kitteh adoption

This post reminded me of my own kitteh (non) adoption story.

My SO is deathly allergic to cats. Enforced stays with cats (more than a day) result in breathing problems, then lung-filling-with fluid problems. I love cats, but I'm rather attached to my SO. So, no cats.

One lovely summer evening, we were watching TV when we heard a pitiful cry. It was a teeny little stray kitten who'd gotten separated from its mama, sitting right under the window. I made the mistake of going outside to see what I could do, and that was it. The kitten cried outside for a while before I broke down and put out a dish of water. Then we slunk out of the living room so we didn't have to hear sad little kitten cries.

In short order the kitten decided that our house was his house. We gave in and started feeding him and his family once we were sure they were indeed strays. But he eventually chased out his siblings and spent his time trying to get inside if we were in and snuggling up to me if I was outside.

This kitten was one of the homeliest cats I'd ever seen. He started out super scrawny (although he eventually filled out on kitten chow), with giant ears and double paws. That is, he had an extra "toe" on his front paws that stuck out like a thumb. That's what it looked like, but upon closer inspection, that "toe" had three toes, and the rest of each paw had a couple extra toes as well. I had the cutest mutant kitteh ever!

We racked our brains about what to do with the kitten once it got cold. Would it be cruel to keep him in the basement if the alternative was staying outside? He was going to get in trouble outside - our neighborhood had dogs, raccoons, and (a year or two later) coyotes, and he'd hop into random cars when people opened doors - he was that friendly/fearless.

That was my summer of stray cats. Everyone I knew who might have taken a cat had already done so, and a friend of mine was trying to place a whole litter. And our kitteh had to go to a good home, because we'd both completely fallen for him. But eventually, someone living upstairs (who was discovered one day lying on the front porch with the kitten on his lap, so we weren't the only suckers) did find a good home for him and arranged for the mama to be trapped and spayed.

I know he's in a good home, but I still miss our little mutant kitteh.

SLAC job searches

As I've said before, I do think that a SLAC was the right place for me to go as an undergrad. Overall, it was a terrific preparation for post-college success. However, the big problem I had when I graduated was trying to find a job. Oh, sure, you can go anywhere with a liberal arts degree, and the school talks up its big job search/placement department. But at my school, they knew about/could help you find two types of jobs:

1. Finance
2. Teaching

Big frickin' help.

My advisor had some knowledge of environmental work, but the school I went to was located a couple hundred miles from where I wanted to find a job. And this was before monster.com and all those other company search engines. Searching for "remediation" and "environmental jobs" brought up asbestos removal companies, industrial hygenist positions, septic tank companies...I didn't know that I was looking for "environmental consulting". All I knew was that I wanted to play in the dirt and maybe do something good for the environment.

I floundered around for a little while, took the first job that sounded about right, and was frankly sort of relieved when I was laid off because by that point I'd gotten my bearings. I ended up in a job that I could see staying in for a while - I was able to do actual scientific-type stuff. And I did stay for several years.

I run into environmental consultants from my old geo department from time to time. Invariably, they describe the same problems I had trying to find a job. I still keep in touch with my old advisor, who is the one professor who really helped me academically and professionally. And I repaid the favor by letting him know when we were trying to fill entry-level jobs. Since most of those people worked out well, my SLAC is starting to get a good rep in the (extremely local) environmental job market.

So I'm afraid I don't have any original job hunting advice for new grads in environmental consulting. The jobs are out there, I promise. But sometimes it takes accepting a somewhat sub-par job before finding where you really want to end up.

authority and weather

Most of the time when I'm out in the field watching a drill rig, I'm collecting soil samples and so am incredibly busy. But there are lag times, such as when we're fairly deep (it takes longer and longer to pull up a split spoon because you have to break more rods to get at it) and when backfilling a well after installation.

I've said before that there's always things to do to keep busy, such as catching up on paperwork. But I prefer to keep my eye on the drill rig. At first, it was because I had no idea if what I was watching was really ok, so I was trying to learn by watching. Later, it was simply to keep an eye on things. If the weather is lousy, it feels wrong for me not to be out there, suffering along with the drillers. Drillers occasionally tell me that I don't have to stand out there with them. This happens especially if it's very cold, which makes drilling super annoying and obviously affects me more than someone weighing 100 pounds more. But I shrug this off because part of the reason they want me to go away is that then they can be sloppy and finish quickly. I'd rather be cold than have a poorly constructed well.

One particularly miserable day, we were doing rock coring in a monsoon. The drillers hadn't put on their raingear in time and by the time they realized their mistake, they were soaked and so didn't bother. I did have raingear (I break out the ugly pants and jacket at the hint of rain for this reason) but the rain was going sideways so hard, the raingear was only sort of helping. I couldn't really take notes even if I wanted to, so I was really just watching and commiserating with them.

Another geologist on the job had driven by and seen this. That evening, he pulled me aside to tell me that by staying out with the drillers, I had lost my authority with them. By seeming to be one of them, they had lost any respect for me. This geologist had at least 10 years more experience than I did and I'm always trying to reinforce my authority, but in this case I didn't give his advice an iota of consideration. Why?

1. I have my reasons why I stay outside, as I mentioned.
2. This particular geologist was actively sabotaging other people and had no redeeming qualities that I could see.
3. I had seen how he worked earlier in the day. His drillers worked away on his supposed instructions in the pouring rain while he sat in the truck with the heat on, reading the newspaper. His drillers hated him. If that's not a recipe for insubordination, I don't know what is.

I am always trying to assert my authority. As a young looking female, I'm walking a fine line between empathy and not being taken seriously. Part of the "being taken seriously" is to demand the same high quality work regardless of weather. But I refuse to become an asshole to play stupid power games.

geological leprosy

I mentioned previously that I had a hard time fitting in at college. You might imagine that I would find refuge in Science, in a department of people who were geology geeks like me. This was not the case.

The geology faculty had a distinct group that was “in” and one that was “out”. The “in” clique filtered down to the students, whose social structure mirrored that of the professors. The situation was a lot more complex than that, of course, but I’m trying to keep this from turning into an e-novel. As you might guess, my thesis advisor was “out”, as were his/her advisees. I couldn’t corral the other “out” students to make our own group because I realized what was going on relatively late and the other folks had either left the department entirely or (justifiably) had no interest in associating with the rest of us.

So here’s the summary of my undergraduate geology experience:

Freshman: panic. I don’t know anybody! Why does everybody else know so much? (I’d inadvertently taken classes out of the usual order and most students were juniors or higher)

Sophomore: denial. We’re all in this together! My senior friend who mutters darkly about “the cool kids” is just being dramatic.

Junior: growing awareness. Why is it that I keep having nice conversations with people when we’re alone, and then I become invisible if another person joins us? Why is this happening with everybody!?

Senior: rage. What, I’m not good enough? Y’all can kiss my ass. Watch me ace my senior thesis and graduate ___ cum laude. Then I’ll find a scientific job and in a few years I’ll be running major projects while your pet students are still “finding themselves”. Then I’ll apply to grad school in various disciplines and I’ll be accepted to every single one. Then I’ll eventually defend my thesis, publish a couple papers, and go on to do kick-ass science. So there!

Well, that got me all fired up! I’m totally motivated to go write more.

department organization

In this post and in the comments, I mentioned that I'm not getting much guidance while I'm writing, so I'm sending endless drafts for comment instead to make sure I'm going in the right direction. This is one result of my department having almost no rules and regulations other than those which are university-wide.

Other departments in the university and at other schools have orientation programs for new students, require you to submit a proposal for your work, require tests of general discipline knowledge, have a strict plan for completing your work on time, specify work hours for RAs, and have a template for how your thesis should be organized. My department has none of these for masters students. What it does have is a fantastic graduate student coordinator/secretary who knows all the university regulations, keeps a million balls in the air, and advocates for students who are getting shafted by their advisors. This works out ok, but if the grad coordinator leaves, the department will grind to a halt.

I'm a grownup and I dislike red tape as much as the next person, but there are disadvantages to doing everything on the fly. I spent my first week here in a panic, trying to get a million things squared away in buildings scattered all over campus. When I started my first TA, I had no idea how to run the labs and I was assisting a brand-new prof who didn't have a clue either, which made things interesting. My specific area of study is the specialty of a prof in another department, who has become essentially advisor 2 and has made it clear that he doesn't appreciate all the extra work advisor 1 has created for him. A proposal that formalized what I was doing and who would help out would have reduced that drama. A more institutional problem is that some students appear to have vastly different research workloads.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the lack of direction on how to write the thesis. The various professors have different opinions on how a thesis should be organized, and we have completely different theses. Some folks have long-term field projects, some do a million little lab experiments, some write code...it makes sense that different formats wouldn't work so well for certain people. But if your professor doesn't really care how you write it, then it can be hard to figure out where to start. So I guess in my case, the reason I'm feeling sort of lost right now is because I'm not getting guidance from any direction other than that I should finish by x date, which is waaay too soon. So I guess I better get back to work...

handing it in

Posts about writing have been circulating around the blogosphere recently. I have my own writing process (I try to put everything possibly useful in writing as I read it/produce it and then end up with a bunch of documents I manipulate into whatever form I need), but what I'm interested in here is the point at which folks hand out their work for comments.

I have a very "hands off" advisor. This normally works fine. When I started, I had industry experience to draw on and I have my own ideas about what I'd like to do. When I started planning, I wrote out a fairly detailed document explaining I wanted to do, citing literature for my reasons for choosing x and y methods. I tried to get feedback as much as possible prior to starting work, but if I hadn't done so, I'm not sure if my advisor would have pushed to make sure that I was doing something remotely feasible/scientifically defensible.

So here I am with a massive amount of data collected in various ways over a relatively short period. For a number of reasons, I cannot go back and get additional data to supplement what I did. I've been spending my time making a million graphs, testing various hypotheses, checking control samples, and generally trying to make sense of everything. My advisor is not interested in digging through data, and all he sees is the end result that I've produced. In order to explain what I see, I'm essentially writing my thesis as I go.

As a result of all this, I keep shooting "does this look ok to you" drafts to my professor. He comments on style and organization while he's at it (don't we all?) and that gives me something non-technical to work on when I'm tired of wrestling with numbers. My timeframe is to check in once a week and send a draft after I've made enough progress that I'd like reassurance I'm going in the right direction with the analyses. This works out to a draft every couple of weeks.

I'm getting the feeling that my way of producing and handing in this thesis is different, to say the least. Everybody else I've talked to has handed in finished (to them) sections or even the whole thing at once. Friends have offered to proofread it once I have the whole thing together, but by then, my advisor will have seen it several times. Am I annoying my professor with all these drafts? He hasn't shown any sign of irritation, and frankly, if he'd spent a little more effort on this earlier, I wouldn't need as much hand-holding at the end.

smile, dear!

Sorry I've been AWOL - I've been on vacation (along with what feels like everybody else) and I didn't have internet access.

I am normally an exceptionally easygoing and friendly person. I am cranky on this blog, but it's my way of unloading all the things that get under my skin. A perceptive (or not so perceptive) reader may realize that being perceived as a teenager is a massive pet peeve of mine. When this happens, unfortunately, my manners go out the window. My typical response is either a) start spluttering with indignation or b) my smile freezes into a grimace and I get a slightly crazed look as I try not to do option a.

Last week I met a middle-aged man who asked me what my school was. I know he was assuming that I was an undergrad, so I said that I went to (undergrad school) and then (grad school). But I didn't actually say that I was a grad student. My bad. So this guy goes on and on about how I probably know this person he knows, who is, as it turns out, a current student.

I was with my mother at the time. Needless to say, she knows me well. She jumped into the conversation and explained that not only was I not a current college student, I had graduated from college before this girl started high school. She then steered me away before I could say something obnoxious.

I realize that announcing my actual age and then stomping off in a huff is not the sort of behavior that helps me gain respect in the field or anywhere else. I have managed to not do that. But it is really, really tempting.