Grad School Blues

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Sometimes graduate school feels like diving into a lake on an early summer morning.  You know the cold will be shocking, but you feel confident that you’ll adjust.  You can’t quite see below the surface of the water, but you’re excited to submerge your head and open your eyes.  You swim out away from the shore.  It’s challenging.  And thrilling.  You’re testing yourself, and your body is responding. It’s downright joyful.

Sometimes, it’s like that dream you have just as you’re drifting off to sleep, where you feel like you’re falling.  You’re stomach and your heart are up in your throat.  You realize, on some level, that if you had the presence of mind to check, you’d probably actually be wearing a parachute.  But you can’t check, so you don’t.  And, in all likelihood, you’ll wake up with a gasp in your own bed, finding you aren’t falling at all, though you’ll still feel it in the pit of your stomach.  But you’ll go back to sleep, and when you wake up, you’ll probably think “Hey, I think I’d like a swim.”

********* Continue reading “Grad School Blues”

Graduated AF: Summer Edition

I really don’t need to tell y’all how easy it is to sink down into the murky swamp of grad school. How many times have you sighed and resigned yourself with that well worn “Well, I’ll get to [enter cool/useful shit here] after [enter giant pile of stress and obligations]”? If I had a puppy for every statement I made over the past two years that ended in “…after quals are done.” then I’d give up blogging/grad school and be a full time puppy snuggler (I’m really good at hypotheticals). I acknowledge that Summertime as an academic can entail a wide variety of busyness levels, but for many of us it’s time to catch up and take control of our lives and routines. If nothing else, there are less meetings to be had, which makes a huge difference.

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Stick with us, we’ll be  your guides!

Rachel and I have compiled a (non-exhaustive) list of #AcademicSummer To-Do items that will help you make the most of your life while rocking out your field season, internship, research, etc. Continue reading “Graduated AF: Summer Edition”

The Science Grind

Editor’s Note:  Today, we are thrilled to bring you a guest post by my very own sister, Sara Wigginton!  We look super similar, we also both study invasive plants, and her current lab studies an invasive wetland plant.  I know, it’s weird.  Regardless, she is a smart, funny ecologist, and Meridith and I are excited to share her words with you.

One of my favorite things about blogging is the ability to share the reality of my day to day life with you all.  Sara’s piece really gets to the heart of what the day-to-day as an ecologist can feel like.  Tell us your stories of the Science Grind in the comments section!

“Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation”- Robert H. Schuller (A televangelist who said an insightful thing at least once.)

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Collecting invasive Phragmites in China

 

Some days I might be knee deep in a marsh, breathing in deeply the weird smell I’ve come to love, thanking my favorite deity (Mother Nature) that I don’t have a desk job.

 

Other days, I might be extracting DNA to sequence and haplotype, thinking it is so cool that I know how to do something called “haplotyping.” Continue reading “The Science Grind”