Never Ever

I feel about as bad for shrub as I do for Britney.

Would You Like Some Cheese With That W(h)ine?

It’s September 2007.

I began graduate school in 2002.

That’s five years of my life. Five years of my life working my ass off for bupkiss and feeling like a failure 9 out of 10 days.

And when I look back over my life it’s also the point at which I begin to feel the “seven year itch”. It doesn’t seem to matter what I’m doing, who I’m with, or where I live. Five years is my max in any same surrounding. And while I have no desire to switch careers, as I truly love being a biologist, I feel it is time to switch institutions…cities…states. But I’m trapped both by obligation to and love for my research.

I wonder if this is how the married with children feel when the magic is gone. You don’t want to stay…but you can't/don’t really want to leave either.

My boss wants me to take a tenure track faculty position, after another 2-4 years of working my ass off for bupkiss and feeling like a failure 9 out of 10 days. And I dont even have my PhD yet!

From Dictionary.com: Tenure- status granted to an employee, usually after a probationary period, indicating that the position or employment is permanent.

PERMANENT?!?!?! Thanks, but I don’t do permanent. And, quite frankly, I don’t understand people that do. How do people look out over the landscape of their future comfortable in the knowledge that little will change so long as they have anything to say on the matter?

What have I gotten myself into?

Someone once said to me that “there would be a lot less suicide in the world if people just realized that everything is temporary”. And I believe that. Because, what is really permanent? What is really constant? And should we trust anything that is?

Nothing is permanent and everything is temporary.

So, I spoke to my boss about being a science editor for a someplace like Science magazine or a newspaper. Maybe even Scientific American. Not a bad rag if you ask me. And we both know that literature reviews and writing papers are my strong suits.

But don’t underestimate your talents as an experimentalist he says.

And I don’t. I know I have good hands and if it can be done I can figure out how to do it. Hell…I work less than most an accomplish more. My skills or lack thereof aren’t what’s in question. What is in question is what I actually want to do.

But it’s so hard to get back into “hard-core” science once you leave, he says. And he’s right. Despite Brian May’s recent ascension to the ranks of PhD after 36 years playing guitar for Queen it’s not the same for us biomed geeks. Things move faster in the world of biomedical research than they do in Zodiacal Dust Clouds.

But is that a reason to chain oneself to being one thing? Would I really be making a point of no return decision should I decide to “leave the bench”?

I used to be an accountant…and I got to tell you…as dull as it was…sometimes I miss it. I actually miss the dull. Which means at some point I’ll probably miss the daily knots in my belly over that which I cannot control or that which I do not understand.

And on that note…I’m going to go start in on the w(h)ine…

Jen Left...Spacey Stacey Returned.

My keys were in my purse when I left my Sisters house in Sacramento this morning. I’m almost positive I saw my car keys in my purse. Almost.

Whether they were in my purse this morning or not is absolutely beside the point because they weren’t in my purse by the time I looked for them on the shuttle ride from the terminal to the parking lot. Where had I been? What had I done? When could they possibly have removed themselves from my purse without my knowledge?

Perhaps I only imagined seeing my Ralph’s Club key card poking out from beneath the assorted lip glosses and hair handlers that populate my purse.

Who knows? The fact of the matter is I was stranded in the airport parking lot. I and one sad looking little tree that only Charlie Brown could love were surrounded by 102 degrees of heat radiating black asphalt. With a dying cell phone battery, and all the water I possessed in the world locked in the car I carefully weighed my options of whom to call to help get me out of this little jam.

Would triple A be able to help me? I knew they could get me into my car, but could they fashion a temporary emergency key for me and get the thing started? Maybe, but not being sure and not wanting to waste precious battery time finding out I ran through my list of friends trying to decide who would be best set up to help me get my show on the road (both literally and figuratively). The most likely choice would be one of my roommates who have easy access to the lair where the spare key is stored. One of them would be chosen to assist me in my starring role as “damsel in distress”.

After that it was easy. You chose either the most dependable or one that will give you the least amount of grief for being a complete and utter space case. All else being equal I would have called the person with the most time on their hands. The one sitting around in his underwear most days out of the week should have been the one I called. But I didn’t. I called the guy with the job. In other words…I called the dependable one (who also happens to be the one that is least likely to tell me a blonde joke every time he sees me for the next 6 months).

Me: Hi __________...how’s it going…what are you up to.
The Saint: Just working.
Me: Are you super busy right now?
(pause)
The Saint: Not super busy…
Me: Here’s the thing…

I go on to tell him my situation and that I am sure I have a spare key for the car in the little box on my desk near the dresser in front of the lamp.

40 minutes later…as I’m considering breaking one of my windows to get at that water…the phone rings.

Me: The key isn’t there?
The Saint: The key isn’t there.
Me: Try here
The Saint: Nope…nothing that looks like a car key.
Me: What about over there?
The Saint: I see it, but there is no key.
Me: Try the bathroom.
The Saint: Ah HAH. I see a key that looks suspiciously like a car key (insert boring description of key)
Me: Yes, that sounds like it.
The Saint: On my way

40 minutes later…as I’m looking for a rock to throw through the window of my car...he appears…with an old house-key. Not the car key I was hoping for. Dejected and unsure just how long it was going to take me to figure out how to get my car out of the Airport parking lot I put a smile on my face and climbed into his car.

You looked here? You looked there? Stare out the window wondering how much this little stunt is going to cost me in both time and money.

Wait, I said to “The Saint”, “which box did you look in…was it the little box on my desk next to the dresser in front of the lamp…I mean…was my MJ in it?”

“Why yes it was…in the box by the lamp…just like you said” replied a grinning Saint.

“OH”, I replied. “You looked in the little chest on my desk by the closet next to the lamp. I keep the key in the little box on my desk by the dresser in front of the lamp. It must be there.”

After all I distinctly remember putting it in there. Just like I distinctly remember seeing that Ralph’s club key card this morning…

As luck would have it…it was there. Right near the top in the little brown bag I’d imagined it in. So I grabbed the key and that Saint took me BACK to the airport to get my car. What? It's not like he has a job or anything...right?

After all that all I can say is...all’s well that ends well.

But before I go…I’d like to offer up a piece of advice.

Don’t be too dependable.

If you are…you’ll only get space cases like me calling you up asking you to bail their dumb asses out.