Monday, October 16, 2017

"The Gap"

This whole summer I kept thinking back to where I was and what I was doing a year ago.  At this time last year I had recently come back from India, moved to Eugene, and started at UO.  I've been in Eugene for slightly over a year now, and it's only now feeling like the transition period that began last summer is finally wrapping up. 

One thing I found appealing about UO's chemistry program was that I would get to do a 10-week rotation in each of three research groups before deciding on one.  I'm grateful to have gone through that process and to have gotten exposure to multiple projects, but I was also extremely glad to settle down in one lab at the end of the school year.  (If you're curious, check out the Jasti group and our research here!)  Surprisingly, despite returning to a lab where I had already done a rotation, this summer felt almost like a fourth rotation.  I'm working on a different project than I was during my rotation in the Jasti lab, so in some ways I had to start from scratch. 

I've learned a lot in the past year, there's no doubt about it.  I started at UO feeling like my chemistry knowledge was really rusty after being out of school a few years (and honestly, even while I was in school the scope of chemistry I was exposed to was pretty narrow).  Last fall I was most intimidated by the prospect of being a teaching assistant for undergraduate lab sections, worried I wouldn't know the answer to something, but I can say now that teaching is in fact one of my less stressful responsibilities! 

As I take on my research project more fully and explore possible directions for it, I'm now in the stage where creativity is required just as much as knowing the answers.  It's exciting and scary!  I love that so much of what artists and other creative people express about their process feels so relevant to my own work in science.  Take Ira Glass: "It's hard to make something that's interesting.  It's really, really hard.  It's like a law of nature... that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre... so what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will."  It's been wonderful this year to start having ideas of experiments to try or molecules to make.  That never could have happened before, and it's a lot of fun.  But that's me right now, trying to put in the effort to have an idea (and to do the work) that's maybe, maybe a little better than mediocre. 

If you want more Ira Glass talking creativity, and who doesn't, watch this: The Gap

The point is, science may not be "creative work," but let me tell you, SCIENCE IS CREATIVE AND IT IS WORK!

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Fragile Life Here --

I put these on my thoughts-to-come-back-to board months and months ago, just because I liked them.  They feel relevant now.  I highly recommend reading the full poems.



...
Fragile Life Here --
Which is what I say to strangers

When my aura gets dim
and I need an extra layer

of protection to steady me
through the day's unraveling reels

of atrocities.  I'll point
to my chest and remember

how joy survives,
humming through the cracks

of accidental grace,
making a home out of nothing.

Kendra Decolo
From "Sometimes God's Work is Sloppy but it's Always on Time"



Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can't
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can't do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on a beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thing about God/ or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/ all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be
alone because I can't do what I want with my own
body and
who in the hell set things up
like this
...
...
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
My name is my own my own my own

June Jordan
From "Poem about My Rights"