How to achieve inner calm
Listen to this whilst
watching this It's like the
plastic bag scene.
It's like some surreal form of beauty that slows life into a single beat.
It's like I'm not giving my first ever Unit seminar in 3 hours.
The announcement
I GOT MY FELLOWSHIP !!!
After weeks of waking up in the morning and hesitantly opening my inbox, constantly scanning the fellowship outcomes website and generally walking on eggshells and holding my breath, I woke this morning to find an email neutrally entitled
"NHMRC Training Award application - Outcome"
sitting at the top of my inbox. Of course the results were released at 5:30pm Australian time, so the bomb had been sitting there for a good few hours before I got to it!
I had a few stern words to myself, a couple of deep breaths and with a slightly melodramatic "Here we go..." I opened it. The email itself was a straight form letter, with no indication of the result, just "The outcomes have been announced" however the attachment entitled "Evans_
Succ Fell App" looked a little more promising. I opened it and woke my housemates with screams of "I GOT IT!!!!".
What does this mean?
The
CJ Martin award provides me with two years of funding here in the UK, and then two years of funding in Australia. It's for my own specific project, with my own salary (
yah! pay rise!) and some travel and expenses money too! The fellowship can begin any time in 2007, but I am hoping to defer one year to begin in 2008. So for those of you up with the maths, that means staying in the UK till at least 2010 with a return to Australia after that. At present, my nominated
return lab is at
QIMR in Brisbane, but this may or may not work out. Personally I hope it does, but it's still a good few years away yet, and science is a changing world, but at least I know there is a way for me to come back home on of these years!
It also meaning I am in the NH&
MRC fellowship system, which as well as being prestigious (etc, etc) it will make it easier to stay in the NH&
MRC funding system later, in terms of applying for more grants and fellowships later down the career line.
It is so strange to be alone in my room with no one to jump around and celebrate with....
Thanks to the amazing people in my life who hold my hand (both literally and virtually) make me cups of tea, talk sense to me and remind me why I play this science game. I couldn't do it without you. And of course, to those who proof read, edited, scanned documents, made corrections and directly helped out with my fellowship application. You guys rock!
Now, i think i might go out for a coffee!!
Wishing everywhere you go you always take the weather with you...
York, UK:
Victoria, Australia:
Personality Dichotomies
Today's personality quiz is short:
You're at a party and the person you are talking to has a piece of basil caught between their two front teeth. Do you tell them?
A) Yes
B) No
I have a really early memory as a child of a situation that arose at a church social function. I have no idea how old I was, but I can remember it quite clearly. We were at a buffet dinner in the upstairs church hall and one of my friend's parents came up to me and said "Krystal, go and tell Mrs. X that she's tucked her pettycoat into her skirt" and pointed at the nice old lady who was hostessing around with a tray of food. I was terrified. I had to take a deep breath, walk across the tiled floor and pluck up the courage to tell lovely Mrs. X that her tartan skirt was tucked up into her pettycoat and was showing off her thick ultra-supportive stockings and sensible cotton breifs to the entire room. I remember my voice trembling over the "Excuse Me Mrs. X..." part of the sentence. So as a child I was frightened, but as an adult, I am appalled. Why would you send a poor innocent little kid to do this? I don't understand...
Today at work I was in the office and behind me there was a commotion, a story, and then the room was hysterical with laughter. Apparently one of my male colleagues had split his trousers and was walking around with the back seam torn open a good ten centimeters. And not only were my peers laughing at the situation, not one of them had told him about it yet. They were all too embarrassed. They claimed they didn't know how to tell him, I mean honestly, how hard can it be?
I charged out of the room and initiated the following exchange:
"Dude, what have you done to your trousers?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've ripped them at the back, didn't you know?"
"Oh, no, no one told me"
It's that simple people.
So, repeat after me:
"Hold on, you've got something in your teeth"
"Excuse me, but I think you've caught your skirt"
"Sorry, but are you sure that naming your son Jonathon Thomas is a good idea"
Just be brief and to the point. And thus save someone else from being brief to their entire workplace.
How politics can ruin your breakfast
The flow of information is a curious thing, within any social circle, especially families. I was once chastised by sister#3 because she found out i was moving house and hadn't told her. I suspect that the thing that annoyed her was not that I was moving, not that I hadn't told her directly, but that the knowledge filtered through to her from her husband's aunt and uncle. To be fair, they had recently been staying with me here in York, but still, it is odd to hear news about those in your immediate family circle from those outside.
However, to be fair, this aunt and uncle are in fact a good source of local knowledge. It's important to me to keep up to date with current affairs (not the TV show) and politics back home, and so when the Australian opposition party leader lost a leadership challenge, and that
Kevin Rudd was the new labor leader, I found out via an email! Thanks for that :)
I had suspected that this change was in the wings, again from a rather unusual source. Kevin Rudd recently published a few
articles in "The Monthly", the Australian current affairs magazine I subscribe to. In these he spoke out about the prevalence of extreme christian values in the political scene. He argued that the christian philosophy is essentially an "exhortation to social action" and emphasised issues such as poverty and social justice, above those of the mighty dollar. He also had a few words to say about the current prime minister - "Mr Howard is a clever politician who often succeeds in masking the essential self-interest of his political project with a veneer of "duty to the nation"." When I read these it was clear to me that he was trying to raise his public profile and
appeal to the lefty-labor lovers out there. He was scathing in his attack of the "neo-liberal" milieu of our current parliament. And I was right behind him.
So when the cheery email from my aunt-and-uncle-in-law arrived, I was pleased to read that Kevin Rudd had stepped up to the plate. The ALP desperately needs re-vitalisation. Rudd sounded like he would provide true "opposition", rather than the casual compliance seen under previous skies.
However, today, I was desperately disappointed to read that Kevin Rudd, along with John Howard, are
not in favour of the proposed changes to stem cell legislation. I am bitterly disappointed that, in one of his first major policy votes as leader of the opposition party,
Rudd will ALIGN himself with the far christian right, to block this proposal. I have spoken previously
here about the issue of stem cell research, but aside from that, I am just so angry that he has capitulated on the very first issue to hand.
Grr.. I got so cross just writing this post that I had to go eat a mango. Odd seeing as it is winter. But it was from Ecuador. Organic, but high on
food miles, hmmm, does that make it even? I digress.. but at least now, I am calm.
Am I just naive to be so constantly surprised and hurt by the hypocrisy of politicians?
I'm sorry Kevin Rudd, but you're off my christmas card list.
Once an ENTJ, always an ENTJ
Science is not like other jobs.
At least not to me, which is why i love it and i hate it all at the same time. But I feel as if research is becoming more and more institutionalised, more textbook, more regulated, end-point oriented, goal focused and sometimes I feel like that can really cramp my style.
Imagine if an artist had to put forward a standard operating procedure for their sculpture before they even started to carve. If they had to map out a series of objectives, in point form, as to how they were going to "be creative". I suppose the arts students out there will shoot me down and tell me that that's exactly what they had to do in college, but does that mean it really works?
And I am frustrated by the red tape. Death to the perpetuators of tape! I mean today, I was dissecting a sample and suddenly I had a really strong lacrimal irritation reaction, my eyes were burning and the fumes were so caustic I felt like i had been punched in the nose. I had to turn my head and pull away from looking at my blade. I guess it was my own fault, I wasn't in a fumehood, and I hadn't bothered with gloves or protective eyewear... Wanna know why? I was chopping onion in my kitchen. If I wanted to do something like that at work, I doubt I would be allowed. After looking up all the material safety data sheets, filling in the risk assessment forms, and getting approval from the OH&S powers that be, maybe they would decide that the benefits of the procedure (ie making my dinner) didn't warrant such a high level of risk (crying my eyes out). But luckily it's my kitchen, and I'll cry if I want to.
Today I had my annual performance review. A little premature seeing as i've only been here six months, but it's departmental policy to conduct reviews prior to the end of each calendar year. So I had to fill in a form listing what i thought were my best achievements, my strengths and weaknesses, what my training objectives are for 2007 and how I think the department can provide support and assistance to help me meet my career objectives. *vomit*
And while I understand that this can be a really valuable process for some, for me right now, i really only have one objective. Do research. A sub-clause of which is; get some data. And possibly, go to a conference and then publish a paper next year.
I don't need to work on my public speaking skills, go to presentation seminars, see a careers advisor, diversify my skill base or develop my writing style (though some readers here may disagree!). I'd just like to be able to do some work please. Without having to map out my toilet breaks in chronological order.
So, the discerning reader may pick up on a few of my impatient vibes here. I know, I've been working on Leishmania for six months and I haven't found the cure. What's my problem? What? No Nature Immunology paper in the first three months of your post-doc? That's it, your career is going to hell..
However, the performance review process did make me focus on how I work as a person, and just for fun, I returned to the
Myer-Briggs personality test. This is something I discovered whilst procrastinating over writing my thesis, and it has to be one of the most insightful and accurate online personality tests that I have ever done. I have taken this test many times to ensure the results are reproducible, and under a variety of conditions.. at work, at home, in the morning, in the evening, even now, on the other side of the world.. I still get the same result.
I am an ENTJ - Extrovert, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging.
What does this mean? Well the test assesses four different aspects of personality whether you are:
Extrovert/Introvert
iNtuitive/Sensing
Thinking/Feeling
Judging/Perceiving.
So my exact opposite is an ISFP - which interestingly enough, is in fact the personality result that the test returns if i try and LIE about all the answers I give on the quiz.
What's fun about this is when you read the descriptor for each personality combination - there are sixteen different combinations of traits, and the test gives you a percentage for each. For example, it may come as a shock to those who know me that I am 89% extrovert. I know, I was expecting 99% too !!
So the personality descriptor for an
ENTJ is
Executive or
Field marshall - which surprised me, and when I first read the description I couldn't believe that it was anything like me at all. My friend Girl swears by this stuff, almost as if it is her new religion. At times when I have sought her counsel on various issues about how i relate to life the universe and everything, she always smiles and shakes her head and says "What do you expect? You're an ENTJ"
Though perhaps...
"Disorganization, confusion, emotion, inefficiency and illogic drive ENTJs to take charge of situations and institutions"
"often becomes maudlin or melodramatic"
"They dislike to see mistakes repeated, and have no patience with inefficiency. They may become quite harsh when their patience is tried in these respects"
Maybe they've been reading my performance review forms!!
*giggle*
