Hello 2012

January was a fascinating month.  Let's just start with that.

It began with a pleasant precursor: a flight home from Dallas after enjoying a very, merry Christmas with my immediate and extended family.

Scott and I then had three days to pack up and clean our apartment in preparation for our move to Washington D.C.. The real trick was loading our economy-sized Toyota Camry with the "bare essentials" for our time out on the east coast, i.e. clothes, dishes, basketball, a Zen sand garden, and a small potted cactus. The feat was accomplished through a brain-wracking game of life-size tetris using misshaped boxes and bulging duffle bags.   Having now been in DC for two months, I can confess that most of our stuff is not really all that essential. The sad truth is (if I were to be completely honest with myself), I could probably survive the rest of my life with a half-packed duffle bag and an endless supply of Wheat Thins. Yes, the potted cactus would be in the duffle bag. 

The next three days involved a thirty-six hour car ride where our sole entertainment came from an iPod with limited battery power (the charger was lodged somewhere in the tetris maze of our back seat).  After the iPod died, we had to resort to singing.  Those last few hours were difficult ones.  The funny little quirk about our (then working) iPod was that, in order for it to be played on the car speakers, we had to use a ghetto tape-player converter which accompanied our music with an incessant, high-pitched, nerve-pinching "whirrrrrrrrr" sound one decibel softer than the music being played.

So, in a way, the singing was a welcome relief.

We spent the first night of our trip in Omaha and the second in Columbus, where Scott and I made random and unexpected visits to old friends on January 1^st ,the day after all those crazy New Years celebrations.  Keep in mind these people haven't seen me in seven years and many were still feeling the effects of last night's partying. Surprise!

 Surprised/groggy former neighbor: "Who on earth...? Why are there needles in your arm?"

Day three, Sunday night, we made it to DC.  Monday, we slept for sixteen hours (which translates to: I, Kristi, slept sixteen hours, Scott slept seven and then used the additional nine hours to do something productive with his life).  Tuesday morning, I flew back to Provo, while Scott stayed in DC.

I spent the next two weeks in Provo alternating between working in my lab and awkwardly avoiding the hostile roommates of my very sweet friend, Mary Ann, who offered me a place to stay during my visit. 

As refuge I spent three days at my cousin-in-law's house sleeping on a mattress in her basement, and three additional days staying in the extra bedrooms of Scott's family members' homes.  Those places were like little oases for my soul.  (One point for using the word oasis. Two points for remembering that the plural form is not oasises. I think.)

My time in Provo was followed with a twelve hour road trip to Ventura, CA with my faculty advisor and another lab member and his wife.  It was probably one of the more pleasant car trips I’ve made.  Perhaps because there were no whirring iPod cassette converters.

The next four days were spent mingling with scientists from all around the world, where I discovered the social hierarchy of advanced-degree academia.  It's fascinatingly similar to Thanksgiving dining arrangements.  

There’s the adult table for the tenured faculty members 

  And then there’s the kid table where PhD students sit.  Their time is spent discussing their handful of published works while eating off disposable paper plates, dreaming of the day when they will be trusted with china dinnerware, and an NIH grant.

 Not to be forgotten are the misfit post-docs.  They're in that awkward transition stage of life.  This group is equivalent to the post-pubescent, hormonally-confused teenager who is disgusted and chagrined to still be sitting at the kid table, but not yet accepted at the adult table. 

 

They eye the other table feverishly, hoping someone sitting there will either retire or die so they can move up the ranks.  

Then there’s me.

The master's student.

Where exactly do I fit in at this Thanksgiving feast? 

 

That’s right. 

A disgrace to even the kids' table.

Which is why I was quietly advised to tell everyone I was a first year graduate student, that way the assumed notion would be that I was learning the ropes as a new PhD and not the real truth: I was an intellectual toddler traipsing about a prestigious scientific convention who could at any moment shove the nearest object up her nose.

Under this guise, I presented my research to intelligent, and slightly snockered, professionals of the field.

Professor: "My chardonnay and I are interested in your research..."

My brain: Hmm.  Yeah....I can't be positive, but I'm pretty sure the chardonnay is his drink, not his hat. Man, I've been in Utah for a long time...

This would be a good time to mention an unfortunate character trait I possess.  It is that I will, without fail, have a complete mental lockdown whenever I’m asked a question while being nervous.

And was I nervous?

Yes. Yes I was. 

Professor: "So, ahem, if you don't mind my asking. Are the variations within this two-component signaling pathway..."

My brain: Okay, Kristi.  You can do this.  You know this stuff.

Professor: "...with the various conformation changes of the aforementioned proteins discussed in Osaka et al..."

My brain: Oh no! I forgot to listen!  Gah!...Calm down, just try to fill in the gaps...

Professor: "...via the Kevorkian complex of assimilated Ebola virus patients..."

My brain: What the..?!  What is he talking about?!

Professor: "...without the infrastructure of quadraphonic and pneumatic cross-linkages..."

My brain: ...

Professor: "...by multivariable hybrid influx systems..."

My brain: Welp, that's enough for me.  I'm signing off.  I'll leave you to handle this, Kristi

Professor: "...which, in your opinion, would be the assumption of current or previous research?" 

Me:...

Cue complete mental shutdown

 

 

Professor:  “So I'll just read your poster then, shall I?”

Upon finishing the conference, the lab crew drove back to Provo and I quickly packed up to head back to DC and Scott.  Three weeks away from my husband was a terrible ordeal that rendered me emotionally helpless destroying all pretenses of the I-love-to-be-alone person I once was and reduced me to a whining little child most evenings because I just wanted to hold his hand... and also, maybe, have him kill the spider that's on the wall over there because I don't want to please don't make me learning experience.  So needless to say, I couldn't wait to get on the plane and fly home.  Sure, the flight had one lay-over, but I could wait one extra hour.  Couldn't I?

As I sat on the plane waiting for it to pull out onto the tarmac, I notice the snowflakes beginning to fall outside my little, oval window. 

Two hours later the plane left the tarmac.  Around the same time my connecting flight in Denver left for DC.

Upon our arrival at Denver, a few hundred very disgruntled passengers lined up at customer service to reschedule their connecting flights.  None of us were able to connect that day; the local hotels were very happy.  Being the very collected person I am, I decided to calmly call Scott and tell him that I would not make it home until tomorrow afternoon.  That he shouldn't be worried, but I would need to stay the night alone in a dark, scary, lonely, and likely, lice-infested hotel room that night.  But everything was going to be fine.  Just fine.  

And when I say that I "calmly" called Scott, I really mean, "had a psychological meltdown at an airport terminal".  Euphemisms. 

The next morning, I made it to the airport lice-free, passed through security like a champion, and boarded my plane with no complications.  At noon, Scott picked me up from the airport and gave me flowers, because he is sweet like that.  Or maybe he just wanted to placate the emotional monster he witnessed over the phone the night before.  We'll never know.

Either way, in the end I was happy and he was happy. And we were both happy I was no longer wandering around aimlessly in a Denver airline terminal left to my own devices.  As was airport security.