XKCD has done it again

One of the favorite parts of my job so far has been picking out toys to give to our (future) kid participants as prizes. Including deciding if I should get the Lego pirate or the Lego helicopter (I got 3 of each). And instead of Batman, I went with Hannah Montana and Transformers.

Speaking of my job, the lab is nearly ready to go! After a week of working out of my PIs' apartment and another week in the newly renovated and full of windows lab with no furniture, all of our furniture was set up on Monday, so the lab is really beginning to look like a lab rather than a random assortment of half unpacked boxes and mismatched stolen/borrowed chairs.

My PIs were not stingy with their start-up funds. The lab is outfitted with 3 Mac Pros, 5 iMacs (there are only 4 of us for now), and a bunch of Mac minis with giant LCD screens for running participants. And our desk chairs are awesomely ergonomic, even if they're not as awesome as the Aeron chair one of the PIs got for his office. Yes, got some chair envy going on, but, as he joked, you need at least 20 publications for an Aeron, so I got a ways to go.

Oh, and we have a giant plush giraffe:

While picking out toys and office supplies was fun, the best part is yet to come. Our first protocol (one of the first I've ever written) has finally been approved for expedited ethics review! That means that we'll be able to run participants soon! At least, as soon as we find them. I would ask if any of y'all know any young'uns in the Rochester area willing to be research participants, but I didn't write recruiting via the YPMB Oh Nine blog into the protocol, so it's probably not allowed.

There's a thing at the Rochester public library tonight that I can't decide if I want to go to. It would mean skipping dinner (because I don't want to skip kickboxing) and showing up late. By then, the free crepes might be gone! The main draw is the subway tours. Why tour a subway, you ask? Because it's an abandoned subway!

Back when Rochester was teh shit and Kodak and Xerox were doing well, the city built a subway system. Unfortunately, Kodak's late arrival to the digital camera age eventually led them to lay off half their workforce, and Xerox wasn't doing too hot either (as my roommate put it, pdf killed Xerox), and the city's population hemorrhaged away. By the time the subway was finished, there weren't enough people left to justify actually running it, so they sealed it up and never used it.

Kind of sad, how a whole city can just die like that. There are parts of Rochester that look like the shabbiest chunks of New Haven, and then there are skyscrapers and architectural works that rival NYC or Austin or any other big city. I think it's a good Rosa-sized city.

Greetings from Washington, D.C.!

Hi y'all! Hope everyone has been having a great summer so far. Things are going really well with me. As you know, I've had the pleasure of entertaining Carly, Monica, and Rebecca and her parents at my house, although I did not see any of them there. But my mom and sister say they are all lovely, which is of course true. My June was spent at my beloved summer camp, Strong River, in Pinola, Mississippi (aka totally the middle of nowhere). I had great cabins of boys aged ten to thirteen, and spent my mornings blueberry picking and working at the high ropes course, and my afternoons on the river, plus eating lots of good Southern cooking to top it off. I could write about it all night, but I'll move on.
I came up here to D.C. on July 8th, and moved into the sweet apartment Steve picked out for us. Our apartment is slowly starting to look like home, but I'm still waiting for some furniture, so it's a little sparse right now. I started work with IBM on July 13th with a week of orientation with my fellow new hires, who are smart and interesting and nice young people, which is really good. For the past week and a half I've been doing some proposal work and waiting for my security clearance to go through, which it did today. So I'll probably be getting to work for real starting next Monday on a project with the TSA. I'm pretty excited about that, and being a big kid in general.
DC has been outstanding so far. I've seen a lot of friends from school, like Homer and Carly, and friends from outside of the band. One of those friends is from camp, and I got to have lunch last week with the her and her dad, who just happens to be Obama's new Secretary of the Navy, in his private dining hall, which was one of the coolest things I've done in a real long time. I did feel that it was a slightly hilarious scene, though, because she's only seventeen and a rising high school senior. So despite now wanting to date her, and having not canoodled with her ever, it kind of felt like I was meeting one of the parents in that important first meeting. But Ray Mabus is a really cool guy, so I just laughed on the inside.
Seems from the posts like most of y'all are doing well. I miss you all, and think about fun times with the YPMB a lot. I look forward to keeping y'all in the loop about my life and seeing everyone at The Game come November. Take care!
Ned

hey guys? i'm scared.

Dear '09,
I miss you all a lot. You know how, when you miss someone, you start to see them subconsciouly in the faces of strangers? Even ones that don't really look anything like the people in question? Well, I saw Alex crossing the street, Carly on the train, etc etc.
This isn't helping the fact that I've got a tremendous amount of anxiety about moving, settling into Baltimore, and going back to school. I'm really not at all sure that I want to go to school at all, or that I want a job in academia... It's kind of crushing me right now. :-(
I wondered if y'all had any thoughts for me-- what career path (aside from academic) did/do you see me in?
On a happier note, I got to see some dead folk this weekend (Hudson and Hergenhan), which was nice. And I also now own a car-- a not-thrilling but perfectly practical 2004 Chevy Malibu.
<3 to all!
Katie

PS-- sorry for being a buzzkill.

Are we there yet?

First, my apologies for being relatively MIA thus far this summer; this whole planning-for-my-new-life thing while still working in lab takes quite a lot of time! That said, I am definitely starting to get antsy. I move to Philadelphia in a little over a month--my program starts after Labor Day, so I want to make sure I have time to familiarize myself with the city before it starts--and I feel both incredibly prepared and totally unready. Sure, I've done all the things that Penn asked me to do--I filled out my payroll forms, I sent in my W-4, et cetera--but every time I look at the pile of things I took home from school that I need to sort through before the end of August, I shudder. What to bring? What to leave? And of what I leave home, how much can I actually afford to replace on my grad school stipend? The next year will be a Budgeting Adventure.

One way or another, the ball is rolling, and I am anxious to get the next stage of my life started. Sitting around in lab, tying up some loose ends from my senior project... that's all well and good. But get me to the City of Brotherly Love!

I mean, come on, there are hot pretzels. And Cheese Steaks!

...and science, too, I guess.

what I did with my summer vacation

Basically: went to Mississippi, went to Texas, learned how to be a teacher (ish), went back to Mississippi to find a house/etc, went to Washington, tomorrow leaving to drive back to Mississippi. Phew!

So you know (or you may not) how everyone says TFA institute is so horrible and OH MY GOD THE WORST FIVE WEEKS OF MY LIFE? Well...it really wasn't. I mean, it was hard work, sure, but somehow I managed to get through it, and it really wasn't half bad. Even though I did have to get up at 5 every morning. I took some classes, and I taught some classes, and I learned a LOT (lesson 1: you might think 6th graders could share markers without throwing them at each other; you would be wrong). I also convinced my class, who then spread the rumor throughout the entire school, that I was 51 years old and looked so good on account of all the plastic surgery. (Lesson 2: 6th graders are gullible as hell).

At the end of institute, I was chatting with my adviser and he asked me if I felt ready to teach for real now. Putting aside the question of exactly how well teaching 6th grade social studies will prepare me to teach K-6 general music (jury's still out on that one), I came up with the following analogy:
This summer, it's like I was learning to swim. I was wearing little water wings, and there were a bunch of people around me, holding me hand and making sure I didn't drown. The water was about two feet deep. No problem. And now they're THROWING ME OFF THE DEEP END INTO SHARK-INFESTED WATER.
I'm exaggerating a little. The sharks aren't that bad (how much trouble can five-year-olds cause, really?) (famous last words!) and I'll still have people holding my hand. But still.

Anyway, so I then went back to the Delta for a few days where I had a whirlwind of findaroommatefindahousemeettheschoolsuperintendantbuyfurnituremoveinopenabankaccount HOLY CRAP being a grownup entails a lot of stuff! It was crazy, but after two and a half days I am now moved into a two-bedroom townhouse in Greenwood, Mississippi with one roommate and (as of now) very very little furniture.

I did buy a bed, though, which was the highlight of last week. Partly because it meant I no longer had to sleep on a pile of blankets on the floor, but mostly because it was delivered by two muscle-bound young men (Chris: no. Good grief), both wearing grimy baseball caps, identical t-shirts with Confederate flags, BOTH NAMED CODY. Amazing.

And so now I'm back at home for a couple of days, and tomorrow, my parents and I leave to drive back to the Delta!



School starts August 3rd. Yippee!

gainful employment

I got a job!!!!

I know I posted it on facebook, but since I like you guys better than most of the ppl I'm facebook friends w/, I wanted to share w/ you all.

I'll be working at the Department of Homeland Security, putting together the Secretary's daily briefing book. I start in a few weeks, and I'm super excited.

!!!

Chapter One of Life as a Real Person

*UPDATE*
Scratch the whole teaching 3rd grade and Spanish thing. I will now be teaching kindergarten, which as we all know means one thing - naptime! Whew, this is like my third assignment change since Wednesday. I guess this is what they meant when people told me teachers need to be flexible.

***

Friday officially marked my one week anniversary in New Orleans. I've settled into my new sweet apartment (after my air conditioner not working for the first day and a half; I did get to sleep in Ned's bed for a night, though!). My school's professional development started on Wednesday, and I've got to say that I am so impressed with the people I'll be working with. My two principals are incredibly cool, and so focused on closing the achievement gap and making our school be a shining beacon in the dark of the New Orleans public school system. I've also found out what I'll be teaching! Ms. Cooper will be helping out with 3rd grade language arts and teaching Spanish! This is a little different from what I was originally hired to do, but I think it will work out for the best, and I'm pretty damn excited about it. I'm still a bit nervous about the whole teaching thing, but I've got a great support team, and I've already recruited a veteran teacher to be my mentor.

Hmm...I'm starting to realize this post is a bit boring. I guess I should also mention that one of my principals bought two other teachers and me a round on Bourbon Street as he was out bar hopping with four other gay principals. This amused me greatly. Meh, anyway, time to go attempt to cook dinner.