Five more days until I’m on vacation! I cannot wait - I’m going back to Boston for 10 days to see the family and just relax. I’m currently in pre-vacation mode, which means I’ve been pretty lazy and doing the bare minimum at work, but whatever. Tuesday can’t come fast enough!
But before I leave, I have an interview!! Woo! I applied for a graduate student internship with a program on campus that works to promote the success of traditionally underrepresented groups in the sciences. I’m all for increasing diversity in sciences and encouraging students from all ethnic, economic, and cultural backgrounds to pursue studies and careers in the sciences. I’m really excited about this opportunity - I hope it will be the first step toward a career in improving education for everyone!
What I DO want is to reform science education. It’s a complete mess and it seems like no competent person is tackling the issue at the moment. I stay as involved in education as I can - through teaching college students and working with elementary aged students in Oakland. I love it. There is nothing that I enjoy more than working with and teaching students. I find it so incredibly frustrating that my advisor is not at all supportive of it, though. He doesn’t want anything to take away from time spent in the lab. Shouldn’t a person’s education be specific to his or her goals? If I wanted to be a lab rat for the rest of my life, or be a research professor at a big university, then I absolutely see the benefit of dedicating all my time and efforts toward research. Not all of us want that life, though, but it’s a pretty hard message to get across sometimes! I wish I could get some support to pursue my own interests within the field - especially since science education is so important! I find it to be a bit counterintuitive that places like Berkeley want to attract the best and the brightest scientists, but they don’t want to put the time and effort into improving education at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Where do they think all of us scientists come from in the first place?!
Holy crap it’s been a long time since I’ve written on this thing. A lot has happened in the past five months, yet I find myself in pretty much the same position. Funny how life works like that, huh?
I almost quit grad school a few months ago. I submitted the paperwork for the Master’s degree, told my boss I was leaving, and even got hired as a teacher in Oakland! I had to take teacher credential exams and everything. It was a super stressful and difficult decision, and I was just so miserable every day. When the time came for me to accept or decline the job offer, though, I just couldn’t go through with it. I got pulled back from the brink by an old teacher/mentor, and I realized that down the line I would be angry with myself for not getting the PhD. So, I got my ass in gear, got some good work done, and convinced my boss to let me stay! Hopefully things will go much differently (better) this time around.
I also stopped taking Ambien a couple weeks ago. Shocking, I know. Especially since I had become so completely dependent on it for sleep. I was taking it every night, couldn’t sleep without it, but it made me feel groggy all day long. I went cold turkey and have had a really hard time sleeping, as you could imagine, but I’m going to stick it out. I don’t want to be stuck on pills, I can’t imagine it’s all that great for me. I have been getting lots of reading done lately though! There’s nothing like reading a good book at 2 am, 3am, 4 am, etc… Too bad reading doesn’t make me tired like it used to.
I have a new mini obsession with crossword puzzles. I was recently given a book of NY Times ones. They are all Monday puzzles, so they’re doable but not so easy that they’re a joke or a waste of my time. I’d really like to get better at these - I’ve never been so great with words/vocabulary/etc. I’ve always been a logic and numbers type of person. That won’t change, but maybe I’ll learn a few new fun facts and fancy words!
