c.v.
I have a new job. Unfortunately, it's not replacing, but is only adding to the other jobs I already had.
My main responsibility is to myself: I need to be working on my project so that I can actually write my thesis and graduate. Fortunately I have that fellowship, so theoretically, I shouldn't have any other major demands on my time. But in the interests of being a well paid graduate student (to the extent that such a thing exists), I'm also working 25% time for my advisor. Ostensibly, my research aligns enough with the grant that's paying me that I shouldn't have to do extra work for those 2 hours a day (or however it falls out). Of course, that's not what usually happens. I had to plan the October campaign of fieldwork, and of course, participate in it, which resulted in me working far more than 25% time on that project, and hardly at all on my own project. After that, things sort of settled down, and I mainly performed an oversight function, sitting in on meetings and making wisecracks to make them more interesting. But now the deadline for the report is nigh. I worked full-time on it last week, doing a preliminary application of CART modeling to the data and writing it up for the "Future directions" section of the report. Yar. Anyone else would have done a much more cursory job than I did, but that's just not possible for me... And I also have the not-coveted-at-all position of "printer supply inventorist" in my lab, due to the fiasco we went through trying to prepare the report in June. (A fiasco which was not at all my fault, but still caused me to suffer a good deal.) This is a pretty minor duty, but a little annoying, and extremely thankless.
I'm also having an affair right now. A research affair. My research is my old, stodgy husband, and just no comparison at all to Hurricane Katrina. My advisor is teaching a class this quarter to analyze hyperspectral data of the Gulf Coast to identify areas affected by oil contamination from the hurricane. I was kind of forced to take the class, which I was really not thrilled about initially. (And I was especially not thrilled about the havoc it caused with my class registration this quarter, but we won't even go into that here.) Strangely, I've really thrown myself into this analysis, and have really led the class in terms of effort invested. In the beginning of the quarter, before we'd received the imagery, I wrote a short review about remote sensing of oil pollution. Since I can't do anything half-assed, it was very comprehensive and took me an entire week. (We were supposed to be working in groups, but nobody wanted to do the literature review with me. Blar. Oh well. I like doing lit reviews, and prefer not to work with people, so I guess it worked out well.) My strategy was that if I worked really hard on the review, I wouldn't have to do anything else for a while =D. But then we got the imagery, and I devoted a lot of time to doing a red-edge analysis of it. (Although, this is probably to my benefit since I may want to do this kind of analysis myself sometime.) I volunteered for this task since it's something I'm interested in, but had no previous experience doing. Plus, based on my lit review, it seemed the most likely to have any interesting results. After that I've kind of been chilling since I need auxillary data that some of the other groups are preparing, and all of the images have to be co-registered to each other before any of that data will actually be useful. I'm categorically refusing to do any registration, which I think I'm entirely justified in doing.
So yeah. With all of this Katrina stuff, in the rare moments when I've actually had time to work on my project, I haven't been doing it =P.
And now my new job. My advisor considers me to be one of, if not the, best writers in my lab, which means that I'm occasionally asked to proofread things for her. I don't usually mind. Editing a paper can be a nice 1/2 to 1 day mini-affair. But sometimes my advisor volunteers me out to other faculty members (my schedule permitting, of course). The worst was last year. I had to review a grant proposal by a hydrologist who is a notoriously bad writer. And did it ever live up to expectations. I actually only had to review a 2 page section of it, which took over 4 hours. A few weeks ago, my advisor referred an atmospheric scientist to me. I had time since I was forced to stay home one day that week (Lawyer Day). The atmospheric scientist was so impressed by my efficiency (and I suppose my revisions too, though I've heard no mention of that), that she's decided to make me a staff member of hers with the sole responsibility of reviewing all of her manuscripts. At least this means another income source for me, but since it is paid and since it has nothing to do with my research, ethically I shouldn't work on it during "business" hours. Which leaves only evenings and weekends. Bah. I was really enjoying not doing any work in the evenings or on weekends! But how much work can it really be? How many papers can she really write? So far I'd say she's pretty prolific about it... It hasn't even been 3 weeks since the initial request, and so far I've had to edit one journal article, a 2 page report, and now I have another article to do tomorrow!
And I was so hoping to do fun reading and catch up on my Netflix movies!
My main responsibility is to myself: I need to be working on my project so that I can actually write my thesis and graduate. Fortunately I have that fellowship, so theoretically, I shouldn't have any other major demands on my time. But in the interests of being a well paid graduate student (to the extent that such a thing exists), I'm also working 25% time for my advisor. Ostensibly, my research aligns enough with the grant that's paying me that I shouldn't have to do extra work for those 2 hours a day (or however it falls out). Of course, that's not what usually happens. I had to plan the October campaign of fieldwork, and of course, participate in it, which resulted in me working far more than 25% time on that project, and hardly at all on my own project. After that, things sort of settled down, and I mainly performed an oversight function, sitting in on meetings and making wisecracks to make them more interesting. But now the deadline for the report is nigh. I worked full-time on it last week, doing a preliminary application of CART modeling to the data and writing it up for the "Future directions" section of the report. Yar. Anyone else would have done a much more cursory job than I did, but that's just not possible for me... And I also have the not-coveted-at-all position of "printer supply inventorist" in my lab, due to the fiasco we went through trying to prepare the report in June. (A fiasco which was not at all my fault, but still caused me to suffer a good deal.) This is a pretty minor duty, but a little annoying, and extremely thankless.
I'm also having an affair right now. A research affair. My research is my old, stodgy husband, and just no comparison at all to Hurricane Katrina. My advisor is teaching a class this quarter to analyze hyperspectral data of the Gulf Coast to identify areas affected by oil contamination from the hurricane. I was kind of forced to take the class, which I was really not thrilled about initially. (And I was especially not thrilled about the havoc it caused with my class registration this quarter, but we won't even go into that here.) Strangely, I've really thrown myself into this analysis, and have really led the class in terms of effort invested. In the beginning of the quarter, before we'd received the imagery, I wrote a short review about remote sensing of oil pollution. Since I can't do anything half-assed, it was very comprehensive and took me an entire week. (We were supposed to be working in groups, but nobody wanted to do the literature review with me. Blar. Oh well. I like doing lit reviews, and prefer not to work with people, so I guess it worked out well.) My strategy was that if I worked really hard on the review, I wouldn't have to do anything else for a while =D. But then we got the imagery, and I devoted a lot of time to doing a red-edge analysis of it. (Although, this is probably to my benefit since I may want to do this kind of analysis myself sometime.) I volunteered for this task since it's something I'm interested in, but had no previous experience doing. Plus, based on my lit review, it seemed the most likely to have any interesting results. After that I've kind of been chilling since I need auxillary data that some of the other groups are preparing, and all of the images have to be co-registered to each other before any of that data will actually be useful. I'm categorically refusing to do any registration, which I think I'm entirely justified in doing.
So yeah. With all of this Katrina stuff, in the rare moments when I've actually had time to work on my project, I haven't been doing it =P.
And now my new job. My advisor considers me to be one of, if not the, best writers in my lab, which means that I'm occasionally asked to proofread things for her. I don't usually mind. Editing a paper can be a nice 1/2 to 1 day mini-affair. But sometimes my advisor volunteers me out to other faculty members (my schedule permitting, of course). The worst was last year. I had to review a grant proposal by a hydrologist who is a notoriously bad writer. And did it ever live up to expectations. I actually only had to review a 2 page section of it, which took over 4 hours. A few weeks ago, my advisor referred an atmospheric scientist to me. I had time since I was forced to stay home one day that week (Lawyer Day). The atmospheric scientist was so impressed by my efficiency (and I suppose my revisions too, though I've heard no mention of that), that she's decided to make me a staff member of hers with the sole responsibility of reviewing all of her manuscripts. At least this means another income source for me, but since it is paid and since it has nothing to do with my research, ethically I shouldn't work on it during "business" hours. Which leaves only evenings and weekends. Bah. I was really enjoying not doing any work in the evenings or on weekends! But how much work can it really be? How many papers can she really write? So far I'd say she's pretty prolific about it... It hasn't even been 3 weeks since the initial request, and so far I've had to edit one journal article, a 2 page report, and now I have another article to do tomorrow!
And I was so hoping to do fun reading and catch up on my Netflix movies!
posted by Meg at
4:14 PM
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