Mentoring and Transitioning

 As I near the end of my PhD, I'm reflecting a lot on mentoring and the transition that I feel like I'm being pushed through to get from mentee to mentor. I am trying to get a paper out before I leave, and my mentor has always been... well a mentor. In that he looks things over and approves and gives suggestions and we go through several iterations of that before anyone else sees the thing. With this paper, he is giving me much more leeway to lead the project and loop him in as needed. And in some ways this feels cool and as though I am taking charge and ready to graduate and lead these on my own. But in some ways it feels like getting shoved in the deep end of a pool.

Getting a doctorate means that you are learning really deeply about a field and contributing to it. It isn't very cut and dry what that exactly means, and in a lot of ways that has kinda changed into just "fulfill the requirements and get what you want out of it" rather than the grandiose contributing to science origins. For me though, I am much closer to that earlier definition where because I want to stay in academia I wanted that experience of having a paper get out. So I am doing what I set out to do and what I wanted. But I have also been asking about this experience for years without much success. And I understand that my project is going to be dead in the water after I leave, but in some ways I do not feel as though the past few years have prepared me for this.

With this paper I have been analyzing data and drafting up figures. It is really a bioinformatics paper primarily, but my degree is in Genetics. The past few years I have been doing some analyses, true, but I have been struggling against cell culture and wet lab experiments as well. This as a culmination, in some ways, feels as though I am breaking out into a new path rather than a continuation. To be clear, I don't hate this, I wanted to learn dry lab techniques. But it still feels like a pivot point rather than anything else.

To get back to the mentoring though, I have only been meeting with my mentor every other week on this. We cannot possibly get through everything in that time, so it feels more like I am pulling him in for select things that I want his input on. But now I have to present it to my thesis committee and there are definitely aspects that he has not seen or signed off on. And that makes me a little nervous. Not to mention that other students I talk to are meeting almost every other day when I am out here meeting every other week. It puts a lot of responsibility on specifically me since I am the only person working on this project to begin with.

I don't know if this is the way I would want to mentor, but I know that I have more of a tendency to hand hold. In some aspects, I do think I needed this as I transition out, but I do wish it was a little smoother and that I had more time for feedback and such. But some of that also isn't by design it is just the amount of time my mentor has right now. Regardless, it is my degree and I am getting the experiences that I want out of it. So in the end, it will probably end up just fine.

This Is Beautiful: Stuff is... Working?

 I'm at this home stretch of my degree where I'm doing a lot of analyses, and also at this point where I'm trying to wrap them up and just about everything I have left is super annoying to figure out. But this past week felt really good, I had multiple things work out! It feels good, and I'm trying to just remember that and focus on that because it's so easy to just focus on what doesn't work instead of what does. But things are in fact progressing! It might not be as fast as I'd like, but that's ok because I will get there eventually and while I still have a timeline I think it'll work.

"Assassin's Quest" by Robin Hobb

 I finally finished the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb! I covered the first two in this post and this one. This was definitely a mixed bag of an experience, for a lot of the book I was a little bored and wondering where we were going with this, but the conclusion was definitely satisfying in a way that not many series are for me these days. So while I wouldn't jump to recommend it, I did have a good time with this book.

It starts where the previous book left off, Fitz induced his own death to escape a dungeon by bonding his soul with his wolf's. His surrogate father Burrich and mentor Chade then brought him back into his body after he was buried and essentially brought him back to life. However he still has to learn to be a man again, which Burrich bullies into him. Eventually though he does regain his memories, painful as they are, and he chews out the both of them. This triggers both of them into leaving. Fitz and his wolf, Nighteyes, start traveling to find King Regal and kill him as revenge.

This is tragically a lot of the book, them traveling on their own. They get there and he fails to kill the king but word is now out that he's still alive. Verity, the true king, realizes what Fitz is doing and Skill commands Fitz to join him. (The Skill is like telepathy essentially.) So Fitz starts traveling to him. On the way he realizes through his Skill dreams that his partner before he died, Molly, has given birth to his daughter with Burrich there to help. He tries to go to them, they both think he's dead, but is physically unable to due to Verity's Skill command. So he keeps going. He meets a minstrel, Starling, who figures out who he is. He is briefly captured and escapes, then the two of them start heading up to the mountain kingdom. They meet up with Kettle, an old lady heading the same way. Of course they are ambushed on the way but narrowly escape again.

Fitz had to separate from the other two and is nearly dead when he gets there. The Fool, now the White Prophet, finds him and starts to care for Fitz. Chade, Kettricken, Kettle, and Starling all stop by. Eventually Regal finds out though and most of them (all but Chade) start heading up the mountains to try and find Verity. They eventually find him at the top of the mountain in a quarry. He is carving a dragon. Kettle reveals that she was a member of a queen's Skill users and starts to help him. Fitz wants to but is rebuffed, and Kettricken is aghast to find her husband half out of his wits as he focuses so single-mindedly on the dragon. It becomes clear that Verity is putting himself into the dragon to eventually become it, and Kettle will join him. Verity refuses to put Fitz in, and that reveals that it isn't enough to wake the dragon. Fitz makes a deal where he can put some of himself in but only if they do not take his daughter to become the new heir to the throne. They Skill to Burrich and Molly and Fitz sees them sleeping together as they both think him dead. He's devastated, but Verity keeps his end of the bargain and gives Kettricken an heir. Verity is able to wake the dragon, and there's a final battle where Fitz wakes the other dragons, and the Fool leads them all to fight off the Red Ships. Peace is restored.

We leave Fitz as an old man writing up his memories. Starling still comes to visit, but he never reveals that he is still alive to anyone else.

For the vast majority of the book, it felt like a big slog. Fitz is constantly going through boring periods of him just traveling with the wolf, and once you think it cannot get any more monotonous he gets captured. He gets a few new scars, but manages to escape. And then it starts over again. Once he gets to the mountain kingdom it does get more interesting with the reappearance of Kettricken and the Fool. The Fool is one of my favorite characters, very funny and a gender neutral icon.

What stuck with me the most was the way Hobb dealt with Fitz's relationship with Molly. I think it had such a large impact on me since Fitz is constantly thinking about her. He so desperately wants to get back to her and the child but cannot. He does so much to try and ensure their safety, but it is simply not enough in the end. She thought he was dead for too long and he wasn't there to help. Usually storytellers would have a couple like that reunite, but not Hobb. And that really broke my heart, I truly felt for Fitz with that. Plus then the rest of the characters are dealing with it pretty flippantly and that made me indignant on his behalf. I am glad he never started up a strong relationship with anyone else. He had to actually feel that pain and process through it and not seek them out ever again. Just brutal.

I also appreciated the ending with the dragons. They feed off of life, and the blood then wakes them up and reminds them that they're hungry. But in the process the people in them are consumed. Verity does not respond as a human after that, even though his purpose is to save his kingdom. And it is revealed that the shadow of a dragon causes you to lose your thoughts, revealing how the Forged ones that have been terrorizing the kingdom came about. The dragons flew over the kingdom's enemies so many times that they forgot everything and turned into shells of humans, so they did the same back. The book ends implying that this is a cycle, and I enjoyed that. The big bad of the trilogy is really King Regal, the Red Ships are never made clear who or what is behind them. But this detail at the end humanized them and made it more than barbaric fighting.

As a result I am not really sure how to leave this series. Again I do not think I would recommend it without caveats, but the world was fun to inhabit and the ending was so satisfying. It takes a bit to get there, but maybe it is worth it if you are looking for a new fantasy series.

This Is Beautiful: Nice Weather

 It's finally warm! I can wear shorts outside! This is game changing, I have the windows down in the car and I'm not in lab much so I'm in shorts and flip flops. It is lovely!

On Teaching and Collaboration

 Something that I have noticed recently is that I approach classes that I am teaching myself completely differently from classes that I am working with others on. I taught a course on my own last fall, and that was definitely a learning process since it was my first time. Currently, I'm helping with a course with three other people, and I'm the Program Assistant so I'm not teaching or designing the curriculum but handling logistics of the course. And it has been dawning on me that the latter seems to stress me out way more and involve very different thought processes. This is a very unstructured post where I am thinking through these experiences and what I think of them.

With this more recent course, between this year and last year I tend to get so stressed while it is going on. I think part of it is that I am beholden to other people, and that I worry with all my communications that I am accurately portraying what we think as a team. But I think that there's also something more than that.

To be fair, these courses are very different. The one I do over the summers is aimed at graduate students and the course I taught was for undergraduates. This also adds to the differences where I try to expect the graduate students to be more on top of things. I learned last summer that they were not. With the undergraduates I know that they have a lot going on so I deliberately tried to help a few students as much as I could. The graduate students also require a lot of communication, I am emailing them after each homework to let folks know that did not get the assignment in, and I'm emailing about attendance after each session. It feels different though, maybe it is that I am mostly inclined to let the graduate students do their own thing as adults rather than the undergraduates, or because I am mostly passing on a message from my other instructors.

Potentially it is also in the nature of the course. The class I taught was for a grade and this summer course is for a certificate. So a lot of the communications has to do with the certificate requirements (attendance and homework) and just trying to encourage as many students as possible to meet those requirements. The course feels a little weird to me in that we only advertise the attendance requirement when selecting applicants so I think a few people join and are not aware of the rest, or think that it is not a big deal if they have to miss more sessions when it comes time. And this has been really frustrating for me since I have to constantly chase them down and try to encourage them to make up assignments or the like.

This certificate issue has come up already, I think I would communicate about this differently if it was me. So I wonder if the disconnect is there in that I'm communicating differently and having to deal with unclear instructions from others as well. Whatever the issue is, I am glad that I am getting all of these different experiences. It will only be helpful further down the line when I am teaching more!

This Is Beautiful: Leaving Things

 Alright so as I'm trying to graduate and get out of here, I'm abandoning a number of leadership positions. Most I'm able to get others to take, there's a few that I'm not. And that's ok because I'm done here. And it's just so nice to finally be out. No more meetings, no stress about event planning, and no more responsibilities. Feels so good, and I'm so ready to be here. 

I am worried that I won't have enough to look forward to, but honestly a lot of these things I was doing didn't make me happy anymore and I wanted out. For a while I've wanted out. So this is going to be good for me.

“Shakespeare for Squirrels” by Christopher Moore

This book was given to me by my partner’s mom, she read it and liked it and thought she would pass it on to us. We are a bunch of Shakespeare fans, so it makes sense. I found the book confusing more than anything else, and while it has the potential to be funny it largely does not fully deliver on it. Still, it is a fun take on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and I imagine the other books in the series hit a little better. 

The book opens with Pocket, a fool, adrift at sea with his friend Drool and monkey Jeff. They shipwreck on Athens and meet Cobweb who is recognizable as a fairy to us and not to Pocket. From there, the two wander into the Mechanicals practicing a play, and get stopped by the watch. Pocket narrowly escapes (and thinks he is a ghost for a minute) while Drool is captured. Turns out Pocket was turned invisible by the Puck and that’s why he thinks he is dead. Pocket heads into town and runs into the lovers on the way. One back, he is enlisted by Hippolyta to take a message so he goes back into the woods where he finds the Puck murdered. He is arrested by the watch, taken in, and then enlisted by Theseus to find the love flower. Pocket goes back into the woods, runs into Titania and her fairies, and joins up with the changed Bottom, Cobweb, Moth, and Peaseblossom to find Oberon. Also there’s occasionally appearances from Rumor, a big guy in a cloak of tongues who tells Pocket that he’s ruining the plot.

They get to Oberon and find out that a goblin killed Puck, but the better question is who paid the goblin to do it. From there, back to town where the sad Mechanicals are met and Pocket decides to rewrite their entire play to try and reveal who killed the Puck. Rumor shows up as well, and then Puck is frolicked back to life by the fairies to reveal that he is Titania and Oberon’s son, Puck’s son is the little fairy child, and he wanted to kill all of the nobility. Pocket and Drool head on with Cobweb, while the monkey Jeff stays behind with Moth.

Alright so my main critique is that the plot is far too complicated. Pocket runs into all of these people and is paid to do different things by all of them, and then he makes very little headway on the whole solving the mystery thing. You just find more and more layers until the play at the end where Pocket just kinda lights the whole thing on fire to see who gets smoked out. (And honestly I still don’t fully understand who killed Puck.) Whole thing was kinda incomprehensible.

And the humor primarily relies on sex jokes. Which is Shakespearean, yes, but after hearing about how the fairies are naked and the goblins shaved their bits for the fifth time you get a little tired of it. Rumor was funny, especially when his hat is stolen by the fairies and Jeff, but it is also quite weird to have this guy show up and be useless and then yell at Pocket for being dumb. Like do it myself my guy.

Having said all that, Pocket and the fairies are quite fun. I liked that the fairies can’t count or anything so any number they say is almost immediately proven false. Drool wasn’t around as much but I bet he is a good time as well, especially playing off of Pocket. And regardless of everything else, if you know “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” you will likely have a good time seeing the same characters in a different situation.

So anyways, I did not think much of this book or its mystery. And the humor left something to be desired. But apparently this is part of a series about Pocket, so the other books might be better crafted, I’m especially interested to see if any are based on Shakespeare’s tragedies, that might provide more of a space for the humor to flourish.

This Is Beautiful: End of the Semester

 I am so ready for the summer, I won't have to be teaching and will have more free time. Of course this means that it'll be more time for me to work on my research and manuscript preparation so I won't just be sitting around but I will definitely have more flexible time. I'm dropping all of my leadership roles so I'll not be worrying about organizations or meetings that I have to lead. It sure will be nice.

“The Accidental Medium” by Tracy Whitwell

I had picked up this book at a bookstore in the UP of Michigan and thought it looked like a silly goofy mystery time. And for the most part it is, but there’s a pretty severe issue that I have with it that is probably going to ruin the whole series for me.

The book centers on Tanz, an actress in London who is struggling to find work. She ends up getting a job at the till of a New Age shop to make ends meet and from there gets friendly with Sheila, one of the readers there. Sheila recognizes that Tanz has a pretty good sense of the dead, and together they start cultivating her senses. Tanz also lands an advertisement that takes her to Spain where her makeup artist recognizes her as Romani and says that her ancestry is where she gets her powers from.

Back at London, a woman comes in for a reading with her boyfriend and both Sheila and Tanz get images of a screaming woman the entire time they are both there. Together they manage to sort out that the dead woman is Mona, and that the couple killed her. Tanz is spooked, but they eventually decide to try and find Mona’s body. They locate her, but then the man shows up and kidnaps them. They manage to get away and get to a police station, where they learn that the man killed his new girlfriend and then committed suicide. Tanz decides to stay in the business of talking to ghosts, although she still doesn’t want to take money for it.

Overall, the book is a really fun, light read! The characters are really amusing and funny, Tanz is a bit of an alcoholic and so are all of her friends really. It is very light on the mystery side, you know from the beginning who murdered Mona, and the mystery doesn’t even take up half of the book really.

My main issue is the stupid bit where it is revealed that she is Romani. That whole thing could have been dropped and the book would still work just as well. It just feeds into dumb stereotypes about gypsies and whatever, totally not necessary. Not to mention that I am pretty sure the author is white as hell and the character keeps being so “proud” of her ancestry, nope, no thanks. Get that out of here.

So while this is fun I am probably giving the rest of the series a pass. I do not want more of the “exotic bloodline” nonsense.