JennEd

Some things I have noticed lately

2006-10-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

A lot of the resources at TS are sort of unhelpful. I know I'm comparing them too much to my old school, but still:

At the stockroom, I can't go in and find the things I want--I have to ask. The full-time employee working there knows nothing about chemistry and the extent of his training seems to have been in how to look up account numbers. He's cheerfully helpful, but if you ask him for something you'd better be prepared to have him wander around looking for things, offering you 12 variations on what you want until you get it right, and debating what he can and cannot sell you. It also takes ten minutes to get rung up on a simple order... and that's after the fifteen minutes to find what you need. Sigh. I like the guy, and none of this is his fault--it just seems weird that this level of training and expertise is all we can manage. Having an efficient and knowledgable stockroom manager is extremely useful.

I need to get into and out of a lab I don't have a key to. This is the second time this has happened. Both times my advisor and labmates suggested a number of ways I could get access to it--borrowing someone's key, borrowing the master key, etc. I'm planning on doing what I did last time, which was to go to the department secretary and ask to be assigned a key for the room. She never asks questions, and I don't have to ask for access. I'm not sure why nobody else thinks to do this. I guess you could say I'm taking a key someone else might need eventually, but if it's there it's obviously not being used yet, and I feel okay making my life easier. (Now watch all my keys get stolen so I have to pay for them all.)

Lastly, I need to type less. Ow.

You know you're a first year grad student when...

2006-09-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

...you're still really kind of starstruck when the author of a whole ton of papers you read over the summer (whose name you searched on to find all the most useful and well-written articles for your thesis) calls you to ask a few questions about your research.

That sounds far more interesting than it is--the reason he was calling me was that he was processing my order from his start-up company that spun off from his research. He had just synthesized the particles I needed and wanted to know things like what solvent to put them in, and then we got to talking about what I was doing with them.

We had a somewhat awkward exchange when he asked me if I'd ever seen any of the IR spectra of the particles, and I told him yes, I'd seen them in some of the papers published about them. He said, "Oh, I hope you weren't reading my papers," in that sort of self-deprecatory way. While I didn't quite admit that I've read everything he's authored or coauthored in academic journals in the last ten years, I did tell him I'd definitely read some of his work. ("Good!" he said. "Well, I hope that's good, anyway.")

Also, he told me to call or email if I ever had any questions, and that he'd send me as much of the stuff I ordered as possible, since I wasn't authorized to spend any more money and he was concerned about my not having enough. (I'm concerned, too. I don't think I'm going to get usable results out of this stuff I've been setting all my hopes on for four months. But that's neither here nor there.)

He gave me some reassurances that life gets better than being a first-year grad student and generally left me feeling good about the world, which was nice after a long day of being irritated with it.

Practical applications

2006-09-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

From my class notes (given by the professor, not the ones I take):

"There are several fundamental limitations of [this approach] including accuracy of [the figures used for the entire set of calculations] and the length and time scale limitations that need to be considered in the context of specific simulations."

So basically, your underlying assumptions aren't accurate, and the calculations you do with them don't take into account practical reality. Way to go, method. You are truly a winner, and I hope we use you a lot in this class. Oh wait! We will.

From the same professor in class the other day, addressing the concerns of a chemist-turned-engineer (not me) about an approximation he made: "You're an engineer now. One percent error, this is okay. Ten percent is maybe a problem."

This is a rather different mindset for me. One of my other professors takes more points off for sign errors than for method errors, if your method error still got you to an answer similar to the right one. He told a story about a student a long time ago who got the whole process right but switched one sign and got the opposite of what he should have gotten. He marked the student almost completely off on the test question, and when the student complained, "But I understand the process! I just made this one careless error!" The professor's response was, "But you couldn't have made a bigger error!"

It's just a whole new world, this engineering thing.

A question of scale

2006-09-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

I work in a nanotechnology center. One of the strange things about this is that sometimes I shake my fist at a paper I'm reading, declaring it useless because it only provides techniques for depositing micron-thick layers of a metal.

"Why is this useless?" my boyfriend asked, quite sensibly.

"Because a micron is gigantic," I said. (There are one million microns in a meter, for those of you not typically doing work on this length scale, which I bet is most of you.)

The best part is that it took me a while to figure out why this was funny. Because it's true! A micron is one hundred times bigger than what I want! It's like going to paint your nails and ending up with layers a few inches thick, or trying to wax the floor and ending up ankle-deep in floor wax. I work on the scale of 1-100 nanometers, by definition--so ten to one thousand times smaller than a micron. A micron is massive.

Well, back to the drawing board, I suppose. (I am, by the way, looking at techniques to do what I mentioned in my last entry, now with less palladium. It... might work.)

New research project, new considerations

2006-09-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

It's always sad when you come up with the perfect solution to your lab problems, and then you realize that its implementation would involve widespread palladium poisoning among all consumers of convenience food (i.e., things that come in plastic wrap and can be heated in the microwave).

The technique is brilliant, though!

Lab group culture

2006-08-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

Over a month has passed, and I've slowly settled into my lab (slowly being the important word there). The adjustment to any new lab is sort of difficult--you have to learn how everything runs, what materials or equipment are for general use and what you should get for yourself, what space is "yours" and what is just space you're allowed to use when it's free, whom you should talk to in order to get what you need, etc. Then you add in the transition from a small liberal arts school to a larger tech school, then the transition from undergrad to grad, then the fact that the person whose work I'm taking over is gone, then the fact that it's summer and thus I didn't get a great introduction to the school to begin with, and it gets even more complicated.

It's an interesting change, going from my lab group there to my lab group here. My undergrad lab group did have one person who'd worked for the department the summer between his second and third years, but other than that, we were all essentially on the same footing and seniority level in the lab. We all settled into our workspace at the beginning of the schoolyear and all cleared out together in May. We asked each other questions, but we were generally all equally clueless.

Here, coming in clueless when everyone's got their own independent work, well, it's definitely different. Unsurprisingly, it's intimidating to be the new girl, and confusing. The fact that I arrived at a time when nobody was really expecting anyone new to show up sort of makes that worse, though I'm sure it'd be disorienting anyway. But at the same time, I think everyone remembers what it was like to start grad school, and when I get up the nerve to talk to them, they're usually quite helpful.

Something about everyone all having different expertises and different levels of experience helps in encouraging people to do favors for each other. Okay, I think I get the whole utility of a lab group, now.

Not that the department at TS is really terribly friendly outside of lab. A guy I knew from high school is in this research center, too; we share an advisor, though he's technically in a different academic department. He got here a year before me. I ran into him today and expressed my slight distress that I haven't made a single new friend here, other than being introduced to a few friends of an old friend of mine. He told me he hasn't made any friends since he moved here a year ago, either. That's encouraging in that I know it's not just me, and incredibly disheartening for my future prospects.

Oh, well. At least three people in my group know my name now! I have people I can ask my pesky questions about how TS and this department run.

-Jenn-

Achilles overtaking his future

2006-07-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm always planning ahead to the next step, never quite fixed in the moment. I'm an ambitious planner, so it fits me. Right now is no exception.

I'm planning on spending only one year at TS, to get my MS, and then moving down to one of those hot and humid states to study chemistry again, for my PhD this time. Weirdly enough, it works, although the environment will be very different--going from a small department at a 6000-person school to one of the biggest chemistry departments in the country. I'm excited about the research being done, and I'm excited about moving to said hot & humid state because, well, I'm moving in part to be closer to someone.

The program is good; it requires some teaching, which is good for me (I've been sort of bemoaning the fact that I probably wouldn't teach at TS), the research is nifty, the funding is pretty good, and it looks like it wouldn't take me forever to get my degree if my research goes well (such a big if).

So life is good. And I am constantly planning.

Anticipating the future is most of what I do with my head. My biggest fear, I think, is losing the sense of connectedness between moments but not the ability to anticipate. The idea of being stranded forever in a moment that's just before another one, locked there and unable to move forward or backward, knowing other moments exist but I am solidly here & now forever for the purposes of my own consciousness--that's just terrifying.

I experienced this, for a while, once when I'd been sleeping three hours a night and stressed out of my mind for a few months. It was just as scary as I'd always thought it would be, of course, and now that I've come in and out of that experience it's simply focused the fear.

I think about it most when walking to someplace I've never been before. Specifically, it always comes to me when I'm walking down the jetway to an airplane. What if I come loose now, and this version of my conscious mind never gets there? Because I fly alone, getting on a plane is usually sort of a lonely process, and one I don't like much, so the recurring idea of being stuck there is probably a product of that feeling, my strange fear, and having not much else to think about on the way down the jetway besides practicalities: Will there be someone in the seat next to me? Will a kid be kicking my seat the whole way? Will there be space for my bag above the seat?

Thinking all of these things and realizing simultaneously that they are totally mundane and that they are really the only real questions I have about the universe at the moment--I don't tend to think about planes crashing or why I'm taking this trip or anything big like that--underscores the strangeness of going somewhere or doing something with only anticipation on the brain. The fact that the thoughts aren't big, life-changing ones means there's room to worry about, say, becoming unstuck in continuity and spending the rest of my conscious life in this spot, then the rest of another life one inch closer to the plane, and so on, never actually having a sense of having gotten there.

So yeah. That's what I was thinking about a couple of days ago.

Does anyone else have fears or thoughts like this? Do you think about them often, just when you don't have anything better to worry about, or in response to specific parts of your life?

-Jenn-

Home in the lab

2006-07-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

I feel much more like myself again now that I have a lab to go to.

If I'd heard myself say that three years ago, I'd be totally mystified. Hell, or even a year or two ago. It's funny how we settle into new aspects of our personality.

The undergrad who's been helping out on this project has been showing me around and teaching me some of the basics. I feel kind of like a fake; he's probably older than I am and has more lab experience. But shh--don't tell him. I think he thinks I'm at least a few years older than I am.

Later today I get to learn to use the second-most complicated & expensive piece of equipment I'll be using in my labwork--the melt mixer. I have to wear a lab coat for this process, something I haven't done before. Wacky. Then next week I get trained on the SEM, which, honestly, was all I ever wanted out of a graduate program. (If you're unfamiliar with scanning electron microscopy, just scroll down and look at the kinds of images it gets and I think you might understand why I am so in love with this instrument.)

So, yeah, it's good to be here, and good to be doing science again. I've been doing a lot of reading, too, so I understand more about the motivation for the project and what needs to be done to improve what we've already done. It's probably not world-changing, but it is industry-changing, and it's just an interesting puzzle to work on for at least a year.

Oh, work, I love you. I'm going back to you now.

Versatile technology

2006-06-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-19T06:57:00.000-07:00

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-

Liberally sprinkled with science

2006-03-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

I'm posting this mainly to link to an interesting post from Rob the Dirty Liberal on an interesting approach to university-level science education. (I found my way there via the new Teaching Carnival, by the way.)

I went to a liberal arts school because I do believe, strongly, that there's something valuable about having a well-rounded education. This seems like a possible way to give people a well-rounded science education, if it does all hang together, much like my classical humanities course. Too often, I think, students who are interested in a liberal arts education stumble through one of the sciences without seeing where it fits in the big picture--combining them might help some.

Also, Radical Russ posts an interesting animated map of Bush's approval ratings. If your computer isn't liking the changing images, just look at the end points: November 2004 and March 2006. I think the changes over time are informative, though, and if you can, you should look at the animated map. (What can I say? I'm a liberal and like these things.)

School continues. I wish I were sleeping more. Oh, well. I can do anything for six weeks, right? (How do I only have six more weeks--well, eight counting orals and exams--of being an undergrad left?)

Those who can, teach.

2006-03-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I guess I didn't update for a while. I blame school.

However, it's spring break! Wooooo! Last week was pretty hellish; I had huge, major assignments due in every class, including a seminar to my whole department on my thesis. My talk went really well, though; I tend to think of myself as someone who's terrible at public speaking, but it went smoothly, and everyone said I didn't appear nervous and got the information across well.

Here's the thing: I wasn't nervous. I was presenting on something I knew well--my research of the past nine months--to people who wanted to understand it. And it was great, other than the fact that I was sleep-deprived and thinking of how I needed to get studying for my exam the next day.

Which means I immediately started thinking again about how much I love sharing my chemistry knowledge. And would love to teach, if I could just get over my fear of talking in front of people--which apparently vanishes when I'm talking about a subject I feel confident in, like chemistry I know well instead of music I've been researching for a week or something.

So maybe academia is for me, after all. I know I function well on the long stretches of intense work followed by some time I can schedule myself. I am pretty decent at juggling a lot of responsibilities, too--better when I'm saner, and I get more sane every day, I think. We'll see, I guess.

I still don't know if I'm ready to leave Portland, or to leave chemistry. I know materials science is a lot like chemistry, but it's not quite the same. Am I ready for the big switch? Am I ready for grad school at all? I think the answer to the latter is demonstably yes, but do I really want to go to grad school next year? I've wanted to take a year off for the last three years, and this is pretty much my last chance. Hmm....

Well, now to get down to work. I know it's break, but I have a lot to get out the door by the end of the week.

-Jenn-

They're also related because both involve big grey things

2006-01-31T08:19:00.000-08:00

I don't have much to say, but I was quite amused by Dean Dad's very short play this morning.

Also (and this is only related in the sense that it involves cheering me up), it never occurred to me that I would just never even know if my full-spectrum light box was helping this winter. How do you know if you would have been happier anyway--or if you would have been much, much more miserable without it? I do know that I'm happier when it's actually on; I wish I could carry it with me. Man, do I miss the sun.

And that is the real reason why I will leave Portland, sad as it makes me.

I feel the earth move under my feet...

2006-01-29T08:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at 6 PM there was a very minor earthquake in Portland. I was in the chemistry building at the time, and heard a bit of a rumble and all the ceiling tiles shook. My first instinct, after realizing that, no, the wind doesn't shake huge buildings like it does my house, was to get the hell out of there, but I decided to see if Brian, who I'd been talking to a minute earlier, was still around or had heard/felt it.

Brian and I were apparently the only people around; we debated whether it had been an earthquake (since the ceiling had shaken, but the floor's shaking was imperceptible) or an explosion in one of the biochemistry labs on the fourth floor. When we went upstairs to investigate, though, nobody was in any of the labs and all the lights were off, so we went over to Community Safety to find out if they had felt it, or if not, if they could please come over and look around. The dispatcher hadn't felt it, so I went on my merry way (I'd been on my way out anyway) and Brian went back to the building, promising to leave if it happened again.

I got home to a chorus of my roommates shouting, "Jenn! We had an earthquake!" They hadn't felt it, though, which was weird because it had only been twenty minutes since it had happened at this point--but the internet was already abuzz. I called the dispatcher and he said, "Google said there was an earthquake!" Oh, internet. You tell us all.

I started to get mildly annoyed that this had happened during my third attempt to get a scan of a certain sample of mine for my thesis. See, this scan would tell me if my results were at all reproducible. The machine is very carefully aligned, so an earthquake woul theoretically throw it off. The last two times I tried to run this scan, something weird happened once and the power went out the second time. I've been waiting for these results since early December, with considerable trepidation--if my pattern were significantly different from the last time I made this stuff it would mean basically all of my science was crap, and I'd have to spend the rest of the year trying to figure out how to make it at all reliable, rather than working on the problem at hand. I had considerable reason to doubt that I was coming up with reliably reproducible results, too, which I won't get into because it's even more boring than this is.

I went back an hour later to check on the pattern anyway, convinced the earthquake would have messed up my scan. It hadn't, however, and my powder pattern was there--and, at least upon first inspection, totally identical to the one for the same sample made earlier this year. Yes! Yes yes yes!

It's the small victories that really count. Especially when you don't know if you are going to win them.

Getting back into the swing of it

2006-01-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

I've just finished the first week of my last semester as an undergraduate. It went much more smoothly this time. I'm not sure why it took so many semesters to finally get into the swing of things and recognize patterns and feel basically cavalier about the whole starting-new-classes thing. It's like how it took me until last spring to recognize that I always freak out in the second-to-last week of classes (which is also the week before my big concert), and it always turns out fine. Last spring I was able to say, "Okay, it's the week before my concert, and I'm freaking out. That means it will turn out fine."

For someone who claims she's intelligent based mainly on her ability to recognize patterns, I sure am bad at recognizing them in myself.

Outside of school, well... there hasn't been a lot. I've been tired a lot, going to bed early. I've been neglecting the friends I generally write to. I've been neglecting a lot of the friends I have to go out of my way to see. But it's the second semester of my thesis; it's not like they had no warning whatsoever. I'm not the sort of person who really misses having time to hang out with people when I'm working hard. It's not that I don't adore my friends, because I do. I'm pretty outgoing and all that, too, so I have a large friend base. I just enjoy having time to myself--I blame being an only child--and won't let my social life infringe on that.

My situation is pretty ideal right now. I have housemates I can hang out with--or not, if I'm feeling solitary. But I don't get that depressed feeling I sometimes do when there's no one around. I didn't get it in high school when I spent a lot of time alone, but then I moved into a dorm and I'm afraid I've been spoiled for living alone ever since. Living with four others (sorta five) is perfect. Especially when they're the amazing people I do live with. I am so lucky.

What am I going to do when I have to leave for grad school?

Around the neighborhood

2006-01-20T09:25:00.000-08:00

I've been living a little over a mile from campus in my house for a year and three-quarters. For the first eight months or so that I lived here, I was ill a lot (this was before my priorities shifted to health--I'm now one of those boring people who will go to great lengths to avoid getting sick), so I never really walked anywhere, but once that was done I started walking to school and noticing the neighborhood a lot more.

I adore my street between home and school. Portland is so pretty--and living in a city is so different from living in the suburbs. People treat their homes and neighborhoods differently, and I like it. There's a different feel in general.

In the mile between here and school, there are lots of houses (single-family, duplexes, small apartment complexes...), more than ten restaurants, three churches, a 24-hour grocery store, a normal-hours grocery store, a liquor store, a gas station, two auto parts stores, several coffee shops, hair salons, bars, and banks, a movie rental place, two convenience stores, a hardware shop, two furniture stores, a dry cleaner, two realtors, a bike shop, and a lot of other stuff. We have so much we can walk to, and I only wish I could manage to explore it all. I adore familiarity with places, especially complex places like this. I love the affection that grows as you get to know a place.

(Some things we do not have within walking distance: a Wal-Mart, a Starbucks, or a McDonald's. In case you missed it above, we sure do live in Portland. I had never quite realized those last two--although they are building a Starbucks up a few major streets, and that'll be walking distance from campus. But I do feel good about our neighborhood.)

I think the entire point of this commentary was to say that the Catholic church seven blocks from my house is having a "Viva Las Vegas!" fundraiser. Uh, what? I love you Portland. I sort of love you, Catholicism, when you make me giggle instead of frown.

Revival

2005-12-03T19:41:00.000-08:00

I've decided to revive this blog, because there are lots of things I want to share with people from all over in my life without shoving it into their faces.

So hi. I started writing when I was about to go to/newly arrived at Reed College. I'm now a senior, writing my chemistry thesis. I never even meant to let this blog lag, and somehow over three years passed without my writing in it. Hmm.

My mother's here right now, for my concert, which is tomorrow. We're on our laptops on the couch, sharing pictures and blogs and houses for sale and all that. I love my family.

-Jenn-

What fear does to home

2002-10-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

I was walking quickly through the Salt Lake City airport to get from one flight to the other on Saturday, completely blank-minded, when I saw the cover of U.S. News in a store. "I AM GOD," it said, and I stopped in my tracks. And I just started crying in the middle of the airport hallway. I thought, "You are not God or Satan unless we make you such." And we have. Our new villain. Our new fear. Our new object of hatred, home-bred. How dare this person take that power, and how dare we let him or her?

When I got home and was driving through the town, everything excited me. Good memories, particularly from this past summer, flooded over me as I drove through late-night Columbia. It's easy to imagine nothing has changed in the dark.

I was fooling myself, though. I was prepared to be uncomfortable with how I had changed with regards to my surroundings; I was not ready to see how much we had changed here. People and places are humbled. Little things--every little thing--were affected. I said I was going to a diner; I was told not to stand around outside of it. Several people have said in fairly jovial tones to me not to go get gas. When people hear about a shooting far away, they run and get gas, because hey, that means he's not here.

Last night there was another shooting. I-95 (the highway that runs behind my house, for you silly West Coasters) was shut down. My father told me to go get gas now.

The streets are quieter. People don't go out as much. I haven't seen this kind of attitude in people since the September 11th frantic fear for the safety of our military/government parents and other family members. Both are similar, I think, in that they hit us on two levels: one simply shock at the inhumanity of it, and one close-to-home feeling. People look anxiously about for their loved ones with a worry just a few steps removed from the panicked phone calls last September.

It hurts to see this much fear, and to know that it's justified. There are plenty of people who go on with their lives--because what else can we do?--and some of them get shot. It feels like we're all standing in our own little fields just before a lightning storm. There's such a little chance, but...........

Miw.

-Jenn-

MRIs are my kind of test.

2002-10-13T16:00:00.000-07:00

MRIs are my kind of test. Why? Because I was allowed to keep my socks on. In fact explicitly told to take off everything *but* my socks (and underwear) before changing into the hospital gown.

The actual procedure was weird. It felt very surreal, because I was unmoving in this little tube with really loud noises all around me. The noises were odd and I want to read up more about MRIs so I can figure out what was going on. They took something like ten pictures, three while I had a needle in my arm, putting that stuff into my veins that shows up as white on the image. It made me feel reeeeeally odd having my arms crossed with a needle I couldn't see in my left elbow, stuck in this tube, unable to move. I'm not claustrophobic, and I'm not afraid of needles, but the combination was a little much for me.

I basically slept through most of it, though. At least, I dreamed. Not particularly bad dreams. Just vivid ones. Kept thinking I was back on campus, but no, I was still in the tube. It was just strange. And when it was over, he just took the needle out and showed me where the door was. I don't know, it was just strange to come right out of the machine and go out on the streets again.

I would not do well with isolation tanks, I think. It wouldn't be bad, just... I'd feel different afterwards.

Just in case you don't know, I was having an MRI because I was referred to yet another doctor who doesn't know what's wrong with me for my dizzy spells. Yayfor.

Now I really need to study for midterms (Russian and physic tomorrow, heh) but I don't want to. I want it to be fall break. Now. While everyone's still in MD. Miwf.

-Jenn-

Shorn

2002-10-11T18:48:00.000-07:00

Today I buzzed my green hair to one-half inch long. It's good, though I've never looked so butch in my life.

It felt like a good way to take out my strange energy, my desire to redefine the world. Shallow though it may be, it got my mind off life and back onto myself in a positive way, which I think was needed.

-Jenn-

declaration

2002-10-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

the senate joins the house in authorizing bush to declare war on iraq. the world feels very unsteady. very unsafe. everything going on right now makes me want to just erase us all and start us over again. i'm writing a paper on justice. hesiod says the gods will destroy those who promote injustice, start over with a new race of beings. i just want to erase this. i just want to say that we have failed. we have failed in this.

and the part that makes me sick is that this is just one of a number of stair-step atrocities which have made me lose my injured faith over and over again.

my paper seems very inane right now. my studies--all useless. but every time i think the world is ending, it comes back to its feet, a little worse than before, or maybe a lot worse, but still standing. america in its glory and its freedom and its bullshit stays standing. i never saw us as much of a monster until recently. i love america, i do, but we are ruining ourselves. we will wear ourselves away in our preoccupations with the inane and our fundamental misunderstanding of the point.

and this bubble, funded by america, will continue to function along with countless other bubbles across the nation until they are physically unable. that is what we are good at. keeping our priorities constant, even if they aren't the right ones to have. i love my bubble. i don't want it destroyed. i don't want anyone else's destroyed maliciously, either. what frightens me is the prospect that maybe that's the only way we'll learn. though maybe it doesn't matter. maybe we're on an irrevocable path. maybe this is the way things are going to be, consistently worse and worse. maybe it will be another time like world war two--not in the war sense, but in the sense of having such little hope against so great an evil. and then maybe one day we will vanquish it. or be vanquished. are we the evil?

i don't even believe in evil. or i didn't. it hurts to begin to. and it really hurts to begin to believe that maybe i am a part of that evil i never wanted to believe existed. that maybe, in the end, i'm just an instrument of hate. that maybe i will be a fundamental part of the downfall of a life so promising.

but this is not my tragedy. yet.

-jenn-

Safeway glory

2002-10-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

Today we bought 100 packages of ramen. Oh, and some pathetic excuse of a protective mask in case of tear gas at the protest tomorrow, to be used in conjunction with a wet handkerchief. It was glorious. Something about buying protest gear and a Safeway cart full of top ramen... well... it just makes me feel like a college student.

And now I'm taking a break from my hum paper (it's going well--I've got four pages of six to seven done, and I have a good two pages worth of material left to write, plus an intro and a conclusion) to record this. I'm not actually stopping long enough to take off my headphones (I'm listening to loud Air and Apocalyptica, but I can't find my Crystal Method CD, so so sad--what will keep me awake when I'm editing this at midnight, one AM, five AM?) or get anything to eat. Just long enough to record the glory of today's Safeway run. Yes, it was bad procrastination, but it was oh so good.

Hugs.

-Jenn-

A good day

2002-10-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

Today was glorious. I got up and left the room within ten minutes at eight-thirty and still had time for a decent breakfast before hum lecture. The lecturer was Jay Dickson, whom I love. Then I went to physics lecture, and I felt like I actually learned something for once. In hum conference I contributed to the conversation and just generally enjoyed myself. In Russian I got homework back with few mistakes and felt like I really understood the material.

After Russian I went to lunch and checked my mail. In the mail was a package from my mother (yayfor!) with a pitchpipe, two rolls of quarters, and my leatherman. My meds also came from the mail-order place. And it was good. And we ate lunch with Laurel, which is always good. Laurel is silly and just generally rocks my world. After that I read Shayna's journal and found out she was happy and was just generally yayyayyay.

After lunch we went to Hawthorne to go shopping. I drooled over skirts and, finally, bought (with Jay) a reeeeeally ugly shirt which I shall someday take a picture of myself in. Basically, it's a bright blue mesh shirt with a mesh hood, some pieces of orange reflector tape, and a pathetic little yin-yang on the back. It's beautiful. At the Red Light I also bought these sparkly rainbow docs which are in very good condition and in my size. They look like rainbowy disco balls. I am very very happy with this purchase.

After we met up with Peter at Powell's, we came back to campus to get our tickets for The Color of August, a play in the black box theatre here that was this guy's directing thesis. It turned out to be really, really cool with no goodguy-badguy setup. It's a two-woman show, and the two women who were acting reminded me of Lisa and Margot, which just confused me. It was... intense. It's hard to describe, and I'm still processing it. So yeah.

After that we came back home to drop off stuff, and I decided I was too tired to go back out again as we'd planned, to meet one of Jay's friends downtown who gets off work at eleven. So I'm still here, and listening to the Crystal Method playing outside my window. Sounds like someone downstairs is writing a paper.... It makes me happy.

Anyway, good night all. I hope everyone else had good Fridays, too. I love you all so much.

-Jenn-

Sniper

2002-10-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

Five people in Montgomery County were shot and killed randomly in the past two days. Someone just went for a drive and killed five people who had never wronged them. Someone just terminated five lives. Five families, five communities are permanently torn now.

I haven't felt such a loss of faith in humanity since it sunk in that America is set on revenge.

I used to cry every time I read the newspaper. Reports of deaths, even in accidents but mostly by the calculations of others, made me cry no matter what. Then, eventually, I hardened myself. I guess seeing it near my own hometown just made it hit me again, and it hit me hard after this many years of steeling myself to it.

What can I do to help anything? I feel so useless. Like all of our efforts are futile, because they can be wiped out by one bored psycho with a gun.

I know that's not the way to look at it. But it just exhausts me. I cried for hours today. Eventually I shut myself down to do work. And then I remembered and I felt so sick.

I just don't know what's happening.

-Jenn-

2002-09-23T20:46:00.000-07:00

So, thoughts from the past 24 hours:

I really love Reed.

Mondays with four classes running from 9-1 and two doctor's appointments and a voice lesson and orchestra rehearsal and a study session are harsh.

My doctor here referred me to a neurologist for my dizziness problem. Probably barking up the wrong tree, but it's worth a shot.

I hate the Logan airport. A lot.

The PDX airport is pretty nice, especially at nine at night when nobody's around.

The hungrier you are, the better airline food and Commons food both taste.

I love music.

I really miss Heather.

-Jenn-

2002-09-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

So, first off, Thursday night. It was quite a happy night, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was my impending departure for Boston (where I am now) to visit Heather. It was spiffy also because of the multiple meetings I went to--a QA discussion/meeting and a VOX meeting. Both were really productive and I'm just so excited about getting involved with both groups.

Earlier Thursday I'd run into Dhyana behind Commons and talked to her for a while. She vowed to hang out with me more. This was very exciting, because I heart Dhyana, but I was honestly really surprised when she showed up towards the end of the VOX meeting and then hung around until it was over to see me. Apparently she had been looking for me all evening, because a couple of people were happy to see she had found me. She was dressed (and speaking) like a pirate because it was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Anyway, we hung out all evening and it was so cool and I was just generally flattered that she enjoys my company.

Early early Friday morning (4 AM) I got up and went to the bus stop over on 39th. The first bus drove right past me, but I caught the second one. Then I took that to the transfer center and took the MAX to the airport. At the airport, I went through security only to find I'd left my Leatherman in my bag. So I had to FedEx it to myself, which meant FedExing it to my home address, since they can't deliver to the P.O. box that is my school address. Not so cool, but not disastrous. So I went through security again, clean this time, and eventually got on my plane. The rest of my trip was fairly uneventful, other than trying to find my way around Newark International Airport. When I got to Boston, I called Heather. She had just woken up and was on her way to get me, which meant I had time to sit and people-watch and stuff. When she did show up, we got on the wrong shuttle to go back to the T at first and ended up going around and around the airport in circles a couple of times before we realized that we were on the wrong bus. Eventually, though, we got back to the T and then back to MIT.

MIT is rockin'. Heather's floor is very cool, and they seem open & friendly enough, though Heather says they haven't been huggy up until this weekend. A little bit of touchiness can go a long way in changing a community. :) Friday night Heather and I danced on a picnic table and it was beautiful. We also helped set up the trampoline and jumped on it and sat on it and curled up on it. It was gorgeous. I was so happy. It just made me remember even more how much I've missed Heather. I'm so happy when I'm with her.

Anyway, this morning--Saturday--we got up and went to the T station to meet Jai. It's soooo awesome to see her again. We went with Heather's hall to a chocolate brunch--this breakfasty thing at a hotel where everything is chocolate. They have chocolate crepes, allll sorts of chocolate cakes and truffles and sauces and drinks and other dishes... it was amazing. I got reaaaally tired afterwards, though not much more than I get after any carbohydrate meal. I've been eating vegan chocolate most of the time at school when I actually do eat sweets, so... it was just wonderful. Yummmmmm.

After the brunch we all went outside and a bunch of us ran through this fountain. It was great, because we were all in pretty nice, dressy clothes, and... yeah. It felt good and spontaneous and yayfor. I've been being so spontaneous here. I think it's just that I notice it here, because at Reed everyone else is even more spontaeous than I am. But it made me realize that I am definitely a Reedie now. It's really a part of my identity. I love Reed, even though it's sooooo far away from the east coast and all of this.

After all that, the three of us went back to Heather's room to hang out. Heather found out about a bad grade and got upset (though she controlled it very well) and I was so glad I was there to be able to actually give her a hug. I really wish I lived closer and had the mobility of a car, because so many times I've wanted to just drive over and hug her. I would do it even if I lived in, say, Providence. It would be worth it.

We went grocery shopping after that to get foodstuffs for Stressball and for tonight/tomorrow's foodmaking. We got spinach for our quesadillas tonight, which was especially worthwhile. The quesadillas we made were in a pan on the stove, not by microwave, and had chicken and cheese and soooo much spinach. They were amazingly delicious. I want more at some point. I think I get to take home the rest of the spinach, unless Heather has now decided to keep it. :)

After dinner we went and sat on the trampoline and gave each other backrubs and talked to boys and about boys and we had a lot of fun conversations and it made me miss Reed. Not actively, but enough that if I weren't going back I'd be sad, if that makes sense.

After that we all went upstairs to change for Coffeehouse, which is basically when a bunch of people get together and go hack-- they go up on rooftops, they go shafting, and they go ledging. Jai and Heather decided to go ledging, which sounded really scary, so I opted to come back here instead. I'm proud of myself, too--a year ago or even much less I would've really berated myself for deciding not to go and I would've been really upset. But tonight I just knew my limits and decided the scariness outweighed the fun potential and made the responsible choice without hating myself for it. I can't help it if I'm afraid of heights, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't respect my own preferences. I'm really glad Heather and Jai decided to go anyway, because I honestly don't mind not going. I needed a little quiet/alone time anyway, so this was perfect. My need for quiet time has increased since arriving at college. It's why I like doing my homework--I have guaranteed quiet hours every day with a legitimate excuse for not being too social. It's not that I don't like hanging out with people; I just need some space sometimes. So this is nice.

And that brings us to now, when I am sitting in Heather's room typing. I'm really happy to be here and also happy that I get to go back to Reed. I have a feeling fall break will leave me insanely homesick for Reed.

Sometimes home is in too many places instead of not enough. Ooof.

Happy Sparkle Christmas!!!!!!!

-Jenn-

2002-09-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

So, unhappy as I may be at times...
I love college.

-Jenn-

2002-09-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

So, my schedule has changed. I needed to change it because I am adding a class in the spring--music theory 2--that conflicts with my current schedule. I also dropped set design, because I don't have the creative energy for something that I'm not particularly interested in. So here is my schedule now, although it's not quite official yet, with my spring class in parentheses:

Monday
9:00-9:50 Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 Physics lecture
11:00-11:50 Humanities conference
12:00-12:50 Russian
1:10-2:00 ((Music theory 2 lecture))
4:00-4:45 Voice lesson
6:00-7:30 Orchestra rehearsal

Tuesday
10:30-11:50 Physics conference
12:00-12:50 Russian
4:30-6:00 Chorus rehearsal

Wednesday
9:00-9:50 Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 Physics lecture
11:00-11:50 Humanities conference
12:00-12:50 Russian
1:10-2:00 ((Music theory 2 lecture))
2:10-3:00 ((Music theory 2 lab))
4:30-6:00 Collegium Musicum rehearsal (yes, I got in)

Thursday
12:00-12:50 Russian
1:10-4:00 Physics lab

Friday
9:00-9:50 Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 Physics lecture
11:00-11:50 Humanities conference
12:00-12:50 Russian
1:00-3:00 Work in the theatre
1:10-2:00 ((Music theory 2 lecture))

Oh yes, and I changed my adviser, too. My adviser is now Ginny Hancock of the music department. I am pleased. And now, having (mostly) dealt with all this bureaucratic crap, it's time to do some real work.

-Jenn-

2002-09-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

So, today was going to be my Get Down to Business and Work Day. I really need it. I got up a little before noon--last night was an amusing night but involved staying up until after three--and went to breakfast. While there, we decided to go to Trader Joe's to get some stuff to eat that isn't Commons food.

On our walk to Trader Joe's we saw this avocado-colored refrigerator/freezer out on someone's driveway at 36th and Steele with a sign on it saying "Free--works fine." We decided that we'd try to take it home with us if it were still there when we got back. At Trader Joe's we got lots and lots of yummy food and paid for it communally, so that was very good. Then Susie and I went and petted some dogs while Jay and Lizard went over to Limbo to get some other stuff. I encountered a golden retriever who growled and snapped at me. It was the first time a dog's ever done that to me, and I was surprised that a golden retriever would. His owner said he had an attitude, but that's still really weird.

Anyway, we started discussing the possibilities for this fridge, if it turned out to be there, and decided we should decorate it and use it as our communal fridge. We're college students, right? It seemed really essential and we hoped it would still be there. When we got back, the fridge was still there, but the man who had put it out said two guys had gone to get their jeep so that they could take it home.

Susie and I rushed back to Steele to find some sort of cart to bring back the fridge and to put our frozen goods from Trader Joe's away. I found someone who had a pretty flimsy dolley and took it back to the fridge. The guys hadn't come back yet with their jeep, but we agreed that the dolley wouldn't work. So the guy who owned the fridge offered to let us use his dolley, and then proceeded to bring it all the way back to Steele West for us, just because he thought he could handle the dolley better than we could. He was really great about it and helped us a lot. And we got the fridge to Lonelytown (Steele West), which is slightly less lonely for it.

We decorated the fridge amusingly, with lots of geeky Discordian-type comments and such. There's magnetic poetry thrown on there in a disorganized fashion. It looks fabulous. I am very proud of us.

Oh yeah, and I have a lot of work to do. Myeh.

Six days until Sparkle Christmas

-Jenn-

2002-09-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

So, I know I should catch everyone up my life here at Reed, but right now I only have the patience to relate one particular story. Here goes:

This morning, I was stretching to reach my clothes, dangling over the piles o' stuff in my room, when I looked down to see what I was straining to reach over. I realized that it was a large graffitied cooler with an overstuffed backpack on top. It was not mine. Although several people spent the night in our room last night, mainly because I'm a dork and didn't have the energy to really kick them out, I didn't think it was any of theirs, either. So I called Lizard over and we looked into the smallest compartment of the backpack.

In that compartment, we found a restraining order against Lance Losher, as well as an "inmate request form" from Welks County jail in Colorado. We also found a list of phone numbers, labeled with some familiar names of people in our dorm--Cody, Jesse, and a couple of other names I couldn't remember. I figured then that someone on the hall knew him and he had put his stuff in the wrong room. This is not particularly disturbing, because he wouldn't have had to break in--Lizard and I regularly leave our door propped open when we go down the hall to the social room, just to keep air flowing through and such--so Lizard and I moved the stuff into the hallway and went off to commons to eat and ask Cody & co. if they knew him.

At commons, we found Cody and asked him if he knew Lance. He said he didn't, and suggested that we run his name through the Reed email directory to see if he's a student, and that we ask around the building. So, we went back to the dorm to check out the blitzmail directory. There are neither Lances nor Loshers in the directory. So we asked around, and nobody knew him. Finally we called Community Safety and asked them to come over about the stuff.

Going through the stuff (partially to make sure there weren't any bombs in it, partially out of the glee born of unrestrained voyeurism), we discovered that he was in jail in Colorado at least up until this past Tuesday. We discovered that he was put in jail on the second of September, for fighting in the parking lot of a store, refusing to leave the premises when asked, and "wilfully damaging the real property of the Frederick Police Department by repeatedly slamming his head into the hood of the patrol car." He requested medication for "psycological [sic] and some medical problems" while in jail on the 4th of September and was not granted his request until the tenth.In his bag were a crystal of some sort, tabasco sauce, toiletries, clothes, and a large, poor-quality knife. In his cooler was a t-shirt and a panhandling sign: on one side, printed with the American flag, it said, "With your help I can get beer and become God," and on the other it said, "Spare any GOD--I mean $$?"

The CSOs finally came and talked to us and took the stuff away to lost-and-found. In the meantime we had become quite a large group sitting around the stuff in the hallway, getting our fingerprints all over it and messing it up. And the adventure was over, although the mystery has not been solved....

Lance, who are you? Why are you here? Why did you slam your head repeatedly into the hood of a Frederick patrol car? And why the hell did you leave your stuff in my room?

-Jenn-

2002-09-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

So, I'm about to run off to dinner, so no time to really describe Reed yet except that it's awesome and soooo far away from home. Here's my schedule of classes (they start on Tuesday):

Monday
9:00-9:50 AM Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 AM Physics lecture
12:00-12:50 PM Russian
6:00-7:30 PM Orchestra rehearsal

Tuesday
10:30-11:50 AM Physics conference
12:00-12:50 PM Russian
2:40-4:00 PM Humanities conference
4:30-6:00 PM Chorus rehearsal

Wednesday
9:00-9:50 AM Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 AM Physics lecture
12:00-12:50 PM Russian
1:10-4:00 PM Physics lab
4:30-6:00 PM Collegium Musicum rehearsal

Thursday
12:00-12:50 PM Russian
2:40-4:00 PM Humanities conference

Friday
9:00-9:50 AM Humanities lecture
10:00-10:50 AM Physics lecture
12:00-12:50 PM Russian
3:10-4:30 PM Set Design for Theatre

-Jenn-

2002-08-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

So, one more day gone by, two best friends gone off to college, and amazingly, I feel a lot better. The three of us spent the evening/night together last night, and it was comfy and just like the really good days. It was good enough that it made it okay to leave. They both left this morning, and I leave tomorrow. I think it will be okay.

I don't really know what else to say. I cried a lot yesterday, but I have no regrets about this summer. It was wonderful. I couldn't ask for anything more. I hope this year goes as well....

-Jenn-

2002-08-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

So, I leave for Reed in two days, and I'm terrified. I don't really have a reason to be, except that it's suddenly hitting me on yet another level... it's been sinking in for quite a while now, it's just that all of my stuff is getting packed up (I'm living out of a suitcase for the next week), and Meather&Hatt leave tomorrow and I'm so nervous about the unfamiliarity of the other side of the country. It's nothing in particular that I'm afraid of. It's just the uncertainty. I know I'll be okay. Everything will be okay. But... oh wow. So scared. So not wanting to leave everything I've built up here as home...

I've never moved before. My room has been my room all my life, and I have never lived elsewhere, excluding a brief stint at my father's house a couple of blocks away. This has always been my yard. In a sense it still will be, but it's still going to be strange to not see it for two months. Two months without seeing either of my parents or my house or my dog. And I swore I wouldn't sp-end those two months pining for familiarity. Instead I know I have to build up my home there. 3,000 miles away. Maybe more, I don't even know.

Did I mention I'm feeling nervous today? And focusing on packing isn't helping, somehow. Every armload that comes out of my bedroom is a reminder. The living room is filled with boxes. And they're mine. With my life in them. And I'm leaving so much of my life here. And other partts of it are scattering across the country where it's so hard to reach......

-Jenn-

2002-06-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't really been writing here as much as I'd planned, which I suppose is okay since I'm still in Maryland. I had kinda hoped to keep a log of this summer, too, though.

I don't have a job, which is more and more fine by me. I think I'm going to look into volunteering again at Our Daily Bread, like I did earlier this year, while NHS was still on their good side. Ben M. promised to go with me if I do. This makes me very happy.

Mmm. Life. It's confusing.

-Jenn-

2002-05-06T19:35:00.000-07:00

So, prom was wonderful. I was worried about what it would be like... it seemed like a scary, high-expectation event, and I scorn these kinds of things normally, in the way I laugh at Seventeen magazine (i.e., I try, fairly unsuccessfully, to detach myself from it, and since I still care about it I feel the need to make fun of it). I felt kinda pretty in my dress, kinda-sorta, which is always nice. And I just enjoyed myself. I mean, it's hard not to with such wonderful friends, but I still worried...

Ehwell. In here, life is beautiful!

-Jenn-

2002-05-02T17:10:00.000-07:00

So, I decided I needed a place to babble to my parents and I decided to let other people see it, too, because I'm too lazy to type and retype or tell and retell my life. The point is so that when I leave for Reed College in August, I don't have to feel cut off from everyone and everything I've known here in Maryland. I mean, I've lived here all my life--I can't just attempt in vain to keep in touch and then give up. I know this seems like a cop-out, like not really keeping in touch, but still, this will remind you all that I'm alive, and I'll put commenting thingies in so you can hound me about not talking to you.

And off we go.

-Jenn-