What I do for a living?

I have always been interested in learning more about what you do for a living. It doesn’t matter what field you belong to, whether you work for money, work from home, or work in the weekends. I’d love to know what one random day in your work life looks like. By you, I mean anyone in this world, from any location, who might be reading this. When I browse through LinkedIn profile of friends and contacts, I sometimes understand what they do, but most of the times, I do not. I get stuck in jargon. I don’t understand the matlab (meaning) of MATLAB. P2P networking to me means peer-to-peer networking for professionals. Data architecture makes me think of the architecture of European cities.

            If we had to explain to an eight year old about what we do, what would we say? If we had to leave behind all the heavy duty jargon, how would we explain what we do? If we had to get creative and draw on a postcard what we do, what would we draw? It seems like a fun, but challenging project. I think that writing about one’s work in simplified words actually requires a lot of thinking, processing, and strong communication skills. As a writer, who writes for the academic crowd, I know how tempting it could be to get lost in the complexity of ideas when you write. Yet the simple and most eloquent writings are the ones that have been well-thought, structured, and have come from writers with years of practice.

So what do I do for a living?

I teach teachers how to teacher better.

What are my work tools I play with?

A computer. Lots of books. Lots of data analysis software, both statistical and qualitative. A notepad. A pen. My brain. And a lot of creative ideas.

And what does a random workday look like for me?

            Well, I do a lot of discrete things. Let me choose one in particular that might interest you. J I’ll try to leave out any academic jargon.

            I watch 10-12 hours of videos every week. Imagine having a big computer screen and Bose headphones at work, and the fun of watching movies every day, and being paid for it. I watch and score 8-10 videos every week. These are graduate level or undergraduate level science courses that professors across the US teach. Someone records these lectures and sends them to me. Sometimes, I go to these classes, camera and tripod in hand, and record them myself.

            Every morning, the first thing I get to work, I plug on my earphones, and watch these videos. Sitting in one place makes me restless, so I munch on puffed rice while I watch. Buttered popcorn would be great, but I figured out that puffed rice is healthier. I am not kidding when I say that I have multiple containers of puffed rice stocked up at my desk.

            These videos are anywhere between an hour to two hours long. I note everything they say, everything they do (or do not do), even how many times they say, “Do you have any questions?” After I am done, I score their teaching. There is a set protocol for this that contains 25-30 questions, with five different scales for each question. I score them, and so do others in my team. Then we sit together and discuss our ratings, and their justification. Sometimes, our ratings match, and sometimes, they do not. That is why I take detailed notes about what is being done in class. We discuss our ratings all the more when they do not. This recalibrates the way we see things when we score the next video.

            We do statistical analyses on our scores to see how effective teachers teach, and what good teachers do to make their classes more effective (and enjoyable). I moved to the US for my PhD, and always wondered how undergraduate courses were taught. Now, I know it all. I have watched videos for every science subject from all over the US- chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy, biochemistry, you name it. Isn’t that wonderful? It is like sitting in classes and not having to pay tuition. And then at the end of the class, you get to say what was good and what was not so good about the class.

            Of course I explained things in a simplified way, and it involves more that sitting with food and enjoying a video. Every minute of what you watch is important. You cannot doze off in the middle of a boring class. I have grown so addicted to watching class lectures that I feel that something is amiss in my weekends.

            Care to share a snippet from what your work looks like, in a simplified way, so that even a child can understand what you do? If you write about it, do share the link with me.

sunshine

Weathering the cold

This morning, I counted seventeen pieces of clothing on my body before I started for work. I counted underwear too, but there are only so many that you can wear. The rest were all twos of each, two pairs of socks, two pairs of hand gloves, a few thermals, coats and scarves and caps and all. I looked nothing short of an Eskimo, a bloated one at that. I logged on to my phone to take one last look at the weather when I noticed someone from California whining about the “chilly” weather on Facebook. Not used to the Fahrenheit scale and not intending to, I was dismayed to find the weather outside to be “-15C, feels like -22C). That little bar is not a dash, it is minus. To refresh your knowledge, pure water freezes at 0 degree Celsius.

Welcome to life in NE.

            I write this with a latent anger brewing inside me, an anger not directed towards any person, but at what my life has become in the last few weeks. I prepare myself for the worse every day, and it only gets more worse. And I have not even talked about the added discomfort that wind chill creates. This is my first winter in the mid-west, literally the middle of nowherebraska, and I just don’t know how to brace myself for it.

            Don’t get me wrong, my life is pretty easy and straightforward. I am not talking about walking 30 minutes to work, or taking a crowded bus every day. It’s just that the walk from the parking lot to the lab takes 10-15 minutes, and I am not exaggerating by any stretch of imagination when I say that that walk kills me.

The kelen-car-i

            It all starts first thing in the morning, when people usually hop into their cars and drive away. I would do the same, if not for the thick coating of ice crystals on the car that takes a significant amount of time to melt. I started with scraping, but it is a long and arduous process that involves torturing oneself early morning. So I started pouring warm water on the windscreen, that I was strongly recommended against (sharp temperature differences can crack the windshield). I got the warning sign the day my car’s power buttons stopped working. The windows would not go down, the lock would not work. I knew that it was time to do something about the car.

            I went to the leasing office to get a covered garage, and I swear that they had quoted me a lower price, but they now said that they always charged $20 extra than what I thought they did. The office closes at 6 pm, I usually work way later than that, but I had to leave office earlier than usual. I called them on phone, asking them to get the paperwork ready. In return, they gave me grief about the fact that their office would be closed if I was even a minute late. Anyhow, paperwork was signed, money was paid, and I said goodbye with the remote key to the garage, only to discover that the garage door would not budge all the way up or down. I called the emergency maintenance, told them that I had a meeting the next day at 9, and they said that they would fix the door, which they did, but only for the night. That night, I actually dreamt that the door would be jammed, and yes, the door only opened half way, with my car inside. I tried working with the remote for another 30 minutes or so in the cold. No one picked up the office phone (remember, they do not tolerate people a minute after they close or a minute before whatever time they open). But I was trying to reach the emergency maintenance, the on duty for 24 hours person. Instead, I went home, all dressed and freezing, and emailed the boss saying that I was not mobile until the garage door opened. Soon after, the emergency guy called me back, and came and fixed the door. Things have been good ever since. It snowed six inches the day after I rented a garage.

A four-layered cake

            The trouble with wearing multiple layers of clothes is, after the first layer, clothes do not fit you anymore. Your jeans may fit you fine, but try wearing it with two layers of thermals inside. Or try doing anything with two layers of gloves. You have to remove them, even if you wanted to do something as simple as use the car keys. I actually feel dizzy with all the layers of tight clothing pressing down on my blood vessels. The first thing I do when I get to work is remove a few layers, only to put them back on the moment I have to leave the building. And it does not end there even with those layers. Your eyes, nose and mouth are usually left unprotected. Tears were streaming down my cheeks until I realized that I was not crying and it was the cold. I cannot take a full breath of cold air, and gasp like I have asthma. My nose still feels so sore that it seems like someone has punched it and bruised it. After 5 minutes of walking in the cold, my fingertips, all ten of them behind two layers of gloves, no longer feel cold or numbness. They burn. Intense cold makes me feel like someone has rubbed chilies on raw flesh. Pain is a sensation I can relate to, but burning is a sensation new to me. Yes, intense cold ironically makes me feel like my fingers are on fire.

And all this, for nothing but to get to work.

            Because times are different now. As a student, I’d stay back home the first thing it got extra sunny, rainy, or snowy. I am no longer a student. I am expected to be at work five days a week, eight hours a day or until the work is finished, whichever is more. I cant stay at home because it is too cold. People are so used to the weather here that schools and colleges are open even when it snows heavily.

            The quality of my life has greatly suffered due to this. I can no longer socialize or go out, because it is too cold. I can’t go to the gym anymore, and that makes me feel heavy, bloated, and miserable. The happy hormones are no longer working for me since I am not working out. On weekends, I am happy because I can work from home and do not have to go outside in the cold. This is not a healthy life. Socializing is a primary component of my life, because I have no one at home to talk to. When I tell people that I am from India and not used to this, they laugh it off. People do not realize that one can actually have serious adjustment issues if one has never been exposed to such harsh temperatures before. I know that I might just do fine in extreme heat, because I am used to that. But cold, I am just not used to. But all I hear are clichés, “It will only get worse from here”, “Don’t worry, you will get used to it.”, or, “What would you do if you lived in Wisconsin?”.But I do not live in Wisconsin, is what I want to tell them. 

Everything will be fine by May.

But May is six months away!!! When I imagine the arctic wind from Canada blowing all over here, I shiver inside my warm house. By the way, the electricity bill doubled this month, although I am not at home most of the time Monday through Friday, or when traveling, which happens quite a bit. The thing is, when you are considering a job, no one warns you about the downsides of the place. I was told that this is a cheap place to live in (which I still have my doubts about) and people are nice and super friendly. What I was not told about is the way the extreme cold can impact my life in a negative way. And you know what- don’t let anyone tell you that you are shallow because the geographical location is as important to you as the kind of work. Weather is something that will affect you every single day of life. I’d happily take a job in Texas that pays less, just because the weather will suit me better.

            This year, it seems like I have no option that be a passive spectator. But the moment I reach office, I do two things. I make myself a hot, really hot cup of coffee, and spend some time looking for jobs elsewhere. I love the kind of work I do here. But I don’t think that I will be able to survive another winter here.

As for the Californians who are still whining about the weather, I wish them a speedy mental recovery.

sunshine

On work hours

This is my third week of working as a postdoc, and I see some clear differences in the work culture and work hours. The difference might somewhat be attributed to working with an associate professor versus an assistant professor, but I am not so clear on that. However, the work hours here resemble more of a 9 to 5 job. Make it 8 to 6 actually. Today, the hours got slightly reversed. When I left at 7 in the morning, I saw the sun rise on my drive to the lab. By the time I was done, it was past 7:30 pm, and the sun had set. However, today was an outlier, I hope.

            During PhD, there was no compulsion to show up at work during fixed hours. Don’t get me wrong, this did not mean that I was not working. It only meant that I had the liberty to work from anywhere, and not necessarily the lab. It makes sense, since two of the three years in graduate school was spent taking classes, and the third year was my final year when students are busy writing a dissertation and do not want to be interrupted. There were 1-2 weekly meetings at specific hours when everyone in the lab would meet. If you happened to be out of town, collecting data or on vacation, you could call in. With 3-4 graduate students, people were always in and out. I am not saying that I didn’t show up at work, what I am saying is there were no fixed timings. Some days I would be there by 9, and other days, I would show up after noon. Then again, some days I left by noon, and other days I worked until midnight. All I had to do was tell my adviser that I am going home to work on something, and he can call me or email me if he needed anything. As long as he knew where and how he could find us, he did not care. For me, it was a false sense of freedom while I was still on a leash.

            During my third year especially, I remember working from home three out of five days, or showing up at work for a few hours, and then coming home and working more. As a result, I would have the flexibility to work until late night, and wake up late in the morning. Then I would sit in my sunny, east facing kitchen cum dining space with huge French windows, sipping coffee. I would cook a hearty breakfast and wash it down with more coffee, amid working and staring out of the window and watching students take the bus. After lunch, I would even take a nap. When the roommate came home in the evening, we would chat up, drink tea, eat onion fritters, and watch a movie on Netflix, still working. So I was working all day, but the way I wanted to. It’s not that I was hiking up the mountains. I was still communicating with the adviser whenever I was needed.

            Graduate students are low stake employees. They hardly get paid anything (I like the way I now call them “they” and not “we”), they take a few years to train, and the level of accountability is lower. I cannot generalize and speak for all research groups, but I have known enough research groups to be able to make a broad statement. A postdoc on the other hand is an employee. We get paid (marginally) more, and it is a full time job. The level of accountability is way higher. A postdoc is only a step away from being faculty most of the time. So you can easily forget the morning brunches and the afternoon naps.

            How does a typical day of mine looks like now? Well, I am at work by 9 am, which is when there are no 8:30 am meetings, or 8 am class evaluations. So a 9 am day is a good day for me. I am not the only postdoc, there are more. Hence there is always an implicit comparison on how much work we do. It looks very odd if a postdoc leaves for home at 5 pm, and the other one is still working, and so is the professor. My entire day is filled with meetings. I meet with the professor every day, sometimes twice or thrice a day. There are group meetings, and then there are one-on-one meetings. Then I attend a lot of workshops and seminars, typically 3-4 every week. This is because it is not enough to sit cocooned in your lab working, you need to be out there familiarizing yourself with other research groups and networking with them.

            Earlier, my Fridays did not start until 12 noon, when there would be a group meeting. Now, my meetings with the adviser Friday morning is at 8:30 am. Every week at the group meetings, I give an update on what I have been up to, and critique a research paper from the field. If I was taking classes, I would also have to give a talk on how what I have learned in class is applicable to my research, so that other members of the group who are not taking those classes can learn too. And these talks are around the table formal discussions, with powerpoint slides, and not informal chats. Very soon, I will also be supervising undergrads who work to gain some research experience.

            By the time I come home, it is usually past 6 in the evening. I barely have the energy to cook myself something, take a shower, head to the gym (sometimes), and collapse on the bed reading a book. I cant stay up late nights anymore because I have to be up the next morning, and the similar cycle would resume. I am genuinely enjoying it, learning a lot, and keeping busy in life. It gives me a sense of worth. However, I no longer have the flexibility to show up late, or not show up at all. I now get twelve vacation days annually, and everything is on pen and paper, formally documented. And on that note, it’s midnight here, and I must go to sleep. I am evaluating an 8 am lecture tomorrow morning.

sunshine

Doing the math

Earning more doesn’t necessarily mean saving more, and I am learning this firsthand. As a graduate student, I thought that my financial miseries will be over once I start working. What I did not realize is that a student is also shielded from a lot of extra spending. As a postdoc, I earn 1.4 times of what I used to earn as a student. Not a whole lot more, I agree, but remember, I now live in a city where the cost of living is much less. Now let’s do some math.

            I now pay more taxes.

            I now pay some money for my health insurance, which I did not have to do as a student. It’s about $100/month, but still.

            Most students live in shared houses. The more the number of roommates, the less expenses per person. The rent gets shared, and so do the utilities, electricity bill, internet bill, water, sewer, garbage, anything you can think of. Now that I live on my own, I pay everything by myself.

            Most students also live close to campus, and either walk, bike, or take the bus. The bus ride is always free. In a bid to stay in a larger apartment community, I moved away from campus. So now I am paying for gas, as well as parking. Parking alone is close to $50 every month.

            School gym is free for students. Not for postdocs.

            I now have an iPhone, that comes with a data plan. Despite getting an 18% university discount, I am still paying more.

            I now fancy things I did not fancy before. Bose speakers, nice bedding set from BB&B, et cetera. Agreed, it is a one time buy, but still.

            I will no longer be able to avail all those student discounts. At conferences. For professional memberships at organizations. In Bengali associations, et cetera.

            I am not even accounting for the weekends when I do not have to work (which I used to as a graduate student), and hence feel like taking a flight and visiting some place. Remember, I live in a place which is really flat and uneventful. The nearest mountain is a good 8 hour drive away, the Pacific is close to 26 hours away, and the Atlantic is close to 20 hours away. To curb temptation, I just stay at home in the weekends, do household work, watch movies, and read.

            And at the end of the day, I cannot take up a second job for money. No tutoring, consulting, or offering professional services. I could, if I lived in India, but not here. Hence my argument. Unless you earn many times more, this earning more as a postdoc is just an illusion. What you actually do is spend more, and become poorer.

sunshine

In press

            Today, I signed the agreement form for my paper, the first one to be published where I am the first author. And while I should be doing a victory dance, tap dance, lap dance, any kind of dance, I feel neither happy, nor sad.

            I had written this paper two summers ago, and ever since, it has seen multiple rejects. The reviews were pretty harsh every time, and I still vividly remember the first time it was rejected. Call it professional naivete, but I had a misconception that this was a great paper, my first and best brainchild, and should not have been rejected. I cried, consulted, went and talked to people about their first rejections, and some of them said that they still have papers sitting on their shelves that have never seen the light of the day (and probably never will). My heart sank.

            Since then, I pledged that I will try my best to get it published. I gave it a few months of break, and took a stab at it with renewed vigor. I rewrote it almost entirely, added some more data analysis, and emotionally distanced myself from it, my theory being that things happen when you detach yourself from the expectation of outcome. Not entirely scientifically proven, but I believe that if you can actually distance yourself sufficiently from an outcome (and not just pretend that you have distanced yourself), your failures will stop bothering you, and even if they don’t see fruition, you would have stopped caring by then. And then last April I went to San Francisco for a conference, met an editor (another reason why you should not spend time sightseeing during conferences), and things fell in place. After five more months of back and forth correspondences and editing, it finally got accepted. It might not be in one of my dream journals, but it is still something worth a few lines on my CV. And by now, I have matured enough to know that this paper is not my best work either.

            All this makes me think about the futility of using the number of publications as a productivity measurement currency in academia. Years go by from the time you conceive an idea in your head to the time you see it in print. The process is arduous and painstaking, to say the least. I am not even considering fraud where someone in the lab steals your idea or takes undue credit. And then we critique other people’s papers in classes, saying they did not do it well and the study is old and will not be relevant ten years down the line. No experiment is perfect, even the world we live in is not perfect. This is social science research after all, and people change. Then what is the point of using publications as a yardstick to measure success? It takes years of mastery, rounds of edits and rejects, heartbreaks, and tears, and this research may not be relevant in the future anyway. Then why not measure a researcher’s worth using more tangible measures?

As you can see, I’m rather feeling philosophical today.  

sunshine

The seven year (h)itch

Today marks the seventh year of my move to the US. Like I keep repeating this story to the now bored audiences, on a sunny September morning seven fall seasons ago, I had toured the entire world (almost) on my maiden flight, from Calcutta to Mumbai to Frankfurt to Los Angeles (with a one hour cockpit tour over Turkey) until I reached Seattle. I was tired, jetlagged, discombobulated, and ready to collapse. That started a series of many first experiences in life.

            I started with paying a rent of $375 every month (including utilities) in my first apartment at the U-District, sharing a floor, a kitchen, and two bathrooms with seven other people. Canon was my first point and shoot camera. A tub of Vaseline was my first purchase (which I still have, because another tub came free with that). My first trip was Las Vegas during Thanksgiving.

            Honestly, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was twenty five, starry eyed, and ready to change my life with my freshly minted F1 visa. Moving to Seattle was the best decision of my life, something I have never regretted. It started many a memorable journeys in life, making hundreds of new friends, whose spouses and siblings and neighbors and parents also became my friends eventually. 

            And what a fantastic journey it has been. I had never lived outside home before that, and this was my first real taste of independence. I have messed up quite a lot, burnt my dinner, knocked off a trash can while driving in someone's driveway, woken up late and missed class, shown up for the wrong exam, failed my Biochemistry test, had bland soup at someone's house because I did not know how to use a pepper mill, wished happy Thanksgiving to a cop after he gave me a $300 speeding ticket, ordered quesadilla as kyu-sa-dilla, the list is long. These are real life examples as well as figurative examples.

            And yet my learning curve in the last seven years has been tantamount to my learning curve for the twenty five years before that. Have I changed as a person? I don’t know. But I think that I take life way less seriously now. My goals are still serious, but not the way I see life anymore. Because nothing matters at the end of the day. 

            Regrets? Not at all. Okay, maybe a tiny one. I still have not seen Grand Canyon, but I intend to change that soon. I'll add Alaska to the list too.

            Quoting Jhumpa Lahiri from Interpreter of Maladies, “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.” Seven years, and I have moved and lived in three cities and six apartments. I will always associate most of the significant milestones of my life with this country. Getting a masters degree. Getting a PhD. Working. Researching. My postdoctoral job. My first digital camera. First car. Failing the theory of the driver's test the first time. First speeding ticket. Trips to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. First road trip. First paper publication. I realize that memories of the milestones achieved in India will slowly fade out, replaced by memories in the US.

            Quoting Jhumpa Lahiri from The Namesake again, “Pack a pillow and blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it.” No Mrs. Lahiri, I have never regretted it. Today might as well have been my second birthday. And here is a toast to everyone who has been a part of this amazing journey.

sunshine

A tale of three job offers

My first verbal job offer came as early as a year before I graduated, during a conference presentation. Someone I met there liked my work, asked if I would like to talk over breakfast, gave me tips on how to strengthen my skills in my CV, and thumbs upped my adviser. I had not even proposed my dissertation then.

            This was one of the premier cancer research institutes of the country, the person was very well known, this was a big city with an impressive diversity, sizeable Indian population, and one of my favorite authors lives in that city. I was thrilled, and mentally started making plans of graduating on time and moving there. Five months later, a formal interview was done, and they said that they will get back to me.

            When I did not hear back from them for a while, I got nervous. I started applying for more jobs, thankfully. And there I saw a job advertised for a postdoctoral position in the Chemistry department. I was applying to as many jobs as I could, and although Chemistry is not my specialization, I wanted to give this a try. I was a chemistry minor in undergrad, had studied enough chemistry and biochemistry during both my master degrees, and for the rest, I was wiling to learn. I was not terribly excited about the place, and this was more of a backup job option for me.

            When I asked my adviser for a recommendation for this job, he actively discouraged me from applying, because of the same doubts I had. I did not specialize in chemistry. According to him, it would look bad on my part, as if I had not done my job research, and it would make him look bad, because he was recommending me for the job. We argued, and by the time I left his office, I had decided that for once, I will go against his advice. Sure he is my adviser and is supposed to know more than I do, but I was fighting battles he had no inkling about- the need to find employment, a visa sponsor, and making sure that I did not go out of visa status.

            Months later, on an unrelated note, the adviser told me that if I felt unhappy with my job, I should let him know. He was applying for a grant renewal, the same grant my dissertation was based off, and if he got the renewal money and I was still interested, I could rejoin the team as a postdoc. I considered this as a verbal job offer, and my best option, since I already knew everything about the project. But he said that this was a backup option for me, since I should spread my wings independent of him.

            I got the second job offer during the phone interview itself, stunning me. I was too tempted to ask, “But I have not specialized in chemistry”. That was a backup job and I did not even think that I would get.

            After months of prodding, the first group told me that they are declining me an offer. The funding agency had recently gone through serious sequestrations, and they did not have enough funds to hire me. Job offer one was gone.

            Yesterday, the adviser announced that he has decided not to go for that grant renewal this year. He wants to wait for a year and get more publications first.  Job offer three, from my very own doctoral research team, was gone as well.

            As for job number two, I took the job and moved here. Then one day not so many hours ago, I asked the new boss why I was hired despite my lack of background.

            “To avoid researcher bias”, she said. She wanted someone with the required skills, but outside the field, because everyone else was from within the field, and she wanted an outsider’s perspective. She wanted to reduce research bias. I got the job precisely for the same reason that I thought I would be denied the job.

            What can I say, this situation reminds of three movies, Amores Perros, 21 grams, and Babel, all from the same director. Each movie has three separate stories revolving around something common. All three movies are fantastic.

            Three independent research groups in three different locations and specializations, together decided my professional fate. What I thought I would get, I did not. And the job I got was precisely for the same reason I thought that I would not get that job. And I am beginning to like that job.

sunshine

Beginnings

The first day of work was more paperwork than work. Filling out numerous forms, photocopying passport and SSN, visiting international student office and postdoctoral office, attending a faculty workshop, doing online training, and interviewing an undergrad. Then there was going to the bank to get one dollar bills (for parking) and quarters (for laundry). I am slowly beginning to figure out my way around the city, and around the campus. Now I know where to park my car, where to pay, and how to figure out the way to the department without using a GPS or getting lost. I know where to go for grocery, where the bank is, and where the post office is. Slowly, I am beginning to figure things out. The feeling of alienation is not gone yet, and I mostly drive around like a stranger in an unknown city, looking at roads and shops and people. Anonymity has its own merits, when you know that you will never bump into a known face, since there is no known face. A friend tells me that before I even know, those bylanes of the city will be privy to my life and secrets soon. I don’t know if I should believe him.

As a child, the first day at school was always exciting. I'd spend the night before arranging my bag, smelling my new books, polishing my school shoes, and organizing my school uniform. The smell of newness surrounded me- the smell of shoes polish and paper and camel ink and laundered school uniforms. There was this excitement of meeting old friends again. The enthusiasm would ebb eventually, and would rise by the beginning of next year. I felt the same excitement of newness the night before my first day at work.

I still don’t know a single soul here (except the people at work). I intend to keep it that way for a while. Anonymity comes with its own merits, and I don’t see the need to try to unnecessarily bond with people just because they speak the same language or there is a shared cultural heritage. I decided this after someone I have never met and exchanged a few introductory emails with asked me if I am married or have a significant other, adding a postscript of “This is a personal question, don’t take it personally, and don’t reply if you are uncomfortable”. Clearly the guy was more uncomfortable about my status than I was. It was so evident that the Indian community is curious about the evident lack of signs of a male.

In the meantime, I stayed home for more than a week, and used this time to set up home. And I bought a smart phone. 

There I said it aloud. If you know me well, your jaws would have dropped by now. I resisted buying a smart phone for the longest time. I do not have anything against them, but change disconcerts me. I have ordered the same ingredients for a burrito at Chipotle for years, take the same road to work, and like to use the same set of machines at the gym. I didn't see why I needed to follow the herd and buy one, especially since technology is fickle and gets upgraded almost every week. I do have an iPad, but that was after my adviser told me that he would get me one, and even then I waited for 2 months, until he screamed at me and threatened to fire me if I did not get one right away 

When I was doing my road trip and moving here, someone asked me how I would manage without a smart phone. Well, I had my GPS, map, and smart friends, who were on call to help me, if I needed it that is. I was really happy with my red flip phone that was so small, you could hide it in your fist and no one would notice. I could use it with my eyes closed, solely from muscle memory. I am not a text person, and I have a camera and three lenses that I proudly sport around, so I really did not need a smart phone to talk, text, or take pictures. What also bothered me is the way people become around smart phones. Here I would be having dinner with someone, and instead of making meaningful conversation, that person would constantly check the phone that would not seem to stop dinging or droning. 

So what changed?

Everything. I moved here, and my original phone provider’s network sucks here. I could never start or finish a conversation with anyone. I got a land line, but that meant I need to be home to be able to talk. Then one morning, I needed to talk to my mom, but there was no network for 2 hours, and I could not call her. And that was it. Like Eric Cartman, I said, "Screw you guys, I'm going home". I did some research on good providers and ended up at the phone store. There, I realized that the deal I was getting for an iPhone is not that bad. I got mine within 10 minutes. 

Now all I hope is that I do not become one of those people whose phone wouldn't stop droning while making real face to face conversation with people. I have the same phone color. I told you, change disconcerts me. My preferred mode of communication still remains meeting in person, talking on phone, emailing, chatting, and texting, in that order.

I also had a strange dream a few days ago. During my undergrad studies in India, my early mornings and evenings were fraught with private tutorial classes. A necessary evil according to me, everyone went for multiple classes, because content was not always taught well in colleges, because there was often a mismatch between what was taught and what was asked in exams, because a particular professor was often reputed and sought after, and because everyone else did it (herd mentality). So the time I could be learning new skills, reading a book, or relaxing, I was running in and out of these tutorial classes, often at the other corner of the city. All that happened for years, draining a lot of my father's money and my time and energy.

After ten years since all that ended, I had a somewhat scary and hilarious dream. I dreamed that I was back to my Chemistry tutorial classes in Calcutta. I argued that I am done studying, but the professor said that I will need it for my postdoctoral training. Surprisingly, I identified at least 3 other friends, all PhD students in the US, who were in those classes. They told me that since education is so expensive in the US and they were visiting India for a month, they wanted to use that time taking tuition. I never really recovered from the shock, and was only too happy to wake up and realize that it was all a bad dream.

Then there was this saga about assembling a desk. I wanted to buy the simplest writing desk, that I could use to do some daily writing. So I went to Office Depot and chose the simplest of them. They did not have it in the store, so they said that they would ship it directly to my home. However when the delivery guy arrived, I was not so sure that it would be that simple to assemble.

I opened the box, spread out the contents, and got so overwhelmed that I started doing other work. Yet at the back of my mind, I kept wondering what I should do. Should I ask for help? Should I return it and live without a desk? By afternoon, I tried making sense of the manual, but it looked so complicated that I gave up the idea and went off to sleep. The package came with 15 slabs of wood, and 130 of these fasteners (bolts and screws and what not). Had it been my dad, he would have started working on it with all his excitement. But I am not at all a do it yourself (DIY) person. Building and creating and hands-on activities are not my forte. I actually spent the day confused and clueless about what to do.

By evening, I was so annoyed with the mess I had created, and my inner and very sarcastic voice kept saying harsh things. The manual actually shows how to assemble the desk in 20 steps, each step in a page with lots of complex diagrams, and I stared at the manual for a long time. Step 1 took me the longest, but soon emerged a very embryonic stage of a simple writing desk.

After 6 hours of working on it (seriously!!), a few cuts and bruises, an elbow swelling, a little bloodshed, hours spent on my haunches, studying, understanding, Googling videos, and ending up with backache, I was able to assemble it. I actually stayed up the whole night assembling this 90 lb desk. The desk is finally ready. The upper drawer needs some rework, but I am too tired, and it can wait.

If living alone has taught me anything, it is the fact that no work is gender-specific. We hear and see a lot of these, that women are good at certain things and men are good at others, but necessity has taught me to cook, drive, clean, assemble, lift weights, and now use a hammer and a screwdriver as well. It's just a writing desk, not a big deal at all, but until I did it successfully, it became the biggest deal for me. Sure, it took me 6 hours and a few cuts and bruises, but I am glad I did not take the easy way out by returning it. It's not perfect, but I can live with that.

And life goes on, as I slowly try to make a living.

sunshine

The first few days

             It hit me the first day I entered my new apartment in a new city in a part of this country completely new to me. My new job as a postdoc was in a city where I did not know even a single soul. I had thought about my transition when I decided to take this job offer. How would I fit into a completely new city in the Midwest? How will I make friends at an age when none of the people my age are single, and I don’t really fancy making new friends who happen to be married and with children? How will I get used to a place that did not have a single national park or mountain, and was as flat as bread? But I decided to embrace my new life with all the positive energy I had. I felt very fortunate that I got a job months before I graduated. I knew that I was going to make this work.

            However, the transition was hard, way harder than I anticipated. I drove from VA to NE, which was my first solo longest road trip. I did stop in MD and PA to catch up with friends, but beyond PA, I was on my own. From PA, I drove for two days, stopping for the night at IA. I covered a total of 1,420 miles. Honestly, I was excited.

            Things went wrong when I reached here. Without furniture, my one bedroom apartment looked even bigger, the bare walls and the empty rooms needing work. I used to live with roommates before, but now I was all on my own. Within the first few hours, I realized that my phone network in this part of the world was terrible, and I would not have internet at home for the next 2 weeks or so. My virtual world had become so much of my real world that I could not get a grip on this feeling of alienation.

            Thankfully, the clubhouse has free internet, and for the next few days, I spent all my time there until my back hurt. Every time I got home, the smell of the carpet would nauseate me. I have a strong sense of smell, and a strong gag reflex. The strong smell of carpet was giving me a psychosomatic reaction. Those were the longest five days of my life.

            After five days, I went to a conference in San Diego. The Californian sun and sea did a lot to help me recover from my depression, but it was not a never ending vacation. The best part of the trip was taking a boat in the middle of the Pacific ocean and hiking Channel Islands National Park.

            I am back from California, for good, and I try to stay positive everyday. I am setting up my home, and having furniture at homes goes to some extent to help with depression. I miss the mountains of Seattle and the beaches of Virginia. I miss my friends. I miss my old life. It’s a vicious cycle, when you are depressed, you don’t make new friends, and when you don’t make new friends, you get depressed. I cannot wait for work to start. I have cried without rhyme or reason, everyday, lying down and staring at the ceilings. No amount of long drives or Netflixing or reading has been able to bring me out of this. Eventually, I realized that perhaps by embracing the depression, I will be able to let go of it. I cannot help myself as long as I am in denial, so I have stopped denying that I feel sad about my new life here. I am going to embrace the sadness, live with it, and deal with it. For a person who is as enthusiastic about photography as I am, I haven’t taken a single picture here. I no longer feel motivated to go out with my camera. I no longer feel motivated to write.

            A change in life can sometimes shake the most sturdy of us. I never felt this way when I moved to Seattle, considering that was a cross-continental move half way across the world, in a new country with no idea about the future. I never felt this way when I moved cross country to VA to pursue my PhD, unsure of where I was headed and if I would do well in school. But now armed with a PhD and seven years of knowledge gained by living in the US, a move to the Midwest has shaken me like nothing has done before. It could be age or lack of friends or anything. Who knows?

            I am curious to see how long I end up living here, and where my new job takes me next.

sunshine 

T.G.I.F. Part 2 (Finding the job I got).

The biggest issue that plagues most of us academicians training to establish ourselves in our respective fields is- “What after I graduate?” This is a pivotal and determining existential question, central to building our identity as researchers, academicians, and professionals. I have seen people in certain fields find a job they are happy doing right after their masters, for example, people who have some association with the software industry. Then there are people who graduate from renowned business schools and law schools and land up with multiple lucrative job offers. If you have been through this journey before, you will know how lonely and isolating the life of a final year doctoral student is. You are done with your classes, you are trying hard to figure out a research niche that will define your identity in the following years, writing a dissertation, struggling to get published, interviewing for jobs, dealing with job rejections, and so on. The bad news is, it is a tiresome, overwhelming, and alien feeling that requires all your energy, time management and resource management skills as well as prayers. The good news is, you just need one job at the end of the day. Yes, multiple offers will help you make a more informed decision about what you are worth in the field, not to mention a huge boost to the ego. However, all you need at the end of the day is just one job.  

The way I found that one job is an interesting story. I was applying to as many places as I could, but few of them were interviewing. Funding agencies were going through sequestrations, and it seemed that none of the people I contacted proactively everyday had anything hopeful. I was applying for both postdoctoral as well as faculty positions. There was one posting I saw in the mid-west (read: middle of nowhere) in a field that was certainly not my niche. The work looked interesting, and sure it would require me to reboot the Chemistry I learned years ago, but it definitely seemed like something I would apply to. I started applying for the job when my roommate walked in and said, “Nebraska? Who lives in Nebraska?” I had said the same thing to someone a few years ago, and that person seemed to have born in Alabama. Her lack of enthusiasm dampened my spirits, but hey, maybe this would be my backup option?

The next day, I went to the adviser for a recommendation, and faced some serious opposition. He mirrored my thoughts that my specialization was not in Chemistry, and writing me a recommendation for something I might not be skilled at will only put him in a bad spot. I asked him to focus on what I was rather than what I was not, and write what he thought I was good at, instead of making something up. He was still not convinced, and gave me a hard time about applying. I went ahead nevertheless.

A few Fridays after, I got a call for a Skype interview in the morning. Interestingly, I had another interview lined up in the evening, with a different school (which I never got, and it took them 2 months to tell me a no). During this interview of mine, we talked. She told me what she does, and asked me what I did. She asked me technical questions. It was a formal interview of course, but things were not uncomfortable. She did not bombard me with a hundred questions trying to see if I knew ANOVA from MANOVA or grounded theory from interpretivism. The interview went well.

She offered me the job by the end of the interview. Which means she had pretty much made up her mind when she scheduled the interview.

That is the only job offer I got. Which made my choices easy. After all, you need one job at the end of the day.

Lesson learned: Trust your gut feeling, and apply to as many jobs as you can. If I had listened to my adviser and not applied for this job, I’d be jobless today.

Chances are more that my story may not be your story. Usually people get many more job offers and often take time to choose where they wish to go. When I started as a teacher in Calcutta, that was the only job I applied for and got it. Then in Seattle, that was the first job I applied to, and since I wanted to live in the area, I did not look further when I got that job. This time, I applied to 7-8 places, got interview calls from 3 places, and this is the only job I got. I seem to have a record of finding that one job I would take up.

sunshine

T.G.I.F. (Part 1)

Phrases like TGIF or Monday morning blues always make me frown. There is quite a bit of disrespect associated with such statements, because the opportunity to be gainfully employed is a privilege. Ask this to someone who has been unemployed, even if for a few months, and has always feared being on a dependent visa and not being allowed to work. Sometimes, people do it because other people do it, aping doesn’t take much thinking after all. However, that is not the purpose of this post.

A certain Friday months ago, sometime in February or March, the adviser told me that if nothing works out and I am unable to find a job, he might be willing to postpone my graduation, but would cut down my salary by a significant percentage. This was obviously a temporary arrangement, more so that I could legally remain in status and keep working. Money was a shortage in the lab, so this was not one of those cases of advisers exploiting students and getting work done while paying them less. This was the opposite actually. I had nothing but gratitude for him, who understood it is not possible for me to stay here unemployed. But a reduced salary? Students do not make much as it is.

For the first time in many years, I started to notice the prices of things around me. I used to do that, almost a decade ago. Since MS Office and Excel was not in vogue then, I had a hard bound notebook where I used t write down my expenses- bus fares, food, buying stationery, etc. At the end of every month, I used to calculate my expenses and draw fancy charts and graphs to compare them. This had more to do with my love for numbers and graphs than anything else. Although I earned some money through math, science and English tuitions, I knew my dad was always there to take care of any major expenses. But that was a decade ago.

Now, I was looking at a possibility, even a temporary one, of having a slash in my salary. I started noticing the price of milk and fruits at the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, I was not planning to cut down on food and start living a life of misery. All I am saying is that the future possibility of a salary cut made me notice things in more detail. For example, if you asked me how much milk cost me, I could tell you a range, but not the exact amount. I have never compared organic versus non-organic vegetables, I just bought whatever looked good. I knew saving $20 weekly in grocery bills wasn’t going to make me richer.

That day, I first noticed the sign at the gas station with the price of gas. Again, I could tell you a range if you asked me, but I was surprised that I had actually not noticed the exact price of gas before. I know many people who use iphone apps to compare gas prices and always go to the cheaper gas stations. I always thought that it is not worth my time and effort, saving a few cents in a few gallons of oil. I know friends who never refill a full tank, and have a weekly budget. I have never thought that would be something I am doing.

For the first time, I came home and made a spreadsheet of how much I spend on phone bills, car insurance, internet, utilities, etc. I started thinking of what I should do if I run out of money. Sell my car? It was a depressing thought, since I am very closely attached to my car. But selling my car would also mean no fuel costs, no insurance costs, and even no speeding tickets. Two months ago, I got a speeding ticket. It did hurt, shelling out $125 as a penalty. Maybe I should have been more careful.

Just the possibility of a salary cut made me notice all those things I did not care about before. I have never thought how much a tank of fuel would cost if I made an impulsive weekend trip to DC. I have never thought how much this brand would cost me versus that brand. I paid more rent to live in an apartment with a big kitchen, French windows, and hardwood floors compared to carpet.

That was months ago. Between then and now, I found a job, graduated, and today is my last day here. Tomorrow, I am driving halfway across the country to my new city. What happened between now and then, and how things worked out is something I will save for future posts. So thank God it is Friday today, not because tomorrow is a weekend and I do not have to work, but because tomorrow will mark the beginning of a new chapter of my life, and will bring in lots of possibilities of a better life.

sunshine