#pdont

[the-green-bucks-fire-hydrants]

Canada Valve Century. May 2021 #thegreenbuck #firehydrant #fireplug #hydrant #firehydrantsofinstagram #firehydrantsofcanada #firehydrantsoftheworld #pdon #pdont #portdover #ontario #canada🇨🇦 (at Port Dover, Ontario) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPOmpIfLwhz/?utm_medium=tumblr

[bisexual-bifurcations]

Syracuse Trip

Gonna expand a bit since it left me on such a high!

So going in, I was really nervous for two main reasons:

I wasn’t 100% sure what the department wanted me to talk about (mental health but like suggestions? my mental health etc?) and for some reason didn’t ask for clarification

I asked to meet with the soft matter people. Now I am not technically in soft matter. My group does cardiac dynamics so there are biophysics stuff but there is also nonlinear dynamics. My work has been going into more active matter route of things which is like a subset of soft matter and so I have been learning a lot about soft matter. My husband also found his way into soft matter kind of accidentally so I also hear through him. I think I want to continue in this direction but I am making slow progress because of mental health, because my advisor is not great at advising, and because he has no experience in the area of the projects he has given me.

So basically I would be having many back to back meetings either about mental health or about soft matter and my impostor syndrome was through the fucking roof.

However, it all turned out very well! I was able to keep up in conversations about the research people talked to me about, even some big names in the field who gave me suggestions about work which were really helpful! (I will admit I was happy when I was able to even correct one of the graduate students when he said something wrong. This is not me trying to show off, but that i feel like I truly know so little and am so stupid that I have to hang on to these little things that may seem so small like oh wow you know that was a +½ and -½ defect and the guy in the field did not! Wow you were able to to keep up the conversation and understand the work which is such a small thing, but to me it was like a little voice in my head saying “see you *do* know something!”

I didn’t realize how many first and second connections I had in the soft matter group. There was a grad student who was in my SPS chapter in ugrad who graduated a year or two before I did, there was a post doc who was a grad student here that started my year and was in my husband’s research group, there was a professor who chaired CUWIP the year I did so we had briefly met for that, and there were students who heard of me either through @my-gravity-relativity-world or actually through a friend of my husband’s from high school. so like A LOT of people there knew me some how which was SO WEIRD and also really really cool! And they wanted to talk to me!  (I know this is like well duh Andrea they invited you but, you know, depression.) I never felt like that before. 

So anyway, I learned a lot of cool physics and met some great people. My talk went okay. Maybe about 20 or so graduate students showed up? I mean I could have organized it better but at first I was thinking it would be more of a conversation but then I suddenly realized it was more formal and like quickly pulled up old slides which I edited. I kinda wish I spent more time organizing my talk and making it tailored to this, but I think I didn’t really know what to expect. We had a Q&A panel after where someone from Health Promotions basically echoed what I said and a grad student who made like a mental health app also talked a bit. Seems like the Syracuse Counseling Center has similar problems to the GT one (students not being seen for weeks etc) so I suggested they speak with their Dean of Students. I also noticed the grad advisor taking notes, so that means hopefully I said moderately useful things? Also I was told by post do that she was happy when she saw that I was speaking because see wanted to talk with me about their Women in Physics group (which she started with @my-gravity-relativity-world and that’s so cool!!!) When I left, one of the grad students gave me a mug that says Syracuse Soft Matter with a cool logo which was really nice! Then before I left for the airport, the grad advisor said they are really open to couples in their department (is that a hint???) So yeah basically I feel like I learned so much in 24 hours, was so welcomed, got and gave advice, met cool people, and felt like I had some sort of understanding of physics! Overall, very positive. Plus it was cold, which I love, and I got to stay in a really nice hotel room. Can more departments invite me to speak?

[the-green-bucks-fire-hydrants]

Canada Valve Century. May 2021 #thegreenbuck #canadavalve #century #firehydrant #fireplug #hydrant #firehydrantsofinstagram #firehydrantsofcanada #firehydrantsoftheworld #pdont #pdon #portdover #ontario #canada🇨🇦 (at Port Dover, Ontario) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPOmPm8rfi0/?utm_medium=tumblr

[bisexual-bifurcations]

I am trying to make specific connections now with various professors in hope of future post doc positions in the next year or so and this is scary. Got a meeting with a prof at UChicago before oSTEM and some profs at Syracuse Tues and Thurs next week. And hoping to meet with profs in LA during March Meeting.

Scary scary adult things