Passing the Qualifying exam and a Personal Transformation

I passed the Qualifying exam.
And I can't describe how truly overwhelmingly grateful I am to everyone for helping me through this. There is no description that fits what you have all done for me.
It is a fact that my personality is not easy. I know it. Everybody knows it. It is beyond obvious and it is something that I am working on. I believe that my loved ones have been trying to teach me 2 things through out my life and I just have been too scared to listen:

#1 You can't conquer the world all alone on your own.
#2 The world is not against you.

All my life, it has been me against the world. It has been I'll do anything at anytime, defy what ever law or person, I'll do anything to get what I want. No matter what.
All my life it has been myself biting the hands that feed me, all to just get out of the Bronx, get out of Miami, to go to college, to go to graduate school, to become a scientist, to find a way to help science uncover the mysteries of HIV/AIDS, to help stop the killing of Millions of people per year via AIDS. I never felt that anyone was willing to be in my army. I never thought that anyone had my best interest in their heart. I never trusted anyone enough to even give them a chance, and this includes my parents. I always felt that everyone around me had their own agenda and that their loyalty was temporary. Because of that I worked five times as much, I knew I couldn't take a break I knew I couldn't stop for even 5 minutes and look at the things that I had accomplished.

But this last year, things have changed. I've noticed that my "me against the world" tactics were actually hurting me more than ever. I nearly lost Anna as a friend. I pushed Alex away. I pist off everyone at work, all the way to my boss. Carlos started telling me he wasn't liking whom I was turning into. The world looked preatty dark for a while there. When I stopped kicking and screaming for 5 mins, I asked Carlos, Okay what do I do? And we talked. And I thought wow, it is going to be really hard to stop acting like this. But I told myself, I don't want to loose the people I have pist off, can I turn this around? So that has been in the back of my mind for the past 6 months...

And then when I started studying for the Qual....

Sara (just this once I am going to use everyones real name) stood by my side, no matter how many times I yelled at her, no matter how much I screamed at her, no matter how many times I cursed her out for telling me that my secondary proposals sucked. She stood there. She would be quiet and let me scream and then she would come right back when I needed her help 5 minutes later.
Sara, Andrew, Kara, and Warner, kept throwing the proposal back at me. And just kept telling me to fix it, that it still sucked, over and over again. It hurt my pride so much but there was a small voice inside me that said, "just listen to them now, you'll fix your pride later". I cried I kicked and screamed and complained like a Dominican Jewish grandmother only could but I listened to them and re-wrote the proposals over and over again.
"LISTEN to them," a little voice told me.

While I cried my pride down the drain, Brian and Brianna would calm me down and tell me that I would pass. Anna, Alex, Sara and Dr. Stephens would keep asking me the hard questions, even though I would throw markers at them for doing it. Danielle stayed away. Except that one day when Anna passed her qual and I started crying in Danielle's car and she just listened. It felt good to have someone listening.

It is overwhelming to realize for the first time that you have people that really do care about you and are not afraid to tell you that you are wrong about things. I'm used to fighting everyone in sight not laughing with them. So it is going to still take a lot of work.

So I've learned A HELL of A LOT this year! I've learned theres a lot of things I have to fix within me. I've learned I've actually found a small but strong army to conquer and destroy my enemies with. At this point my worse enemy is a tiny 100 nm retrovirus, and I am all fired up and completely determined to do all the work possible to find the Achilles heel of this creature.

"My name is Isa Munoz-Arias. You killed my father. Prepare to die"

hahaha!
In conclusion my kitties, life right now is plain ORGASMIC.

Lunch for your Qual committee: 30 dollars.
A sexy black dress for the job's Christmas party: 300 dollars.
A trip to the Dominican Republic with your Lover: 500 dollars.

Having your friends help you thru the Qual, Passing, and having your boss announce to the WHOLE institute that you passed, that he thinks you are special, and that he is proud of you: Mother fucking PRICELESS!!!!!

Christmas... No matter What...

Hello kitties!
First I want to say MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

This whole thing with the Qual has been a roller coaster really. I get really happy and confident when I meet with the professors, then a few days later I loose faith and get so depressed I cry every hour. Yes it has gotten that bad. Sheri almost slapped me the other day and told me to put myself together. Or she should have. It was the day that Maria was taking her test. I guess I was anxious for myself and for her and when that was together I just crashed and burned.
The hardest part of the whole process has been finding a secondary. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil because it is the most un-useful thing this department/school has ever come up with, to make you do another proposal on something you've never worked on.... Why not just let us concentrate on our own shit? It pisses me off and I swear that if I pass this test I am going to do everything possible to get rid of the secondary. If it weren't for the secondary I would be studying for my primary. I would have had it perfect by now...but no... Instead I've been thru 3 different pathogens and 6 different proposals.

Anyways, believe it or not I am not blogging to complain.

I blogged today because it is Thanksgiving. I had forgotten what all that meant. But today, I didn't want to get off bed and I just had that distant look on my face. Carlos kept telling me to get up and start studying but I was just so tired so out of energy. Then all the sudden he went down stairs put the TV on and there it was. The Macys Thanksgiving Day parade.
He knew that my mom and I would always get up extra extra early to watch it on TV from start to finish. I couldn't believe that I had actually forgotten that the parade was on Thanksgiving Day.
So even though there was a constant voice in the back of my brain saying that I should be studying I sat down and watched it. My eyes filled with tears when Santa came out. And then all the sudden I remembered no matter what it is my favorite time of the year, it is officially, Christmas... No matter what in a few weeks I'll be visiting family. No matter what Carlos and I are going to Dominican Republic together for the first time...

Really on the grand scheme of things, how important is it that I fail or pass? There are other more rewarding, high paying, enjoyable careers out there. Besides, if I am not good enough I SHOULD be moving on. This mission, this career, has taken so much out of my life... Maybe it is time to move on.

I was talking to Dr. Caroline Kane the other day, as usual she filled me with comfort and confidence and I told her I hope I pass because I am not going to do this twice. She said you can do it twice if need be and we'll carry you through it because thats our job...But thats all she said because I am sure she saw that look on my face, the one that says "no enough is enough".

But again, No matter what, it is Christmas. It is that time of the year, when it gets cold, when you put up ridiculous trees with crazy ornaments and lights even though you don't know what they mean. When you buy gifts and get them and hang out with family and kids. It is that time to think about how are you going to make your life better? How are you going to change for the better? It is that time when I allow myself, just for a few seconds, to believe in Santa Clause and elves, and wizards, and mermaids, and Magic.... When I allow myself to think like a kid. And this test is not going to take that away from me...No matter what.

Yes We Can....

I am beyond happy that Obama won. I'm sorry republicans but if McCain would have won the world would not be jumping for joy as it is for Obama. If Obama would have lost, it would have been the expected and Europe and South America would be saying, "Ofcourse he didn't win. He is black!"
But he won, and everyone is so hopeful.
So here is my take on this whole shbang.

I grew up with a Hispanic immigrant family. In my family, the only people that I could be sure were legal were my parents and my grandma. That is it. So it doesn't take a genius to realize that were poor in America. There were many times that my mom should have been on welfare, but she had way too much pride for that, and instead risked having some really hard days, in which we didn't know what or how we were going to eat for dinner. So growing up, I guess my family got used to just getting by. With all the big hurtles that they had to overcome they didn't have the energy to even consider doing something big. So every time I would say, "hey when I grow up I am going to be rich". They would laugh. When I would say, "hey I want to go to Europe, to go to all the museums and see the work of Michaelangelo". They would say "thats impossible". When I said, "I am going to be a doctor". They ridiculed me. When I said I am going to get into Graduate school, my mom said, "Stop acting like if you are some white rich girl. Poor Latin people can't afford to take on jobs like being a scientist. You need a job that pays the bills that is it!"
So... It has been hard. It has been really hard to Prove them all wrong. They convinced my sister out of becoming a ballerina. Which is something I will never forgive them for because she loves dancing. And ever since then, I feel like she has just been lost....

I am not rich but I proved them wrong when I went to Italy multiple times, when I went to Bali, and finally when I got into Grad School. The rewards are amazing. The younger generation of my family is using me as an example but again. It has been such a struggle.

With Obama's victory. Now instead of having 20 aunts, 5 uncles, and my mom saying, "thats impossible. you are crazy. Women can't do that....blah blah blah".
I feel like now, there is someone that is whispering into my ear, "yes you can"... FINALLY! Someone shut my family up. It is just such a relief. I feel like 20 elephants have been lifted from my back. I can't help but get all choked up and teary about it...
At the same time, with such cynicism through out my life, you have no idea how many times I thought, maybe mommy is right. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I should just give up. And now with this event, with Obama getting all the way from a single mom's home to the White House, now I feel like there is just no excuse for me to give up. Is this what they call motivation?

I have promised myself that from now on every time I feel like just dropping dead right before I do it, I am going to just say aloud, "Yes I can"....

The Primary is Over...for now.

I turned my primary over to Andreas...
Andreas, just to remind you guys is a post doc in my lab. And he is the best writer we've got in the lab. Everybody turns their papers, grants whatever over to him before giving it to the big boss. It is not just that he is the best writer in the lab, he is a very good writer over all. He has gotten awards, he minored in English..etc etc.
This is why I am so scared what he'll say. I really really want him to say something the likes of, it has quite a few mistakes but I understood it overall. Which is something that most of my friends that have looked over it before have not been able to say. And the fact that my proposal, my baby, has not received good reviews before has just plain depressed me.
This is the first serious proposal I have ever written. I wrote a proposal for a class once last year but I basically wrote it within a weekend. So...yeah not much work went into that and then I had my friends rewrite what i did into English and turned it in. I knew that the professor was not going to read it so I didn't care.
This is different. This is my project. This is HIV, this is a big chunk of my life. It is personal. I am trying to convince myself that Andreas is going to say that it plain sucks and that I should quit grad school and to just expect the worse hope for the best, but it is not working that well.
What I have concluded from all this is that I am still not a good science writer. The positive way to look at this is that, I know that it is a skill that I can develop, I just have to work more on it...
I gave the proposal also to Brian. He was already pointing out a bunch of little mistakes and making fun of me. Which is okay because thats what Brian does. If Brian were a protein I would say, that is the Brian's mechanism.
At the same time I want the proposal to not have that many revisions because I have to write my secondary and I don't have time to work on the primary anymore, not if I want to take the week before the test to study.

The Qual Storm

It has taken so much energy and time to write my primary proposal that I am just too tired and depressed to care about whether I pass or not. I want it over with.
It took me about 3 weeks to write "a" proposal down, then it has taken me 2 weeks to revise the content, and now I have to give it to several people so that they can read and see if they approve, if I wrote it in English, how to translate the hieroglyphics.

I've been so busy with the content, the techniques, the rationale that I haven't taken 5 minutes to look over grammar, smoothness, ass kissing, blah blah blah. And now I am too tired of it to hear about petty corrections. Maybe when I start working on my secondary I'll have some free time away from the primary and be in a better mood.
Sigh....
Carlos and I went to visit his mother. She is sick but she doesn't look or sound it. The woman can't sit for a second. She runs around like a chicken without its head 24hrs a day. It is a relief that at least she is not bed ridden, but even now, she is not taking the best care of herself. I'm also worried about his Dad. Guess I am just worried about everything.

Flying over there and having to return made me realize that having family around is very comforting, almost makes life without it seem...sigh..whats the word I am looking for? meaningless? lonely?
I asked Carlos about this but Carlos doesn't need people. He says he needs me and just me... Which is ultra romantic and sweet, but I need people.
I guess what I am trying to get at is that going over there made me feel like I should have 5 children.

Whatever. I don't even understand myself. I am so tired and paranoid, I don't trust anyone. I am having nightmares almost everyday. I am not looking forward to seeing anyone in lab at all. The only thing I have to look forward to is leaving in December to go to Dominican Republic.

bummer

Writing this thing is hard. I just realized 2 days ago that I need to have my primary proposal done before the end of the month... bummer.

Qualifying exams and Retreats....

I have scheduled my Qual. I am not going to release the exact date. Just know that it is between Turkey Day and Jesus's Birthday. When I scheduled it I was so excited that my whole comittee agreed to meet on the exact day that I wanted. AND that it only took them 4 hours to agree. I am sooo proud of them. For those of you not in Science. This is an extraordinary event, that 4 scientist can agree to meet at a certain time on a certain day within 4 hours has the chances of a black hole appearing next to our planet all the sudden and swallowing it whole.
I took this as a positive sign from the Higher power telling me to hurry up and get my ass up there, that everything is going to be fine.
Everyone keeps telling me that my project is "very HUGE". At least the project that I am proposing to the Qualifying committee. BUT when I meet with my committee they are just excited. They tell me that it might be too big but that it is an interesting exciting proposal. They said, as long as you can fit it into 10 pages without counting figures then it is fine with me. One of them reminded me that they don't need every detail of the techniques in the proposal because it will all come up in my presentation.

We had another annual retreat this week. I feel like the chairman of the department ripped me apart. Everyone said I looked sick afterwards and they all asked me if I was okay. Lets just say, there were many things I didn't like about that presentation and many things after.... But what matters to me is what my Qualifying committee and my boss say about my project. I couldn't care less what the department thinks about it. So I am going to keep writing.
I am looking to finish my background this weekend. And start writing my Aims. I wanna have the first draft by the middle of October to give time to revisions....

I love my lab Part II

So. Today I gave lab meeting after almost 2 months. My lab meeting only had 2 slides of data. So ofcourse I know that is preaty pathetic. Of course I wish I had at least 5 more. But my project is a slow running one. See for me to get data from 1 experiment I must wait 2 weeks. So imagine if you are learning a brand new system of experiments and you find that after 2 weeks your experiment failed. BUT you must present lab meeting every 3 weeks. What would you do?
This is what I have done to remedy the situation:

1) I set up as many experiments as possible so that 1 can work.
2) I wash my cells a lot so that they will have a fresh amount of nutrients every 3 days.
3) I try to be as careful as possible so that my experiments have every single control possible.

What this has led to is to most of my experiments either dying or not staining right etc etc. and maybe only 1 or 2 experiments that give me something interesting and interpretable. This is preaty normal for a grad student.... I think. SIGH.
I mean it took a post doc 8 months to get this system going. I am half way there after 2 months of trying to initiate the same system. Really. I have it almost working.

SO here is the real story.
I gave lab meeting only had 2 slides of data. After lab meeting various people from the lab were discussing who should go next when (to present in lab meeting). So one of the other graduate students suggests that we give Shawna time before throwing her into lab meeting. And I said well Shawna already has data and she hasn't presented in a long time. Not that I have anything against Shawna but I don't want any of us to get special treatment. And she has the data...
So all the sudden Maurice says, "Yeah you know every grad student that has been thru here has been able to do all the lab presentations with a lot of results to present"
And I asked, "So does that mean that we suck?" Since I had just given a 2 slide presentation.
And he answered, "Well to be honest, Yeah you do suck."
I responded, "Oh Go to Hell Maurice" And walked away, infuriated, but at the same time happy that Linda (our new postdoc group leader) was able to see, hopefully, how nasty these people really are.

Infuriated because these people keep telling me that I shouldn't be comparing myself to anyone whether it is past post docs or past students or current. AND yet look at the shit I have to deal with.

I hate, I mean Love my lab.
The sarcasm is making me nauseus I have to go.

I love my lab, I love my lab

So my PI has been canceling lab meeting for the past weeks. I have basically not presented for almost 2 months. :O Then all the sudden just like 3 days ago he decided that we will have lab meeting on Tuesday after all. Now I have to put my lab presentation all together in a matter of seconds and make sure I find something I can publish on Nature so that the lab will not bite my head off.
It can't be anything I do not comprehend, nothing I messed up on, no mysterious dissapearances, it has to be ready to publish on Nature.

I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab.

Yeah, I wonder how many times I have to repeat that for it to happen.

Switching gears now...
I was studying for quals last night by reading about viral Assembly and then I found out that the Nuclear capsid is involved in almost everything. It is involved in entry, in reverse trancription, in integration, in transcription, and in exit. I got this idea for Garry's project. I emailed it to him and then new Post Doc leader, Linda. When I tried to discuss the idea with Garry he said, "Oh we tried that idea out 4 years ago."
Garry is sooooo sweet. Sarcastic sigh..
Then I explained to him how my idea is actually different from the one he had before and he admitted that my idea was an interesting one.
Now if I can just come up with ideas for MY project everything will work out great.

I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab,
I love my lab, I love my lab.

Good scary Times....

Well I feel like it has been a long time since I've written. Enough time so that something good was allowed to happen. We finally found a suitable apartment for us. It is a loft 2x's the size of the 1 bedroom in which we live in. We actually painted the walls so I think it is going to look SUPER cool. I can't wait til I have all my stuff over there, organized.
Another good thing is that my friend passed the Qual! YEY! So we are all back on track. Now it is just a matter of Maria and me passing it.

Oh yeah, I finally found 3 suitable aims that I feel confident about. I've talked to 2 professors and they approve. I had a practice Qual with my friends and tomorrow I will practice with a professor and my classmates. I've gotten to the point where the desire to get this over with is overshadowing my fear of taking it. I've written a couple of sentences on the background.
So everything is on track for that..

I have so many experiments I have set up. And so many others I still haven't analyzed at all. I am kind of scared to analyze them because if the results that I need/expect are not there then I'll be in big trouble. I will have to deal with Post docs and lab meeting heckling all over again. At the same time the reason why I haven't done it is because again I have soooo much shit to do it is not even funny. The worst thing is that I keep getting pulled into doing all of these things around 5pm outside of lab so I haven't had the chance to just stay in lab a whole 20 hours and just get everything Done....

But cheerios. Who cares. I am happy that nothing terribly bad has happend and also that I am finally on my way to finishing this Qual Crap... I just can't wait to have it done. I can't even imagine how good it is going to feel to pass it, to actually be done with it and tell my PI right to his face that I passed it. I really wonder how he will react. Probably like if a fly is buzzing around him. He'll pass his hand in the air to push the fly away.
Maybe he'll murmur a good, now get me some real results. Who knows, who cares. I just can't wait to visit my family to go to the Dominican Republic for Christmas to get back to my hobbies. ETC ETC ETC....
I just can't wait to get back to LIFE!

Fears eating me alive

Trying to come up with an outline for my Qualifying Exam. In the mean time I preaty much know where to start on my BackGround! Like I know kind of what I want to say. I already wrote 3 sentences. This is so scary!

I tried putting 3 aims together but I fainted and hit my head against concrete and then I was taken to the Hospital and was having outer body experiences from the concussion.
Conclusion: Must repeat experiment. What if I don't find the factor? I am exxagerating about the hospital and all that but the 3 aims were just not good enough especially together. Aim #2 was dependent on #1 and so on and so on. So... Back to the drawing board.

I am so scared my experiments didn't work that I am not collecting my FACS Samples. More than 100 FACS samples have accumulated.

Poor Little Grad student

The terrified graduate student tried to get as many results and experiments working as possible. Then she got bumped off the project. "I will come up with a new project myself," she thought, but when she went to the professor and presented it, he rejected the project.
So she thought I must come up with another one.
Again 3 months later she found herself at his office and again he rejected her project except that this time he actually gave her one. Only problem was that this project was already someone elses.
She spoke to the post doc to whom the project belonged to. They both agreed it was ok that she worked on this project. They agreed to help eachother out to not be paranoid about the project adn just work together.
The graduate student felt very nervous about the new situation. What if the post doc, the only one that seemed to be friendly with her turned out not to be her friend anymore?

Surely enough a few months later she saw her ideas being used in other experiments being twisted a little so that they were not quite her ideas. She tried to ask the post doc what was going on but the post doc denied everything.
She decided that she was being too paranoid and crazy and that it she was wrong.

A few months later the post doc told her that he would try to do an experiment in her project.
But it is my project not your anymore. Why would you want to do an experiment thats not for your project.
The post doc tried to convince the graduate student that in academia it was common for multiple people to be doing the same things, same projects, same experiments. And that getting scooped is a beautiful part of science.
The graduate student just didn't buy it so she finally got the nerve to go up to her professor and ask him to round up a meeting with the post docs to tell them what her project was and why.
They met.
The graduate student cried for days completely confused, suicidal. She was so stressed she ate a cheeseburger with fries.
God kept patting her back telling her some day everything would be okay again.
"But God I have to start writing my proposal. What the HELL am I supposed to be writing about?"
Not even God could answer such a question.
She went to the Devil,
"Devil what should I do? Im assuming you have been watching this."
"Yes little graduate student I have. The truth is that I dont' know what to do with you. See I wanted you to come to hell so that I could steal your soul and make you suffer but you are in your own HELL and no one should suffer as much as you are."
"Devil I am not interested in my soul right now. What can I do about my pH.D career?!"
"Well you can blow up the building where you work at. That way you'll come down to hell and be at least a little bit more comfortable than suffering in lab."

The graduate student went back to lab and pippette away and read papers and kept working. When will these problems end?

Progress

I have 1/2 of an experiment working.
I worked out 5 miles on Saturday, 700 calories off.
I worked out 400 calories off on Sunday.
I have reviewed DNA replication, Transcription, and Translation.
I have been commanded to write an outline by the end of the week.
Start writing an Introduction and make appointments with all my Qual members by the end of next week.
I feel like there aren't enough hours in the day.... I wish there were 5 hours to every day that I could just lock myself in a room and study. It has been really difficult to find these hours.
It felt sooooo good to get a few milliliters of results.

YEY!

Dear Kitties,

I had a talk with my PI last week and as I usually feel after talking to him, I feel sooooo super re-energized and much more focused!
Here are a list of GOOD things that happend in the meeting.
1) He told me I needed to start studying for Qual.
2) He told me that I was a smart person and that right now all I needed was perserverence.
3) He told me I am not a postdoc so stop trying to be one or comparing myself to them.
4) I told him what was my Back Up plan if my first project fails. It felt great telling him my own ideas and him approving of them. yooopeee!
5) I told him how I REALLY felt about the lab. So now he knows whats wrong with me.
6) He realized I was depressed and frustrated without me telling him anything and the reason why this conversation happend was because HE asked me to meet with him.
7) On several occasions he told me he understood why I was so disillusioned and depressed.


This week I've been doing a million experiments.. I don't know if it is all the merengue I've been listening to on Itunes in the P3, the music CD I brought from my Moms, or the the meeting itself, or the fact that I have lab meeting next week but I feel like a million bucks!
Which has made me wonder, why do my emotions have to be soooo extreme? Am I manic depressive? Cause I have NO problem taking medicine if that is what I need. They often say that Manic depressive people don't take their medicines because the HIGHS feel so good...
Well not for me. The highs are soooo rare.... that they are not worth risking the lows..
Well I guess I'll soon find out when if I ever start therapy.

But for now.... YEY------------!

Back from Mom's

I don't know how it happened but I feel changed. I went to moms. My whole entire family couldn't believe or understand why it was that I just wanted to stay home. I didn't want to go see any tourist attractions. I didn't even want to go to a hotel. I just wanted to stay home, see the family, talk crap eat and go to sleep. Even though I was visiting my mom had to go to work (2/5 days). In those days, I hung out with my sister and just looked for funny videos on YouTube. I had not laughed about silly stuff for quite a while in my life. My brother spent the whole day and night playing RockBand. It was very relaxing.
I made sure to tell my family that the wedding was going to be next year in DR. They were all freaking out but thats that. I've made my decision. Thats where I've wanted it for quite a while and thats where it will be, even if it ends up being just Carlos and I and our parents.
So talking to my entire family about the wedding all the sudden woke me up and made me realize that I needed to start saving for it and start figuring out what was possible and what was NOT possible. So as soon as I got into the airport I called Carlos and we started talking logistics and numbers.
As always when talking about finances, specially when talking about Expensive wedding finances we started.... well.... arguing. But I guess everything has been settled now.

Work... what can I say about work... Well I have 3 goals to fufill this month.
1) Find a positive control Condition Media.
2) Start replicating the killing factor experiments that the Postdoc did.
3) Start writing the background on my Proposal.
4) Don't let the lab rode kill me in Lab Meeting again.

Yep. Thats it.

Working out? Well I worked out one day when I was in Orlando and I worked out on Sunday. The usual 3 miles, 300 calories routine....

Days away from the 15th circle of Hell

Wow!
what a 2 weeks I've been having. It has been emotional, stressful, sleep depriving...etc etc. I know it sounds like I am describing a torture chamber in China but it is not. It is just Grad School in UCSF.
The good thing is that I am leaving this hell hole for a few days and going to visit my family in Orlando. I keep trying to look thru my list of people I can lean on for comfort but the list is so short. Sometimes I think, "Oh I can lean on my mom and cry and she'll understand and tell me that everything is going to be alright I just need to work hard" but EHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Nope, mom is not the comforting type. She is the tough love type. It will be more like, "Well why can't you do it are you retarded? Why can't you just be an excellent perfect Grad student? Why are you acting like an idiot? and so on and so on.

I'm thinking that in this trip I'll talk crap with my family. I'll eat Dominican food. Maybe I'll finally learn how to make Salcocho. I'll eat moms food, hang out, drink, cook, run around looking at open houses. And... Just for a few days I'll forget that I am in Grad school and that I suck at it.
I haven't seen my mom in 2 years. Which means that I haven't been in an enviroment that doesn't give a shit about science for 2 years. They don't care if I forgot to put a negative control. They don't care if I didn't test my virus in HeLa cells before trying it on PBL's. And right now thats what I need.

Maybe Science is just not For you.

Exercise summary: Yesterday I lost 364 calories, ran 2.9 miles on a 5.0 incline (on the treadmill).

Hello kitties,
Honestly speaking I am at a complete loss. I gave lab meeting 2 days ago as I do every 2 weeks. And I am so bothered by the results of that meeting. During the meeting I got reprimanded for supposedly not having the correct controls in my experiment. My boss said, "It is not a good idea to be at the position where you do not know what happend in your experiment. If you have all of the proper controls you should always be able to figure out what is going on."

But I did have all the controls, and for the rest of the night afterwards I was so confused I got maximum 2 hours of sleep. Yesterday I was told by one of the post docs that they did not understand anything I presented. I talked to him. I tried to explain my slides.

What I had done was that I had generated a virus and had tested its infectivity in HeLa Cells transfected with CD4 and CCR5. These cells are usually preaty good at letting you know if you virus is going to infect. So I tested it and it gave me good results. Then I decided from there I could do my experiments with another aliquot of the same Viral Stock (Lets call this Stock 1) in primary cells since this stock showed good infectivity.
I went ahead and found that the aliquot did not infect after all. At first I thought it was just the donor. SO I tried it again with a different donor and again I got bad infectivity. SOOOO finally I re-tested my virus in the HeLa cells and this time I got bad infectivity.
It was preaty bizarre to me. All three of these experiments had been done with 1 stock (Stock 1), and not all three of these experiments agreed. I concluded that the virus was just not good but the question that lingered in my head was, how could a virus work once if it is no good at all?
After concluding that my virus was absolutely useless I generated a new stock(Lets call this Stock 2) and I've been able to test them in HeLa cells and get good results just once.
So when I was giving lab meeting I said, "Yes, I don't know exactly what happend"... Once I said this I got a whole shpeell from my professor telling me that if I had the proper controls I would know what happend. Everyone in the room was just looking at me like if I were an idiot and nodding their heads at my PI's reprimand. I didn't understand what he was talking about but I just nodded and said, "Okay".
Then when I was talking to one of the Post Docs I realized that the whole time everyone had thought that Stock1 and Stock 2 were all the same stock. So they had concluded that the cells were the once that had been bad.
I felt soooo abused and mis-serviced when I realized this. I told the post doc that not only did my slide indicate that it was a new Stock but I had said it.
Not only had I gotten reprimanded but they had not been paying attention, and now everyone thinks I am an idiot that got reprimanded. I was mad cause if you are going to make me stress and work so hard that I have to present every 2 weeks shouldn't you be making an effort to understand my presentation? When I said this to the post doc he told me that I was thinking like a kindergarten kid. He told me that I should be thinking, "how can I present my results in a clearer way?" I agreed with him and in a way, in the back of my mind, where my ego doesn't exist, I thought the same thing.
Now I am just exhausted, overwhelmed, burnt out and sick and tired of my career and everyone in my lab, including my absentee wonderful PI. I indicated this to the post doc and he just said, "Maybe Science is just not for you".... SIGH...
This is a terrible comment cause it just adds to the self doubt and lack of confidence that has been building for the past year, ever since I joined this lab. It is as if I were an orange and everyone thought that peeling away at my layers and taking me apart and picking at me is perfectly fine to do.
I am soooo tired kitties, sooo exhausted. And I can't help feel that the post doc is right after all eventhough the thought just makes me cry.

Random Feelings Random Thoughts

So I ran 3 miles, 300 calories once again...
I am planning to start working on Quals this Saturday.

Yesterday I fixed my hair went out with the girls. It was cool to finally do something fun together. We don't go out enough. But.....
I don't know I guess I'm just PMS-ing and it is making me paranoid. Sigh... Just that sometimes I feel like my role in the group is to be the bad guy. I felt some tension, I felt some.... I don't know target practice? What evers---- I am sure it is just my crazy imagination. I guess it doesn't help at all that I am having a career life crisis.
Still, even though I had seen the movie it was nice to discuss it in the coffee shop after even if it was for a few minutes.
Anyways today I have to do another fusion assay, and I have to run my samples from the last FACS before it gets too late. Somewhere in between all this I should find a way to go to the DMV.

I hate Qual and it makes me hate everything Else

So on Saturday I did 9 laps in the pool but that must have killed me because I have not gone swimming or running ever since. The only thing I've read lately is trashy novels. Soooo....
Yeah I feel ashamed but I just don't care all at the same time.
I guess this is what happends when you let your career rule your entire life for so long, you become apathetic and resentful, and then you question why you even started this in the first place.

I am not worried about Quals because I keep pushing it away. I keep telling myself I'll start studying/writing next week. I don't even know where to begin. Honestly right now I can't see why it would be a bad thing to push it til December. I don't see why would it be that bad anymore. Sigh
Sigh Sigh....

I hate everything. This hate is obviously eminating from the evil Qual.

miles ran: 0
laps swam: 0
papers read: 0
pages written:0
We'll make up some of this tomorrow.

There has to be something Wrong with Me

There truly must be something wrong with me. Everyone I work with, at least in Science, hates me after working with me. I feel like it is a combination of people thinking I am disagreeing when I am truly not. It is easy to see the solution to this problem, solution would be just say "Ok and Thank you" to everything people tell you and walk away. But it is not that easy to accomplish specially when people are telling you something that you are not sure how to accomplish or when you don't understand what they are trying to tell you.


miles ran: 3
calories burnt: 300
papers read: 0
pages written: 0

Accomplishments

Hello everyone,

I am sooo excited! Today was my first day excersizing. I am super excited to reduce the fat on my bones and to start getting healthier. So from now on I am going to be recording how many laps I've swam or how many minutes and speed I ran. Just to keep record....Here is the first try.... And also since I need to start studying for the Qual YESTERDAY, I am going to start keeping track of that too.

June 25th 2008->

Laps I swam today at Hearst Pool: 4
Papers I've read for Qual: 0
Pages I've written for my Proposal: 0

Laps Carlos swam: 1 1/2

small miracles make me smile

Hello kitties, How is it going out there in the real world?
For once I am truly elated! I have been stressing about presenting the information from Cold Spring Harbour for 3 weeks. 3 Weeks I have been stressing sooo much that my skin started breaking out. I started getting sick and Carlos reprimanded me for stressing so much. Finally last week I forced myself to work on it. I worked on the presentation til the last minute!

Finally, the day of the presentation comes and I am so nervous that I escape from lab to Borders bookstore and buy a trashy novel. Telling myself that no matter what happends I would have that book to read and enjoy after the presentation. My boss had been away for a whole MONTH.... So...
Before lab meeting I was feeling weird because everyone else only had 12 slides total of the conference and over all I had like 23 slides. Everyone was like what the hell?

THEN I presented I tried to talk as fast as possible so i didn't give so many details as i gave you guys but I got compliments from Wes whom has always been nice to me but has never complimented anything i have ever done. MY PI said to all of us that he liked the way we presented that from now on this was the way we would do conference talks. Then today another lab member said that he wanted a copy of our slides, and then he said, "I really liked the way you guys presented it. Specially you Isa, cause you presented the background and it helped out a lot"

Also my PI asked us, what talk did we like best. Andrew said that he liked the ESCRT one because he hadn't read on that area so much before so it was very interesting. Then I said that I like the TRIM talk because when they said that there were 70 TRIMS I thought 70 projects

and everybody laughed because they got the point (my frustrations with looking for projects)

Andrew told me yesterday and today that I did a good job.

So it feels so good to finally get a compliment in something infact it feels SUPER GOOD.. Like Godiva chocalate melting on my toungue followed by a glass of Don Perignon!

Another personal crisis....

This week was crazy. I went to a conference thinking that I would have an idea of the things that would be said in the presentations, but for a lot of them, I didn’t. Actually for too many of them I didn’t.
Andreas was great. Despite the fact that I am older than him by one year I feel like he is my big brother. He is so much more mature than I and in terms of career success he is beyond me. He is a postdoc in my lab and if you could only see how well he plans and does his experiments. I only wish I do experiments like that. Andreas carried this trip and converted it into something that could have just been a weeks worth of feminine hissy fits. There still were hissy fits but not as much as there would have been without him. He comforted me soooo much without doing anything at all, just being himself. I wish I could be like that. I told he brought out the best in people. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could just accept every one the way they are.
The thing with Andreas though, is that when he is in the lab, he is completely different. So I am going to have to remember that on Tuesday.
Anyways, Andreas made the party. Because of him we met around 5 guys. Which to me means 5 new friends while to Brianna it means 5 new possible husbands. Most of them were from Germany but there was one from Britain. The two that I will never forget are Bjorn and Jez. Bjorn, I never got to see his work, but he was super nice and good looking. I had never met a guy that was such a gentleman. He had married his first girlfriend after 7 years of being together 2 years ago. He wore a thick gold plain ring on his finger.
Jez was from Britain. He wore no ring, but he was engaged. His parents were mix, his mother from India and his father, I guess British. He had the accent. He also had the brain. At first I thought he was a very nerdy looking guy and I wondered about his work. Then, next thing I know he presents his work and it is beautiful. I am talking about Beau-ti-ful!!! work. He’d published in Science, Cell, and Nature in 3 years of Graduate school. I wanted to die. I still want to die. And then he was so gentle so serene so graceful.
I guess I talk about these people because I wish I were them in some ways. I wish I were that intelligent that gentle, that serene, that likable that influential.
I can’t help but be depressed. I am thirty years old and I don’t think I’ll ever publish in Science. And I just want to die. I feel like I deserve to die. What part of the puzzle am I? Lately I feel that I am not part of it at all. What is my purpose? I wish God would stop playing the silent treatment and just tell me already. Why does he expect me to read his mind?
Last night I called Carlos and I just started crying. I couldn’t help it. I needed to cry. What else could I possibly do except cry? But after talking to him I went back to the group we had found and they made me dance. While dancing I felt like God was right there with me. I know, you skeptic kitties are about to vomit but just give me a chanc to explain.
I said, “God I don’t feel good at all. What is going on? Why am I feeling so bad when I am doing exactly what I thought you wanted me to do? Why is this hurting?” and he said, “This is it Isa. This is where you decide what you want to do. This is when you just do it. Did you think it would be easy? Did you think I would make it easy for you? Whats the fucking point in that (yeah in order for him to keep my attention he cusses too)? If it were an easy mission I could have given it to anyone but I actually needed you for it and the truth is that you are doing a hell of crappy job. Pathetic really.”
And then all of the sudden I got this burst of energy. I danced it off. And I made a decision. I am going to work, as hard as humanly possible. There is only one problem. I am scared to do things on my own for the first time. And this is keeping me from doing anything at all.
No more. I just have to do it that is all.
Tomorrow I am going to read 3 papers on finding ligands. I am going to look at the paper that used RNAse to see what I have to do. On Tuesday I am going to ask Wes where I could possibly find some RNAse if at all.

And I am going to do it.

Retrovirology Conference

Hello Kitties,

My problems with Dr. Diva are over. The tests finally made it to his fucking stupid asshole. The reason why I am extra mad is that the MCB department sent me a messege saying that the grades were due Tuesday. Which means that all the previous emails I've posted on the blog are just his bullshit. It is not that he needed the tests it is that he was being a SUPER DIVA.
GOD I hate human beings. Especially idiotic San Franciscans who think that everything should be done for them whenever they feel like it.

Anyways... enough with that. I am at the Retrovirology Conference in Cold Spring harbor, and I just feel like my PI wasted his money. What am I doing here? I don't belong here. These people are brilliant. I am an idiot. I can't even pipette very well. In the mean time there are these people who have done such beautiful work. There is a British graduate student I met here. He has published 7 times and I think he is only in his 3rd year. It is not that he has published this many times but his publications are phenomenal. He has published in Science in Nature in Cell. He is motherfucking BRILLIANT.
Me? Oh you wanna know how many times I have published?

I feel so bad. I sat at those talks and I couldn't understand 3/4 of the talks. There was a session that I understood. It was about the viral budding of HIV. How VPU and a transmembrane protein called tetherin work. There was another one where they talked about the ESCRT system. But I didn't understand anything else. I feel like such a failure. Like such an idiot and I can't help it. I feel like I am never going to be a good scientist and it just makes me cry.
Why? OH WHY Do I want this so badly?

Happy Trails with Dr. Diva

Dr. Diva's email to me responding to the previous email:
Isa,
You are absolutely correct.   I did approve you going to this
conference----as I thought you were leaving Sunday and returning on
Wednesday---as in today.  But you only told me on Saturday morning that
the conference lasted ALL WEEK.   But I
figured..........well..........okay she did not know it was all week.  
Then I said--- we will compromise--- you will just need to grade two
pages---and mail the exams back to us by Wednesday.  We will do the rest.
THEN you tell me you are attending ALL the talks and DO not have the exams
ready still.  Then you say it is MY responsibility to get you a Fedex
number??  And only NOW are you finding out about Fedex there??   you have
been there since Sunday.
I also realize that you MUST have known the meeting lasted all week ---
some time ago.   As you had  the ticket for some time.    And you tell me
the day of the exam.    So what was your plan??
For us to wait all week for you to come back?? To not do any grading?
We need the pages as soon as you can send them.

Thanks,
Dr. Diva
-----------------------------------------------

My response to Dr. Diva's last email:
Dear Dr. Diva,
I sent the package graded papers.
I couldn't include the paper clip so they are all bunched up together but
you'll be able to distinguish when the 2nd page starts because the answer
sheet is right there.
I truly apologize for all the trouble I have caused. Obviously I didn't
mean to. I didn't know that this meeting would be all week and from
Morning til night until the week of the final. I had only received the
electronic ticket 2 days before the final.
It is not that I wasn't expecting to grade I just thought that we would
have a week before we had to hand the tests back in.
But whatever it is all my fault anyways I should have payed more attention.
So again I apologize to the both of you for causing so much stress and
trouble.
Here is the tracking number: xxxxxxxxx
The person in the FedEx office said that it should arrive tomorrow.
In the mean time if you guys need to turn in the grades in my previous
email I sent you the scores on each page for each student.
Let me know if you need anything else.

I am very sorry,
Isa

My Last day of GSI-ing and I am SOOO glad.

Email from professor after 2 nasty phone calls:

Isa,
> I am thinking that you should be using your lab's Fedex number as it
> is for THEM that you are missing your work HERE---for which YOU ARE
> BEING PAID!!!!
> Or that you use your own account number ---pay cash.
> IT is YOUR responsibility to make sure we get those exam pages as soon
> as possible.
> Please let me know as soon as you have sent them.
Professor Diva

My response to the Professor after being in poster sessions collecting as many notes as possible and oral
presentations from 9am-11:30 east coast time:

I am trying my best to do this. I know very well that it is my job and
that I got paid for it. Attached, you will find the scores of each student
on each page. So if you want you and Sean can go ahead, and meet, and add
up the grades using this sheet. IF not then do not worry because I am
going to do everything in my POWER to send the pages to you early
tomorrow. I realize that I am in a conference now and that I am missing
grading over there.
I just want to peacefully remind you that earlier in the semester I warned
you about this event. I asked you if it was okay that I come to this
conference and you approved it and said that "we would figure it out".
Please understand that this conference is something that I NEEDED TO DO
for  MY career. This is not just for Dr. Greene.
Again, the scores and names of the students are attached in the order that
the sheets were given to me and I will send the tests tomorrow, I have
never implicated otherwise.

Thank-you for your patience:
-Isa

happy times and fucked up times- In Lab

hi kitties,

So I went to the Institutes' retreat and had fun. For a minute there I thought that everyone was fun and not that bad at all. Then all the sudden yesterday I get a blood sample. I wanted to isolate my PBL's which was a successful procedure. Then I had to activate my T cells with IL2. This is where I failed.
So there is supposed to be this lab stock of IL2. A post doc in the lab prepares that stock and people take some whenever they needed. I didn't think of asking people for IL2 or anything cause I was depending on the stock. Then when I went to the stock box I found nothing in it. NADA. This is at 8:30 pm when I was trying to make it to Maria's for an emergency Fight Club meeting. No one else was in the lab that knew anything about IL2.
I went and checked the freezer again, checked all over the place. Every box every shelf. NADA. So then all the sudden I see this other box that indicates IL2. In the box I find this eppindorf with the alpha sign but it had the same concentration as IL2. Maybe it is a 2 and not an alpha. So I call Dave. Dave says go ahead use it, it must be IL2. Well, I added I finally picked up the phone to call the girls and instead there was a messege saying that the fight club meeting had ended. I call Maria, she doesn't answer, classic.... I call Sheri we talk for a while about recent events and the mystery of graduate life. I go home I come back the next day only to find out that what I had thought was IL2 was actually IFN alpha. I realize that all of my cells have to be thrown out.
I couldn't help get pist I mean real pist. If the lab stock would have been where it should've been then this would not happen. It is not like I can get PBL's this week again or next week. This means everything is delayed by 3 weeks. I got so pist that I ended up having a tiff. No I didn't scream, I didn't yell. I ended up venting to some one about how if you are responsible for stocks you should be responsible and put them where they are supposed to be. Well instead of saying you need to come down it is not such a big deal. Mistakes were made. I'm sorry your cells are shit now. Instead of any of that I get the, you are acting psychotic, I don't like your tone, why are you coming on so strong, I don't know what you are talking about, why don't you take 2 days off, talk.

Yeah it was great. Not only did I feel like people were hiding stocks from me but now I felt like I was being thrown out of the lab for complaining about stocks. GOD FORBID I ever complain about anything.
I have lab meeting in June and according to one of the lab people, I need to prove myself in this lab meeting or I am toast. We might as well throw away the toaster cause I am soooo burnt.

I wanna quit this lab so badly, so so so so badly. Hell, I want to quit Grad.

The "Bay Area"

If you are going to buy a place in California you might as well make a deal with the Devil so that he can get you a free pass to Heaven.
Obsiously the Devil wouldn't be the individual to consult on entries to Heaven. Well in the same way. You just don't come to LA or San Fran or oops "the Bay AREA" excuse me, to buy a home.

"A home? What? Why would you need that? Oh Jesus! Isn't that just Bad for Global warming?" Yes Bay Area People, this is what I think of you and your little over blown area.

I believe the first ultra polite thing they would say to me is, "Well if you do not like it why don't you just leave?" Instead of, Isa, let me show you the best thing about MY special area. Instead of I understand that housing here is crazy and it really isn't worth it but don't worry you'll find a place.
No, God forbid that you could be this nice understanding and helpful in "the BAY AREA"....

Well my answer to all of you "Bay Areans" is that I am STUCK IN YOUR STINCKING DIRTY HOLE!" ,because I am going to grad school here.
I mean I am not asking for much dammit. I am just asking for a place where I can sleep and live and study and be COMFORTABLE and not be paying 100 million dollars for it. And where I can take a decent crap without having to share the toilet with a stranger whom will charge me a quarter so that he can buy more CRACK!
The bay areans snicker at me when I talk about NYC. Well, let me tell you, in NYC I could pay for an apartment on my own, I could buy a home, I could go to cool restaurants of any kind. Whether that be Mexican, Puerto Rican, Vietnamese, Korean, whatever! But here all I find is Guacamole and Sushi, OOPS! I forgot that goes together.
My husband, whom has been waiting for the market to go below HELL so that prices here drop 1% is telling to say something positive about the marvelous, "Bay Area". Well here it is, at least there is an old long red bridge where you can throw yourself off of after foreclosing your home.
Then again there are many long bridges in New York and even in Florida, mind you not red.

Qual Fever

Well kitties, it has sure been interesting.
I am to the point where I don't know where I started and I don't know where I am going. Is there a song that goes like that? Oh well.
Basically if I had a tail I would just start chasing it right now cause that would have a clearer objective than anything else that I've done.
It is like Qual fever in Berkeley. Everyone is working on their Qual, except for me. I am just looking for a primary. In the mean time the chief thinks that when we met he actually gave me a solid project. So I'm going to have to meet with him and somehow make him think that he came up with whatever project I re-propose.

This feels really bad. The fact that everyone already has preliminary data and is putting their 3 aims together and all that. While I am just getting started. I basically need to get preliminary data within the next 2 months. Yet, here I am trying to figure out what it is exactly that I am going to be doing.


Quote of the year, "Well Dengue enters cells by receptor mediated endocytosis so it gets into the cytosol and then it does transcription so it produces RNA and then it produces DNA from there."

The month

Hello kitties,

What a month! So the project I was investigating is basically going down the toilet. And I am soooo super ready to flush it. I mean I am finally ready to let go of the project. So ready I am that for the last 3 weeks I've been searching for my official thesis project and I've been meeting with everyone and talking and reading and reading and reading and reading. I even attended a small symposium in Berkeley and then a talk in UCSF.
The good side of all this is that I am learning so many things about HIV. It feels good to be able to chat with the experts about what happens during infection at the immunological cell level as well as others. I have trying to find a project that fits into the Qual so that by the time I am done finding my thesis project I'll be ready to start writing the proposal for my Qual.
It has not been easy.
This weekend I had to go to Vegas to meet there with my in Laws who we have not seen for over a year. I actually ended up sleeping a maximum of 4 hrs. The sad thing is that it wasn't because I was partying, it was because I had to read! So I got up at 4:45 am and read until 10 am and then would go to breakfast with the in laws. It all sounds like torture but it was worth the sacrifice, to be able to hang with them and Carlos.

The reason why I am soooo anxious about all this?
1) I had to meet with the Chief this morning (originally scheduled for Monday).
2) I have to present in next week's lab meeting and I wanted to present the proposal to the lab then along with the horrible results from my current project.

So how did my meeting with the Chief go you ask... It went well despite the fact that he denied me permission to work on the project that I was proposing. He redirected me in a whole other way. I mean it is still within the playing field but....yeah..
So I still have a new project but now I have to read 1 million other papers inorder to be able to put it together for Quals and my Lab presentation.

With all the drama and exhaustive work that has been going on I haven't been paying attention to my family at all. I missed my mothers birthday and I still have not responded to my cousin's Christmas card or sent her a gift. I wish they could know how stressed out, suicidal, anxious I have been. At the same time I am DYING for a weekend away from this shit hole (grad student prison) with the family. DYING!

The growth of gray hair on my head has become exponential. I look like I am Albert Einstein's grand daughter... without the genius gene.

Hookworms, Black Widows, and HIV

So it has been a very long time since my last post. I apologize for my long absence but I have basically been through a lot. First of a girl in the lab betrayed me. She told the administration that I was not scheduled to present for the whole institution where I do research. The reason why they have not scheduled me though is probably because I do not have any data.
That got resolved, I even forgave her.
But then a few weeks after that the post-doc lab manager called me into his office. We had been working together on the 2nd aim of my project. He had been bailing out on me. Like he would tell me you need to do a PCR on this and would not tell me how long what temp what enzyme. So I would have to end up figuring it out on my own. I thought this meeting was going to be about that but instead it was about something else. He told me that I had not produced anything worth looking at in all the time I had been in the lab. This was strange to me due to the fact that my PI had complimented me on my lab presentations 2 times. Then he kicked me out of yet another project I was trying to get going. And he also told me that the post doc officially assigned to me didn't know what I had done or was doing. I was shocked. I was distraught.
For the next 2 weeks after that him and I had ugly unprofessional fights. There was one day that he was so nasty to me that I ended up going home and crying for 2 hours straight. I fell asleep from exhaustion. Carlos tried to calm me down but it didn't work. If it wouldn't have been for Carlos though, I seriously would have committed suicide. Honestly speaking I hope the lab manager(black widow) gets raped by 13 men and that they take his liver out.
But the storms, I think, are settling down. He still says these little nasty comments every time he manages to get me to talk to him. I just ignore him. It is getting to the point where I don't value anything he has to say at all. With all this distress none of my experiments have been working. I mean keep in mind that I am also teaching classes.
My collegues are telling me I should just quit that lab and move to another. As if it were that easy.
What am I going to start doing?
I am going to start meeting with professors at Berkeley. If things get worse I may actually consider getting out of the lab. But I am not a quitter at all so it is going to take a lot to get me out of there.
I was sitting with Sheri in a restaurant yesterday. She was telling me that she knows that I can handle this, that she knows that I am a very strong person. But that it would be a very big shame if I let these people take my love for HIV away. It would be a shame if they stopped me from loving HIV. Sigh Sigh. I wonder if thats already gone. In reality when she said that I was shocked. Cause it had been the first time in quite a while that I realized how much I had given up in this lab.
I remembered how passionate and focused I used to be about HIV. How I had a million research ideas. Now. Well.... Now I have to deal with people telling me that they are not proud of me that they don't like what I do in the lab. That nothing in my personality is good for science etc etc.

Then we started talking about possible new projects for me. And I felt so much better. I finally remembered what it was that I loved about this career, just by talking about projects.

After that I went and met up with my post doc. She is not a bad person at all. We have our differences but in many ways I like her. We sat down, talked about my results, talked about my problems, talked about my qual, and talked about new possible projects. She encouraged me. She complimented me on my third aim. She answered questions.
It was like breathing for the first time in 6 months. Thats another thing I was telling Sheri, I was telling her that I felt like I was a little colorful fish and I swim around the seas saying hi to everyone talking having fun enjoying all the colors and corals and stuff of the sea. Once in a while though I have to come up to the surface for fresh air. I never hurt anyone I am just there to be part of the beautiful picture. And then all the sudden this horrible hurricane came and destroyed all the coral. I can't go up to the surface. I fall down to the bottom of the abyss where I wake up hungry for air and then I only see all of these weird ugly white fish that look like they are from out of space. Now I am trying to swim back up to the surface even though I am 1/2 dead, even though I know most of the fish up there are dead and gone and the coral is destroyed.
That is it, that is how I feel.

Officially Back-Stabbed

So I was kind of happy this week, despite all my conplaining and teeth grinding and worrying. I was happy because I was making friends in lab. We were hanging out and most people seemed to like me so far.... this was something I had not been able to work on during the semester because of the time constraints.

I am going to start this story from the beginning. A few weeks ago, "Lab girl" pointed out to me that I was not scheduled to present infront of the institute (there are these weekly meetings that the institute holds and some miserable student or post doc presents and gets asked questions as if it were their Qual). I told her not to tell the administration anything because I had to teach this semester and I had just started looking for a new project. She told me that she was going to say it any ways. I thought she was kidding but I warned her not to say anything.
All the sudden Today Lab girl comes to me and tells me that she told them that I was not presenting. And that now I had to take 1/2 her time at presenting.
So here I am. I have no project. I am exhausted. People are trying to push me out of the project that I have kille my self for. I have to teach some spoil stupid brats some immunology and I have to somehow prepare for my Quals.

It is not the fact that I have to do the presentation that depresses me. It is the fact that I got back stabbed and now. Well now I have to spend energy avoiding the fuck out of this hook worm (the person I am refering to as lab girl)....
Why? Why do people think it is okay to piss me off? Why? Why in the world do they look for my fury?

My PI only eats Carrots and Diet Coke....

So I am being pushed out of my research project. No one cares whether I want to work on it or not. It is as if time has run out and now I am out of the project.
In the mean time I have at least 2 other projects that I need to know and start working on YESTERDAY.
I was told by another lab member that there are two baskets in this lab. There is the basket in which, if you are in it then the boss likes you, asks you how you are, wants to know about your life, wants to play golf with you, gives you good projects....etc.
But if you are in the bad basket then he just doesn't bother with you... For example, the post doc that has had results in the last 6 months (keep in mind someone optimized everything for her before she arrived in lab), she is in the good basket. But me, the one that has had to optimize everything from Planet Mars to California, the one that has not had results every GOD damn day of her life, Well She goes in the evil basket.
I was told that all I have to do is jump into the good basket. By the time I was done with this conversation all I wanted to do was burn some easter bunnies in a basket. I saw it, I imagined it, I wanted them to suffer as much as I have.
Today I was also told that the more attempts into the good basket without sucess the harder it becomes to go into the good basket. So not only do I have to jump into a basket but I have to do it fast.
OFCOURSE no one explains exactly HOW to get into a good basket.
I guess the thing to do is have someone optimize everything for me first and then show results that are not statistically significant and don't have proper control.

I want to kill someone. I want to burn some bunnies alive and I want to hear them cry while they try to jump from one basket to another.

Join me in being miserable

Well Christmas is over. The new Year is in. Back to being miserable.
Yes..
THere are a million reasons to be miserable. Here are the most important.
1- Christmas is over
2-The New Year is in
3-I am fatter.
4-I have to come up with a Project...by Myself!
5-I have to come up with a Project
6-I still feel so uncomfortable in Lab that I get Migraines and sweat
7-I have to go back to work
8 I have to go back to work
9- I have to go back to work
10- I have 2 days to know everything about my new Pseudoproject
11-I am not allowed to enjoy anything until 2009 because now that my friend has finished Quals I have to begin it.
12- My boss has officially begun to hate me. We've already had 3 NON-beautiful moments.

Join me in being completely miserable.
Can't anyone just shoot me.

Here is how you know if you are miserable.
1-You hate your work
2-You hate yourself
3-You hate the world
4-You want to die

All of these 4 can be covered by the fact that
1-you are a stupid humanbeing that decided to be a GRAD STUDENT!
very very stupid