bad actually.  I am only in the materials department because my area (water) had two people in it: my boss, a water treatment research engineer, and the VP of development, who also happened to be the director of the materials group.  I've been here a year and a half now and while I didn't remember much from that freshman materials course five years ago, most of the memories have resurfaced.  

One of the projects I'm working on now is a new coating.  I'm running a life test on the coating current and today was my weekly day to check the panels to see how they're doing.  One panel looked funny but not in a discernible manner.  The only real "test" I've been doing with these panels is cutting them open once they fail.  Since that wasn't an option for this panel (it hasn't failed yet!) I needed a different test to try.  

But what?  The extent of my tests to now has consisted of weight loss/gain, blister, and potentiostat.  None of which were suitable for what I needed.  Then I remembered something one of my co-workers had suggested for a different coating: AC Impedance.  Unfortunately all I remembered was that the equipment to run the test is in the lab and that it's used for some coatings.  I needed more information.

When professors would retire at my alma mater they would leave behind any old text books they no longer desired and students could pick and chose if they wanted any.  When a professor from my department retired last year I managed to snag the book Corrosion Engineering by Fontana.  This was the book I turned to today to get an idea of what the AC Impedance test entailed.  Unfortunately, Corrosion Engineering only talked about the theory behind AC Impedance, I wanted more.  

The next book I turned to was one from my work's library called Electrochemical Techniques for Corrosion Engineering by Baboian.  This book gave me more details into AC Impedance evaluation for coatings with a lot more graphs and figures than Corrosion Engineering did.  More importantly, from this book I learned that I could take this technology and apply it to a different project to get more insight into a filmed electrode.  

I didn't end up trying an AC Impedance test today, I already had my plate full with linear polarization and tafel plots anyway but it would have been fun to work my way through a different test.  I put the funny looking coating back on test and moved on to another project.  There will always be more days, I'll just have to wait until a less busy one.

Oh, Snow

Hello snow, my old friend.  Today was the first snowfall in Milwaukee.  My parents up in the Twin Cities have already have three snowfalls this year - and not light dustings either.  I knew snow was coming but I'm glad it held off till the 1st of December.

There was snow on the ground earlier in the day but it was all gone by the time I left work at 5.  In honor of the occasion I put up some holiday decorations.   The extent of my decorations?  Penguin and snowflake window clings that cover one of the three windows in my apartment.  I do have a small tree but it's in the basement storage and it's scary down there!  I probably won't set that up till this weekend and besides, I have to clean the apartment first.

It's hard to believe that finals will be soon and the term will be over.

Thanksgiving & Its Perils

This past weekend was Thanksgiving, a holiday filled with food, family, and *ahem* Black Friday shopping.  Due to weather concern I spent my Thanksgiving in Milwaukee instead of with my family in Minnesota but I did make some traditional Thanksgiving fare (sweet potato casserole, pumpkin pie, toffee cookies, and dinner rolls) so I didn't completely miss out on the food portion of the holiday.

While I love shopping, I chickened out this year for participating in Black Friday.  It was very very cold outside!  The original plan was to hit the outlet mall at 10 PM Thursday night.  After a large temperature drop in the middle of the afternoon on Thursday I decided my plan was rotten and that I should just go shopping on Saturday instead.  Yes I could have gone out Friday still, and yes you can (for the most part) get all the same deals online that are to be had in stores, but I didn't really need anything to warrant the crazy shopping.  All I really need are more clothes to replace the ones that I've destroyed working in the lab.

Thanksgiving sure does have its perks.  It's on a Thursday which pretty much guarantees that one will have Friday off from work and maybe Wednesday as well.  When I was working on my bachelor's and master's degrees these days off meant nothing to me as I would have had final exams the week before and the whole week of Thanksgiving as a "break."  Now that I'm in the working world I just get Thursday and Friday off from work but as a graduate student at a big, semester schedule school I no longer have a break.  I had my microbiology class on Tuesday like normal, but my once-a-week Thursday class was moved to Tuesday to account for the day off.  There went my normal Tuesday afternoon work in the school lab time.

On a trimester schedule the week of Thanksgiving was nice because I didn't have to worry about anything school related.  No exams, no homework, and nothing upcoming!  Not so much now.

The peril of having a four day weekend is that now the likelihood that I'll have a lengthy to do list is high, and the likelihood of my accomplishing anything from that list is low.  Sigh.  Today I have a test in microbiology, my part of a grant proposal due, a meeting with my advisor, and some lab work that I've been putting off.  Today is going to be busy.

Darkness

It gets so dark so early these days.  It's hard to stay motivated when I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.  Plus it's freezing (literally) outside and all I want to do is stay home on the couch with hot chocolate.  This was the view outside my lab on Tuesday at 4 PM.

It should not be this dark this early.  There is one more month ahead of me just like this until the winter solstice. I need to move closer to the equator.

In Class Experiments

One of the classes I am taking this term is called Pollutant Dispersion Processes.  It's the class I like the least of my two, mostly because the few assignments I've had involved MATLAB.  I'm still not very good at MATLAB but I am better than when the class first started.

Anyway, back in October we got to do a fun little in class experiment that involved trekking over to the Milwaukee River and releasing some (EPA approved I believe) red dye.  The main goal was to measure the amount of "pollutant" that passed through the center of the river.

Since I wasn't one of the people do got to don waders for the occasion, I stood on the river bank and recorded this little example of what went on:



I like this type of class activity.

And Then You Edit

So you've written a paper. Phew.

You diligently carved out time every day to sit down and pen a few lines of prose. You paced the floor, you muttered to yourself, you bounced ideas off your colleagues, you did your best to manipulate Microsoft Word into doing your bidding. But before you submit the paper, before you hand it over to someone else to read, you've got to edit it yourself.

After I finished writing my thesis for my masters I was exhausted. Hours were spent hunched over my keyboard pecking away. Candles were burned at both ends. Cliches were tossed about. But read my own thesis?

"I know my thesis like the back of my hand! Why would I need to read it?"

Well...I tend to write like I talk. I think most people do this, it's fairly common in the age of social media/internet. Unfortunately, the writing-like-you-talk style of writing is not ideal when it comes to things like papers for publication...or my thesis. So of course I needed to read my thesis but I honestly didn't do that great of a job reading through it. It's tough to read your own work when you feel like you have it all memorized.

When I saw this article on the Chronicle of Higher Education's website about editing yourself I was psyched. "Perhaps I can find some tips for the paper I'm having a tough time crafting," I thought. And I did but not as many as I had hoped for. The two main tips from the article are in italics below, emphasis mine.

All I can do is urge [you] to pay attention to well-written works in [your] own field, to read not just for content, but also for the nuances of style, and to steal the tools and tricks that good writers use.

I recently read a great journal article about microbial desalination cells whose text seems to follow such a logical manner I can't help but admire it. I could probably do something similar for my topic.

If you don't remember the basics—like what a semicolon does—you might want to remind yourself. If you don't know the difference between further and farther, lay and lie, figure it out (or go lie down until you do). If you are prone to comma splices (as I am), be aware of that and make conscientious choices. Those are not trivial issues. If we don't take the form seriously, the content of the message won't get delivered. There's no point in writing if you're not going to be understood.

Over the weekend I reviewed a paper that was full of mistakes. On one hand the writer of that paper was an English as a second language person and an undergraduate student. I'm not saying that ESL or undergraduate students don't know how to write, I'm saying that I think it's harder to write a paper in that situation. On the other hand a lot of the mistakes were formatting ones (e.g. "Figure 1.title of figure here" vs "Figure 2. The blah blah shows blah.") which I would consider mistakes that anyone could catch regardless of language or years in school.

I've been using Guide to Technical Editing: Discussion, Dictionary, and Exercises as my go-to style guide but that's simply because it was the book that the "Writing and Editing for Technical Publishing" class I took last year used. This article recommends The Elements of Style (4th Edition) plus Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing), and a four-and-a-half star Amazon rating can't be too far off. The article goes on to name other reference books for writing and editing such as Economical Writing, Second Edition and On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft.

These five books aren't the only ones out there. Are there any must-have style guides that you use?

Origin vs Sigma Plot

Poll time! Which do you use for making your publication-ready graphs/charts/tables: Origin or Sigma Plot?

I honestly haven't made much progress in my paper writing though I have finished off one of the grants already. What I have done however, is assemble a bunch of data that I can turn into publication-ready figures...as soon as I figure out which software to use.

This would look good in a paper...right?*

My advisor uses Sigma Plot, a co-worker uses Origin. At this point I'm leaning towards Origin because they have a student version that I could purchase for $50/year. I didn't see a student version for Sigma Plot, in fact the cheapest version I saw was $499 (ouch!). Ideally work would get me a license for creating publication quality figures but at this point I'm going to assume that I will be footing the bill.

So, what should it be: Origin or Sigma Plot?

*Not actual data. I know it looks good (ha) but I really made this in Paint in less than five minutes.


UPDATE (6/14/2011):  I've had some time to use both Sigma Plot and Origin now (my Sigma Plot license expired any my company decided not to renew it) and I wanted to give some more information that someone will hopefully find helpful.  I've only created very basic graphs with both software, graphs one could create in Microsoft Excel but look better in professional software.

I found Sigma Plot easier to use right off the bat.  I was able to copy and paste my MS Excel data into Sigma Plot and create a graph within a matter of minutes without reading the manual - pretty awesome.  When it came time to stack graphs, make a secondary axis, add error bars, etc. I had to pull out the manual and found the process rather painful.

Origin I could not use without reading the manual.  Time consuming and tedious, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to get my data in Excel and an even longer amount of time to figure out how to plot on the secondary axis.  Origin isn't all bad - once I got the hang of it, Origin was really simple to use.

Hectic Day

In one of my recent posts I mentioned that I respond well to bribery, especially in the form of cookies. I probably should have mentioned in that post that all the students in the lab received cookies shortly before our advisor flew to Mexico for a week.

The cookies were the incentive to keep our microbes live and well, not to mention have a bunch of stuff ready to share in the weekly meeting. My weekly meeting occurs every Tuesday afternoon for an hour. It takes the full hour because I either have an experiment that goes really well (which gets my advisor very excited about what I can publish) or one that goes really poorly (which confuses my advisor and causes us to spend significant time troubleshooting the problem).

My advisor came back yesterday. Regularly scheduled meeting was today.

I have two different experiments running right now: one is doing great, the other not so much. The two experiments, combined with the fact that I was out of town since last Friday and didn't get a chance to assemble my data over the weekend like I normally do (I got back in town last night at 11:30), meant that I was frantically sitting in the lab all morning trying to put together information to show my advisor. I finished just in the nick of time by looking through my lab notebook during class and skipping breakfast & lunch.

The hectic pace of earlier today has left me feeling unmotivated to continue working on a take-home midterm I have due Thursday. I must pull myself together! While I'd love for this midterm to complete itself I doubt it will happen.

City View

The nice thing about my lab is that is has windows. Lots of windows. A whole row of windows in fact!

The bad thing about the windows is that they're high off the ground. In fact, the bottom of the window is just above my eye level. Most of the time I can only see sky when I look out the window...but if I climb up on the lab bench then I get views like this:

At night.

During the day.

Pretty! Especially now when all the leaves are changing color and with Lake Michigan such a nice blue in the background.

Classes, the Unnecessary Evil

I've always thought that the purpose of graduate school was to become very specialized in one topic.

For a bachelor's degree you learn a lot in four (plus or minus) years and it covers a wide variety of topics. For a master's degree you hone in on one topic from your bachelor's and specialize; becoming the master of that area. And finally for a doctorate you become really really specialized in one area from your master's degree.

I think the following comic from PhD Comics says it well with the following graph:

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

It's so true. And if you don't already subscribe to PhD Comics you should. Seriously.

Throughout that period of school you take a lot of classes. Because the bachelor's degree is so general you have a wide variety of options to chose from. The same, more or less depending on where you do your master's at, goes for the master's degree. But by the time you get to your doctorate all your research is cutting-edge - or at least to new to have classes devoted to the topic. So you take the classes that you think will help you pass the qualifying exams or the few that you find interesting.

Classes then become this evil, time-consuming thing that helps to foster procrastination. Why work on that journal article when you have homework to do? So few classes are applicable (at least for me) that it's almost a waste of time. Professors don't like teaching them because they take away from time they could be writing grants, students don't like taking them because it takes time away from research.

Classes at the graduate level are one of the really big differences between the educational system in the United States versus Europe. Here in the US it's classes and research until you fill the credit requirements and then just research. In Europe, or at least the UK, it's research-based where students work mostly towards the end goal (thesis/dissertation) without having to fiddle around with classes.

I'd like to just get these classes done so I can focus on my research! Especially right now when I'm trying to learn MATLAB (and failing, sigh) but still have a large "to-do" list accumulating. Perhaps this is just me complaining but how do you feel about class-work at the graduate level?

Bribery

I respond well to it.


These cookies were baked by my research advisor's wife and yes, they're as delicious as they look. Because I was at work when the advisor brought them to campus I didn't get them till late in the evening but from the sounds of it there was a large bag of cookies for everyone in my lab. That's a lot of cookies to make!

Coxie Pt. 3 (or Wordless Wednesday)

Coxie has recently undergone some severe changes. I'd rather not share Coxie's deep dark secrets but I will share an updated photo.

If you remember my last update on Coxie there is much more going on now. Yay, Coxie!

What Editors Want

I'd like to share another article on writing that I found through Julie from A Very Focused Blog About School and Work. Julie is the person who originally introduced me to The Chronicle of Higher Education and subsequently the article on How to Write Less Badly.

This article is called "What Editors Want," a self-explanatory title in my opinion. I'm actively working on two grant proposals and one paper right now and I want my work to be as polished as possible. This article offers several key pieces of advice as to how to make editors happy; after all, they're the ones who have the final decision as to if your work is going to be accepted or not.

If you're writing something to be published:

1. Know the journal you are attempting to publish in
   
2. Proof-read, proof-read, proof-read!
3. Don't deviate from the style guide

The article has more pieces of advice but those are the main ones. I really like reading articles like these because although the information they convey is very basic it is still very applicable. Proof-read your e-mails, proof-read your tweets, proof-read your status updates. If you're limited to 140 characters don't exceed that amount. If you have a graduate school blog don't post about your grievances with city parking tickets (oops).

The article does end with a positive suggestion: Develop a healthy attitude toward rejection.

It's necessary to stay sane.

Promoted!

This past Tuesday I was officially promoted! What that means is that I was (finally) given my Research Assistant (RA) paperwork...tax forms, direct deposit forms, benefits info, etc. Exciting!

Working in the lab

What does that mean for me other than the fact that I get paid and get things like health insurance? Basically nothing. I'm doing what I was doing before. This is actually two months late in getting set up which is a tad frustrating and disappointing. Frustrating because I would have gotten paid for all I've done and disappointing because this is a joint venture between a university and my company. The university says it would like to do more with industry but then when a company steps up and says they want to corroborate the university does a poor job at getting everything together. My company approached the university in April about this corroboration, I started in late August, and all the paperwork was just completed this week. For a school that wants to increase their presence in Milwaukee for engineering this slow-to-act approach is not ideal. Disappointing, yes.

In any event, I've felt much more official working in the lab this week! The fact that I'm getting paid now is also quite motivating.

MATLAB

MATLAB, short for the MATrix LABoratory, is a strange program. Throughout my bachelor's and a bit during my master's I would hear people complaining about the program but I never had the opportunity to use it. Looking back on it now I wish I had!

One of the two courses I am taking this term is a modeling class; modeling how pollutants move/travel by dispersion/advection/diffusion/etc. I'm not sure how worthwhile the actual class will be because I don't forsee myself needing to model pollutants in the future but MATLAB has the opportunity to be a great tool.

The only problem is that I don't understand what I do wrong when it doesn't work! Take the following for example:

r=zeros(1,5);
i=1:600;
ufs=uf(i:end);
ufs=[uf(i:(i-1))];
Ru(i)=mean(uf.*ufs)

Do you understand what that is saying? Me either. That's what my professor gave me for the answer but it's not one that MATLAB is recognizing. I'm just trying to do an autocorrelation! And what I have above is not correct.

I'm sure MATLAB will be a very useful tool...once I figure it out. Until then it's a big pain.

Nail Bitting vs Sickness

This fall I've been pretty sick. The current score is Research 0, Sickness 3. Basically I've been sick for the last three weeks and it's been a pain. The urge to sleep all day, the puffy sinuses, the throbbing headaches, and let's not forget my nose.

What gives? I'm usually really healthy. In fact, I'm usually the one who picks something up, walks around with it for a few days with no symptoms giving it to everyone, and then marvelously gets over being "sick" in a matter of hours. I'm the carrier! I don't get sick! I've attributed this tendency to my hearty Minnesota blood but uh, that seems to have failed me now. Plus there was this article last week in the New York Times about how my body may not have been "making the normal amount of inflammatory agents. "

So what's this different about this year as opposed to all the previous ones? This year I suspect my nail biting habit may be playing a part in my ceaseless illness. I'm a horrible nail biter, especially in times of stress (can you say graduate school?). Countless times I have bitten my nails down to bloody, painful stubs. Countless times my eyes have welled up with tears because of how much it hurts to try and grasp something with a finger who's nail I've bitten down too far.

I can't say that nail biting is a particularly good way to relieve stress but it is a good distraction -- hold on, I've got a hang nail -- but it does pass the time. Thankfully I've been biting my nails less and less. I'm attributing it to better time management. For the first time for as long as I can remember I have finger nails that I can use to scratch/open/use and it's amazing. I am a bit fixated on them - they look so pretty now! And I'm sure George is sick of hearing "look at my finger nails! Aren't they pretty?!?!" But perhaps biting my nails was a blessing in disguise.

I started noticing something about when I got sick this fall. It always seemed to occur a day or two after I bit a couple of nails down. I was hoping to find statistics on the number of times nail biters get sick as compared to non-nail biters but all I found in my very scientific Google search was this article from a dentist. According to Dr. Connelly:

Your fingers are pretty much involved in almost everything you do. Even with frequent hand-washing, your fingers are still dirty. Your fingernails are almost twice as dirty as your fingers. Since fingernails are not the easiest places in the world to clean, there's all manner of germs and bacteria underneath there-- germs you really don't want in your mouth. And when you bite your nails, you are inviting these germs into your mouth (and chewing them, etc.) Plus, bitten nails can be jagged, and may cut the gums, allowing these undesirable germs to easily access your bloodstream. [emphasis mine]

What he said makes sense and truthfully it's a little scary. But perhaps decades of biting has helped me build up an immune system that can take on anything! Or perhaps it's just a coincidence that I'm getting sick when I bite my nails after going cold turkey in the summer. In any event, it's one more reason why I really need to keep these nails looking pretty.

"Look at my finger nails! Aren't they pretty?!?!"

I do hope George never tires of me asking him what he thinks of my nails. Especially if not biting them keeps me healthier!

Anniversary

Today was my five year relationship anniversary with George. Thanks to Facebook and it's reminder system there was really no way for either of us to forget the date. In celebration of the big day (since it is in the middle of the week and all) we had a nice fancy dinner at home. George even got me roses! George is not a buy-you-flowers-randomly guy so this was a big deal.

A Dozen Beautiful Roses!

For the fancy dinner we stayed in and had a home cooked meal. But fancy! Ha. We had seared steak with caramelized onions and Gorgonzola, crushed red potatoes with buttermilk, and steamed asparagus. This meal was one I found on EatingWell.com's 500 calorie dinners and since George and I are trying to eat healthy this seemed like the perfect meal. It turned out really well too!

Mmmm...tasty.

We had a nice dinner together with angel food cake (plus strawberries and whipped cream) for dessert.

So here's to George. My number one fan. The only follower of this blog. My foundation.

The Chronicle of Higher Education & What to Call Yourself

Julie from A Very Focused Blog About School and Work, recently introduced me to the website The Chronicle of Higher Education. I'd been on this website before due to people linking the articles on Facebook but I had never paid it much attention. Now I visit the site once every few days looking for advice, ideas, and just to check the news. The chronicle isn't just another website though, they have a print edition too that one can subscribe too. I'm a poor graduate student so I stick with the free content I can get.

One of the front pages of The Chronicle of Higher Education, print edition.

A few weeks ago I had posted about wanting advice for several burning questions I had. One of the questions I had was "How do you manage publishing papers under one name (maiden name and then another name (married name) later on?" Of course the simple answer is to never marry or change your name. By this point in my life I'm pretty confident that I don't want to use the simple answer. From the Chronicle of Higher Education's forums I was able to learn what others had done. For those curious, most people in that position had either done something like:

"Really Neat Paper on Something" by Jane Smith (as Jane Doe)

or

"Really Near Paper on Something" by Jane Doe-Smith.

I'm not a fan of having to write out a long name for myself. If I wrote out my full name as it stands today it would be 22 characters long (not including spaces of special character) and to include a married last name? That would put me at 29 characters (again, not including spaces or special characters). I'm a fan of the first option.

If you were in this position which would you choose?

Research vs. Sickness

I'm onto my second sickness of the fall season and let me tell you, it's really putting a hamper on my research. I feel so listless and tired that it's hard to scrounge up the motivation to get out of my apartment to go to my research lab.

Today I slept in past when I would have normally gotten up to start my day and so I didn't get any new papers read. Bummer. Then while I was at my school's research lab my pain killers that I took before going to class wore off and I couldn't take anymore so I went home to sleep.

It appears that my ability to research is no match to me being sick. You would think I would be more inclined to work on my paper or find more articles to read but that is not happening tonight. It's hard to focus and keep my eyes open. Plus I just set a towel on fire in my apartment and melted the top of my George Foreman in the process. Oops.

I hope I get better real fast otherwise I'm going to have to suck it up and just go work in the lab till I get caught up. And I don't want to do that!

Research: 0 Sickness: 1

Parking Tickets

I have a problem with the City of Milwaukee. A very large problem. It involves their parking regulations.

If I park in a spot without paying the meter and get a ticket? I'll pay it with no qualms.

If I park within 15 ft of a crosswalk or in 4 ft of a driveway and get a ticket? I'll be wiser next time and pay the ticket.

Basically, if I do something wrong, screw up and break the law, I'll suffer the consequences. I can live with that. I mean, you can't just have people staying in a metered spot for hours monopolizing a prime parking area.

Recently though I feel like these parking checkers (meter maids? ruthless bandits?) are taking things too far. This past summer I had paid for my vehicle registration and was waiting and waiting for the little sticker to come in the mail for me to put on my plates. Three days before the sticker arrived in the mail a parking checker wrote me a ticket for "improperly displayed vehicle registration." What?! Are you serious? I can't display my vehicle registration sticker if it hasn't come in the mail yet! That's a $20 ticket...on top of the $20 wheel tax that every vehicle registered in Milwaukee has to pay when you register your vehicle. Ridiculous. And apparently this isn't a common thing. Just this past week this article ran in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about certain areas being more prone to tickets than others. Unsurprisingly, I live in one of those areas but the fifth most written citation is improperly displayed vehicle registration and the officer who wrote my citation ranked third for most citations issued in a six-month period. I am disputing this citation, this is a crazy thing to be able to write a ticket for!

In the last week I have gotten three citations, one that I rightfully earned but the other two I feel are unjustified.

To park on the street in Milwaukee you need a night time parking permit and a daytime parking permit. Last December I went down to the courthouse to get a new residential parking permit because my old one was expiring soon. I was there just after midnight and the officer on duty didn't give a lot of daytime permits out (odd period to renew a permit but you don't have to worry about the meter running that late at night!) so she may not have known exactly what to do. I had my $10 ready, she told me "it's actually free now!" and I got my permit. Fast forward nine months: I'm parked in my typical spot across from my apartment building and find a citation on the car. Violation of Residential Parking Permit Program. "What's this?" I say to myself, "I have a residential parking permit." So I photocopy my permit, the citation, and fax it in to the city. A few days later I get a letter in the mail thanking me for my payment but saying that I still owe money...the same amount that the citation was for. The same day I get another citation for the same violation. I figure no big deal, someone obviously can't see my permit sitting on my dashboard. I call the city up and it turns out that I actually don't have a residential parking permit, I have a commuter permit. Why would I have a commuter permit? I live here! I park across from my building, in the same spot, with the same people everyday. I'm not sure of a way to dispute these tickets but I am pretty upset that I did not have the permit I used to / received the wrong ticket. I mean, I've been parking under a certain assumption (that I received the permit I asked for) for the last nine months without error, I didn't have any reason to think that trend would not continue.

The most recent citation I deserved. I broke a law (no parking during street cleaning) and my vehicle was issued a citation and then towed to the city impound lot. My fault, my mistake, I'll pay the price ($145, ow) to get it back. At least I wasn't the only one! But you know what the silly part of this all was? My truck was towed but the street wasn't even cleaned.

Like I said, I have no problem admitting when something was my mistake and I screwed up but parking citations that are unjustified make me very upset. I'm pretty sure my alderman was voted in because he said that he would decrease the amount of parking citations written (who knows if he actually had that power) but it's only gotten worse. And for a city that ranks 4th poorest in the nation? We can't afford all these fines, things are out of control. I need a way to put a stop to it but how many letters to my alderman do I need to write before something happens?

Lunch

Occasionally, actually very frequently during the school year, I make really bad lunches for myself. Week-old bread, tuna of indeterminate age, shrived up apples, etc. These lunches are barely edible at best and I try to get through it by eating them very very quickly.

But I love food. I think food is delicious. And these lunches make me very sad.

I don't make lunches like this on purpose, most of the time it's because I haven't been to the grocery store in a few weeks and there is a limit to what the Walgreens down the block will carry. As I've said before, I try to eat healthy but sometimes school gets in the way and there simply isn't enough time to take care of myself.

In order to make these lunches more bearable I turn to the internet for consolation. Specifically, TasteSpotting and foodgawker. On these websites I can look at page after page of tasty dishes, most with recipes, and pretend that I'm eating something better. Something fresh and home-made, with a main dish AND dessert.

Usually when I do this I end up bookmarking a lot of recipes for me to come back to and make for dinner. Sometimes the pictures live up to what I think they'll taste like, sometimes they don't. Either way it's a good chance for me to expand my food horizons and to pretend that I'm eating like a queen.

How to Write Less Badly

One thing I've always thought I do well, or at least sufficiently, is write. Contrary to most engineering types I've met, I like to read and write. Lab reports? Class papers? Inter-office memos? No problem, easy. All those things abound during the first years of engineering classwork but start to trail off as one does more math, equations, and technical drawings. I'm a bit out of practice now I think.

I was cruising around the website, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and stumbled upon this little gem: 10 Tips on How to Write Less Badly. This article really resonated with me because of my recent writing adventure: my master's thesis.

When it came to writing my thesis I had great ideas on how to make everything flow together and on what to write. Getting these ideas from my head into a word processor? That was more like pulling teeth. I had no idea how hard it was going to be! Or how long it was going to take. That experience made me go "yes!" when I read points four (give yourself time) and five (everyone's unwritten work is brilliant). Not to mention point number ten: edit your work, over and over. My goodness did my thesis need work on the editing front. I tend to write how I talk, which is not a very good way to write technical work. Reading and rereading helped me to catch the numerous errors I made.

The other suggestions that the article had, such as "write, then squeeze other things in" and "set goals based on output, not input," I thought were helpful. I'm soon going to try to turn my thesis into a paper I can publish, there are two grants I want to apply for, and my current adviser thinks I will have enough laboratory results to publish another paper by December. Whew. In other words, I have a lot of upcoming writing I need to be working on and if I start employing some of the tactics from this article, the whole process should be much less painful than my thesis was.

Publish my Thesis? Huh?

My current advisor recently asked me a question I wasn't pleased to give an answer to.

Advisor: Did you publish your findings from your master's research?

Me: No, I never did.

Advisor: Hmm... I see.

I wish I had published my master's research. Unfortunately my master's is from a very non-research orientated school, it's more of a terminal masters, and I'm the first graduate from the program that's gone on to pursue doctoral work. The program isn't too old, I think it started in 2004 and I graduated in 2010. But my old advisor (who also happened to be the department head) was not concerned about publishing anything. I don't think he's published anything since he completed his doctorate in 1991. My advisor, committee members, and the director of the school library all said I should publish it. My problem was that everyone urged me to publish but no one would tell me how to, or offer to review it.

Taking matters into my own hands I took a course titled "Writing and Editing for Publication," a class through the technical communications department. The class was helpful...if I wanted to publish an article in Cosmo or Popular Mechanics. That wasn't really what I was after but I did learn some things that improved my grammar (e.g. proper use of effect and affect) and writing technique during the editing part of the course. Unfortunately this still left me without any idea how to take my 102 page thesis and turn it into a paper I could publish in a peer-reviewed journal. That was all last year.

After my current advisor asked me if I'd published my work two weeks ago I decided to consult the post-doctorate student I work with at work. As part of his post-doc he is required to publish a paper or three and has expressed an interest in having me work with him on said papers (we're in the same department and I've helped with his research). I'm very glad I asked him for advice!

I knew nothing about the process. He'd previously mentioned this journal called Nature, saying it was crème de la crème of peer reviewed journals. I was skeptical until I heard others from a different sphere talking about it too. Turns out every journal has an impact factor, which is apparently a "measure of the frequency with which the 'average article' in a journal has been cited in a given period of time. The higher the number, the better the journal.

Once you find your desired journal look at their author's guide and follow it to a T. If the guide says you need 5,000 words make sure you have 4,999. My co-worker said that most times you'll be accepted conditionally and the journal will only give you a few days to make the required changes. Checking your e-mail often is a must! He also said to try and find out what the turn around time is for each journal; turn around time being the time between when it's accepted and when it will actually appear out in circulation. For me trying to publish my thesis this doesn't matter. It's stored in my alma mater's library, that was good enough to them to give me a diploma.

The last issue that my co-worker talked to me about was authorship. Such as, where my name goes on the paper. For my thesis for example, my name would be the first listed and my "boss" would be the last name listed. Other people who helped me with the research or through consulting would appear as the middle names. That's fine for a typical paper but I think mine is a bit different. All the work I did was pretty much on my own with very little direction. My old advisor knew nothing about my topic until I started working on it. Aside from weekly meetings with my advisor where I gave him a progress report we had little contact. And the contact we did have was nothing like my research relationship that I have with my current advisor. He said that for junior engineers such as ourselves it is better to be the first author on papers and then slowly move into being the second, third, n+1, and finally into being the last author.

We both wound up staying later at work than we'd planned on account of my questioning him (and it was Friday no less!) but I'm very happy he offered advice and helped me out. I'd like to start taking the steps to find a paper and work on getting my thesis into a publishable form soon, and then work on submitting it over the upcoming holiday season.

WANTED: Mentor

I need a mentor, or at least someone I can ask a lot of questions to! I have so many questions that I don't know the answer to such as:

• How do you manage publishing papers under one name (maiden name) and then another name (married name) later on?
• How do you balance school life, work life, and family life?
• How easy is it to have children and still work on a doctorate?
• What do you do when you propose to someone and they laugh at you?
• If your "husband" gets a job in a new city/state would it be better to quit everything & move or stay and finish out the doctorate?
• How do you go about publishing something on your own?
• How far should one downplay their achievements to their potential in-laws so as not to overshadow what their son has done?

I haven't found a good source for these types of questions yet. I've asked what questions I know my co-workers will know the answer to, such as the publishing on your own question, but I really don't know anyone else in the same type of situation as myself. There are two other female engineers where I work at: one is a austere older women who I do not socialize with while the other is a younger women who is very nice and willing to answer all sorts of questions that I throw her way. The problem is that she got married right out of high school, had children, and then did her mechanical engineering BS & MS degrees. No one else I know is pursuing a doctorate in engineering (or anything else for that matter) and I don't really know who to turn to. My other source of information is my sorority, Alpha Omega Epsilon, but I haven't come across anyone there I know who is in the same / was in the same situation either.

My boyfriend suggested trying to find a forum or blog or other internet source where I can read and learn what others have gone through. That lead me to the blog by Young Female Scientist (YFS) and How to be a Good Graduate Student (because the author is a female and wanted to focus on women's issues...but didn't). YFS is a good blog and is very interesting for me to read because it highlights issues I may eventually encounter while working in academia but doesn't answer all of my questions and it doesn't appear to be exactly what I am looking for. I've gone through all my latest Society of Women Engineers magazines looking for information but have come up short there as well.

Where else do I turn to? Any one have any good sources of information or should I just hope I eventually ask enough people that I find good answers? Also, if anyone has answers to any of my questions or wants to volunteer to be my mentor let me know! I need help.

Keeping up Appearences

One thing that I'm afraid of for continuing my studies is looking like the stereotypical grad student. You know, the person who becomes so caught up in their research that they forget to do things like sleep, eat properly, and exercise. In short, I don't want to look like the guy in the picture below.



To take steps against that I've set up a daily schedule for myself that's valid on my "school days" where I wake up at a set time, have breakfast, read journal articles, class/lunch/work in the lab, then dinner. So far it's working and I'm hoping I'll be able to maintain the schedule. I've been trying to keep healthy food in my apartment, limit the amount of sugar I have, and limit what I do eat. Because boy do I love food. Especially pastas and bread. Yummy. I also tend to east past when I'm full (oops).

I think that watching what I eat, getting enough sleep, and exercising (did I mention that I have a "boot camp" class twice a week?), will help me to stay in prime condition for school. It should also keep me sane, right? That's the plan at least!

Coxie Pt. 2

Hello world, meet Coxie.



What you see in the picture are three microbial fuel cells. The one on the red is a microbial fuel cell (MFC), the one on the green is a microbial desalination cell (MDC), and the one on orange is top secret for now, formerly a MDC.

Coxie was acting up today. I made some modifications to the test plan this week and that could be the reason for the misbehavior but I won't know till the week after next. Ah, research.

Women in STEM

One of my favourite topics for women is STEM, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I am all for increasing the number of women in STEM programs and careers. Yesterday I ran across several articles on the topic of women in technology and what can be done to increase involvement. Most of the thought for why there weren't a lot of women in STEM stemmed from a lack of development in childhood - more specifically through the toys we are given based on gender.

I believe this article (Why We Don't Need More Women in Technology...Yet) says it nicely:

Before you retort with your personal vote of support for female education, I’d ask you to take a stroll around a toy store and imagine you can’t read. Imagine, if you will, that you’ve been taught a simple system of color-coding: Pink and purple is for girls, and blue, green and gray are for boys.

You will immediately notice the drastic segregation — the gendered version of the Jim Crow-era South. There are entire aisles of pink, and other aisles devoted to dark blues and greens. Imagine that you are only “allowed” in the pink and purple areas of the store, and examine the toys you find there.

The vast majority of playthings for little girls encourage them to think about nurturing others and caring for themselves — including, to a large extent, their appearances. These aren’t inherently negative lessons to learn, except for the fact that these lessons exclude others that deal with problem-solving, strategy, physics… you know, the kinds of things you learn from playing with Lego, K’nex, Stratego and other male gender-coded games and toys.

I can relate to this a lot. Sure I had a large amount of Barbies and other dolls but I also had a good-sized Lego collection that I used to make little cities and houses, lots of houses. This turned into building doll houses, which turned into my bachelor's in architectural engineering, which turned into plumbing engineering, which turned into my master's in environmental engineering, which brings me to where I am now: my PhD in engineering. I doubt I would have been in a STEM-field today if I had stuck with making stories up and having my Barbies act them out.

I haven't made up my mind completely about the other article I read yesterday (Too Few Women in Tech? Stop Telling People How they Should Feel About it) but it did make the comment:

Marina Martin, a business consultant, agrees with Schappell. “If you really want to see more uteri in tech, grab your nearest 3-year-old girl and make damn sure she’s around computers all the time.”

I'll agree with that. So much of our thoughts/ideas/impressions about how things should be start when we're little. No one can dispute that the younger years are crucial for development. But this also terrifies me for if/when I have children of my own. So much pressure!

Coxie

A few posts ago I mentioned that I was reading through How to be a Good Graduate Student. In that article it was suggested that I should have "30-second, 2-minute, 5-minute and 10-minute summaries of your thesis ready at a moment's notice." I am not at that point yet but I'm getting there. I'm mostly not there yet because I'm still in the beginning stages of my work.

This past weekend I was at a perfect place to practice this idea: MSOE's greek reception. MSOE is my alma mater and the annual greek reception was a way for me to show support for my sorority, Alpha Omega Epsilon, and help with fall recruitment.

While there I was able to share with my sisters some of what I have been working on. I've been picking up where another student left off with desalination using microbial fuel cells. One of my sisters mentioned my habit of naming inanimate objects and decided that my three microbial fuel cells needed a nickname. "Ballcock" was suggested due to my fondness for toilets and thus my cells were named. I think my sisters were trying to come up with something embarrassing for me to say and ballcock does fit that definition. Now the name has been shortened to Coxie and that's not so bad to say at all. :)

I haven't had the opportunity to use Coxie yet (explaining where the name Coxie came from to my research advisor doesn't seem very professional) but someday I will be discussing my research with a colleague and the term will slip out. Ah, well.

The First Labor Day

Today I got to experience something akin to the First Thanksgiving...but from the view point of the Native Americans in the United States.

My research group held a BBQ along with many other research groups in the civil engineering & mechanics department. It was a good chance to get out of the lab, socialize (eek!), and meet other people in my department. The civil department (in an American university) does not contain many Americans. In fact, there were only three of us at the BBQ. The rest of the group was comprised of two from Denmark, three from South America, one from Africa, and many many people from China. Everyone was very excited to be having an American BBQ on Labor Day.

When I arrived one of my professors was setting up the grill. He recruited my reluctant boyfriend to man the grill and seemed as pleased as punch to be learning the art of grilling from an American. When it came time to cook one of the boys in my research group took over, gleefully wielding the tongs. While I was there it felt as though I was standing just off the coast of the Atlantic (in reality I was just off the shore of Lake Michigan) listening to the newcomers speaking (I can't understand anything in Chinese!) while sharing some age-old tradition (in this case, BBQ).

Truth to be told, I haven't attended many BBQs in my lifetime. More when I was younger but since I've gotten an electric grill I just haven't seen the need to drag out the bag of charcoal and toss on some lighter fluid to make dinner. What I really enjoyed from this BBQ was all the different food. Sure there was the typical meat & veggies on a stick, the Johnsonville Brats, pork chops, but there were also baby soybeans, noodles, and traditional Chinese desserts. I wish I knew what the desserts were called! Not quite as sweet as typical American (or European) desserts but light and tasty just the same.

Overall, I thought it was a very interesting experience and I'm pretty excited to experience more holidays with my research team.

RefWorks

One of the suggestions that I read about in "How to be a Good Graduate Student," the topic from two posts ago, was to set up an online bibliography. This guide, written by computer scientists, suggested using BibTex but I'm not used to code and the format doesn't look very user friendly for me.

Since I was at work when I was trying to figure out what format to use I decided to ask one of my coworkers what he used. He's a recent graduate from UIUC's WaterCAMPWS and a very smart guy. My co worker, who I'll call Mr. N, recommended RefWorks as an online bibliography and it sounds exactly like what I was looking for.

See, BibTex doesn't integrate well with Microsoft Word but RefWorks is designed for Word. Sounds like a match made just for me because Word and I are best friends forever. Seriously. I would consider myself an expert on that program after all the formatting and trials I went through writing my master's thesis.

I'm even more excited about it after finding out my university has a copy of it for use. Yay!

Today's mission: take the articles I've read and enter them into my RefWorks account.

No Sleep Till...

I'm up much later than I wanted to be tonight. Classes start tomorrow! In less than 12 hours I'll be in class actually. I had planned on going to bed around 10 or 10:30 at the latest and here I am, a full hour later than anticipated. Not a great start to the semester. I'm placing blame for up-late blues on anticipation and excitement. And also maybe on the fact that my boyfriend is watching MacGruber very loudly in the other room. He starts the term tomorrow too, but he does not suffer from the same anxiety as I do.

My kitten, which I suppose should be called a cat since she's three years old now, is very excited for school to begin. That means I will be home more! Someone will be around to play with her during the day and keep her company. She must be very pleased indeed. I can tell because she's been extra-cuddly all night and has currently curled her purring self into the space between my arms as my hands type away.

I should try to force myself to sleep. Shut down the computer, rest my head on a pillow and so forth. If only I hadn't left my binder full of papers to read in my research lab! That would probably put me to sleep in no time at all.

How to be a Good Graduate Student

In preparing to start academic research I've found this website to be an invaluable resource:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030424095650/www.cs.indiana.edu/how.2b/how.2b.html

My previous research experience is limited to industry and the little research I did for my master's degree, which was more of a terminal master's anyway. In getting ready to start my PhD in engineering I've been mostly lost.

I have an adviser now? What do I do with one? How do I stay on-task when there is no set program to follow? What should I worry about? What shouldn't I worry about? This guide has helped.

I would definitely recommend the above website to anyone going into graduate school.

Where to start?

So much has happened since I last updated. Mostly, I registered for classes and began my research.

I'm taking two classes this term: environmental microbiology and pollution dispersion processes. Hopefully taking classes and working won't be too bad here. When I was working on my masters it was pretty easy to take classes and work but I'm not sure what this school will be like.

I'm working on two different tracks with my research. I've picked up where another student left off with microbial desalination cells and am putting together a literature review on enzyme biofuel cells.

The research appointment officially started last Monday. I didn't realize I would be starting so soon! Classes don't start till this week.

Accepted

I finally received my paperwork last week that I am officially a graduate student in the Engineering PhD program for the fall. Yay!

Now I just need to meet with my advisor and figure out what classes I'll be taking in the fall and start writing my program of study.

The Beginning

Every tale must have a beginning and this is mine.

I have created this blog as a place for me to record my thoughts as I start my journey towards completing a PhD in engineering. Sometime in the future I plan to look back and (hopefully) see how far I've come since this period.

Time will tell.