grad student life

At dinner last night:

Me:  I know someone from my hometown who just had her third kid.

Friend:  Whoooaaa.  That's crazy.

Me:  It's not actually that crazy, is the weird thing.

Friend:  Actually, you're right.  I guess she could have gotten married right after college, waited a bit, and still spaced them two years apart.  I guess we're getting old.

Me:  I know, it's really weird.  All these people my age on their second and third kid...

Friend:  Yeah, but... we know LaTeX.


Wahn wahhhnnn.

must... keep... going

I'm hitting the wall, and it's only 2:00 in the afternoon.  No good.

Well, back up.  This is a weird day for many reasons.  I got up at 5:00 this morning, as I have been for the past few weeks, and I worked on my dissertation until around 8:00.  Then I took my shower and ate breakfast and was ready to head in to campus to get ready for my class this afternoon, as I have been for the past few weeks.  And as I was leaving, I turned my back in a weird way, and it did that stupid, stupid spasm-y thing that it does periodically.  I usually get about one back spasm per year, and then I hobble around like an old lady for a few days before my back decides it's going to quit giving me grief.

So yeah, back spasm this morning.  Not a particularly bad one, but it immediately started stiffening up, like it always does, and I was hobbling around already.  I tossed back a couple Advil and started to head for campus, but it was hurting.  Now... I had been wanting to find an excuse to cancel class today, or let them out early, because I really, really need to get some serious writing done.  So part of me (the little devil on my shoulder) was hissing "dooooo iiiiiittttt... caaaaannnnccceeelllll", but then part of me (the stubborn goody two shoes part) was going, "don't be ridiculous, you're fine, go teach your class."

I made it about a block when I started thinking about what I would have done if I didn't have a dissertation to work on.  And I realized that my back was bothering me enough that if this were a different summer, or during the semester, I would have seriously considered canceling class independently of the fact that I have a dissertation to finish.  So the fact that I was being so stubborn and hobbling to campus anyway was directly tied to the fact that I had been feeling guilty about wanting to cancel class back when I didn't have a good enough reason to.

So I stopped walking, and I stood there for about 6 seconds, and then I turned around and went home and canceled class.  Because forget it.  I'm an adult.  Adults are allowed to have sick days, and this is basically a sick day, and one that I legitimately needed, because I can't really stand up straight right now.  (Which is totally legitimate.  I don't want to be struggling to stand up straight at the front of a classroom for 2 hours.)  The thing that's weird and extra lame about it is that then I felt like, "Hooray!  A sick day!  I get to stay home and work!!"

Being an adult: maybe not as cool as you had hoped.

So now it's 2:06 and I should be heading to my classroom to teach, and instead I am blogging.  I have gotten a tremendous amount of writing done today - which is freaking excellent - but I am hitting the wall.  And this brings us back to my opening sentence.  Part of me is like, "It's only 2:00!  Suck it up, quit being a wimp, and keep working."  But then I realize that I've been writing more or less straight for... 8 hours now, if you figure in some little breaks.  So, uhh, no wonder I'm hitting the wall and suddenly having trouble forming decent sentences.

The problem is that now I don't know what to do with myself, because this is normally the point where I would go for a walk to get some perspective and clear my head, but walking is probably not in the cards today.  Dude, back spasms suck.

So... I dunno.  Maybe I'll read or play the piano or something.

some thoughts in passing

I would like it to not be 55 degrees and foggy anymore.

But I guess starting in like, 19 days, it won't be!  So that's weird.

Speaking of that, I realized this morning that I need to start making phone calls to get my utilities turned on in State College.  So that's pretty weird too.

Also, thank you all for the encouragement.  My background chapter still has a ways to go, but it is totally shaping up, and I actually kind of like it.  This thing might turn out okay after all.

I'm just not really going to get much sleep for the next two weeks.  :-P  But then I'll be done!!

*sigh*

Man, it so comes in spurts.  I wrote a difficult section of my background chapter this morning, and now I just don't want to do it anymore.  I finally broke out of the guilt-anxiety-avoidance spiral a little bit - that horrible limbo where you can't make yourself start working on something because it just feels overwhelming and like you can't do it - so it was going relatively well.  But now I just have more difficult sections to write, and I just plain don't wanna do it.

Times like these are when I have to find non-difficult sections to write, like just summarizing other people's studies, because that at least keeps the juices flowing and helps me feel productive.  Confidence building sections, really.  So I guess I should find some more studies to summarize, and maybe that will help me feel better and get back into it.

I also have this problem currently where I keep rationalizing the amount of time I have left.  I was going to try to have this chapter done by tonight, but that's looking less and less likely.  So now... if I can just get it done sometime this week, I can spend all of next weekend revising my three existing chapters.  I think I can do revisions on one chapter per day, if I really buckle down.  And that leaves me about a week to write my discussion chapter...

TIME IS DISAPPEARING.  And I kind of don't like it one bit, because AAAAACK I HAVE TO FILE THIS THING IN 18 DAYS, but at the same time, there is a weird sense of relief beginning to creep up on me, just the tiniest tiniest bit.  I am so in the home stretch.  In 19 measly days I will be done.  I am so close, and yet so far away...

fast forward button plz thx

You know the part where I'm done with this dissertation, and with teaching this class, and with packing my stuff, and with moving in to my new place that's 3,000 miles away?

And I don't have to worry about how all that stuff is going to get done in the next, oh, three weeks?

Yeah, can we just skip to that part now?

On the bright side, I have the greatest advisors ever.  I got comments back from both of them on my last chapter, and I finally got brave enough to read them (it's scary looking at comments, because what if they have no idea what you were trying to say, or there's some huge fundamental flaw that you completely missed because you were too busy getting the stupid statistical model to work, etc. etc.) and they're just the. greatest.  So encouraging and understanding and helpful.  Basically along the lines of, "This is a good idea, and I can tell it's not quite there yet, but it's good, so you should do the best you can with it for now, and then keep working on it."  And also they keep saying things like, "I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation with you once you're Dr. Fricke."  So basically, the best possible way to talk a tired and frustrated grad student down off the ledge!

Oof.  I need to get back to work.

weird weekend, weird blog post

I wanted to write a funny post about what a Berkeley weekend I've had, but only parts of it are funny, so I'm not sure how to write it up.  On Friday night, I went to my friend G's house, and we brewed up some beer.  G has been brewing for something like 2 years now, and I've really appreciated that he's let me sort of glom on to the process and learn a little bit about it.  I'm going to start brewing when I move.  I would've started earlier, except that I don't have much room in my place, and also each batch makes something like 50 beers, and having two people regularly producing 50 beers within a relatively small friend group is just too much beer.

Anyway, on Friday night, a small group of us were brewing up some raspberry ale (it's raspberry season right now, and the raspberries are plentiful, cheap, and delicious).  We were standing in the kitchen, being generally extremely nerdy and philosophical by turns.  One friend in particular was talking about how he'd like to re-do the U.S. government.  He had some really, really interesting ideas (I think), like adding lobbyists as a fourth branch of government.  The thing is, they are the fourth branch of government right now.  They're just invisible and unregulated, and it's totally screwing a lot of things up.  So we were talking about how to regulate that and bring it out into the open; what you'd have to do to really make the "lobby" an official branch of government.

Then another friend pointed out that this was probably someone's worst nightmare: five Berkeley grad students brewing beer in a kitchen in Oakland, talking about how to restructure the government.  (Actually, it's probably my dad's worst nightmare.  Love you, Dad.)

But I loved it.  It was so fun and interesting.  I love thought experiments, and this was a really good one.

Then yesterday, I read an article about a movie that just got released this weekend, Fruitvale Station.  The article said you should go see it if for no other reason than the fact that it's by a black director and stars a mostly black cast of really talented actors, and it represents a unique and important point of view that basically never gets portrayed on the big screen.  And the article said that the movie was under a limited release this weekend, and that if it did well, it might be released more widely.

Besides that, the only thing I knew about this movie is that it was about Oscar Grant.  Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART police officer on New Year's Eve the first year I lived in Berkeley.  It was a huge deal out here.  He was unarmed, and he died a few hours later, and the whole thing resulted in protests and looting in Oakland.

So I knew going in that it had something to do with the incident, which is the story of a black man getting shot and killed by a white police officer, and that it was by a black director (apparently originally from Oakland, although I learned that later) and was starring black actors.  That's all I knew.

I felt really weird about the movie.  It was indisputably a very good movie.  What felt weird about it was that I knew Oscar Grant was going to die.  That was kind of the point of the movie.  Well, no, the point of the movie was to portray a (fictionalized?) version of the last day of Oscar Grant's life.  It's his mom's birthday, he stops by the grocery store to pick up some crab so his grandma can make her famous gumbo for everybody.  He takes his daughter to preschool, he drops her off at her cousins' so he can go out with his girlfriend for New Year's Eve.  On the one hand, it's just a normal day in the life of a flawed but well-meaning human being.  But the movie really felt like it was at pains to make you like Oscar Grant.  It felt a little too heavy handed at points, like the scene where a dog gets hit by a car, and he runs out into the street and holds the dog in his arms as it slips away.  It's a short, very painful scene, and it's completely obvious that the only point of it is to make us see what a loving person Oscar Grant is.  It doesn't connect with any other aspects of the plot.  And come to think of it, it's in stark contrast to the scene immediately following it, where Oscar drives out to a parking lot to make a drug deal.  I guess that's the point, but it just felt like it was trying too hard sometimes.

It's hard to know how I would have felt about the movie if I didn't know anything about the whole situation.  What's interesting is that even though I felt the heavy handedness of it at points, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still absolutely horrified when he was shot.  That's why I have to say that it was a very good movie.  Even though I could feel the mechanics of it a little bit too much - like I could feel it working on me - the reality is that it did work on me, and it's hard to argue with that.

The big takeaway for me was that even if everything leading up to the scene where he gets shot was completely fictionalized, I came away hurting for Oscar Grant and his family, because the point is that he was a person, and even if he was flawed, he certainly didn't deserve to die.  And my personal opinion is that even if the guy who shot him did do it completely on accident (which seems somewhat likely, although admittedly it's not like I know that much about it), he should have done longer than 11 months of jail time.

So we came out of the movie, and we decided to go for a beer.  It was pretty intense, and we wanted to decompress rather than head straight home by ourselves.  We walked around the block, and our normal spot was totally packed and too noisy, so we decided to try Saturn Cafe.  Saturn Cafe started in Santa Cruz, and it's a vegetarian and vegan retro-themed diner.  Kind of like Steak 'n Shake if it had started in Santa Cruz.  Apparently they normally have beer from Bison Brewery, this place in Berkeley that's supposed to do some interesting stuff.  So we're looking at the menu, and our waiter comes over, and he's this really cute, skinny, kind of femme little guy, with big plugs in his ears and big black glasses, and a very emphatic way of speaking.  We tell him we just saw Fruitvale Station and we want some beer to decompress, and he says, "Well... unfortunately all we have left tonight is PBR."  He sees the expressions on our faces and quickly adds, "But we have other alcohol!  We have... mimosas."  And we all start laughing.  And he adds, increasingly awkwardly, "And... champagne.  And... Bloody Mary's."  So we've just seen a movie about the Oscar Grant fiasco, in a theater full of locals who were here when the whole thing went down, and now we're in a vegetarian diner being offered champagne by a cute little gay boy.  What a night.

We ended up "taking a minute to think about it" and then sneaking back outside, then going to Beta Lounge and drinking real beer instead.  We talked about the movie a little bit, and lots of other things, and then eventually I came home and went to sleep.

This morning, I heard the verdict from the Trayvon Martin trial, and I'm just feeling really weird about things.  It is strange (but important) to realize how much your life is shaped by the color of your skin.  I hate it, and it hurts, but it's important to think about it, and to realize how different your entire life would be if you were a different color.  Far, far too often it affects the way people look at you, and the way people relate to you, and especially the snap judgments people make of you.  When you're white, you don't notice it, because the snap judgments are generally good or neutral ones.  But when you're black and there's a gun involved, it damn well seems like you're not going to get the benefit of the doubt.

So there were parts of this weekend that were really fun, but also a lot of it makes me feel a little sick if I really think about it.  And now I have to compartmentalize all that stuff and do some work.

I think this chapter is done!!?!??!?!!1!

I seriously need a walk, but I think this chapter is as done as it's going to be for now.  I decided to not even bother with the introduction, because I'd rather hurry up and get it to my advisors so they can tell me if it makes any sense before I worry about writing a decent introduction.

So!  We are sitting at 103 pages, friends, and this chapter clocks in at 23.  Considering that that's minus the as-yet non-existent introduction, but includes 9 pages of the best discussion section I've written yet - it was like pulling teeth, probably because I came up with my own theory of how speech production works that seems to actually account for my own findings and a small slew of findings in the literature - it is a very significant 23 pages for me.  I now know exactly what I'm arguing, and I now have to go back and make the rest of this thing jive with what I'm arguing.

Allow me to continue tooting my own horn for a moment, and say that I analyzed all of the data for this chapter and wrote the entire thing in exactly 3 weeks.  That is progress.  And even if I'm a little behind where I would have liked to be by now, I really think this thing is shaping up, and I might even end up being somewhat happy with it.

Now... let's see what the advisors say.  :-P  Gonna go for a walk, re-read the whole thing, and then send it off.

THREE DOWN, TWO TO GO.  I GOT THIS.

horseshoes, hand grenades, and dissertations?

Almost.  Almost!  I almost made it to the 100 page mark today.  I really, really wanted to make it, but it's 7:05 and it's time to head over to G's and bottle the beer we started brewing a few weeks ago.  I'm about done for the day mentally, anyway.

But that means that tomorrow, I'm going to break the 100 page mark!  More importantly, though, it also means that I added 8 pages to the ol' diss today (no small feat), and also that I am closing in on the end of this chapter.  Just need to finish up the discussion section and write most of the introduction, which I can do in about a day and a half if I really put my mind to it.

I cannot wait to be done with this chapter.  Then I'll have a little over a month to edit, fix, and tie things together, but the bulk of it will be done.  Don't worry, you will get a triumphant update when I wrap this one up, probably on Wednesday of this week.

Chugga chugga chugga chugga...

Weekends at Westbrae Wash 'n' Dry

The guy who manages the laundromat I go to is a little... off.  The Yelp reviews refer to him as the Laundry Troll, which is not entirely inaccurate.  He's kind of old, grizzly, and very crotchety.  He has a gruff and gravelly voice, and he likes to bark orders at people, telling them not to overfill the machines, or not to leave their dry clothes in the dryer too long, things like that.

At first I was a little intimidated by him, because he's kind of mean, and he's a little creepy when you're a young woman going to do your laundry and he's the only other one there, sweeping the floor and giving you side glances.  But now that I've been going there a few months, he's actually grown on me, in a weird way.  I think he might have some sort of learning disability or something, because he talks a little strangely, and he repeats himself a lot.  My impression of him now is that he just takes his job very seriously, and he likes to take good care of his laundromat, and he also kind of likes to tease people in that way that crotchety old men with a twinkle in their eye do.  I had to go to the bathroom a few weeks ago, and the bathroom door was locked.  "Is there a key to the bathroom?" I asked.  "Uh-huh," he replied, deliberately being as unhelpful as possible and seeing how I would respond.  "Do you have it?" I asked, catching on to his game.  "Uh-huh," he replied.  "Well, can I get you to let me in, then?" I concluded.  And I think he's liked me ever since.

This morning when I showed up to do my laundry, the Laundry Troll was nowhere to be seen.  It was nice and quiet on a Sunday morning, so I loaded up my laundry and sat down to work on my knitting.  Another lady came in, and as she was loading up her laundry, the machine next to her started spewing water.  A big puddle was spreading across the floor, and not showing any signs of stopping.  "Is that yours?" I asked, motioning to the washer.  "Nope!" she said, clearly relieved.  I looked around and whoever's clothes were creating the problem had disappeared.  I set down my knitting and went out the back door to the parking lot, where the Laundry Troll can sometimes be found sweeping or working in the garden.  No luck.

The maintenance closet door was open, so I poked my head in and found a mop.  As I came out and headed for the puddle, an old guy in a tracksuit came in the front door.  "Do you work here?" he half-grumbled at me suspiciously.  "No," I said.  "But this washer started spewing water, so I thought I'd see if I could find a mop."  I started sopping up as much water as I could, but there wasn't much I could do without a bucket.  The old man stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me, watching me swish the water around, looking slightly bemused.  "Hnh," he grunted.  "Where's Larry?"  "I don't know," I replied, assuming he was talking about the Laundry Troll.  In any case, I hadn't seen anyone but him and the Asian lady, so I was pretty sure I hadn't seen anyone named Larry.  "You know Larry, right?" said the old man.  "Larry Lasagna?"

I didn't even know what to say, so I just stared at him.  "Yeah, Larry Lasagna!  I don't know where he is today."

"Me neither," I said.

"You need a bucket," the old man continued, after a pause.  "Where'd you get that mop?"  "In the closet," I said.  "The door was wide open."  He glanced at the door, then back at me, then shuffled across the room to the maintenance closet.

A few clangs and thuds later, the old man in the tracksuit emerged victorious, awkwardly carrying a five-gallon bucket.  He set it down next to me, and I gratefully set the mop in the bucket, letting the gray water collect in the bottom.  Bits of dirt and debris streamed from the mop, but the water was coming out the bottom of the washer faster than I would ever be able to get it into the bucket.  The old man looked at me waiting for the water to drain from the mop.  "You're gonna have to squeeze it out with your hands," he said.  Dude.  No way.  I was already going above and beyond the call of duty by getting a mop of my own accord.  No way was I going to squeeze dirty floor water out of it into a bucket with my bare hands.

I stood there letting it drip for a few seconds, and the old man stood there watching me.  The Asian lady was bustling around doing her laundry, trying her best not to get swept up in the drama of the malfunctioning washer.  The old man looked at me and harrumphed again.  "A shovel.  We can squeeze it out with a shovel."  And he shuffled off back to the maintenance closet.

Forget it, I thought.  I've done more than my fair share.  I propped the mop against the washer and sat back down to work on my knitting.

The old man now had a purpose.  He set to work mopping water and squishing it out into the bucket with the shovel.  He seemed quite satisfied with himself, and also not at all bothered that I had abandoned what had started out as my work.  After a short while, my laundry was done washing, and I was grateful to have an excuse to concentrate on something else.  As I was moving my clothes from the washers to the dryers, the Laundry Troll made an appearance through the back door.

"Steve!" said the old man.  "You got a problem on your hands!"  So the Laundry Troll was apparently not named Larry Lasagna, at least.  Whatever his name, I was glad the old man was the one sloshing water around when he arrived.

Steve/Laundry Troll/not Larry Lasagna took one look at the water and broke out his stash of beach towels.  He was much less angry than I expected.  All in a day's work, I suppose.  I tried to look inconspicuous as I pumped quarters into the dryers, wondering what would happen next.

As Steve was finishing mopping up the water, a pot-bellied man came into the laundromat and headed straight for the problem washer.  The old man pounced on him.  "You overfilled it!" he half-yelled self righteously.  "Look what happens when you overfill the washers!"

"No, no," said Steve the Laundry Troll.  "When there's too many people on the rinse cycle at the same time, 's too much water for the pipe.  Pipe's only 'bout yea big," he said, making a small ring with his hands.  It was the longest sentence I had ever heard him construct.  "Not enough room."

The old man seemed a little disappointed, and the pot-bellied man seemed like he just wanted out of there.  The old man and Steve continued talking about something, and a few minutes later, the old man came over to me again.  "How'd you say you got in the closet?" he asked.  "The door was wide open," I repeated.  He studied me for a moment, then walked back to talk to Steve.

I finished loading the dryers and sat down to work on my knitting.  A minute later, the old man was back.  "You're very industrious!" he exclaimed, apparently quite pleased that not only did I have the chutzpah to look for a mop in a water emergency, but I could knit too.  "What are you making?"  "A hat," I said, not really wanting to engage in conversation with 24 minutes left on my drying cycle.  "Well, it's a nice color," he said.

"Steve wanted to know how you got in the closet, and I said karma!  Ha ha!"  I couldn't help chuckling a little bit.  "She opened that door with her karma, I says!"

"Well, when there's water leaking all over the floor and an open closet, I figure the least you can do is look for a mop," I said.

He looked at me for a moment.  Then: "A very industrious young lady..."

Do things like this happen in State College, Pennsylvania, do you think?

I'm going to miss this town.

Yosemite

We added another National Park feather to our cap this weekend: Yosemite.

I'm still pretty tired from our two hour hike yesterday, and I'm not sure that typing up a big long narrative would really do the place justice anyway.  Suffice it to say that Yosemite is absolutely gorgeous, and if you ever get the chance, you should go.  I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

These first ones are actually from the drive home last night, as the sun went down.  California is a really beautiful place, and I will miss drives like this.

And this is where the Yosemite ones start (in case it's not obvious):

National parks, man.  They are truly a national treasure.

Now I'm back home and it's time for another week of dissertating... but first, a slow and deliberate evening jog to enjoy the beautiful weather, and perhaps an evening of Game of Thrones...