I’m old enough that I remember the fall of the Berlin wall, but young enough that at the time I didn’t understand its significance. We will get into why that’s important, but let’s talk about the post for the day. Today is yet another history lesson courtesy of the labs. Like all history, we’re doomed to get kicked in the face by it. Oh well, let’s do it anyway…
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The U.S. election is here, we will soon decide who leads us for the next four years. Four years, that’s the standard length for a military service contract. It didn’t seem like a long time, I mean four years out of what, on average eighty or so that we get to live? Yet the last four have felt like decades and it reminds me that while your vote doesn’t count, you should still do it.
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November 2nd at 11:59 pm. That’s the deadline for this years NDSEG application. Which means that today is the last day for me to get my application materials ready, double check that I have all the boxes ticked, and that my references did their part (they did). Then we play the waiting game.
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Boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, partner, there are a lot of names you call your significant other. Personally I prefer partner, because let’s face it that’s what the relationship is at its heart, a partnership. It’s a commitment to be a team forever, but what happens when it doesn’t work out? Well you could just walk away, but what if you couldn’t? I mean a partnership is forever, right?
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If you’re finding yourself in the high anxiety club, welcome! I’ve been a member since well before the pandemic. I’m sorry, but I’ve got some bad news for you. We are constantly being bombarded with reasons why we should be highly efficient and constantly producing something. That’s how we end up with articles claiming that we can turn anxiety into a super power. Which are complete garbage and are written by people who’ve obviously never lived with chronic anxiety.
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I might as well talk about it, this will be my second time applying for NDSEG, so today we’ll go over exactly what that is, why I’m doing it, and why, if you’re working on a PhD, you may want to do it as well. NDSEG is tricky, but if you get it then you should be pretty well set for funding, it’s a great program, but it also means you’re being funded via the DOD. Updated in 2025 (late, sorry!) now, so let’s talk!
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New day, yet another topic for me to talk about. Today I’ve decided to spare everyone from hearing about my data processing woes to instead touch on a topic that I haven’t discussed before (at least I don’t think I have!). Today we’re talking about funding your PhD. Specifically why it’s important and what power you have over the funding you recieve.
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Well today was a milestone for me, the end of an experiment I wasn’t too excited to do in the first place! Of course, now comes the semi-difficult part. I need to process the data, draw some conclusions, probably publish a few papers, and get a presentation made. Things need to happen quickly too, so while I’m done, I’m not. At least, not yet.
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Well talk about spoilers am I right? The title gives away the surprise for sure, but we can talk details since that’s probably why you’re even reading this. I get to write a book chapter, as in a actual published book you could get at the library, book chapter. Not something technical either, something more personal. Don’t worry I’ll explain.
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I had one of those shower realizations last night. I was thinking about all the writing I’ve done and how much I still have left and suddenly it occurred to me that I was done with all the writing… for now. That’s not the only thing though, I had the realization that I wrote more the second two weeks than I had the first two, by a lot.
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I’m not sure I would enjoy being a teacher. With the typical size of the class you teach I don’t feel like I could give each student the personal attention that I would want to give them. Thankfully, one of my jobs is mentoring, which is like teaching, but with just a handful of people. I absolutely love it and today I’m going to share a very funny (or maybe just fun) story.
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Well looks like we’re switching gears. That’s right, now that I’ve finished (FINALLY!) writing the draft of my grant proposal, I can move on to some other funding opportunities. It’s fellowship season and since it ’tis the season, I need to iron out my CV and best of all I get to do something different!… wait it’s just more writing.
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Well it’s been a journey… but every person I emailed has responded and they all agreed to be part of my committee. That’s right, we’re making serious progress on the road to my dissertation proposal. It’s been a little surreal and I’m nervous that even though I’m here I’m not quite ready for it. Today, let’s talk about my next steps and what forming my committee actually means.
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It’s been a day. Meetings, planning, the usual stuff, just a whole lot of it. There is a few things that have been left unresolved unfortunately, namely I’m not sure what my main PI is going to do or how to be ready for it. I get the feeling that he’s trying to move on to the next phase in his career and I’m not the only one.
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Time is a great teacher that eventually kills all of its students. We’re all dying, I mean that in the literal sense. We’re slowly headed to a brick wall that we can’t avoid. I guess the difference between that plodding path forward and what I’m feeling now is just a time-scale difference. You see, I’ve set off a chain of events that are destined to blow up. I just hope I’m not part of the casualties. Am I being dramatic? Well, let’s review and you be the judge.
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I’m not sure how to even start. Maybe I’m just being overanxious. I’m an anxious person and this happens! Frankly, I think I’m just overreacting, I mean I have to be. My main-PI wouldn’t do something to hurt my career, it just doesn’t make sense, yet I can’t shake the feeling and the email I got today doesn’t help ease my mind.
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Technical writers block. Is that a thing? I’m struggling to finish this thing and I’m not sure why, it’s hard to make an idea fit a page limit, especially when that idea fits on half the pages that are expected from you. So what are you supposed to do, add fluff? It feels antithetical to the purpose of technical writing to add in garbage. What do I do?!
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Well here’s a post that I thought I wouldn’t be writing this soon. Or maybe I’m right on track and I just don’t want to admit that I’ve made progress. Either way, even though it is the weekend I’m taking an important step in my goal to my PhD! I’ve formally submitted my list for my dissertation committee to my PI. Not a PhD or don’t know what that means? No worries, that’s why I do this, so let’s talk about my committee!
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It’s back and it’s not safe here anymore. You need to go, get far away from here before it gets you too. No one is safe because the deadline is back! Of course, maybe you’re like me and you didn’t take it seriously. That’s the problem, it wants you to feel safe! That’s how it gets you. You’ve been warned, the deadline is here!
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It’s my favorite post of the year!!! Every year I update and post my favorite Halloween tradition! That’s right today we bring you the science fact behind the undead. Zombies, those brain loving little things are everywhere. Sure, we are all familiar with the classic zombie, but did you know that we aren’t the only zombie lovers out there? It turns out that nature has its own special types of zombies, but this isn’t a science fiction movie, this is science fact! Sometimes fact can be scarier than fiction. Let’s talk zombies.
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Well it’s been a full week since surgery (if we don’t count the day it happened). Not going to lie, things aren’t looking good at the moment and if what I’ve read is correct I have another 2 weeks of walking around with what appears to be two large cantaloupes under my skin. If that doesn’t sound like fun, well that’s because it’s not.
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Okay well it’s already been a busy day, but I promised to tell this story today so here we go. To quickly sum up the story, I filled a bathroom trash can full of blood, went to the emergency room, was shoved into a storage closet, then discharged. Welcome to the VA and fuck you for your service.
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It occurs to me that tomorrow will mark the one week point since I had surgery. I didn’t realize it had been that long because frankly I expected to be doing better than I am at the moment. Let’s talk about where I’m at now and tomorrow to mark my one week exactly, I’ll tell you all a VA horror story I keep mentioning, but never really told.
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Every sunday without fail I make my list of tasks for the week ahead. Some of them are automated and repeat as needed, but most are specific to that week so I need to go in manually and add them. It’s nice to have everything written down in one place, in order, with times and reminders. I don’t have to stress out about remembering everything when I have a nice app on my phone that keeps me informed. Unfortunately there is a downside…
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Well I was somewhat caught by surprise yesterday when we had our weekly lab meeting and my PI reminded me specifically that I should be working on my PhD proposal. It’s yet another milestone that I need to accomplish on my journey to a PhD. I’m not exactly sure why the reminder caught me off guard, I’ve been planning it for a while now. So today I guess we should talk about what a PhD proposal really is and why I need to do one before I can continue my research.
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Somehow things keep moving forward. I had an experiment yesterday, I have a meeting today to go over my grant proposal, and there is so much data to analyze. It feels weird not getting a break after such a rough surgery, but here we are. Things keep moving forward and if I don’t keep up I’ll get left behind.
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We’re post-op day 2 so far and the word of the day is ouch. I don’t know that I went into detail about the surgery I was having, I mean I’ve been out of it these past couple of days since the surgery. It was a spinal cord surgery, there was some scar tissue that was giving me some trouble and they went in bilaterally (both sides of the spine) to remove it. That was… fun.
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Well I had a surgery yesterday and it didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped. I’m home now thankfully, but there were some… complications and it could be for a lot of reasons, but I’ll cover the most likely issue and then go and rest some more.
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Well today is the day. I just checked in and ready for surgery. For those of you who follow along, this isn’t the first surgery I’ve had. I’ve had two surgeries a year for the past four years. It’s a lot, but each one offers the promise of a slightly better life.
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The day hasn’t even started yet, but it’s a bad day. No I’m not ripping off a children’s book with a similar, if not more hyperbolic name, it’s seriously going to be a bad day. You may be wondering how I know, well this time of the year is always rough for me. A lot of bad things happened that I don’t have the space, mental capacity, or time to talk about. Today is a bad day.
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Some days there’s just so much going on it’s hard to figure out what to write about. Daily writing is hard because some days you have 50 things you want to share and some days you can’t figure out a single thing that would be interesting to write about. While I have a million things to do, none of them are new and interesting enough to share. So today I’ll let you in on my secret.
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Know your audience, it’s the first rule of technical writing. I’ve taken several technical writing courses during my education and they all start off the same way. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE! In my experience that is usually the end of the advice given. Most technical writing courses assume you know how to write, an odd assumption when you’re supposed to know your audience. Today I’m going to go over what I do BEFORE I write, in the hopes that it will help some of you. Fair warning, this is long and detailed!
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Well we made it, it’s Friday. I’ve finished my experiments, done most of the things that I needed to do and now I can focus on writing for once. No, not my blog. It’s finally time for some technical writing. I’m not thrilled about it, I mean I don’t mind technical writing as a general rule, but it does get tedious with all the edits. Maybe that’s why I like my blog so much, I can just write and be done with it.
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Another long day for me. Back to back experiments (with a short break in between thankfully). It’s a lot, but I’m hopeful that after it’s all done things will slow down at least for a moment, hint they won’t. In any case, I just need to make it to tomorrow then I get a break for a few days.
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I was planning on having surgery over the summer. I put it off because I didn’t want to go to go to the VA hospital. It’s a depressing place in the best of times, a not so friendly reminder that as a veteran we’re better off dead and the living are an afterthought. When the pandemic hit it was, and is, the last place I want to be. Yet, I can’t put it off anymore, so I’m having surgery.
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Well today my midday experiment was cancelled so now I have some time to relax. Just kidding, now I have time to work on the million other things I need to get done this week! That’s the problem with writing daily, a lot of it is the same stuff, but there are some minor differences with today’s list of things to do.
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Most times work can be a trickle, we get one or two subjects a week and that’s all. 6-8 hours in the entire week dedicated to collecting data and the rest of the time I’m free to process data, work on other things I need to do, basically live day to day like I didn’t live in a lab. Most of the time. Sometimes it’s a flood, like this week and next, then I’m reminded that I definitely need to work.
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Sunday means getting ready for the rest of the week and what a week it will be. In my Co-PI’s lab we typically have a steady stream of people coming and going for experiments, this week (and probably next) it will be a flood. We’re trying to make my main-PI happy.
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Why does everything happen at once? I mean you’re minding your own business and bam, suddenly you have a million things to get done. One minute you’re on top of things, the next you don’t know how you’re going to get it all done. I’m somewhere in the middle of all that right now. I’ve managed to get most/all the things I needed to get done, but not without some new things popping up.
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Well today has been interesting to say the least. It wasn’t planned, but I went into the lab to meet my Co-PI and the new potential postdoc for the lab. I sort of rushed in last minute and the coordinator apologize, but I hadn’t planned anything that would’ve been hard to do in the lab anyway, so it wasn’t a big issue.
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Well it’s Thursday and by looking at my list of things I need to get done, I wish it was still Monday. There’s been a few setbacks the past couple of days. My data processing is going well, but not much else has been accomplished because of an incident that happened a few days ago. It’s not a fun time…
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About a week ago I collected some data randomly. Well let me start over, not randomly my Co-PI decided it would be a good experiment to collect the data using my “super secret” technique to verify that it worked. We had six different conditions and I’ve only processed two of the conditions, so there’s still some work to be done to determine if this is real or not, but I have my initial results and my Co-PI has seen them.
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It’s time to help write another grant! In this case, it’s one I actually want. One of these days I’ll write a little tutorial on how I like to do my writing, I think it’s a good system, but then again what works for me may not work for you. This one is particularly complicated though so it needs a lot of attention. It’s not that it’s long, it’s because it’s short.
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It’s going to be a busy week for me. Seems to be a theme in my quest for that PhD to be honest. I’ve got data to process, papers to write, experiments to run, appointments to keep. It’s a lot of moving pieces that all need to be aligned at just the right moment. Dominoes, if I can get everything lined up nicely, the tasks will all fall just as easy.
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Well today one of my grant proposals is due. Technically it’s due tomorrow, but I always try to submit a day early. Why? Well, technical issues, I’m an anxious person, all that good stuff. This was an equipment grant and I did it at the request of my PI, it’s not the grant I want, but it’s a learning experience, or at least that’s how I’m treating it.
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Well let’s toss something else into the pile of “things I’m going to talk about, but can’t share the details because we’re working on a publication.” I’ve got yet another new project I’m working on! This is going to be so freaking cool and I’m super excited to start it. So let’s go over some of the details, at least the bits I can talk about. Eventually when all this stuff gets published, I’m going to have a ton to write about.
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Well that was a …flop. Today I had an experiment, had. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to an experiment, especially in my line of research. Technology, can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Still, somedays I wish I was living in the future, one where I didn’t need to reset my router randomly. Then I would know for sure the singularity was close.
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It seems like weird stuff just keeps happening left and right lately! Yesterday out of the blue I heard from a collaborator I worked with from the UK. It’s been months since we last spoke and he had some personal issues due to COVID, so I wasn’t actually sure I would hear from him again.
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It was a surprise to me, but I somehow ended up with a new dataset from a single subject. One that, after processing, could be the key to convincing my Co-PI once and for all that we have something real… or it could just be one giant mess, but if we don’t look we may never know.
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Well I just started book three and thought it would be fitting to have a third talk about war and Hunger Games (Part 1, Part 2). To be honest, this post wasn’t going to exist. I’ve shared my suicide attempts, my depression, my anxiety, and all the seemingly taboo bits of myself. Today I’m sharing something that’s hard even for me to talk about. In a lot of ways dreams are very personal. I don’t know about dreams, but I can tell you about nightmares. If you’re squeamish, this is your warning to turn away now.
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Lunatic Laboratories 