The thing is, I can't just walk up to someone and strike up a conversation. I feel really awkward. If someone I know is talking to them and I come by and join the conversation, I can go along but otherwise I'm doomed. I participated in recruitment activities for new grad students this past spring and on every occasion I hung out with the same people in my department who I had known. They engaged the students and I stood, laughed and smiled where appropriate and offered a few comments or answered questions. I have already decided that I will not go through that torture again. I can handle lunch or dinner but not large scale events (or even small ones with people I find intimidating).
I am so not cut out for the mainstream science careers where networking skills are a necessity to get ahead. I like to build relationships, start slow and progress not jump in.I realize that it will be almost unavoidable during graduate school and I have two options-try to 'fix' this fear by going to more and more activities or try to avoid them as much as I can. I am committing to neither. Time will tell which prevails.
Btw, I did make sure that the honoree and a few other people saw me there so that people can say that they saw me if my boss asks.
Now, on to better things. This week I finally set up my first committee meeting. It is in a little over a month so I really need to start working on my presentation and reading more literature. It isn't the qualifying exam (that may be in fall or spring depending on my workload). I am excited yet terrified. I hope that I can present one of those talks that I see others giving at grad student meetings or seminars. i will work on it though I make no guarantees.
Over the weekend I posted that I would be having a conversation at the end of July. Guess what?? I couldn't wait. Something triggered me and I had the talk last night instead. I was essentially me telling LD Partner to get his act together or we'd have to end this relationship so that we could both move on. We had a really long heart to heart. I realized that I've been really short with him the last few weeks and that I was part of the problem. We weren't talking as much a and that was getting to me but turns out, it was partly my fault. He said he began feeling awkward when we talked because I would give harsh responses so he stopped talking altogether. Another thing that lead me to deciding on the talk was my view that he was growing spiritually. I'm a Christian (raised Catholic but tending towards Reformed Theology) and as a rule, a Christian can't marry a non-Christian or part-time Christian, which is what most of the Catholics I know are. Off course this is long distance so I can't observe everyday differences so I relied mostly on our conversations to determine whether any changes had taken place in the weeks since his last visit. Enter problem -we weren't doing much speaking. When I did bring it up last night he revealed that he was doing things differently, thinking differently and reading his Bible more. That warmed my heart but I want more and spelt it out to him. He agreed with me and we've decided to move forward as a unit with better communication.
From my 2 month jump in the timing of the conversation, you can see that I'm fairly impulsive. Eg 2-I went online last night ans saw that the new smartphone that I had been stalking for the last month was available for preorder. Wouldn't you know it, I placed my order. It certainly didn't help that my phone has been acting up lately. My trackpad doesn't work right, my cursor jumps all over the screen when my phone is in sunlight (or outside in general even in winter). So I bought a phone. But before I bought the phone I bought cases for the phone. Talk about cart before horse. I bought a set of cases for $11 (5 cases in various colors and 3 screen protectors). So now I wait with baited breath until my cases and phone arrive in the mail so I can play with my shiny new toy.
All in all, I'd say I've had a pretty decent week out of lab. In lab, not so much but I won't bother going into the details of sorting out optimum PCR conditions or waiting on things to arrive to get going with experiments.
Toodles,
Dee
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