So here I am.
Lying on my bed on a Saturday
afternoon, I find myself leaning toward describing the time of day as evening
instead, because, after all, it is nearing that time in December when the
length of daylight reaches its extreme.
As the clock ambles toward tomorrow, the light coming in through the
window is feebler and feebler, oblique and grey – not that it ever did quite
reach the brilliant light of sunbeams today.
It’s been a cloudy, quiet Sunday, with more of a sort of dozing, lazy,
fat feel than anything else.
It’s weather like this that makes
me glad for my auxiliary lamps; you know, the ones that are more orange than
white. The pale, sad light from outdoors
reminds me what living in the northeast is like in the winter, and makes me
retroactively glad for cold, crisp days when the sun cast short, solid shadows
on the ground in front of me. The really
pretty autumn days are gone now and it feels like the weather is just waiting
for the temperature to finally turn cold enough to blanket the browning,
graying ground in white.
The leaves are all the same shade
of brown now instead of brilliant variations from red to yellow, and they are
sort of halfheartedly crunchy underfoot when I walk to school, down a hill and
along a rather scenic sidewalk and then up another hill, so that I feel a
little burn in my calves and every day I swear that maybe today – maybe TODAY –
will be the day that I start running.
Unfortunately the idea of running is still so repulsive to me that I
have never taken myself up on my proposal.
And it’s this kind of weather that
makes me glad not only for that warm glow of the lamps, but for the dominant
color in my apartment. The bold pink
warms it up in here, and I wrap myself cozily in rose-patterned blankets and a
set of pink sheets that have a flower pattern unfurling on them. I’ve finally stopped opening the windows at
night to sleep, because the temperature outside is finally outwitting the
smothering heat that has been constantly emanating from the little vents since
mid-October. Indian summer, indeed. Not hot enough, but long enough.
So I sit here and I think about
grading, but when I was considering it a minute ago – I can’t hold anything in
my head today – all I could find was absolute revulsion at the thought of starting
to read papers and mark them up in red pen.
And then I thought I should clean the bathtub – I still should. I have half of a television show watched, and
I remembered that I wanted to do some writing.
I think it is fairly clear which
of my options won out. After I’m done
here – and it’s been such a long time since I’ve felt the pull to write and
pour some of this stuff out so that I can remember it later, and such a long
time since I felt my friends, the words, come help me out with it, that the
combination of disuse and sheer amount of memory that aches to be committed to
something other than my poor bloated mind makes it impossible to gauge how long
I’ll be here, like this – I will almost surely clean my bathtub. Then I will probably not be able to resist,
and I’ll take a bath, and then and only then will I really start to reconsider
grading.
In any case, it feels very alien
to me right now. If I felt like I was
drifting, floating, aimless and unaware before, I only feel more like that now.
There is an entire reading week here,
and that’s a little bit frustrating if we’re honest, because I have a week
during which I have nothing to do but sit around and study, so maybe I’ll start
my Christmas shopping and rack up that frighteningly high bill at the
bookstore. I have joined a group in
name, but “nothing is official yet” – how many times have I heard THAT these
days? too many, certainly – and I have
been told to concentrate on my classes.
Well. I’m going to do my best, but the fact is, I
cannot entertain myself for that long.
Maybe I’ll go back to writing. I
used to write an awful lot more than I do now, back when I was in high school
and I thought that I was a poet and a mathematician and a wordsmith. Well, lately I haven’t felt much like any of
those things, although I do still have a very soft spot for numbers in my
head. In fact, I’ve been weeding out my
friends-list lately (on facebook), and... you know what? New paragraph.
So anyway. I promise this ties into what I was just
talking about. So a few days ago and
again today, I felt fed-up with the sheer amount of junk in my facebook
newsfeed, and I started to wonder to myself why I kept these people
around. Would they notice if I cut them
loose from my digital life? Did it
matter if they did? Let’s be honest,
here: if I’ve never had a meaningful conversation *in my entire life*, why
should I care if someone is offended that I cut him or her from my
friends-list? So I purged a bunch of
people, and I almost got a rush from it.
It was addicting, to drop fake digital friends like babyweight. Okay I just did that because I thought it was
a hilarious analogy. Moving on.
I guess that was only tangentially
related, because the point was going to be that each time I scoured that list,
parting myself from the dull ache of guilt at clicking that button, I came
across Tony Perkins’s page and it made me wonder how he is doing and if he does
anything cool with math these days and – you know what? This is a real stretch so I guess I’ll try to
rope myself back around so that I can deal with the meat of this entry. I hope you’re not already full on hors-d’oeuvres.
The semester is over. Well, not officially, you know, I’m still
waiting a week to be administered a set of three exams, and I have 23 lab
reports to grade, and there are a couple of “oh-no-we’re-so-behind” classes
being held next week that everyone is going to grumble about, but for the most
part, classes officially ended last week and now I’m in this strange limbo.
Not starting to work yet, just
amusing myself; sitting around and studying.
It almost makes me wish for the days when I didn’t have any time to do
things, because at least then I felt productive. This feels all stilted and uncomfortable and
wrong, and because of that I can just feel that I’m not going to do the
studying that I really need to do. I
suppose I should write myself a schedule, but I’ll probably end up ignoring it
anyway.
I used to think I’d really miss
classes. I still think I probably will,
to some extent. I’m not sure how it’s
going to feel to just do lab work all the time... good when it’s going well,
bad when it’s not, you know... but I am just so tired of the same lecture
--> exam redux. Especially since the
exams have really been something else lately.
All right. So, maybe a quick list of things that I have
learned again, because that went so well the last time I did it.
Buying food and eating it before
it goes bad is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It is actually really depressing. I’m thinking about just eating everything out
of the freezer or a can. I actually
sometimes just ignore food in the fridge because I’m too scared to look at
it. Eventually I do look at it and deal
with it and it’s usually not the end of the world.
My first year class really is kind
of nice, and I feel sort of close to my peers.
This is almost a shame, because soon we will disperse to our own little
labs in our own little corners of the building and rarely see each other again,
but the camaraderie that we have developed has helped us complain about many an
unfair (perception? perhaps) exam.
Nica’s has good sandwiches. Yum.
Now that we all know each other,
we don’t do that experimental alpha thing where everyone tries to indicate to
everyone else that “I am the smartest”.
Hush. No you’re not. Sit down and learn from people around
you. This is a skill that is going to
benefit you in the long run. Even if you
are the smartest person in the room, you don’t know everything that everyone
else knows. There is always something to
learn.
The iPhone is nice. I like it a lot. Occasionally – because it has, in many ways,
supplanted my computer use – I have to adjust to actually typing a period when
I end my sentences. It’s okay. I haven’t forgotten where it is – yet. Sometimes I leave the sound on because I find
the simulated tapping of keys so satisfying!
(clickclickclickclickclickclickclick)
Keeping an open mind is the best
thing that you can possibly do. Nothing
is final. Nothing is set in stone.
And with that in mind, I could
survey the semester for you, but I don’t think I will, because we don’t have
that kind of time. It’s been a kind of
whirlwind without being a whirlwind, a game of figuring out how to fit your
pauses in with the action, how to deal with big gaping holes in your days. It’s been a real game for me of playing my
cards.
I always like to think of my life
in terms of “playing cards”. I put the
expression in quotes because I don’t actually know how to play cards, so I
think I have some kind of bastardized game of poker in my head where my
thoughts or attributes or decisions are in some set of cards that I pick at
every now and again. I like to think of
it in terms of the consequences if I play this card, or I’m holding back this
card because I know when I play it, it will be spectacular! And some of my cards I keep plastered so
close to my chest that I don’t plan to let anyone see them, and when I think of
it all as part of this big game that doesn’t really have rules, it makes everything
a little more fun.
I guess you might say that my
semester has been an exercise in changing perspectives. The same mind-over-matter (or in my case,
conscious-over-subconscious) mentality that served me well at ESF managed to
punch me through initial less-than-positive first impressions of people, and by
the time we’d all settled into our respective places, I was very
comfortable. After a summer of working
for Seth, I was set to sign myself off to him.
I had had a good time this summer, getting to know people, keeping busy
in the lab, working nice long hours and occasionally going out with the group,
if the group went out. It was a
net-positive experience.
When all of the first-years came
together, I was eyeing everyone who wanted to do synthesis. After all, Seth only wanted to take a couple
of people, knowing that he was space-limited and that the group was nearly
optimal size for his advising technique.
I didn’t know who else did what I wanted to do, so I kept my eyes open –
but I kept my claws in that group.
When there were faculty
presentations, I listened very closely to Andy’s presentation, looking for the
same points that we’d talked about a number of months previously. That first night of recruiting weekend when
he’d sat down next to me at dinner, and I caught a glimpse of his nametag; I
realized with a little jolt of pleased shock that this was the man that one of
the students at Notre Dame had whispered to me about – “Listen, I know we’re
not supposed to be advocating other schools, but when you visit Yale you should
talk to Andy Phillips. He’s really
good. We watch what he does.”
At some point I mentioned this
exchange, toning down the under-the-table aspects of it, and Andy looked very
flattered – just really pleased – by it, and told me that he was very impressed
by Richard Taylor and would have returned the favor. I remember that dinner the most vividly of
anything that weekend, the quiet roar of conversation in the background, the
white wine glistening in wineglasses across the room, the carefully folded
linen napkins and the nearly constant attention of this lovely, engaging man in
the square-rimmed glasses, with the quiet voice that rose and fell in cadences
that were just this side of familiar, because New Zealand sounds a bit like
Australia while still somehow sounded completely different; the only other
thing I remember with great lucidity is recalling that I’d left my scarf in
Spiegel’s office, but when I went back for it, it was gone.
Anyway, I digress. I was listening to Andy’s presentation, and I
felt a little bit sad after it was done, because he hadn’t really mentioned
synthesis at all. Occasionally I
wondered if he remembered who I was; if he had remembered the girl who had sat
next to him at dinner at the Quinnipiac Club and talked about the philosophy of
total synthesis, if he could match my face to hers, if he knew my name at all. Nevertheless, I was still going to rotate
with him when the time came.
My first rotation was with Seth,
and with that rotation came the familiar feeling of belonging and familiarity
and I stopped in a couple of times, but for the most part I didn’t rotate at
all, having had a very good idea of what was going on in the group and wanting
to spend my afternoons in the books for the first exams that were starting to
rain down on me.
My second rotation was with
Andy. It was sort of funny, the way this
worked out. I had a meeting with Seth
before I met with Andy, because Seth wanted to touch base once more before he
was off to Japan for about a month and wouldn’t be back to talk before
Thanksgiving break. So I went and sat
down with Seth and talked with him frankly about what I, in the smattering of
understanding that I’ve managed to gain, want out of my PhD. And we discussed potential projects and I was
very careful to always say ‘if’ instead of ‘when’. But I was still so sure that I was going to
join that group, was going to amass my own collection of little solvent
reservoirs and TLC chambers and cut TLC plates and (well honestly I’m probably
still going to do all of that) everything.
Then Seth went out of town, and I
finally caught up with Andy, having had conflicts with the better part of the
first week of the rotation. He was
pinch-hitting a lecture for Spiegel, in synthetic methods, and afterward I
approached him. He looked at me and
said, “Oh, we need to meet. Today isn’t
good... how about tomorrow at one?” I
agreed.
The next day, I turned up in his
office and he talked to me for an hour and a half or two hours, revisiting his
philosophy on synthesis, talking about what he wants to do and how he wants the
group to run. I sat and listened, and
felt a little breeze start to tug at my internal weathervane, murmuring that
maybe my mind wasn’t quite made up yet – maybe my direction wasn’t chosen. We had a very good talk.
Later that day, I received an
email from one of the girls in Andy’s group, inviting me along to dinner the
next week so that I’d have a chance to meet the group. I said I’d love to come along, and the time
was set. I arranged another meeting with
Andy that day, to talk about how my interests lock in with the group, to make
sure (to make sure? am I really thinking
in these terms? I kept asking myself
what I was thinking, but got no answers) that I wouldn’t be relegated to
chemical biology when I wanted to do organic synthesis, to find out about
target selection.
I sat down with him, and he came
over to sit at the little table with me, toting a number of papers. He flipped through them, pointing out targets
and how they fit with the group philosophy; precedent and developed chemistry
in the group, etc. I felt kind of
starry-eyed at this point, and I gave the targets my full attention. Eventually the conversation lapsed into how
classes were going and how I was feeling about the selection process.
Andy told me how highly he thinks
of Seth, and how I would be studying under a really good person for synthesis
if I joined Seth’s group. “I would be a
little bit disappointed not to have you,” he said, “but I wouldn’t be upset at
all if you went with Seth.” I wrote this
off – as I cautiously write everything off – as routine advertising
banter. Later, though, he shot me this
look, hesitated briefly (an oddity for him), and finally said “All right. To be perfectly frank, I would really like it
if we could kind of twist your arm and get you to join the group.” I was, at this point, immensely flattered and
also incredibly conflicted.
Dinner was a bit awkward, as these
things often are when you don’t know people very well. It wasn’t bad, though. I sat next to Candice, who was really nice,
and I caught wind of a synthesis “course” Andy was teaching to his group twice
a week, which was presumably because he had realized, when he pinch-hit for
Spiegel, just how far behind we were.
The weekend after my meetings was
the Halloween party, which Herman and I left early because we wanted to go to
an improv show that one of the undergrads from Seth’s group was performing
in. We walked down to old campus
together; the night was dark and cool but not cold, and besides, I was wearing
my green peacoat. On the way, we started
discussing the selection process, because the selection itself was a month
away, and I told him that I was actually starting to waver between Seth and
Andy.
“Oh really?” he asked, looking
surprised. “I thought Andy didn’t do
total synthesis – that’s what he told me.
He told me he didn’t want to take more people in total synthesis.”
“Oh,” I said, a bit stunned and
also feeling a bit like I’d really stepped in it this time, but it wasn’t MY fault Andy had told
Herman something that he hadn’t mentioned to me. “That’s funny. I don’t know at all why that would be.”
“Well,” said Herman, very
sincerely, “Maybe he just knows that you’re... special.”
I tried awkwardly to turn this
away, because I’d worked so hard to keep my grades under wraps and didn’t want
to take the alpha position by storm, and murmured something about how maybe I
just had a chip on my shoulder about the whole thing because I expected to be
underestimated because I came from a state school. We lapsed into silence for a few steps, and
then...
“You’re really considering it,
aren’t you?” asked Herman. He is very
insightful sometimes and it is a bit nonplussing. “You’re really flattered by it, and you’re
really considering it.”
“Yes, Herman,” I admitted, for the
first time, even to myself, “I guess I am.”
It turned out that the auditorium
was full, so Herman and I bought ourselves ice cream and walked back to Science
Hill.
A few days later I got around to
emailing Andy about this course. It was
a carefully-worded email, to let him know that I would like to come if it was
all right with him, worded to let him know that I was aware that my current
situation was inadequate but that I had zero intention of stirring up waves,
that I would keep it quiet and perhaps just the tiniest bit to let him know
that I had this burning desire to learn.
Also I threw a pun in there to be funny.
Luckily, he either likes puns or
likes me enough to put up with them, because he replied the very next morning
with “That's AOK with me, and your e-mail provided a smile after ~30h straight
with work and travel back from the UK.” It was bookended, naturally, by salutations and whatever it’s called at the end of the letter/email. It made me smile, and that very day I picked myself up and headed off to a synthesis class that lasted two hours and was jam-packed with material.
with work and travel back from the UK.” It was bookended, naturally, by salutations and whatever it’s called at the end of the letter/email. It made me smile, and that very day I picked myself up and headed off to a synthesis class that lasted two hours and was jam-packed with material.
Over the next few weeks, I dealt
with some serious angst, because I did not know where to ultimately go for the
next four years (although I’m writing this with such a strong slant now that
even if you didn’t know the end, you know it now). I went to the class twice a week, along with
my other responsibilities, but the life of a first semester graduate student is
filled with so many pauses that making it fit was no stretch at all. And I really started to look forward to going
to this class that wasn’t any pressure at all, just a chance to pick up more
knowledge.
Then Thanksgiving break hit, and I
hightailed it home with the very best intentions of making a decision while I
was home. I waited for the inevitable
email with directions about this next big step, I went out and bought a new
phone whose screen was visible (I think the LCD conked out on my old phone),
and I did some walking, some reading, some napping and a whole lot of hanging
out with DJ’s new friend – is it weird to call her that? sounds weird –
Keirsten. I had my picture taken, I
talked things out once or twice with my parents, and I went to ESF to visit,
just for one day.
I had my hands semi-full with
people who I just didn’t really want to see, but I managed to avoid them, and I
talked to FX for a few minutes, briefly bumped into Adam, had an absolutely
lovely lunch with Justine, and went upstairs to sit in Caluwe’s office and talk
just like I used to do every now and again, sporadically, while I was an
undergrad there.
I felt so entirely split – that
internal compass that had been so clearly indicating Seth had been decalibrated
by some colossal magnetic force and the arrow was splitting the difference
between Seth and Andy. I felt incredibly
torn, and I didn’t know where to turn to make my decision. I don’t think I ever actually cried about it,
but I spent a lot of time feeling tremendously nervous, my stomach threaded
through itself in knots.
So I drove back to school on
Sunday night, finally leaving around 7:30 and arriving back at my apartment at
12:30am. I slipped into bed, dropping
all of my bags on the floor around the door.
I woke up to the most welcome email I could have imagined – the paper
with the project that I’d done with FX was accepted for publication! I’m going to be a PNAS author!
So, drunk on the success of the
moment and the potential of the future, I slipped into my sneakers and skipped
down the little asphalt path down the hill behind my apartment, gliding through
the gate and thinking-thinking-thinking about who to choose and how very
wonderful life was at that moment. Upon
entering the classroom, I dropped my bag in the front, next to Herman, and sat
down. We exchanged hellos, and moved on
to talking about breaks, and I even mentioned the paper, and then he dropped
the bomb on me.
“So did you hand your decision
sheet in?”
“Um,” I said, and I’m sure I went
white as all of the blood rushed right down to my feet. “The decision sheet. Am I supposed to have that?”
“Oh,” he said, “You didn’t get the
email either?”
“Um, no,” I said, feeling very
upset, trying to quash the rising panic in my torso. I didn’t want the answer to the next
question, but I knew I had to ask it.
Miserably, I looked at him and asked, “When are they due?”
“By the end of the day today,” he
said, starting to look away but then swinging his gaze right back to me. “Do you still not know whose group you’re
joining?”
“No,” I said, dejectedly, and I
felt the panic and the despair start to suffuse my face with that embarrassing
red glow. “No, I really don’t, and now I
have to TA and I need to talk about it with people and there’s just no time...
I have to...”
“Go talk to Susan,” he said, “She
can give you another sheet.”
So I sat in advanced organic on
Monday, feeling miserable and taking absolutely nothing in as my mind went
“Seth or Andy? Seth or Andy? Seth or Andy? Andy or Seth?” Eventually I moved on to saying “I’m going to
join Seth’s group” or “I’m going to join Andy’s group” to myself, and as I said
it, I really tried to believe it. As I
tried to believe it, I plumbed right down to the depths of myself, as if to ask
“anything? are you feeling anything?”
Nothing.
After class, which blessedly ended
about 10 minutes early, I ran to the office.
I hadn’t quite prepared a speech, so I just slipped in, my hands
sweating (and probably my face, too), feeling out of breath because of the
nervous racing of my heart, adrenaline needlessly pumping itself throughout my
poor trembling body. Susan saw me and
asked if she could help, and I said, “Um, yes, I think... do you have any extra
decision forms? Because I guess mine is
due today and, um, I didn’t get the email so, um, I don’t have...”
She gave me a very appraising look
and said, “You did three three-week rotations?
That’s what you signed up for?”
My blood turned to ice as I remembered the form. I remembered it well. I remembered the four blanks that they left
us to list our choices and I remembered wondering why there were four when I
was sure we only did three but I put four names down because DARN IT THERE WERE
FOUR LINES AND WHY WOULD YOU GIVE US FOUR LINES and I said "Um, well,
yes? I mean I was a little confused,
because there were four lines, but I thought... I mean I just figured that
since I was organic / synthetic / prep chemistry that I was supposed to just do
the three when I thought about it later," and all of the wind went out of my
sails because I realized that it was, in fact, my fault that I didn't get the
email and that there was nothing I could do now. I had no high ground, no pedestal... I was
going to have to make the knee-jerk decision by the end of the day, worrying
about it while I watched my students take their final exam.
Then Susan absolutely leveled me
with this no-nonsense, how-dare-you-disturb-the-system look and said
"Well, the next time you're confused, you should just send me a little
email. That will keep things from
getting all tangled up." She
stalked over to the copier to get me a copy of the form, and as she handed it
to me, I thanked her.
“Does... should I bring this
back... by... the end of the day?” I asked, crossing my fingers.
“Yes, that should be fine,” she
said, and my heart sank further.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, “I didn’t
realize and I feel just terrible about it,” because I really do like Susan and
because no one wants a secretary to be angry with her. And I was flustered and my eyes were bright
because I was about ready to cry, I was so scared, and my emotional state
suddenly sent a blip across her radar because her whole demeanor softened and
she smiled at me and said, “Oh, no, don’t feel bad, that’s the last thing I
want, is to make you feel bad about this.
Would you rather bring it back tomorrow?
I don’t think I’ll do anything with them today, anyway.”
“Yes,” I gasped, “Yes, that would
be just wonderful. I can have it back to
you first thing tomorrow morning. I can
have it to you before nine. Thank you
so, so much.” She waved off my effusive,
loquacious thanks and I ran off to TA.
I walked home, having finished
proctoring the exam, and I gave my mother a call, and my father a call, and
later I called them both. And I talked
about it, letting everything finally spill out, not holding any of my pros or
cons back, no matter how inconsequential or irrelevant they seemed, because
this was my last chance and I was desperately throwing everything I had against
this wall because I wanted to make the choice, not have it made for me.
Somewhere along my verbal diarrhea
about this and that, time and support groups and compatibilities and
personality types, that weathervane of mine flipped completely around and I
found myself leaning so thoroughly toward Andy that I took the decision and I
ran with it. At around 10:00pm that
night, I finally finished filling out my sheet, looking Andy up online quickly
to make sure I didn’t insult him by using the wrong number of Ls in his last
name, and I signed my name, and I went to bed, feeling emotionally wrung out,
but vowing to get up early enough to try to catch Andy the next morning.
You see, the awkward thing about
the decisions is that you rank your top choices. They tell you that basically everyone gets
his or her top choice, but the fact of the matter is that that isn’t true. Now I was never scared, exactly, of not
getting my top choice. I was fairly
certain that it was a sure thing, but the miniscule chance of something not
going according to plan would land me with my number 2. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with my
number 2. I would have been happy
there. It is just the awkwardness of him
knowing that he was my second choice. So
I wanted to touch base, to hedge my bets.
I wanted to know that I was safe from that kind of crippling
embarrassment.
So I arrived at school at 8:30 on
Tuesday morning and sat myself down in the little second-floor lounge. I waited 20 minutes, but he was not
there. I stood up and said to myself,
“Well, Shannon, you’re flying blind. Go
get ‘em.” And I handed in my sheet. Tuesday was the day that I remembered I’d
left my grading at home, and that sends a nasty panic-shock to your
system. I called Mom, and she saved the
day.
I’d worn new flip flops that day,
and they tore my feet up so that I was in agonizing pain. Claire and Herman and I holed up in room 102
to work on the problem set for Spiegel, and we stayed there for 10 long hours,
studying and working. At 11:30, I packed
up my books, hobbled out on my now-frozen feet (it poured and the weather
turned cold), hopped into my car, and eventually made it to bed.
On Wednesday I tried my best to go
have a talk with Andy. I hovered around
his door for a few minutes following the end of my TAing semester, but he had
someone else in there and I didn’t want to interrupt. I sat in that lounge for a few minutes again
and sent him a very clever little email from my phone; I told him I’d missed a
couple of classes over Thanksgiving and was wondering if he could let me know
what I’d missed and if I could stop by and pick up the notes. If he’d responded, I could have dropped right
into his office like the awkward stalker I was and picked up my notes, and then
off-handedly said something equally awkward, like “hey so I made you number
one, heh-heh, will ya take me?”
Well, he didn’t respond until the
next morning, so I went home and studied, came back for an entirely unhelpful
problem session that actually kept me from studying, and went back home and
studied until I went to bed. While in
bed that night I remembered that I had a bill due the next day so I got up out
of bed and ambled over to my computer to pay it. Sitting in the dark, with the computer
casting an eerie bluish glow over everything, I pulled up the bill...
...and it was $19,187. So naturally I totally lost it. I sent an email and made some phone calls in
the morning, because my fellowship covers both tuition and hospitalization
insurance, which made up $18K of the bill.
I decided to just pay my balance (rent and prescription coverage). Turns out my fellowship was covering it. Too bad they didn’t put that in my statement.
The exam was terrible. That’s really all I have to say about that,
is that those 75 minutes were not exactly exciting. After the exam, I talked to some people and I
considered going home, but I took my numb self upstairs to collect the notes
from Andy. Upon entering his office, I
noticed that he had rearranged the entire thing to mount a 60” flatscreen television
on his wall, and we wound up talking about that for quite a while. He printed me the notes and demo’d his new
television for me by pulling up a presentation – I have to admit it is pretty
darn cool – and after I left I realized that I’d forgotten to have the talk
that I’d set the meeting up for in the first place. Darn.
There was a seminar that
afternoon, so I went to Sandra’s coffee talk, where she presented her research
to the visiting speaker (from Cambridge), and then to the seminar itself, and
afterward I went out for pizza with most of my first year class, which was
actually fun.
Phew. I’m going to give myself carpal tunnel just
from writing this one blog.
On Friday I got out of bed to go
to Andy’s synthesis course, with full intentions of FINALLY talking to him
about the whole thing. I slipped into
the little tiny room where he has to hold it on Fridays, and ended up sitting
next to Lauren, another first year (in chemical biology, so she’s just starting
her second eight-week rotation now).
After it was over, I hung around but so did she, and we had a brief
exchange.
“So did you have to join a group?”
she asked me.
“Yes, actually,” I said slowly.
Predictably, she followed up with
“So who did you choose?”
“This one, actually,” I said
quietly, not really wanting this particular conversation to be commented on
before I had a chance to talk to Andy by myself.
“Oh!” she said, “That’s
great! Congratulations! Where’s your desk?”
“Well,” I said, “It’s not official
yet... I mean we chose on Monday so I haven’t heard anything yet and I don’t
have a desk.”
“Are you going to dinner? I think the group is going for dinner. Let’s find out!”
And so, for the second time, I
found myself leaving without having talked to Andy, slipping into the bay
furthest down and talking to Diane and Katelyn.
They invited me along readily, smiling brightly at me, and we had some
conversation about grades and teaching and classes and first year. At some point Ben entered the mix, because
apparently Katelyn keeps candy in one of her desk drawers, and he raided it and
then joined the conversation.
Because we were going to go to Red
Lobster, I really needed to get cash and to change my clothes, so I began to
excuse myself and in the commotion that sort of followed Ben gave me one of
those friendly, open smiles of his and said “Well, welcome to the group,
Shannon!”
That halted me in my tracks a bit,
and I turned and smiled back and said, “Oh, thanks! Is that official? Do people know now?”
Suddenly everyone was sort of
half-smiling, spitting out halting, stilted half-sentences that mostly
consisted of “well, we’re not supposed to say anything” and “but it’s not
official yet”.
I sort of dug my heels in,
standing half in the doorway there, and said, “Oh, is it not set in stone? Are things still changing? I might not end up here?”
The half-conversation continued to
swirl in the room before dying slowly down, settling to the floor like
feathers, and Ben looked at me, a half-laugh in his voice, and said, “I’ll just
say that if you don’t end up in the group, it’s because there was a
swordfight. And Andy lost.”
This made me laugh and feel all
pleased so after a few more perfunctory conversational exchanges, I slipped out
to change clothes and pick up cash, but more importantly to slip into Andy’s
office for what seemed like the thousandth time. I knocked quietly on the half-open door and
then entered, standing while he tried to figure something out.
“Oh,” I said, when he looked up at
me, “I’ll be quick.”
“No, no, no,” he said, laughing,
“I’d much rather talk to you than work on this.”
“So,” I said, twisting my notes
and notebook in my hands, suddenly very nervous because I didn’t actually know
how to approach the subject. “So, you
have the list now, right?”
He somehow knew exactly what I was
talking about, which seems miraculous to me, looking back on it now. “Yes,” he said, his face easing into a little
smile, “I have the list. And I was very,
very pleased to see your name on my list.”
The knots in my stomach that had
been loosening all day suddenly untangled and I felt my mood suddenly
soar. “Oh!” I said, “Oh, good! I’m so glad to hear that – well, you know,
because – well, I had a hard time with the decision, you understand, and I
ended up making it later than I should have.
I meant to talk to you about it first – you know, touch base, hedge my
bets – but I didn’t time it very well so I didn’t get the chance to. And you know, I just thought it would be
really awkward if you couldn’t take me and I ended up going to Seth anyway
because he was my number two, right?”
After this veritable waterfall of
words (I have a feeling I just sort of vomited them out too quickly), I looked
back at him to see his expression change to a little bit shocked, a little bit
disappointed... kind of horrified, actually.
And he said, “Wait... wait a minute.
Have I misunderstood something?
Did you... was Seth your... was I not... ?”
“No! Oh, no no no!” I said suddenly, laughing, “Sorry!! No, it’s
all you, you were my number one, I made you number one, I want to work for
you!”
He relaxed, grinned, leaned back
in his chair again and said, “Phew. That
would have been a really terrible end to my week. I was just so pleased to see that list.”
“Oh, good,” I said again. “Yeah, I just wanted to touch base with you,
for my peace of mind, you know? I was
just... nervous. I wanted to make sure
you’d take me.”
“Shannon,” he said, leaning
forward on his desk, “I would never turn great students away. They will always have a place in my lab. And I was really impressed with you when I
met you over recruiting weekend – what, that must have been eight or nine
months ago now, but it feels like forever.”
I think it was at this moment that
I remembered the full magnitude of the raging academic crush I’d had on him
upon meeting him on that very same night.
He continued to say, “You should concentrate on Dave’s course for now,
but when that’s over we should have a talk.
You should think a little bit about what you want to do – not pick a
target, but just think about what you want out of your PhD and that will help
me figure out how best to guide you.”
I just about died, I thought this
was so cute, and I agreed to study (“but I don’t think you’ll be in any
trouble,” he said). “All right,” I said,
and, getting ready to leave, I shot him a naughty little grin. “Well, good.
Just... just don’t trade me away, okay?”
“I will not
trade you away,” he said.
“Good talk!” I said (he may find
out that he doesn’t quite know what to do with me), and he thanked me, and I
skipped off to call my parents and gush about how excited I was about
everything and to get cash and change my clothes.
I had scallops, shrimp, and
stuffed flounder at Red Lobster. It was
good, and it was fun, and it was less awkward and I started to try to adopt
this new group and just felt like I loved everything.
And I remembered so many things,
and started to think that those emails were not just an impersonal recruiting
technique, but that Andy had actually really been invested in having me come to
Yale. That the time that he called me
from his house and I sat in that recliner in Christina’s house with a notepad
that she handed me and a pen, and I took notes as I listened to him talk and
asked him questions, and I just felt so special in that moment because a
professor at YALE was calling ME.
I remembered how much I loved him,
and it all flooded back to me. It’s not
that I don’t like Seth or that I don’t appreciate what he did for me last
summer or that I wouldn’t have been happy working for him or that I didn’t have
a good time. It is just that I am
absolutely fanatic about Andy and I love everything he does and the heart he
has for teaching and his advising style.
I just love everything about him, every philosophy of his and I am so
excited to start working for him and to find out how much I can learn from him.
Him and his cute square-rimmed
glasses and his quiet voice and his so-adorable-it’s-stupid accent and his
crooked smile. Augh. Okay.
I’m going to go get his number from that email and put it into my
phone. I lost it when I got the new
phone. ANYWAY.
I’ve been on a Toto kick. Been listening to Africa a lot. Been prone to random fits of paralyzing
giddiness where I just feel so happy that I lie back and just let myself feel happy. And so it was that a really rough week turned
into one of the highlights of my life so far.
