I have been Humbled.

 I'm going to open this by unceremoniously and immaturely letting you know I am writing this from within my office at school. One other grad student is here- one I have a complicated relationship with, whose life, as far as I can tell, consists ONLY of coming to school- and since I don't think she is leaving any time soon despite it being 9:15 PM, I'm going to hope she thinks I'm doing something useful, since I don't want her to like, Know Things about me.

I am in the process of going through my old lab books. When I started grad school, I had the benefit of having old lab books left here from previous years I'd been in the lab. I thought they'd be a gold mine! So many protocols I'd done already! What I failed to account for is that I'm an idiot. I NEVER included pertinent details and the books are a mess. Sometimes I could find some info, but it seems that past me just sort of used these as a log. Which, to be fair, is how I was taught to keep a lab book, excepting that stint in GENET 375 which clearly left my brain as quickly as it entered. How ridiculous! I thought at the time, as I'd spend HOURS in the library working on making sure my lab notebooks for this lab course contained everything required for the grade. This is an absurd amount of work! Well...

Look. This lab is like, 80% ukrainains. The thing about people who are recently from Eastern Europe, as far as I can tell, is that they are very harsh and don't have time for soft sentimentality (which definitely makes me the weepy one, given how weepy I am in relation to much softer kinds of people). They're not quite German in their efficiency, but they are intimidating. Back in February I sought help from one of them for an unrelated issue, and he saw fit to tear into me about my lab book being kept badly. I said nothing at the time. I mentioned it offhand to my (yes, also Ukrainian) supervisor and she said "we'll take a look at it." With her, I've learned, this means that it will not ever be looked at again unless someone else brings it to her attention. So nobody said anything.

Upon using an internet forum (facebook group) to ask my fellow grad students this question, I was rewarded with a lot of answers that said the same thing: Yes, you have been keeping your lab book wrong. Well, sure, said I, growing more flustered. That's what they think. But this system is working for me! It's just a bit disorganized, but it flows better. I need to write these things down. I need to write them down in this order. I know I'm including all the right details now, not like past me who was an idiot who kept her lab books the same way but this time is somehow different, better.

In case you haven't figure out where this is going: it's not different or better. For the past two and a half years I have been keeping my lab books exactly as poorly as I did in undergrad- in HIGH SCHOOL. I thought that because I was older now and had one degree under my belt, I was somehow Smarter and Better- but I'm not. I'm just as stupid as I ever was.

Much as the comment to me in February about my lab book could have been better phrased (even a modicum of kindness and empathy would have done wonders), it was correct. I have been keeping my lab books entirely wrong and that man was right to call me on it.

Today I finally embarked upon a journey into my lab books, thinking SURELY I could organize them into a system that would make sense to some future user in this new format. And I couldn't use them. Listen to me: I did the work, within the past 5 years, I have presented it at conferences, I have presented it in lab meetings, I have presented it to my committee, and I can't figure out what I did. There are calculations with no context attached to them. Which MTT assay was that for? There are so many wasted lines of pure garbage updates I should have been able to phase out within the first 6 months- about when I last split something, changed media, when something got infected... Let me tell you, for the past 6 months I have NOT been recording this information and my cells have stayed just as alive as ever. I have also saved myself a lot of page space.

This is, of course, really fucking embarrassing. I've changed the format I keep my lab books in now, and it does make more sense, while still giving me room to make notes for myself, do calculations, etc. I suppose this is part of the process of being a student, and if anything this is just proof that getting a PhD doesn't make me smart (even if I didn't get a master's in between), that thinking very logically and systematically doesn't always translate to my behavior being logical or systematic. I've been keeping a fucking journal at the bench for the past few years. And while yes, I caught it early enough to be able to produce some sort of guide for whatever sad sack has to use this book after me, and to fix the latter half of my research work so that it IS somewhat comprehensible... it's not a good look for me. 

At the end of the day, the format I'm using now still isn't even what I was told to do back in February. That format assumes that I do each experiment in a one-shot, and I'm not sure where that lab manager got it from, or whether he explained it badly, or whether it works for the kind of work he does, but I've adapted it so it will work for me, and I'm sure it will change over time. I've been lazy with details, keeping things in my head and letting them go when I'm done with them. And now I earnestly have to try to change the entire way I work.

I'm also not sure how to end this except to say if you too were thinking of Icarus, you're not the only one.

Not to be dramatic but I get the news fatigue now

 I know we're all like, fatigued of hearing about news fatigue, but I'm honestly surprised it took me this long. THIS long to finally acknowledge that a big goddamn drain on my energy is the pandemic and the way it, as it has done for everyone else globally, has leached its greedy little fingers down to every last bit of my life. I don't think I realized how much I, as an introvert, needed all that social interaction I was getting. All that stopping by my friend's house for dinner and hanging out, all that camping, all those trips with friends, the occasional parties where I could sit next to people on the couch and drink 5 hard ciders, the dances I didn't go to because I was burnt out by them then. I don't regret that, but you know... what I would give to go dancing now.

Lately it's really been too much to think about. Redbeard and I want to get married in about a year and a half and it feels impossible to plan. How many people can we even have there? If we want to do it in the summer, will things be easier? Do I have to capitulate to an outdoor wedding? What if it rains on the day of? Do I just send 100 people home? Do my extended relatives understand that this means I can't invite them anymore? That it's more important to me to have there the people who are close to me now? How do we book a venue? How do we plan to do a n y t h i n g this way? Will people be vaccinated then? How many guests do we think will be in that category? Fuck, I can't even figure out if we can have an engagement party this summer. Where would we do it? Who would we invite? No one can travel very far and we have so few friends here, and of those who can travel, so many are not in a position to be staying in a hotel just for one party. 

I used to talk a lot about how I didn't really picture my own wedding. I still don't. But the one thing I had started to picture was the reception. A big room with string lights, a room with music that increases in volume as the night goes on, a dance floor full of people I love absolutely getting the fuck down and not giving a shit about what they look like, getting lightly trashed with friends, my hair coming loose and sticking to sweat on the back of my neck, Redbeard smiling and laughing at me, wondering how many good candids our photographer will get. A bachelorette party, I had pictured... a weekend of playing dumb drinking games with friends, making big group meals, playing loud music and being stupid all together, introducing some friends to other friends. What do I get now? What do any of us get? A quiet meal together? Socially distanced partner dancing? Individually wrapped cupcakes? Do we ever get to do it normally or is this virus just here now? Like, forever?

And it's hard to just be like okay, I'll compartmentalize this and think about other things but I can't. Every last thing is tainted. I can't focus on lab work because I worry all the time the lab will be shut down again. I can't watch TV and unwind because nobody socially distances on TV and that's enough to break my immersion these days. I can't play sims because I get jealous of them and how they can just have friends over on a whim. The one time I managed to get away was going camping, but even THAT had the spectre of my return to a mom-imposed quarantine looming over it. Sometimes reading is enough, I guess, until I remember that I can't go to the damn library anymore. I can't go fucking anywhere these days, and even when I do, it doesn't feel the same. Is it ever going to be the same again? Did it take this long for the grief to hit me because I can't keep living in survival mode anymore?

All of it makes me think of the people on social media who rail against masks, against closures, against restrictions and limits. Maybe they're scared too. Maybe they're looking for any last little thing to hold onto that means this won't be forever, things aren't forever changed and altered, that this isn't just the way things are from now on- indefinitely and forever. Some little way we were wrong, that we overlooked something, that what we're doing isn't actually necessary, and I wonder if their ignorance is just some kind of protective mechanism so they don't have to stare their anxiety in the face and feel it, full force. I can't even say I'm doing that with the amount of avoidance I'm doing, but it's not like I get to take two weeks off to just like, grieve. We're all grieving. 

In the beginning I think I thought this wouldn't happen in the way people think no one they know will ever get cancer. Except then I met someone who has cancer. I mean, I guess a tumor isn't quite the same, but I digress. And then I fell in love with him and got engaged and I cannot tell you how much I have changed, living with that. Eventually it's just background noise, and you just accept there is nothing you can do and enjoy what you can while you can. The anxiety is shelved somewhere in the recesses of my brain- only pulled out when something happens that might give me cause to worry again. A seizure, a bad headache, a new MRI. The rest of the time I can't function with that worry open in my mind. 

I guess that's enough to give me some hope. Someday I might be able to shelve this too, to accept that this is how things are, and all I can do is work with it. But right now I'm angry, so fuck it.

-swegan