shadowclaw

Had a bit of a fake out last night. Got a phone call from Florida, but it was pretty late to be a school (7:30). Still, I've gotten emails from FIU outside of normal business hours, so I got a little excited. It was just Carnival Cruise Lines trying to sell me another cruise.

Soap board

Several years ago, I was putting together a plant collection for a class, and there were these beautiful sunflowers growing on the side of the road (I believe they were Pale-leaved Sunflowers). I pulled completely off the road and into the grass. I was at least 3 feet from the white line on the side of the road. Some asshat managed to hit my side mirror with his/hers, and they never even stopped. Luckily, the mirror folded back and the only thing that actually broke was the glass (a cheap fix), but still. One of my coworkers at my last job almost did a hit and run. He was parked about 5 spaces away and decided to back up without looking and managed to do about $2500 in damage. I still don't know how he managed it. I was inside the building doing paperwork, so I didn't see it happen. He actually said to my face that he thought about just driving away. To make matters worse, he didn't have a license (just a permit, so he was technically driving illegally) and at the time, I wasn't sure he had insurance. He begged me not to turn it into insurance and said he'd cash in some bonds he had. Told me he'd give me $1000 to start and if the estimate was higher, he'd give me more. Stupid me took him at his word. He apparently did cash in some bonds, but between the bank and work, he decided to spend the cash on pot and a cell phone. After a few weeks of him saying he'd have the money in a few days, I just made an insurance claim. I was concerned that because I didn't have his insurance info that I'd get screwed over by my insurance company somehow, but the nice insurance man told me it wasn't necessary since I had his contact info and license plate number. Thankfully he didn't deny doing it when the insurance company called him, so everything ended up fine, it just took a long time.

Down under

under pressure

This is why I ended up planning two weddings. Neither my husband nor I really wanted a big, white wedding... I suppose I was sort of ok with it, but he was definitely terrified of it. Mostly I just didn't like the idea of inviting 150 people, of which I only really knew maybe 50. The rest were distant relatives, my parents' friends and coworkers, relatives that aren't really distant but I hadn't seen since I was 5... basically people that I would really struggle to identify (if I could at all), and the idea of having to spend an evening with people I don't know wasn't really up my alley. So we ended up backing out of the wedding before we invested too much into it (only bought a dress and put a deposit down on a reception hall). We seriously considered eloping. We didn't really want to just go to the courthouse, so we started trying to come up with fun ideas that we could afford, like getting married by aliens in Las Vegas (ok, so that was my suggestion, but he didn't go for it) or getting married on the beach. We eventually decided it would be cool to go on a cruise and get married at one of the stops. Since I knew my parents would be really disappointed (especially my dad... I'm his only daughter), I suggested the cruise to them and they jumped on board (haha that was punny). So it turned into a tiny destination wedding for our parents and anyone else who could come along... which ended up being two of my close friends who didn't have kids to worry about. So it ended up working out really well for everyone. We got our small intimate wedding without offending anyone (we basically put it out there that anyone who wanted to come to the wedding was welcome if they paid for their cruise ticket) and my dad still got to walk me down the aisle (albeit a sandy one). It's also kind of funny, because two of my siblings had big, glorious weddings, and the other two eloped to the courthouse and then had a church wedding later on (and if any of you want to get snobby about that, Miss Manners herself said it's acceptable to have a civil ceremony followed by a religious one... so put a sock in it). My wedding was kind of a halfway point between the two.

Natural waist

Oh man, when I was 17, my parents and I moved to where we live now. Almost as soon as we got our new phone number, we started getting collection calls for some guy. 13 years later, we still get calls for him. Sometimes a lady with a gorgeous British accent calls (maybe they're trying to fool him somehow). I remember a few years ago, there was this week where the collectors called about 5 times a day. On this particular occasion, I answered the phone and someone asked for him. I was in a bad mood, so I started yelling at the woman on the phone that we've lived in our house for X number of years, that he did not live here and never lived here, and to stop calling this damn number. I think I terrified the poor woman and she apologized profusely and hung up. The phone immediately rang again and I answered it. It was the same woman, but this time she asked for me. Turns out she was calling people on a list of registered voters and was reminding everyone to get out and vote the following week. Then I felt bad for yelling at her. The Red Cross used to harass me all the time. Then I changed my phone number at some point, and they never found me again. I would be happy to donate my blood if they actually had people who knew what they were doing working at the blood drives. There's always one person who has a clue, and I'm pretty sure the rest must be students getting practice in, because they suck sooooo bad at taking blood. One of the last times I donated, the lady stuck me wrong and I stopped bleeding after a minute or so (plus it hurt really badly). She then proceeding to twist and turn the needle, and when that didn't work, she stuck the blood pressure cuff on my arm in an attempt to squeeze it out of me (while slamming the cuff into the needle as she put it on). I still didn't bleed, so she let me go. I then proceeded to sit at the cookie table and ball my eyes out for five minutes or so. About 2 years later, I decided to give it another try, and a very stereotypical ditsy blonde tried to find my veins. I told her the good spot to draw blood, and she randomly poked my arm with her index finger and told me she couldn't find it. After some more random poking and me repeating over and over in my head, "please don't let this girl stick me with a needle," she had to leave and get someone more experienced. That lady did a perfect job, but I decided I was done with blood donations for a while.

intergalactic war

NonparametricBananas, I feel your pain. Still no word from UNC or UTK. I think perhaps I have a couple more days to wait for UNC before I can be sure I didn't get an interview. Although I can't fully give up on it unless I get an actual rejection. The website mentions that they send out interview invitations and those who are not invited may be waitlisted. Waitlisted is better than rejected, because everyone could reject their offers or end up doing something really strange during the interview weekend. See, FoggyAnhinga, I'm staying positive I'm not sure about UTK. There's only one result for an interview invite, and it was Jan 19. Their interview weekend starts on the 20th, so I suppose I still have about a week before it would be too late to be invited. Still staying positive! I'm filling out another application to Oregon State, but to a different department. Funny how the Environmental Science department wanted me to send hard copies of my transcripts, but the Wildlife Science department wants scans. I had e-mailed a POI there about 2 weeks ago in response to an ad he put out, and he requested a giant packet of info (CV, writing samples, etc). I got back a "thanks, we'll be in touch if you're selected for an interview." I wanted to get this application done two weeks ago because they're reviewing applications as they come in, but I was completely broke. Hopefully I'm not paying $60 only to find out that yesterday they picked someone.

twisted idea

I just took a look... everything seems to be working fine. Maybe you're cursed and only try to log in during moments of site maintenance or weird outages.

Big break

Music box

Band aid

I applied to some masters programs, was accepted, and chose the one that was the best research match for me. While working on my masters, aside from my thesis, I took any opportunity I could find to get more field and research experience as well as worked on some manuscripts and a poster for a conference. Now that I have more research and field experience under my belt, I feel much better about my PhD applications for this cycle. However, I know that there is still the chance that I won't be accepted. If it happens again, I plan on getting some more field experience related to ornithology to make next year's application stronger.

Fruit juice

Mother nature

Maybe she just has really bad self-esteem. When I was in high school, I had a job where I was the only girl in my department (I stocked shelves and pushed carts at a local supermarket) and I truly wanted it stay that way. I had awful self-esteem and being the only girl in a traditionally male-dominated job made me feel better about myself and special. Maybe she has a similar problem.

Flat worm

Oh, I know the subject's been mentioned before (I think somebody mentioned their Academia.edu profile), but I've been getting a lot of hits on my ResearchGate profile in the past few weeks (and by a lot, I mean 3 or 4 per week). I know two were fellow classmates who decided to follow me, but there's no reason for anyone else to look. I don't have any accepted papers yet, so it's not like anyone's looking for a paper to download. I keep hoping it's various adcomm members looking for more information, but at the same time, there really isn't any new information for them to find. However, the idea that they might be googling me at least gives me hope that they are seriously considering me.

I hate that! Sometimes they try to do that on the campus buses, too, and then they look really mad when there's a big line of people in the aisle trying to get out. One time at the post office (which has a really narrow staircase that you can really only go single file one), I was already walking down the stairs when someone got out of their car and then stood at the bottom of the stairs to wait for me to pass (which took about 1 second after they got to the stairs). After I walked by, they yelled "you're welcome" really loud at me. Did I really need to say thank you to them for not being rude and shoving their way past me on the stairs? I can understand if I was at the top and they waited, but I was basically at the bottom when they arrived at the foot of the stairs.

I think mental health isn't spoken about enough in general. I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about their problems because either they're afraid people won't like them or respect them anymore, or they're afraid they'll end up in a mental hospital. I also think people who don't suffer don't understand or even take mental health issues seriously. I have suffered from depression, social anxiety, or both since I was 14. I'm now almost 30, which means I've spent more than half of my life dealing with mental illness. When I first became depressed and started having suicidal thoughts, I went to my mom and asked if I could see a psychiatrist to help me. She insisted that I wasn't depressed and was just trying to get attention (which was absurd because I was the only child left in the house and I got tons of attention from my parents). At the time, I was taking online mental health quizzes to determine if I was depressed (I didn't know anything about depression and I didn't know if my feelings were normal), and she believed that I only thought I was depressed because the internet told me I was. She did take me to a counselor, and she told this to the counselor before we even started a session. Ultimately, I was just too uncomfortable talking to the counselor and pretended I felt fine again so I could stop going. My mom did end up taking me more seriously a year later when my dad and she found out I was cutting myself (sorry if that's TMI). Except at that point, I felt like she was just angry with me for doing it, and once again, she later ended up saying that I just did it for attention. Ultimately, my own experiences with talking about my mental health have caused me disappointment and more pain, which in turn led me to stop talking about it. I am somewhat ok with talking to some people about my anxiety, but I find that most people are clueless when it comes to social anxiety. My depression has mostly faded in the past 5 years, so I don't really have to worry about talking about it, but I don't think I ever could have a conversation with anyone about it because they just don't get it and are not supportive at all.

Thanks for reminding us of this. We ARE supposed to be scientists, and you're right, I don't think very many people here actually know for sure how adcomms view LORs without rights waived (myself included). Those who do probably only know how their own school handles it. We also shouldn't be making statements like "It worked for me, therefore it works for everybody" because as scientists we all know that anecdotal evidence isn't very useful on its own.

Something else to vent about: People occasionally post something really bone-headed. Someone else will post a response that challenges the point of view and is overall quite logical and intelligent about it. The OP then down votes the post because they're POed about someone having a different opinion.