Versatile technology

I got an email a few days ago from my new advisor, saying she thinks she may have just solved my thesis and I'll need to get a new research direction, but could I please look up some of the literature about this? Okay, putting aside the way "Hi, new research assistant, you need a new topic" makes me laugh and worry slightly, fine.

So I look it up, and some researchers at Rice created these microparticles that, if we can actually get them to play nice with our polymers (which I'm slightly skeptical about given the reading I've been doing--it'd be more successful and screw up the material less if the particles were smaller), will really solve the problem I was hoping to tackle. Okay, cool, I'll try to find a way to actually do the chemistry involved, and then I'll move on to something else to do.

But here's the thing that really gets me, and means I can't be at all miffed that someone else figured it out sooner: these particles also cure cancer. I feel a little dirty taking a cancer drug and popping it into plastic to avoid food spoilage, but it also makes me laugh. Technology is wacky. And seriously, if we can come up with one particle that serves both those functions... what else can we make? Sure, there's plenty of sort of useless stuff (my department chair, when I interviewed with him, told me about these incredibly neat-seeming, almost perfectly round nanoparticles we can make that seem like they ought to be very useful but are used pretty much exclusively in lipstick), but I still think I'm in the right field.

-Jenn-

Massive route changes

See, and then I had to finish my thesis and visit graduate schools and graduate and move cross-country, meaning I didn't write for three months. Don't worry, blog, you weren't the only one to be left by the wayside--I feel like I haven't talked to almost anyone in months.

So, a general, quick update, to get it out of the way so that (in theory) I can start writing again. I did finish my thesis, and it was good. I graduated and did well in my classes. But more relevantly, the school I got into back in February flew me out at the end of March (let's just call it TS, for Tech School) to see its upstate New York campus and to visit my department. It was a great visit, and I liked the place--I was just waiting to hear back from my "first choice" school (let's call it HS, for Home School, since it was right near my parents).

HS had flown me out back in February. I'd interviewed with a lot of people I'd liked and really enjoyed the department and the grad students in it. They seemed happy and friendly, more than those at TS, which is always a plus--I'm such a people person that getting along easily with those around me increases my happiness about tenfold. The department was smallish--about 30 grad students--but very well-connected within itself and to other related departments.

While I was there, I met a few people who had at some point been affiliated with the corresponding department at a very prestigious tech school I'd also applied to. They kept marveling about how the professors here actually knew the students, had time to talk to them, etc.--at that point I decided there was no way I would go to that prestigious school even if they accepted me (they didn't).

TS, on the other hand, was slightly less friendly but was doing more interesting research. The department was of approximately the same size in some ways--around 35 grad students--but had an NSF-funded research center, its own huge, great building, and far more faculty. It was also more interdisciplinary, in some ways; the work being done in the research center involved all sorts of types of engineering and the like.

Everyone told me that HS flying me out meant I was accepted, but I wasn't believing it until I got a letter. Turns out I was right. As TS's deadline for accepting my funding neared, I heard nothing from HS. I wrote to HS, told them my situation, and asked for any clue on whether or not I'd get in. They told me they'd get back to me the week after April 15th--that is, the week after I needed to reply to TS. Great. Ultimately they sent me a rejection letter in late April, after I'd already accepted TS. All in all, three of my six schools rejected me after 4/15, which, to my knowledge, tends to be the reply deadline. Obviously, since I hadn't heard from them by then, I figured I wasn't in, but it still struck me as rude, especially the ones from whom I heard nothing despite regular calls and emails asking about my status until late May.

Anyway, originally I was supposed to be funded at TS via a teaching assistantship, but in early May I got an email asking if I wanted a research assistantship. I talked to my future advisors on the phone, liked their project, and accepted it. They asked me if I'd come out early to learn from the postdoc who'd been on the project and was now leaving, so I made arrangements to leave Portland in early June.

So I did, and I drove cross country with an old friend, and I found housing in TS's town starting in July. Now I'm visiting a friend in Florida, on vacation. Tomorrow I fly back up to TStown to finalize some things about my new housing situation, and then my mother and I will drive back to my hometown, where I'll veg out for a little until it's time to go back up to TStown and start work.

Everything changed very fast. I'm still adjusting.

-Jenn-