“Now that you’re less busy…”
“What are you up to these days?”
“Are you working at all right now?”
I didn’t properly update everyone on what I had been doing after I left the lab, and as a result a lot of people assumed I was not doing anything at all. Some people assumed that the fact that I wasn’t doing a postdoc meant that I was unemployed, seeing as how it’s the “only way”. Others thought I had indeed gone on to full-time freelance writing and mistook that for having lots of free time, and still others believed that whatever I was doing now could never fill up my schedule as much as whatever I was doing last year.
Hmph. Me, do nothing? Me? I haven’t done “nothing” since the summer of 1992. I always find things to fill my days.
Here’s my schedule for the previous week, from March 29th to April 4th. And the next person who assumes I am doing “nothing” will be sent here.
SUNDAY:
morning (late) – get up, check e-mail. Jenny wanted a photo of the cover of a book I reviewed for LabLit. I sent her one, and the review went live later that day.
afternoon – did laundry, cleaned litterbox the extreme way (in the bath tub) and cleaned the entire bath tub and rest of the bathroom afterwards. Did some grocery shopping. My life is glamorous and exciting. I also sent out another pitch for an article idea that I’ve been schlepping around. The first place I sent it liked the idea, but didn’t have funds anymore for that category article.
evening – Watched The Amazing Race. My favourite team (ever) got eliminated .
Made some more slides for my talk later this week, and finished the outline for that.
Sent a terribly belated mass e-mail to friends in Holland (and Dutch friends abroad) to let them know what I’m doing these days. I recently found out that most people don’t know. That realization was, in fact, also the inspiration to document my week.
MONDAY:
morning – Checked e-mail. Someone found broken links in the website I made for work, so I set about fixing those. E-mailed some lecturers to ask if I could come to their lectures with the video camera, especially if there were guest speakers or other interesting events still going on in these last weeks of class. The schedules keep changing, and the camera keeps being in use, and I need to make a new schedule for this.
afternoon – During lunch I worked briefly a bit on a piece I’m writing about biochemical techniques. Spent the rest of the afternoon e-mailing people and talking to people to figure out a schedule for where to go when with which camera this week. The schedule is done, and mildly insane. I also made some requested changes on the website .
Some time during the afternoon, my phone beeped sadly (in a little minor key riff) because it was out of batteries, which reminded me that the same thing happened with the video camera last week, and I really need to learn to charge things. Near the end of the afternoon I got an e-mail that I need to submit my slides for the conference. Guess what I’ll be doing tonight?
evening and night – Printed out sheet music I should have been playing, but had no time for. Started working on slides at 9 PM, thinking it would easily be done before 11, but somehow it took until 2 AM. At least it’s done.
TUESDAY:
morning – Already? I slept less than 5 hours. Put video camera in charger when I got at work. Downloaded some photos I took last week, from the other camera. Visited a class on Global Hunger with both the video camera and photo camera. They did an interactive game with guest speakers from World Vision
Recharged the camera.
Updated an outdated course page on the website.
afternoon – used my lunch break to drop off my bound thesis at my old department. Ran into the graduate coordinator, and updated both him and the secretary on what I’m doing these days, and what I hope to be doing next year.
Took photos of student presentations at a fourth year global health course.
Rushed across campus to take some photos of the genetics lecture in convocation hall.
Grabbed a tea on the way back.
Read e-mail: received maps and directions for tomorrow’s dinner, got hopeful semi-confirmation on a potential location for SciBarCamp 2009, and a friend just got a tenure track position at Princeton. \o/
Updated the website with a link to a news article about this year’s Gairdner winners.
Downloaded newest photos to computer and sorted them in folders by course.
evening – Had dinner while watching yesterday’s episode of How I Met Your Mother . Almost entirely forgot to go to orchestra , but remembered at the very last minute. Printed out slides to look at on the subway. Two-and-a-half hours of Wagner, Beethoven, and Mozart later, I was back home at 10:30. Packed. Amused the cat with the laser pointer for a while. Packed laser pointer. Went over slides. Converted to safe pdf format and saved to USB. Packed USB key. Did the dishes (only time this week). Bed at 1:00.
WEDNESDAY:
morning – woke up at 6, 6:30, 7, 7:15, and every 5 minutes after that until I finally got up. Finished packing. Gave the cat enough food for two days. Brought luggage to work, in the rain. Evaluated student presentations about chlamydia from three of my twelve students. The other nine are on Friday. Then visited a poster presentation about the effect of stress on performance. Did not make it to science fiction class, but will visit them next week. Showed coworker how to work the camera so she can use it this afternoon when I’m away.
afternoon – Ate lunch on subway to airport. The bus to the airport was already at the final subway stop when I got there, and by some miracle the lines at the airport were all so short that I made it through check-in, customs, and security within 90 minutes of leaving work! Flight was fine. Could see the Washington monuments while landing at Ronald Reagan National airport. Made it to the hotel by 5:30.
evening – Speakers’ Dinner at the Chart House. It was a seafood restaurant with nothing vegetarian on the menu at all, so I had fish. Met several of the other speakers. After dinner, I walked through charming Old Town Alexandria and then took the metro to Washington to see the Lincoln Memorial and reflecting pool by night. Back at the hotel around midnight.
THURSDAY:
morning – woke up at 6. Initially because I planned to do some more sightseeing before the conference started, but I ended up having breakfast and practicing my talk. Morning sessions were all interesting. Updated some of my slides at the very last minute.
afternoon – I was speaking in the first session after lunch, but as the third speaker. The topic was the implementation of web 2.0 tools in publishing activities. The first two speakers showed what kind of things they used, and my presentation was about the response that some web 2.0 things have had among scientists, and some of the obstacles in adopting those tools. The next session was roundtable discussions, which went by really fast, and the last talk was Moshe Pritsker’s presentation about JOVE .
evening – After the conference, I had less than two hours to do more sightseeing. Walked around the White House. Had dinner at a recommended (by the guide book) restaurant and then went to the airport. My return flight was from Dulles, and that is far. When I finally got there, I saw that the previous flight to Toronto was delayed, and at any normal airport I would easily have been able to make that flight on standby (there was more than an hour until the new departure time) but for some reason they made me stand in a completely unnecessary 50-minute line-up (really! The story is as long as the queue so I won’t tell it here.) I missed the earlier flight, but was on time for my actual flight, especially since it was also delayed. I was home by 1:30 AM or so.
FRIDAY:
morning – No time for breakfast. Evaluated my remaining 9 students’ chlamydia presentations.
afternoon – Bought a bagel, but had no time to eat it, because I had to take video at three classes (simultaneously). After that, I finally had time to eat for the first time since Washington and to check my e-mail. Scheduled meeting with bioinformatics guy for Monday evening, to discuss progress on that project. RSVPed for Hypothesis meeting next Wednesday evening. Downloaded some photos I took on Wednesday. There were additional photos on the camera from a class that my coworker visited while I was on my way to the airport. Uploaded some photos to the website. Realized I resized them wrong. Did it again just as the clock stroke 5PM.
evening – crashed. Napped for a few hours, then dinner. Caught up (and goofed off) online for an hour and a half. RSVPed for orchestra rehearsal for next Tuesday. By now my next week is planned full as well. Made tea and watched this week’s LOST (their website is so much better than the show itself has been lately!). Made a list of things I should have been doing instead.
SATURDAY:
morning – up at six. Ate quick breakfast, then on my way to the Scarborough campus – a 90 minute trip on various modes of public transportation – to judge the regional science fair . Gathered in room with second breakfast and several other science fair judges. Ran into Mubdi of Science Rendezvous and got location for SciBarCamp confirmed for at least the majority of the event! Judged some science fair projects, then had lunch.
afternoon – judged more projects. Took the trip back home. Had another meal at 3 PM (second lunch? early dinner?) and then slept until 6 PM.
evening – Went to see my old orchestra perform their Spring concert, and then hung out with friends until about 1 AM.
Last updated:
Sunday, 05 Apr
2009 - 20:14 UTC
Some people don’t know how to do nothing. I sympathize. If ever you get the opportunity, go be a hermit in the mountains for a month. Does one a world of good.
It looks like it was a great conference. May you all survive and even prosper. Yay for posting on SlideShare!
I think your blog was one of the ones in the background of one of the blog slides. I only used one NN blog (because they all look the same in thumbnail) and I’m pretty sure it was yours.
Ack.
I feel your pain Eva. It just peeves me so much when people assume that my life is so much less stressful because I am still in school. I am sure you must have heard this while you were in school too. What they don’t realize is that I work on the evening and the weekends, I am constantly reading and preparing for presentations, and I am struggling with the financials (not that I am complaining, being in academia these days provides much more job security the many other careers). I just wish I could switch places with them for one day so they could see what my life is really like.
Heehee. When I went round to take a screenshot, lots of people had random non-sciency posts up on top, and I think yours was the most interesting. But in the end it’s practically invisible, of course, so it wouldn’t even have mattered what I took a screenshot of!
That response was to Heather, obviously.
Caryn, I know! I always had to explain to people why I really had to go in for an hour on Sunday, and that I could not just “leave it to Monday”, and that reading papers was not considered part of what I did during the day but meant for evenings.
Busy? Busy? Faugh. You wait until you have kids. :)
(nods sagely)
Yah. Well, that would be more “instead of” things I do now. Not “in addition to”. From what I’ve gathered about the Car Of Human Children, it appears you can’t just leave them with an extra bowl of food and water for two days, so I simply wouldn’t have been able to go to the conference, for example. Or orchestra rehearsal. That would have opened up about 30% of the week right there.
(P.S. Car = Care)
Not having my own wee nippers yet, but having babysat our nephew overnight, I can also suggest that you get more free time from being kept awake by snoring little blighters (let’s say an extra 10%).
This is, of course, offset by the 2×10 9 % of extra time that will be spent doing stuff that having kids forces you to do.
Caryn and Eva, you really hit the nail on the head!
" I always had to explain to people why I really had to go in for an hour on Sunday, and that I could not just “leave it to Monday”…"
Its taken me 4+ years to explain the above statement to my fiance and family!
It also seems that unless you are working a 9-5 shift at a desk, you don’t have a “real job”
Hmph!
Eva, thanks for the detailed schedule. And thanks for the slideshow (where I might have a few questions later on). Even without children, I think that both my wife and I work more than we did as post-docs or students. But it helps that a) we really like the stuff we do, b) we earn good money for it and c) we both have the same workload. For us it is probably completely normal to work on the slides for a presentation the next day until 1 AM or re-submit a paper at 2 AM (just two examples from the last few weeks), but it just wouldn’t work if your husband/wife/significant other would have a 9-5 job.
Eva, you have no idea how good it is to know that you watch TV once in a while… of course, you should probably rather sleep or eat in that time, from the sound of it.
I eat while I watch TV!
Martin, my main time commitment right now actually is a 9-5 job, but because everything else I do is extra, I still have to work all night. I used vacation days to be able to go to the conference, and couldn’t make my slides during work hours, because it wasn’t work-related. Still, I ended up using them as affiliation, because it looks better to have a university affiliation than to give a talk as “self-employed”.
Oh, and re: slideshow. I don’t think it works at all without me talking about it (I say a lot that isn’t on the slides, or I show something that I might not agree with and mention that) so I think it’s kind of weird that 40 people even looked at it online. It’s now featured on the front page!
I seriously need help: tonight, at a party, my friend’s neighbour asked me what I did. I tried to explain. It took really long. I listed everything I was working on. I made a website, I organize info, I teach, I write, I talk about science, etc.
Thirty minutes later, he said “Yes, but you’re unemployed…” in reference to something else. HOW DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING? I work during the day, on payroll, 40 hours a week. This is what people call a “fulltime job”. ON TOP OF THAT I do other things, some of which I also get paid for. I work MORE than full-time, and I give off the vibe of someone who is unemployed…
Maybe it simply means that you don’t seem like someone who works so much – that you manage to come across as relaxed and loving life? I bet a lot of people think this is only possible for someone who doesn’t work…?
Ha, NO, I doubt that’s it… I arrived late and in a hurry, and told the host I had to leave in time because I had a meeting today (Easter) and a bunch of deadlines.
It’s just that I get a little panicky when someone asks me what I do, because I can’t give a simple answer. I can’t say “I’m a scientist” or “I work in a lab” or even “I work at…” because I’m on a contract job and only temporarily work there. So I struggle and get all apologetic and start with “Well…. I’m kind of in transition at the moment….”
I told people all along that I would use the year after my defense to figure out what I want to do, and people also took THAT to mean I wouldn’t work, but of course I work! Just nothing that I will still be working on next year. And currently I’m starting to fear that my plan for the second half of 2009 is not going to work out due to a certain position maybe not even existing this year, which means I might actually BE unemployed starting July. Well, the 9-5 part at least. I guess I could move my evening jobs up to day time and actually take a night off….
Whatever happens, GOOD LUCK!!!!
Hi Eva!
Interesting to find you back on the internet! I hope you’re doing well, in any case I notice you’re still as busy as at the VU… Trying to set a record myself as the person to be a PhD-student for the longest amount of time and still surviving. May not make it though since for some reason I tend to get some writing done these days, despite occasional stints in science communication and getting drawn into producing copy for several vague publications…
Eric-Wubbo (if you’re curious, I’ve got a kind of science blog too http://www.labnotitiesvdvl.blogspot.com/, though without all those great pictures. I should really get a digital camera, am a bit of a technophobe. I’m used to inventing new technology, using it is for different people…)
Hey, Eric-Wubbo! Wat leuk =)
Good to hear you’re also doing some science writing and -blogging!