The Cost of Research

I've been kind of in the research doldrums. Right before I went to CT I got a lot of bad news regarding research funding. This isn't uncommon, most research proposals, even good ones, don't get funded right away. I'm not going to starve to death or anything like that, I have a TA stipend to live off of for the next two years. The issue is finding money to pay for the research that will ultimately get me my degree. There's costs with travel, lab samples, overhead costs for the university... it kind of goes on and on.

While I've been working to find research money for 3 out of the four projects I want to do, I have been working on a project that doesn't require any money what-so-ever. It's a computer modeling project that uses databases, which are free. I also have access to geographic information systems software at school, which is also something I don't have to pay for. I'm thinking this project is going to take about a year to finalize.

Once the fall semester starts again, I'll get back into grant writing mode, try again with some other agencies, and cross my fingers that the funding gods decide to grace me with some good luck. In the mean time I've been seeking out alternative ways to jump start my research. A friend recently tried out a website for personal donations to fund some field research to look for thought-to-be-extinct Costa Rican frogs. As of today he's made about $200 of his $1200 goal, so it's a start. I decided to try making one for myself. I'm hoping I can get enough to travel to a few museums to get some preliminary data. Here's hoping!

And if this doesn't work, perhaps some bake sales will bring in some much needed revenue...

It's Comin' On Comps

Hello my lovelies.

We're about 4 weeks into the spring semester of my third year (give or take, I lose track about 2 weeks in), and I've been focusing most of my attention on preparing for my comprehensive exams.

Comprehensive exams, or "Comps", is the gauntlet equivalent that determines if a PhD student advances to candidacy and stays in a PhD program. In my particular program it involves writing research proposals for a four chapter dissertation, an extended period of time where faculty on an academic committee ask written exam questions, and culminates in a face-to-face oral exam with the entire committee. The exam material is basically anything they feel I should know, and they will ask me questions until I can't answer them anymore.

I'm kind of looking forward to this in some ways. I kind of want to know what I know, and know what I don't know. I'll also be showing off my biology knowledge to my non-biology committee members, and showing of my geology knowledge to the biology folks. On the other hand, however, they can ask me anything. And I don't really know what to expect from some people.

The written part of the exam has me less worried than the orals. They will very likely be open book questions. I already know that one of my committee members is going to give me 48 hours to do his part, and my adviser typically gives a week. The other two committee members are kind of wildcards for me. They are from different departments that do comps differently than the biology department, so they might throw me a curve ball.

The trick to passing the oral portion of the exam is not cracking too soon.

My oral exam is April 25th, and the 5 weeks before are set aside for my written exams. I start the week after spring break. Between now and then I'm trying to do as much reading as possible. This afternoon I turned in a draft of my proposals for my committee to look at.

So we'll see what happens over the next couple month.

Blue Screen of Death

I'll skip the apology about being absent for the past month.

Yesterday I returned to my desk and was greeted by a big blue screen with scary white writing on my computer. I have no idea what any of this gibberish meant, but nothing good ever comes from the blue screen of death.

I restarted my computer and everything seemed to be fine, I was even able to recover the one sentence I had written in a Word document I had been working on. I have no idea what caused this hiccup, but as far as I can tell everything seems normal. But it sure is scary to come back to your computer, one where you haven't saved any back-ups in a while, and see this:

I have the time to write this post mid-afternoon on a Tuesday because I am currently backing up everything on my computer onto an external hard drive. Yesterday, I backed up my operating system. I've been stupidly lax, even though I've had disasters happen in the past. Many years ago, I lost my entire undergraduate thesis (twice). Rebuilding research, after months of work, is absolutely heartbreaking. And nothing can induce a panic attack in a graduate student quite like the prospect of having months or years of work lost. Gone. In an instant.

So it might be over kill, but I now have weekly back-ups scheduled from now until the end of time.

Lofty and Ambitious Goals

Okay! Semester is off to a good start so far. I haven't been to all of my classes as of yet, and I'm not sure where my schedule is going to settle, but it looks promising. I'm still somewhat stuck in vacation mode, and it was really nice getting out of New Mexico for a couple weeks to visit family and friends before things got busy again. I was pretty desperate to see the ocean and sleep on a beach, and I was successful in checking that off my list of to-dos for the year. I came back from CT more tan than I ever get in NM, probably because I'm so paranoid about sunburns here that I slather myself in sunscreen pretty religiously.

Classes and work aside, I have some personal goals and things I'd like to see happen over the next couple months. I really want to get back into music, I really regret letting that part of me atrophy since college. Starting next week I'm going to schedule daily bass practice, at least 40 minutes a day. Given that I kind of putz around my apartment aimlessly every morning before getting myself out the door, I can easily reallocate this time to playing my electric. If I can commit myself to this successfully for a couple months, I'm going to sell my old upright that I left in CT and allow myself to buy a new one out here in NM. I've also acquired a contact for a voice instructor, and I'd love to take singing lessons and get back into singing somewhat seriously.

Exercise. I kind of became a gym rat over the summer, going for a couple hours roughly 5 times a week. I'd be happy exercising at least 3 times a week while the semester is going, because I turn into an antsy wreck if I sit around for too long at my desk. I'm not sure how I'm going to make this work, running and lifting during the day means I'm sweaty and gross for the remainder of the day, but going at night means I'm taking the bus in the dark, which is kind of sketchy. I might need to get a parking pass to make this doable.

And I am going to harass Russ until we get our papers written and done. There's no reason I shouldn't have at least 2 papers published from my master's research by the end of the spring.

COMMON!

Summer is gone... sigh

The new semester starts in 3 days, and I realize that I haven't posted in over a month. Part of the reason is that I found myself a little burnt out and discouraged. The other reason is that I have been taking a mental siesta during this time.

Let's just say the past few months haven't exactly gone according to plan. In my last post I was lamenting about how no matter how much time or effort I was putting into writing, it never reaches completion. A few weeks after writing that post my working group turned in the third(?) version of our review paper for my adviser to look over. Then we didn't hear anything for a few weeks. After making three figures, editing the crap out of the paper, and various people (including myself) leaving town, I more or less had moved on from this project. In my naivety I figured we were more or less done. Oh how wrong I was.

I strolled into my office the other day, my first day back at my desk for almost 3 weeks, and the first thing I see is our paper on my chair. Bleeding. It actually had more comments on it than the previous version. This isn't the end of the world, the figures aren't going to change and the edits are somewhat minor, but COMMON! I'm so over this.

Here's the thing. It's already a really well written paper, I have no problem saying that. Many of the edits are wordsmithing or tweaking, and I'm just not up for this. Granted, some of them are worth following up on, but others kind of change the meaning of what was originally written. And that drives me nuts. I've gone over all the comments, and Meghan and I are going to work on this some over the weekend or next week.Then maybe it'll be done? Maybe?

I also discovered another orphaned paper that somehow ended up on my desk: a non-dissertation related side project left over from a class last semester. I contacted the people involved with it yesterday to see if we could resurrect it and get it done, but so far I have heard nothing. I've decided I'm not even going to worry about it, it's not going anywhere as far as I'm concerned, and I can come back to it whenever. I just don't want to see it never come to completion, especially since so many man hours have already gone into it.

Since I'm not made of time or energy, I'm going to have to start forcing myself to not work so much on side projects. They have their place, but right now I have dissertation proposals to write and comps to get ready for.

Asymptotes

"In analytic geometry, an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as they tend to infinity." -Wikipedia

Figure 1. Time, effort, and perfection. You're never gonna get there.
http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2011/02/effort-and-asymptote.html

That is, the curve never actually reaches the line. It just gets really, really, really close.


Such is the case with "finishing" an academic project. In my case the "curve" is the paper I've been working on, but really it could be anything academic. A thesis, a project, and experiment, etc. etc. Whatever. The "line" is the completion status of the thing I'm working on. And no matter how hard I work on it, no matter how much time I put into it, I will never ever reach completion. It simply won't happen.


For me, the hardest parts of writing a paper are the very beginning and the very end. The beginning is rough because I have a difficult time building up motivation and getting over the initial hump; but, once I start writing I see the progress being made and it comes easier. The end is even more painful to get through, however, and it is all because of this asymptotic approach to completion. The last 10% of a paper takes an absurd amount of time to get through.


I know perfectly well this paper will never be good enough for my own standards. I know that eventually I'm going to have to just let it go, because any more time invested in it will just give me diminishing returns (see Figure 1). It just eventually becomes more work than it is worth. And that is how you know when a project is "done", even if it technically isn't. 

Because it can't be. It's mathematically impossible. And there's no use driving yourself crazy over it.


But for me, for right now, I think I've yet to reach that critical point where I feel like I'm wasting my time. So I'm off to the crazy factory for a couple more days of staring blankly at my computer screen. 

I'll stop if I start to go cross-eyed.

Academic Flailing

This is a topic I've intended to write on for a while now: academic flailing. I'm bringing this up now because I've been trying to learn how to do something new all on my own and it's taken me months to only be half successful with nothing to really show for it yet.

What's been going on is I have been working on a paper with some friends/colleagues since December. We originally intended to have the paper written and submitted some time in February or March. If you check the time stamp on this post you'll note that I'm writing this in mid June. So we're a "little" off target, needless to say.

The paper is, broadly speaking, a review on niche modeling. Somehow or another it was determined that we should DO a species distribution model to make a figure illustrating some of the points we were making in the paper. The only problem is that no one in our group does this kind of modeling. And I ended up being the one to take on this task while writing and editing continued.

Cut to the punch line: it's been two months, I've sort of learned enough about what I'm doing to be dangerous, but the result thus far hasn't ended up being particularly useful. I'm stubborn as hell and I'm going to do this, but I'm getting frustrated and exhausted fighting with this thing day after day, week after week (month after month). It's been a very steep learning curve, trying to teach myself how to do this thing no one in my lab knows how to do. I would seek out the help of outside people, but I feel like I need a basic understanding before I can even begin to ask them intelligent questions.

And so I've been flailing.

Science is, often, directed flailing. You flail, and flail, and then flail some more. And then sometimes, maybe, you end up somewhere. It's a lot like me swimming. I can keep myself from drowning, and if I point myself in a particular direction I can get from point A to point B. But it isn't pretty to watch.

It's kind of a funny analogy, unless you're the one who's been trying to keep their head above water for an obscene amount of time. And I'm tired, damn it.

Back to Reality

I fully intended to blog about my vacation with my mom, but a lack of reliable internet sort of put a damper on that plan. It is also completely non-academic, and although I have posted about things other than graduate school on this blog, I don't want to make that too much of a habit.

I will say though, vacations are important for maintaining the sanity of a graduate student. We all need breaks, and anyone who tells you any different is a dirty filthy liar. Our trip to Arizona was one of the better vacations I've taken in a long time, and it was nice to finally see the Grand Canyon. It wouldn't be the kind of thing I'd want to do every year; but, sometimes just staring over something so vast and outside of yourself is what you need to bring everything else in reality back into perspective. It's the main reason I miss being close to an ocean, and why I want to see the Pacific some day.

Hance Rapids. Taken with my mobile, so forgive the lousy quality.

But now I'm back to reality. First, I'm going to do the cliche thing and comment on how I can't believe that it is June already. I'm completely unapologetic about this. Summer intercession is almost over, and come Monday there will once again be college students wandering about. This won't change my working environment much, though. Working in my office over the past few weeks has been incredibly boring. No one is around, and by that I mean I sit in my office for 8 hours by myself, only seeing other human beings when I leave to go to the bathroom or get food/coffee. The PiBBS space is a different world when classes aren't in session. Furthermore, I think a lot of other people are traveling, so it is extra dead.

Another dose of reality came recently when I finally got my rejection letter for a big grant I had applied for back in the fall. The big yellow envelope of depression showed up right before I was going to Arizona, so I put off reading its contents until I got back. I finally went over the reviewer comments the other day. I had myself mentally prepared to get ripped to shreds, but it actually wasn't that bad. I agreed with pretty much everything the reviewers had to say, and they will help me write a stronger proposal for the next go around. Three years of support is just too good to not try again. I didn't really expect to get it this time around, they only funded something like 80 proposals with this particular award.

The reviews I got were also mixed. One reviewer rated my entire application as "fair" and provided the most detailed comments and criticisms. The other two rated it as "good" and "excellent". Even I know that my application wasn't "excellent", so I'm going to just go ahead and average everything out and say that I did "good" on my first attempt. Which isn't too shabby. All three reviewers commented that the whole proposal was really well written. The primary complaints were that I didn't elaborate more on my methods and statistics and that I was vague about the broader impacts. It was only a 5 page proposal, so I'm going to have to really try to fit some of these details in and trim up other areas. I'll also have some publications by the time I try again, so that will also boost my application.

The complaints about my broader impacts section kind of threw me, however. Almost all funding agencies now require applicants to explain how they are going to make the world a better place with their research. Kind of like a Miss America pageant for scientists. I thought I had included enough in this section, but clearly not. Apparently they wanted to know how the specific project I was proposing would be relevant to my community (aka NM). I was more broad about how my activities as a scientist were beneficial to my community. Wrong! Looking back on it, I can easily make my project applicable to NM because it is on the role of large carnivores in communities. NM has a lot of issues with wolf populations and managing their larger carnivores, so this should have been a no brainer. But I wasn't sure what they wanted from me and I gave them the "wrong" thing. Next time I'll know better. These sections are becoming more important and less of a kiss-off, and now I know to put more into it.

The next month is going to be all about me tying up loose ends with projects, and thinking about my comprehensive exams. I'm thinking those will happen in the fall, but I'm kind of on the fence about it. We'll see.

First Publication

I got an email today from the editor of my book chapter, forwarded from Felisa (even though I'm first author), indicating that the electronic version of the book we contributed to is available online.

Paleoecology in an Era of Climate Change: How the Past Can Provide Insights Into the Future

Abstract:

Anthropogenic climate change is the most prominent conservation issue of our time. Expectations are that the Earth’s climate will warm ~2.5–6.5° within the next century. The accompanying biological consequences will no doubt be huge. How will the diversity of life on our planet respond to rapid climate change? The best way to predict the future may be to examine the past as biota have experienced numerous episodes of climate fluctuation throughout geologic time. Some of these climatic fluctuations, particularly those of the late Quaternary, have been as rapid as those anticipated by climate warming scenarios. Analysis of the paleontological record can yield valuable information on how past climate change has shaped biodiversity in the past, and provide clues for what we may expect in the future. 

Paleontology in Ecology and Conservation

Springer Earth System Sciences, 2012, 93-116, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-25038-5_6

This is very exciting, and it gave me a boost this morning. I was kind of dragging when I got in to work today. Good news is always nice, and I'm going to try to ride the momentum through the day.

Peer Review Take Three: Done!

So it was down to the due date, but I managed to submit my review to the editor before 10pm tonight. Comments to the editor: check. Comments to the author: check. Annotated PDF: check. I feel relatively good about this, seeing as how this was my first time. I probably spent more time on this than I should have, but from what I hear that is typical. I probably missed some details on some things and didn't give enough feed back on another thing. But it is done and off my desk.

At the very least I can hope that one of the other reviewers was more experienced than me and will pick up on stuff I missed. I was reviewer #2, so I know that at the very least one other person besides me and the editor looked at this thing.

The one thing I really appreciated about the manuscript was that it was really well written, despite any complaints I did end up making about clarity. I've read published papers before where I have absolutely no idea what is going on. At the very least that didn't happen this time around.

I get to add this to my CV right? This was a submission for a pretty big journal. I feel like I should be able to brag about it.

Peer Review Take Two and Spring Fever

I've been staring at my screen all afternoon, knowing full well that I'm not getting anything done, and that the review for this paper is due. Tomorrow.

I remember times when I was productive. Like a couple weeks ago, I was sitting at home feeling blue so I went to my friend Natalie's apartment and magically spat out my presentation for lab group in no time. Or last semester, when I worked furiously for two weeks on a grant submission for the EPA. Or back when I was an undergrad and I would get my second wind at around 11pm, and then spend 3+ hours in the computer lab working on my senior thesis.

No such luck this week.

It's not that I don't want to do this peer review. I do. I believe strongly in the peer review process, and it is actually a really interesting paper I'm going over. Its just been an emotionally exhausting couple of months, and I never really fully checked back in (mentally) after winter break. You read that correctly... winter break... as in January. It's April. And I have a million other things on my mind other than school/work.

I have a really hard time working when my mind is other places. My brain doesn't shut off, and I am one of those people that will ruminate over the same thing over and over and over again until it is resolved either in reality or in my head. I've never been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, but lately I sure have been feeling like I'm afflicted.

At any rate, I've read the paper that I'm reviewing in excruciating detail, and I've made lots of annotations to the PDF directly. Now it's a matter of writing out my comments for the editor and the author. That is going to be the thing that will require a lot of activation energy on my part. The Word document is open on my desktop. The major bullet points for the things I want to address are typed. I just need to do it.

But all I really want to do right now is go lay on some grass somewhere, watch clouds float by, and think about what I'm doing with my life.

Peer Review Process

I apologize for the hiatus, I've had some personal stuff going on and an existential crisis that is still looming over me. But I'll leave that for another post once I have time to process what I've been going through. For now I want to talk about my first experience as a reviewer.

Over spring break I received an email from a fairly big name journal in which I was asked to peer review a submission. How I came to get this email became clear once I saw the name of the editor that selected me as a reviewer: it was my adviser. Advisers often have their graduate students review papers they themselves are selected for, mostly to give the student experience doing something that is important to the scientific publication process, but also in part (I suspect) to clear things off their own desks. This request from Felisa was slightly different since I was directly asked as a primary reviewer.

The most amusing part of the email was that it was addressed to "Dr. Pardi". Cart before the horse.

For those who didn't know this already, the peer review process involves sending out manuscripts to other people in the scientific community for critique before publication. Reviewers identify weaknesses in the science or analyses of a paper, and the authors receive these comments. Reviewers can request that additional analyses be made, or if a paper is really bad they can indicate that they feel the paper shouldn't be published at all. In summary, it is quality control that the scientific community has embraced as a whole. It can, unfortunately, be a painful process for many involved.

I can't go into details about the paper I received, but I'm kind of nervous about being the person who is judging someone else's work. Almost everyone I know has gotten nasty reviews back on a grant or a paper before. Reviewers can be brutal, unnecessarily so. They can also give away their own ignorance by making irrelevant or stupid criticisms when they aren't necessarily an expert in the topic they are reviewing. I don't want to be either of these kinds of reviewers, and it is that second category that I am particularly wary of falling into.

Having said all this, I'm going to try to do this one on my own, at least initially. It turns out that I do know a bit about the subject matter, enough to refer Felisa to other people who would also make good reviewers if she needed anyone else. I have until April 10th the get this done, and my goal is to get it done early and do it right without being a jerk or sounding like a moron.

Sick Start to the Semester

Well no sooner did classes begin did I catch a cold. I've been coughing up a lung all week. I've noticed a lot of people around me coughing, so I think there is probably something going around. At first I was worried that it was my allergies (new kitty), but then Matt started having a sore throat and post nasal drip too. I feel pretty confident now that I've been actually sick all week.

Aside from this minor health setback, the first week of school went pretty well. I like my classes so far, although I'm already anxious about Macroecology. We have two assignments, the first being a class project with very little guidance from the instructors. I'm a little nervous trying to work on something with 25 people, but it isn't due until April. The class is already trying to organize itself, and if we can pull it off we'll hopefully finish the semester with a paper we can submit to a journal for publication.

The rest of my classes just seem like they're going to be fun. My working group is also trying to reorganize ourselves to get back to writing our paper. We got an extension, and I've been trying to do more background reading. At the moment I don't feel competent enough to do much writing, but that will come eventually.

Done? Really?

Seriously, this just in! The only thing standing between me and my book chapter is the consent form.
25 pages, 158 references, and 4 figures have been completed, corrected, and sent off to the editor as of this evening.

To celebrate, I bought a new laptop. My current one has been dying a slow death for the past two years, and it recently started sending me error messages about not recognizing the power adapter. That was the last straw. Just for the record, writing a book on a stodgy computer is hard. I don't recommend it.

I won't be making any money from this book, but the sense of accomplishment feels pretty good anyway. It's also not indexed, so the publication "technically" doesn't have the weight of a peer reviewed pub. But it's still something I can put on my CV. The blank area for publications will now have something there, and I'm relieved for that.

The name of the book is Paleoecology in Ecology and Conservation, my chapter (Ch. 6) is Paleoecology in an era of climate change: how the past can provide insights into the future

That's all I can say about it for now. Springer is publishing it, and I have no idea when it will come out in print, but rest assured that I will post that information as soon as I know it!


Cheers everyone. I'm off to enjoy the remainder of my break.

Never Ending

I just spent the past 2+ weeks scrambling to try and get my book chapter out to the editor. You know, the one that was due in November. Felisa and I kept pushing back the deadline, and it finally came down to the absolute last minute. All the nit picky stuff towards the end was beginning to drive me bonkers, I felt like I was chasing a moving target for a bit.

I don't think I'll be writing one of these things again any time soon. I'm just glad it's done. The whole thing makes me nervous about working collaboratively, it challenging enough to corral myself. I have another project coming up quickly, with a firmer deadline, and it isn't for a book but I'm working with 3 other people. I'm not complaining, really, I'm just mentally and physically exhausted. I learned a lot from the experience, but now I'm just ready to kick back, enjoy the rest of my break, and hope the book people don't come back with too many edits.

It feels good to work on something and see it to its completion.
Merry Christmas to me!

Wrapping up the Semester

It's that time of the semester, where I'm in a perpetual state of "just about finished" before the break. I have three class sessions and two assignments left before I am done with Fall 2011. I finished my paper for paleoclimate seminar that is due tomorrow... the other project is for PiBBS and is really poorly defined. This is lack of instruction has made it annoying and difficult to do, and I just don't feel compelled to do it since the instructor didn't take the effort to assign a clear project. I will, of course, do something just to get through this.

It's also that time of the year where it's really hard for me to find the motivation to get through the last bit of the semester. For one thing, it's starting to get colder, and it would just be so easy to stay in bed in the morning. Fluffy blankets and pajamas sound much better than getting on a dirty city bus to go sit in my office. I'm also usually fried by the end of November. This fall has been very busy with submitting fellowship proposals, developing my dissertation research, and taking classes.

Felisa is gone this week to a conference in New Zealand. It's really bad timing. We have a book chapter due NOW, and we haven't even put together a first draft. I'm getting nervous, but there's really only so much I can do. While she's gone I'll continue to write and edit my part, and I'm also trying to figure out a conceptual diagram to include in the chapter. If I have that finished for when she gets back I'll feel confident that I've done all I can.

As I wrap up this semester, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do when I get back from winter break. What are my goals for the spring? By mid January I hope to have a manuscript submitted, so I'll be dealing with the fallout from that project. In all likelihood the paper won't get accepted right away, and so I'll be spending time editing the paper for resubmission at other journals. Not all journals use the same format, some are REALLY different, so the amount of effort will depend on where we send it and what the reviewer comments say.

My committee expects that I will give a department talk on my master's research some time in the spring, so I want to get some preliminary data on some of my research. It will be easier to talk about future research directions if I can make a little headway on some projects between now and then. The projects that will involve going to museum collections or doing field work will obviously not be something I can talk too much about, but I have some data from databases I can play with in the mean time.

I'm really eager to get home to Connecticut. I miss everyone so much, and it's always too long between visits. I'm excited that we're getting a tree this year, we haven't had one in 4 years. I get anxious when I don't see my family for long stints, especially with my grandmother not doing so great. I think if I manage to not get sick this year, it's going to be a really nice Christmas. Last year was awful, I picked up a stomach flu right after the holiday and Matt and I were sick for most of the break.

The big thing I am looking forward to when I get back in January is the kitty Matt and I adopted. He will finally be coming home with us. We went to PetCo last week and we found such a wonderful cat, we adopted him even though the timing isn't right. Luckily, his foster mommy is willing to keep him until we get back from break, so he can stay comfortable at her house. He's so sweet and handsome!

The Absolute Longest Couple of Weeks

It's that dreaded time of the fall semester. That time when just about everything seems to be coalescing. Conferences, applications, class assignments, exams, etc. etc. I fared pretty well myself over the past few weeks, at the very least I don't have exams, nor am I doing any grading. For that, at least, I'm thankful.

Last week I was away at a conference, however, during the past three weeks I was also working on a fellowship proposal. This was one of the few conferences where I actually got work done; when I wasn't at a talk or a meeting, I was holed up in my room writing. I just applied for a STAR fellowship through the environmental protection agency. The EPA STAR grants provide up to three years of tuition and stipend support as well as $5,000 a year for research. I'm hoping to get this fellowship for when my current funding ends, otherwise it's back to teaching and grading to support myself and looking for research money elsewhere.

The application had many parts to it, including a five page research proposal, a personal statement, my resume, and three letters of recommendation. I feel pretty good about how the whole application turned out, and I think it's pretty strong for a first submission. We'll see if others agree with me, I guess. Many of my friends are also going through the hell of grant writing. It's just that time of the year: mid fall, everything is due. Several friends were writing NSF predoctoral grants (which, sadly, I'm not eligible for because I have a master's degree) and a few were writing a doctoral dissertation improvement grant (DDIG), which is strictly for research money, not stipends or tuition.

After getting through the past few weeks, I'm finding myself extra agitated at the people you hear going around talking about how scientists are scammers, out to get rich off of research money. Rick Perry comes to mind especially, and after all the work and thought I put into just trying to get a piddly amount of money to stay fed and do work, I really would love to punch people like him in the face. These people are liars, ignorant, or some sad combination of the two. I'm certainly struggling to find research money, as is everyone else I know, and I'm certainly not living it up in my little apartment near the war zone of Albuquerque. I suppose maybe the implication is that scientists shouldn't get paid to do research, or that research expenses should come out of my pocket somehow. But research is a real job, and it would be like asking a teacher to pay for textbooks or a McDonald's worker to pay for the fryer. Ridiculous. Incidentally, many teachers DO pay out of their own money for supplies, which like I said, is ridiculous.

After next week I'll have more time for getting some writing done. I have a class presentation on Tuesday in my paleoclimate seminar, and a lab group presentation on Wednesday. I'm going to be talking about past climate change, and changes in wild fire frequency and vegetation. I have no idea what I'm going to present to my lab though, probably what my new project ideas are for the upcoming year. I don't have data, but I have lots of interesting questions that I want to start working on. I came back from SVP with lots to think about.

First Day of School, Fall 2011

Today was the first of the semester, and I'm still in denial that summer is officially over. In reality, I really only had about 3 months off, which at the beginning seems like a really long amount of time. However, every time I looked at the calendar I was shocked.

It's so weird seeing all the kiddies back on campus. I've actually been hiding out in my office for the most part. The area I'm in now isn't frequented by undergraduates too often, and it's pretty quiet over all. The best part of the first week of school is all the free stuff. This past Friday I was lamenting about how I needed a highlighter, and I was debating whether it was worth it to walk to the bookstore to buy one. Boy am I glad I didn't because I scored three different color highlighters today at a tent near the duck pond. That, AND there was free ice cream this afternoon. Welcome weeks are always chock full of freebies. I hear tomorrow the free food item is watermelon, hopefully tacos or pizza or something will come up later in the week. On Wednesday the department is having a welcome back get together, which should also have food. I think I can sneak away from class long enough to get a snack.

Speaking of class, my Quaternary Paleoclimate seminar starts tomorrow. I hear it's a whole lot of reading all semester long. I'm actually looking forward to it, I need to learn as much about this subject as quickly as possible, since it is a pretty important part of my research.

Other than the free stuff and there being more people on campus, today was pretty much like any other day I've been having this month. I sat in my office, read, and took notes on journal articles. I'm starting to get hungry, so I think I may head home soon.

Matt and I went to Santa Fe yesterday, I'll elaborate on that more in another post.

Get Back to Work!

Over the past couple weeks I have been getting back into work mode. I did pretty good this week getting in at a reasonable time and staying all day in my office working on various odds and ends. School is starting back up in a week, I can hardly believe I'm going to be starting my second year at UNM so soon. If I was going to be teaching again I'm pretty sure I'd be having major anxiety over it, I'd be in a horrible mood. But, I'm actually feeling a little better than I was last week. I'm excited about the upcoming semester, I'm looking forward to getting a lot of my own work done.

This past week I've pretty much been working on trying to find out as much as I can about fossil sites in New Mexico caves. It's been very productive, so I just stuck with that all week. It's now Friday and I feel pretty confident that I have all of the faunas I'm interested in on my computer in a fairly simple spreadsheet. It only took about a day of messing around with the Neotoma Database and about a day and a half of tedious copying from tables in books to get it all together. I have just over a 1000 entries in my new data sheet, now it's just a matter of looking at what I have.

I haven't seen Felisa much this summer. We were at the mammal meeting together back in June, and I've seen her a handful of times around the department. It'll be good to get back to having weekly meetings to see where I'm at with research, and to finally see what we should do next with our book chapter. A couple weeks ago I put together three chapter sections with associated questions which we should address. I think if I had my way I would have us split up the topics and do some literature reviews to see what questions we could address.

I also downloaded some new carnivore data. The original set I had before got messed up, but I think I figured out what went wrong. I briefly looked at the new stuff and it looks like I avoided the problem I had before; however, I can't get fine time bins like I was hoping I could. I'm coming to the conclusion that a lot of stuff really hasn't been dated well, which makes it really difficult to do certain kinds of projects. I can understand, dates are really expensive. I know that when I do my next excavation, I'm going to definitely write some grants for a lot of radiocarbon dates.

American Society of Mammalogists Meeting June 24-28, 2011 or My Trip to Portland, OR

I recently attended the annual meeting for the American Society of Mammalogists in Portland, OR. Despite its reputation, the weather held up for most of the time I was there, and we only got some drizzle on the last day.


I really liked Portland, and it's a place I would definitely go back for another non-work related visit. I really liked how easy it was to get around, how relatively clean it was, and all there was to do. I went to the Saturday Market (which actually goes on all weekend), which was really neat to see. It's basically a huge craft fair/flea market and you can find a lot of unique hand made items. I got a nifty bronze and copper barrette.
Portland State University was also really nice, it's right in the middle of the city but it doesn't feel overly city-like when you're actually on the main part of the campus. During the first day of the meeting there was a huge farmer's market going on right in the plaza area of campus, which made for a really convenient place to get lunch. The growing season there is several weeks behind NM, so it was a treat to see all the late spring veggies and berries.

I stayed with a friend while at the meeting. Fred's mother lives in Gresham, OR, which is really close to Portland. Fred, Matt, and I camped out in her mom's living room, and we enjoyed the added company of Jack the dog and Darwin the cat. We took the light rail in to get to and from the meeting, which was about an hour long trip, but it was convenient none-the-less. I can always appreciate cities where you don't really need a car. I could live in a place like Gresham, or any of the other cities near Portland. They're all just really convenient, and you can get just about anywhere between the light rail, a bus, and some walking. Portland is actually pretty eco-friendly, as far as cities go. They recycle everything, and it's one of the few cities I've seen that composts.

The meeting itself was very enjoyable. I personally prefer smaller meetings to the supersized meetings I sometimes go to. This was my first mammal meeting, and it's the first meeting where I was in the minority as a paleoecologist. Unfortunately, there was a mix up with my abstract and I ended up presenting in a session that wasn't ideal. But, the show must go on, and it went alright. Not my best talk, but certainly not my worst. I did have a couple of people approach me about my work with some interest, which goes to show that I am, in fact, my own toughest critic.

The final day of the meeting was really good because I saw some really interesting posters, got some really good deals on reference books, and the keynote talk was also fantastic. Liz Hadley from Stanford gave the talk, and it was on Pleistocene paleoecology and really highlighted how paleontology is relevant to modern ecology. The whole talk was basically about all the things that keep me up at night, so I really enjoyed it. Liz is also just really cool and a really great speaker. She's definitely on my list of amazing female scientist role models.

Here are a few non-meeting related highlights from my trip. I know it starts to sound a bit like a travel guide, but honestly, if a good time can't be had at a conference (or during field work for that matter), then you're doing it wrong:

Multnomah Falls - a really good afternoon hike, beautiful scenery, and I saw TWO pikas. Very appropriate for my first mammal meeting! If for some reason you don't know what a pika is...

South Park Seafood Grill & Wine Bar - I was disappointed with the mussel & sausage appetizer, but everything else I tried was delicious. Kind of pricey, I recommend the butternut squash ravioli, and Fred enjoyed the smoked salmon salad. The wine was also very nice, and I had a Sparkling Elderflower cocktail which was fabulous.

Saturday Market - Lots of hand made goodies! North Waterfront Park and Ankeny Plaza. The portion near the waterfront has the most hand made stuff.

The Seafood Groto - This place is tiny but good! Matt and I broke a cardinal rule by going to a restaurant on a Monday, but we still got a nice (but again, pricey) dinner. The crab stuffed mushroom caps and hazelnut crusted halibut are really great.

Saturday Farmer's Market at PSU - Located right in the middle of Portland State University is a really nice farmer's market. An excellent place to get a bargain lunch that is delicious. You can also buy really fresh fish, and the berries in June are just beautiful.

Powell's Books - The world's largest book store that takes up over a city block. I got some good deals on books, and they have just about everything.

Voodoo Donuts - They're going through a remodel right now, so the hours can be kind of iffy, and if you try to go during the day on the weekend, be prepared to wait in line for at least an hour or more, no exageration. We went at 11pm on a Tuesday, but were still able to get a decent selection considering they were out of a lot of things. They also have a really large selection of vegan donuts, and I've heard their maple bacon donut (so not vegan) is really good. I'll definitely go back to try and get it.

Hotlips Pizza - Definitely a good place for a delicious slice and good drink, right near PSU. They offer up a variety of guest microbrews and they make their own fruit sodas. I got the raspberry soda which was on tap, and two slices of veggie/vegan pizza. You can get a large slice of pizza and a (good) beer for $6. Did I mention they have HUGE fresh cookies? The service is also really quick and they have both indoor and outdoor seating.

Rogue Brewery - There are a lot of breweries in Portland, and I want to go back and try them all (wishful thinking, haha), but this is arguably the most famous. I went to the Rogue Hall on campus, it's under a dorm for Pete's sake. They have all their beers you can find nationwide in stores, plus a bunch of others which you can only get at the brewery. I was very happy with their Mocha Porter. Also, there was free Rogue beer at all the social events for the meeting, and the Hazelnut Brown Nectar Ale is really really good.

McCormick & Schmick's Pilsner Room - Another good place to get a beer, not to mention the best place I did my networking at the conference. They have an extensive selection of guest brews on rotation, and they do their own on the premises. Most of their beers can be had for about $5 a pint, or they have a sampler of 6 varieties for $9. Plus it's down by the marina which has a nice view.