the rollercoaster week

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.

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.