Hey, Jason!

It isn't really expertise, either.

Excuse My Absence From The Blogosphere . . .

. . . while I try to make something happen that I can't talk about yet.

This Atheist Thinks That Accommodationism Hurts Magical Thinkers Like The One I Was, Part 1

Science bloggers DuWayne Brayton and Chris Mooney have recently written on the utility of the “New Atheism” for encouraging magical thinkers to abandon magical thinking. Specifically, they each address to some extent the issue of whether or not atheists should go on the offensive with everything we’ve got. Should we publicly deride the idea of supernatural authorities whose whims we must obey, or should we respect the idea that we can reconcile theism and science with one another? Should we exclusively use civil language to discuss religious ideas? Should we treat Christian (and Jewish, Muslim Buddhist and other mainline) ideologies with the same scorn with which most atheists and theists alike unhesitatingly treat minority superstitions (e.g., adult belief in garden fairies)?

DuWayne suggested to me that I post my response to his argument on my own blog. Here it is. This will constitute the beginning of my discussion of my opposition to "accommodationism".
Read more. . .

DuWayne closes his argument with his assertion that his personal concern is for people with whom he can identify:

The only reason that I spent twenty years in an abusive, painful and sometimes debilitating relationship with Faith, is because I was constantly running into people who told me that it is possible to make the very reconciliations that you are so adamantly defending. Were it not for Christians who accept homosexuality, were it not for Christians who accept evolution, were it not for Christians who are sex-positive, were it not for Christians who perform incredible feats of mental gymnastics and convinced me I could do the same, I would have become an atheist a very long time ago. I would have been saved the pain, the doubts - the trauma, of fighting so desperately to make the absolutely incoherent, fit together coherently.

And were it not for the uncivil, ill-mannered "new atheists" you disagree with, I would probably still be suffering that relationship today...

This was my response:

I think this is key. My experience has been very different than yours (no shit!), but I feel similarly about my phasic abandonment of theism and magical thinking for skeptical thinking and atheism. It's harmful to pretend that something so important is real when it's not, and "accommodation" often entails exactly this. Additionally, it's especially harmful to certain groups of people.

My parents were lapsed Protestants when I was growing up. (They returned to churchgoing and active worship after my mother got and recovered from breast cancer. They presently attend a military chapel, where their pastor "proves" the righteousness of the US war in Iraq with items such as this.) They refrained from baptizing or regularly catechizing me or my sister out of some vague desire to "let us choose for ourselves".

However, they wished us to adopt "Christian ideology", and I did. I believed in my conception of a Christian God-- buffered as it was by classic English literature, random KJV (and, later, New American Bible) verses and my own shamed but vigorous imagination-- strongly enough to make every one of my decisions based on what I "felt" that God wanted me to do. And I did this to varying degrees until I was twenty-seven years old.

I refrain from "unleashing the asshole" with respect to religion in the sciblogosphere solely because I know what it's like to always be the minority; one of my favorite scibloggers, who has been kind to me both in and out of the blogosphere, is a theist among a sea of non-believers. I said this once and got praised for my "open mindedness". It's not "open mindedness", though. It's a personal decision to modify my behavior that does not constitute any sort of argument against "New Atheism". Bullshit is bullshit. Why pussyfoot around it?

I can attribute all of my career and academic decisions from my eighteenth to my twenty-seventh year to magical thinking. I have to live the rest of my life knowing that I never took charge of my life until I was thirty as a result. This kind of experience isn't a big deal to a lot of people. However, I don't have the personality type to deal with this knowledge without constantly and ferociously struggling with self-loathing-- namely in the form of a conviction that I will never do anything special with my life, and that I'll be relegated to the mediocrity that I can't, can't, cannot stand. My propensity for magical thinking has only made my life less enjoyable.

In practice, there is no reconciliation of theism with science. Science is not merely a methodology but an ontology as well, and there is far more evidence that all phenomena can be explained in terms of matter and energy than there is in favor of dualism. Just because scientists can explain no more than the tip of the iceberg at present doesn't automatically mean that there are mysteries that are inexplicable. I have no idea why it makes sense to acknowledge this in the laboratory only to completely abandon your awareness of it in every other type of problem solving you must undertake in the world.

I know there are lots of privileged kids who grew up discussing existentialism around the dinner table with moms who have PhDs in psych from Harvard and dads with JDs from Yale Law School, and who thus wound up more intellectually assertive and productive despite all the woo they may have been subjected to. But I am interested helping kids like the one I was and adults like the one I am. New Atheism has done me a world of good; neither theism or accomodationism has.

More later.

Bite Me, Jukebox

Oh, for fuck's sake.  This is a TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIVE meme-tag post!  (Yes, beware!  TOTALLY UNSUBSTANTIVE!  If you are looking for Method and Theory, stand back!)  Properly light as bubbles, yet halfway depressing nonetheless!  Way to go, Juniper!  Way to go!

Look!  Thankfully, Hermitage tagged me (a billionteen days ago in February) with one music meme, and Leigh with another.  Yay!  I could use a little blogorific musical levity. 

I have shirked blogging.  Again.  I like blogging, but, for me, it remains an unwieldly enterprise.  Unpleasant ruminations over "identity politics" combined with academic developments I can't yet publicly discuss and my growing desire to blog under my real name have scared me into blogging procrastination.  This one weird dude I'm rather fond of has been provokingly tenderly counseling me to stay the fuckety-fuck on get back on the horse.  This is what I think I am doing now.
Read more. . .     



Oh, and, meanwhile, I've done this nonsense to my hair:



That's right.  I cut off my hair.  Specifically, I cut off the chemically straightened parts of my hair.  Because I did chemically straighten my hair.  I'd been doing it since 2005. 

Pictured above is my unadulterated, ringletted hair.  My real hair isn't nappy-- Mom's Korean genes won most of the turf here--so it straightens well; people think that it's growing in straight and they exclaim, "Oh, honey!  You're so lucky you didn't get the black part!"  Or some variation thereof.  That's supposed to be a compliment.  It represents the kind of unsolicited and grotesquely backhanded compliment that I've frequently received from impertinent strangers-- most of whom were white-- all of my life, and it ranks up there with, "Gosh, but you're so smart!  That's got to be your mother-- Asians are really smart, you know."  Yeah.  'Cause Lt. Col. Shoemaker is some kind of dumb ass.  Right.  That's how he got to be a decorated senior officer in the first place.

Last week, after I retreated to the park across the street from my parents' house to talk to DuWayne on my cell?  For privacy?  And I got interrupted by some young white male cop who didn't believe that I lived in my largely white, relatively upscale suburban neighborhood, and who yelled at me like a criminal and made me parrot, "Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.  I'm sorry, sir," before leaving me alone?  I woke up the next morning and sliced off my straightened locks where they ended and the grow-out began.  Because what the fuck was the point?

But.  No.  I refuse to blog about this now.  I will get angry and write something unnuanced and unfair, and I do not have the heart to look at either others or myself through those lenses right now.

Recourse to humor!  The last time I cut my hair this short, I was an ugly duckling in college.  It took a year and a half to grow back past my shoulders.  Now I feel ugly.  I am extremely vain, and feeling ugly makes me sulky.  It's possible that I'll sulk over it through 2010.  In a wide world of ghastly problems, I am just that mature.  I'll try to be covert about it, though.  I cross my heart.  I pinky swear.

Yeah.  Like I said.  I welcomed these tags, 'cause I could use a little joshin' around.

Here were the rules for Hermitage's tag (which the rest of you did a billionteen days ago):

a) Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
b) For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
c) YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS

Well, tonight, I complied all of my favorite playlists into "Hermitage's Meme Tag List", toggled on the "Shuffle" function and acceded.  Good Golly.  Maybe I should've left out "Radio Juniper's Teenhood of Angst".  I even tried answering some of the questions with lyrics instead of song titles for comic effect, and, yet, I still generated a meme mostly as brooding as Jane Eyre:

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?

Well, don’t you please make me real--
Fuck you!
Make me sick--
Fuck you!
Make me real--
Fuck you!

("Rock Star", by Hole.  Blame it on high school.)

2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?

"Endless Summer Nights". 

(It is summer.  And this limbo started feeling endless last summer.)

(Wait, Richard Marx? How did that get in there?  Ahem.)

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?

"You Oughta Know"!

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?

Why do I get cut no slack?

("Jurassitol", by Filter.)

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?

"Since U Been Gone", you mean?  *goofy chortle*

6. WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?

Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back?
Porno Paparazzi Girl, I don’t wanna be a Stupid Girl.

("Stupid Girls", by Pink.  Not bad, iTunes Jukebox!)

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?

And if you want beautiful, pitiful—have me in a picture . . .

("Photograph", by the Verve Pipe.  Jukebox is both sentient and catty, I see.)

8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?

Maybe I’m just too demanding
Maybe I’m just like my father, too bold
Maybe I’m just like my mother—she’s never satisfied . . .

(“When Doves Cry” by Prince, covered by the Be Good Tanyas.  This shuffle result disturbs me greatly.  On multiple levels.)

9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?

Looking out I want to know someone might care
Looking out I want a reason to be there
‘Cause I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you
And I don’t know what I’d do without you

("Nylon Smile", by Portishead)

10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?

"Today".

11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?

"The Man Who Sold The World".

(Um.  Yeah, Jukebox.  Except my best friend's a woman.)

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?

ARRGH!  I SWEAR I REALLY DID PUT THIS SHIT ON SHUFFLE!

Elliott Smith's "Angeles" happens to have been one of my secret "theme songs" for years.  If anything, because this is what my depression feels/felt like:

Someone’s always coming ‘round here, trailing some new kill.
Bet I’ve seen your picture on a hundred dollar bill.
What’s a game of chance to you?
Here’s one with real skill.
So glad to meet you, angeles.

Picking up the ticket shows there’s money to be made.
Go on, lose the gamble, that’s the history of the trade.
Did you add up all the cards left to play to zero?
Sign up with evil, angeles.

Don’t start me trying now
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh
‘Cause I’m all over it, angeles

I can make you satisfied in everything you do.
All your secret wishes right now could be coming true.
Be forever with my poison arms around you—
No one’s gonna fool around with us,
No one’s gonna fool around with us,
I’m so glad to meet you, angeles.

Not to be a downer or anything . . . at least it's a beautiful song . . .

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

With eyes so dilated I become your pupil
You taught me everything about a poison apple
The water is so yellow
I’m a healthy student . . .

("Drain You", by Nirvana.  When I grow up?!  ITUNES FAIL.)

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?

"Falling Man".

(Blonde Redhead.  Whaa?  Though this could be construed in a perfectly positive light.)

15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?

“I Burn”, by the Toadies. 

16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?

Apparently, “Food”, by Nellie McKay.  GROSS.  Answers 15 and 16 are ass-backwards.

17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?

I’ve got Fergie’s “Fergalicious”.   I’m up in the gym all working on my fitness . . .

18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?

“The Long Way Around”.  (Dixie Chicks.  Appropriate:)

Well I fought with a stranger and I met myself
I opened my mouth and I heard myself
It can get pretty lonely when you show yourself
Guess I could’ve made it easier on myself

But I could never follow
No I could never follow

Well, I never seem to do it like anybody else
Maybe someday I’m gonna settle down
If you ever want to find me I can still be found
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around
Taking the long way
Taking the long way around

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?

“When I Come Around”.  (Green Day.)

20. WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?

“Luck”.  (Cesaria Evora.   AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Whatever that is.)

21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?

“Saving My Face”.  (KT Tunstall.  Neither lyrics nor song title will salvage this go-around into coherence.  I think this meme came straight from the desks of starry-eyed middle-schoolers.)

22. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?

“Love Is a Losing Game”, by Amy Winehouse.
 
"Girl All The Bad Guys Want", by Bowling for Soup

Bite me, Jukebox.

Time for cover songs!

I love numerous covers of songs.  It's so hard to choose "bests" from among them.  My favorite "cover" at present is the Be Good Tanyas' rendition of "Lakes of Pontchartrain".

Know what else is good?  Hole's cover of "Gold Dust Woman":

 

Know what else is good?  Flunk's cover of "Blue Monday":

So, so bad, but irresistibly good?  Halifax's punk cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up":

Admittedly silly, but candy sweet?  INOJ's cover of "Time After Time":

Bad, bad, bad?  Victoria Beckham:

Is this last a cover?  No.  However, it is the worst song in my Music Library.  I thought you should know.



I'll be back, guys.  I need breakfast.

Until I Stop Hating Myself

Trust issues. I'll have them.

May Day Resolutions

I didn’t make New Year’s Resolutions for 2009. I wanted to. I didn’t because I knew, deep down, that I wasn’t done feeling sorry for myself. It’s depressing to ceremoniously list the changes that you want to make in your life when you know you will sleep and listen to music and argue with your mother instead of making them.

I toyed with the idea of Birthday Resolutions, but my birthday is also in January.

However, I realized yesterday that it may be quasi-fitting in terms of subversiveness for an atheist to make Resolutions for the Pagan New Year. Besides. I loved dancing around with spring-colored crepe ribbons in a frilly white dress as a child. It made me happy. I could use reminders of cheer. I meant it when I said that I could no longer withstand my current situation. This stasis is untenable.

In unadulterated seriousness? Ultimately, the time just happens to be right. To try yet again to make it official. So, yesterday, I told myself that I'm going to stop caring what you all might think. Of me publicly saying that I will do something and then not doing it and then saying that I really will do it and then not doing it ad nauseum until I do. I have to stop caring what you might think of me, because I have to trust that it's okay to keep falling flat on my face-- so long as I am truly doing my best to get there.

I need all the motivation that I can imbue myself with, too. When you are trying in earnest to act on your genuine ambitions for arguably the first time in your life, it is difficult to know how to begin. I need to keep at the puzzle with fortitude.

Conclusion: Pre-Med Post-Bac Programs vs. Special Master’s Degree Programs for Aspiring Biomedical Research Scientists Atoning for Their Academic Past

If you have emailed me but not yet received a reply, you will receive one after I post this. This is because you are a reader of mine who made a comment I want to address with this post-- either directly or indirectly. I have done much ruminating in the twenty-three days since I last posted.

Those days have been psychologically difficult. I cannot exaggerate my appreciation and thankfulness for all of your support. Your comments and emails have helped to cut short the obscene number of pity parties I’ve been throwing, and they have also kept my sense of humor from completely evaporating.
Read more. . .

Oh, and I’m fine. By the way. I’ve felt genuinely bad. I’ve felt genuinely angry. I’ve felt inarticulate and powerless to write intelligently. I’ve been depressed. As in, episodically. That’s never fun even when I don’t plummet to suicidality—that hasn’t happened for awhile, incidentally—and it always makes me hide. I’ve been cutting my daily Wellbutrin dose in half to save money. I don’t recommend this strategy. I’ve returned to taking two tablets a day.* I’ve been hiding. In many ways, I’m like a teenager embarking on rites of passage, so I have an embarrassingly humorless aversion to . . . nah. Never mind. Let’s just say that I hope have amused Dr. Isis on one of her five-minute coffee breaks. (Somebody has to get a good laugh out of my immaturity. It may as well be a mentor who is kind to me and whom I trust.) Meanwhile, I’ve been installing Greasemonkey so I can privately killfile certain trolls and commenters who lack reading comprehension. These include those who want to dictate how I can discuss my racial identity merely because they’re “tired” of hearing about racial discrimination from someone who isn’t me and whom I don’t even know but is also brown and therefore someone with whom I must share political views as well as the guilt of boring or angering them . It also includes those who make off-topic and unwarranted cracks about careerless losers born in 1980 who live with their parents merely because they were also born in 1980, and they also went to Berkeley, but they managed to excel, and they now have publications, financial independence, and an R1 postdoc in the biomedical sciences, so of course they must be worthy while I am worthless and therefore entitled to hurt the feelings of “people like me” for shits and giggles. (“The wheel goes round and round . . .” I can’t speak for all of us losers, but check back with me in ten years.) I’m not in the mood. I’m not in the mood to read it and then pretend this doesn’t hurt my feelings. It takes too much energy. I need to ignore it and focus. Anyway. I’ve been having an ugly, tense, unhappy time at home. That’s how I’ve been. All of the rambling above: check! But I’m fine.

No sarcasm inflecting that last. I mean that sincerely. The challenges I face at present pale quickly before the challenges ahead—both the personal and the professional, and both the anticipated as well as the blindsiding. Today, I am repeatedly thinking of many of the stories many bloggers shared at the Scientiae carnival that Candid Engineer hosted, including her own. Now, those were stories about real problems.

I know I’m a big baby. I’ve always been a big baby. I’m mortally terrified of my own immaturity. I don’t want to be one of those people who sulk every time they feel ignored or distrustful. I know people will ignore me a lot on the road ahead. I’ve also deliberately taught myself to suspect everyone of ulterior motives, because the gods of my late teens to mid-twenties surprised me to the bone with the brutality of their contempt for me. So I’m a “nobody” who must stomach a lot of dismissal and who has trust issues. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. Juniper.

That’s why I deleted my last post, incidentally. Get the fuck over it. Your life is about to get tough for real. You’re gonna have something to really cry about.

When something truly devastating happens, that is when I will ask for your valuable time and a shoulder to lean on. Not now. When I’ve been basically sitting on my own hands out of fear.

For those of you who saw the Sex and the City movie: remember the scene in which Samantha spoon-feeds Carrie in their five-star Mexican resort by the sea, because Mr. Big has jilted Carrie at the altar of their stupefyingly expensive Manhattan wedding, and Carrie has been refusing to get out of her silk-sheeted bed or eat any of the sumptuous food the servants bring for days? I was ironing in the den in front of the TV on Monday, and I looked up and that scene was on. In the context of the movie, it’s funny, because the film is only supposed to function as a big girly-girl wet dream about shoes and life as the modern-day equivalent of a Versailles courtier. But I watched this scene yesterday and realized with a shock that I arguably have been that self-indulgent since I left high school. I don’t mean just self-indulgent. I mean, gratuitously self-indulgent. Only I don’t come from a wealthy set, and I haven’t been making my own money, so everyone else has footed the bill, and some of them have suffered to do it.

Stephanie Zvan of Almost Diamonds wrote this comment:

Anyone (okay, not anyone, but you know what I mean) can put their head down and plow through to a single goal. When they get there, they have one thing. Their goal.

I have mixed feelings about this wisdom. I don’t want to disagree with it. Disagreeing with it feels like a full-throated endorsement of perfunctory monomania. Specifically, it feels like a full-throated endorsement of a lifestyle devoid of creativity. This idea repels me. It can be good to live by a variety of endeavors, because the variety can encourage you to think imaginatively about everything you encounter and to enjoy yourself. That wasn’t my objective when I was young, but I’ve certainly lived in a way that addressed its first point. Many people benefit from lives in which their twenties were spent traveling nationally and internationally, holding a series of entry-level jobs and dabbling in multiple professions. As I mentioned earlier, I can’t regret the experiences I had during these years.

These experiences were valuable as themselves. You know, existentially. They also had valuable consequences. I grew an (incrementally hardening) spine; divested myself of magical thinking—“Of course he can drive drunk! The angels will guard him from harm!” This is one major reason why I’m now an atheist, incidentally—learned to critically think; established the habit of telling the truth about myself as well as not lying to myself; dispensed with most if not all of my classism, racism, sexism, homophobia and unwarranted snobbery, and took Dr. Method and Theory’s philosophy of science class. I learned that happy relationships require kind work and that I can let go of or outright dump friends who tear me down. I learned that I don’t have to like everyone. I learned that not everyone has to like me. I learned how not to be my parents. After my disillusionment, and in the years it took me to learn to live without the kind of faith that had carried me through childhood and high school and to the university which was supposed to make up for everything, I learned compassion. Had I plowed through to “one goal” instead, I would be a less enriched person. (With less-cool friends.) I don’t doubt this.

Toaster Sunshine, who wrote something cheekily crazy about trigonometry and a catapult yesterday, says:

Stephanie is right. I'm still just a tech, and I spend so much time immersed in science that I often find that I'm losing the edges of Toaster and morphing slowly into a brain on a stick (like melting Jell-O; I think I'd like to be lime). Knowing who you are and what you want before arriving at the maw of research will only serve to make that research more clear and focused because you will be more clear and focused.

Admittedly, this strikes me as sage advice. Even when my estimations are warped by depression.

Besides. Can I even identify this allegedly objective line between those who have fallen but have a shot at crawling out of the hole and those who have fallen so far that they’re doomed? Today, I mused over several bloggers and asked myself if I felt as if could determine the odds of “success” for each one. No. Maybe on some level and before I thought about it, because I’m a snob. But not when I carefully thought about it. How do I know? I have little evidence for the validity of most of the vaguely articulated “rules” by which I was judging others and myself. It’s amazing how much of what amounts to superstitiousness I have yet to conquer.

Why is it so important, anyway? Can’t I just take a breath and do my thing? Can’t I just stop caring what other people think? Who can manage to truly stand in my way? What, random-ass people’s opinions of me are going to stop me from enrolling in chemistry classes? Reading public access articles? Studying faithfully for the GRE? Applying to graduate school? Doing whatever?

By whose standard was I supposed to become a doctor or a professor by thirty or shrivel and die? By whose standard is my worth entirely gauged by my grades and other people's opinions of them?

All that said: there’s still the issue of the second point. I haven’t enjoyed most of my twenties. I’ve never been suited to the life of a glorified teenager. Nevertheless, that is how I’ve lived for a decade. I’m going to turn thirty in nine months. So I’m over it. The glorified teenagerhood. I’m really, really over it. When will I support myself? When will I be independent? When will I get to find out who I am when I’m free of the habitual assumptions of family and old acquaintances? When will I ditch my high-school town, which I hate? When will I begin to significantly develop my pet intellectual obsessions? When will I have a life of my own, instead of watching everyone else have lives of their own and telling myself stories about theirs?

(And, for fuck's sake: when will I finally live in a home continually stocked with Mezzetta hot chili peppers, milk chocolate and strawberry jam?! Not to mention good coffee.)

Two of my former professors, as graduate students, wrote their dissertations in six months. They glanced around at their uncertain peers, realized that they didn’t want to linger forever over their studenthood—even if Everyone Else Was Doing It—and shut themselves away with their materials until the theses were written and they’d gotten what they wanted. Only when they’d enabled themselves to move firmly on to the next phase of their lives and careers did they venture into wider arenas.

I feel I need focus this ruthless right now.

I am, if anything, a surprisingly practical girl. I understand that I gain nothing by flogging myself. I’m genuinely sorry that I’ve hurt people with my irresponsibility. Apart from this repentance, I ultimately deem my past choices to be objectively value-neutral. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t made them. I have no substantial regret. Many of them were poor choices for the purpose of becoming an ambitious professional scientist without the stress of people looking at your transcript, patting you on the head and telling you that you’re never going to make the big leagues. Not so great for financial autonomy, either. Otherwise: I made them. It’s okay. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to flog myself with less and less frequency.

The truth is that I’m the type of person who would have probably enjoyed her twenties more had she “plowed ahead to one goal”. This assessment will not excite many of my readers, but it’s true. The way I have lived? I couldn’t let things go. I didn’t like myself. I felt as if I were asking for permission or favors. I always felt unable to take care of myself. I often felt trapped. My brain always felt mushy. So, on one hand, I was “finding myself”. On the other hand, though, I was seeing what it was like to live without professional or intellectual ambition. Guess what? IT WAS DEEPLY UNSATISFYING. And that’s an experiment that began around the turn of this century.

Beloved but previously sadly misguided reader biopunk suggested to me that I consider becoming a science writer instead of a research scientist. He is one of several who have suggested this to me. My answer? NO. THAT ISN’T GOING TO MAKE ME HAPPY.

The following paragraph is not for biopunk. Biopunk is awesome. Besides, he absolved himself by alerting me to 343 articles about tazarotene that are accessible with the PubSearch application. It’s not for my other friends and readers, either, because you either know better now or you anticipate that you should. I simply want to yell off the rooftop. Don’t waste your time with your kindly meant suggestions that I take it easy and sit on the sidelines. Maybe you think I’m not smart enough to handle neurobiology. Maybe you think I’m too artistic. Maybe you think I’m too girly. Maybe you think I’m too old. Maybe you think I’m too emotional. Maybe you think people who take antidepressants can’t handle the pressure of research or hard science. Maybe you think I gave this career choice as little thought as I gave my stint as a student archaeologist. Maybe you think I’ve had too many chances already. Maybe you think I haven’t the drive. Maybe you think I don’t know myself. Maybe you’re disgusted by the amount of personal information I’m willing to publish on my blog. Maybe you’re confused. If any or all of these thoughts comprise your judgment of me: that’s nice. Save your breath to cool your porridge. I don’t give a flying fuck.



(Several nights ago, DuWayne Brayton (of Traumatized by Truth) and I were discussing socially acceptable behaviors that can be construed as addictive but that don’t involve drugs. I’ve been thinking about that discussion today. When I find a song that I intensely, intensely like, I tend to listen to it over and over. I do this a lot. I have written three-quarters of this exceedingly long post with ears plugged with headphones and this song on repeat. It’s been on repeat for hours.)

(Funny. But, whenever I talk to that guy, I am always radiantly glad to be exactly who I am. Choices and wrong turns and all. I was all brooding and minor-key-musicky and possibly conflating several concepts like I just did in the comment thread of this post, and then you and three hours of phone conversation happened last night. Now, whole segments of today’s novella will be incongruously chipper. Thanks a lot, pal. Thanks a lot.)

With this, I return you to originally scheduled programming.

First, this series was originally supposed to be a single post. Second, it was really supposed to be about settling on the best way to atone for my academic past for the sake of becoming a professional scientist.

I excluded the possibility of returning to do a second bachelor’s degree because I learned last year that many American universities and colleges balk at granting those. From their point of view, you either work on multiple majors simultaneously as a traditional student, or you find some other way of re-educating yourself for a career change as a non-traditional student already wielding a bachelor’s degree. I think this is chiefly because graduate programs in the United States require students to take courses before permitting them to undertake thesis research and writing. Hypothetically, a student in my position can enroll in a PhD program and use the first two years to study what they would’ve as an undergraduate in that field. (Albeit at an accelerated pace and under the compulsion to immediately understand the material far beyond rote memorization.) There may be no significant demand, therefore, for second bachelor’s degrees.

However, there remains the issue of convincing a PhD program to admit me in the first place. As I’ve previously discussed and will possibly allude to in the future for the sake of both specificity and transparency—and for the sake of torturing myself— I have a spectacularly contemptible academic record. I earned a 3.4 GPA as an English major at UC Berkeley and a 2.4 GPA in what master’s degree work at California State University at Long Beach in archaeological science I completed before I quit.

My academic record does not reflect my ability. Look. I am smart enough to know that I’ve been the equivalent of the vivacious small-town star of her quaint high school play who trucks into LA on a Greyhound. Even if she has talent, she’s no longer the only one. Moreover, it's most likely that her talent isn't special, and she’s gonna get humbled quick. I went to college with people of tremendous and polished intelligence. I have been lengthily exposed to people so smart and accomplished that I learned how provincial and deluded it made me look to big-league academics to boast of my own intelligence. This was good for me, too. I used to be pretty fucking annoying and dumb.

However, I also learned that what I’m packing ain’t too shabby even by the loftiest of standards. And I know my transcripts don’t reflect what I can achieve with focus and passionate effort, because I got every single one of my bad grades by not turning in my work, skipping class and ditching exams. In undergrad, I took many classes solely because my “friends” were taking them. I also didn’t read many of my assigned texts. I think I studied in earnest—for classes I did well in—on two or three occasions. There were a few classes in which I studied for the first half of the semester and ceased entirely during the last eight weeks. Otherwise, I winged it.

Did I party? No. Occasionally. “Occasionally” means I awkwardly slunk into one party every three to five months. I had fun at two of them. I don’t think that counts as debauchery nonpareil. I slept. A lot. The semester in which I failed one of my English classes is the semester I was involuntarily hospitalized for three days in a psych ward under suicide watch; I called Drama King and waited for him to visit me. I was sure that he would. He never did. There was a lot of this disillusionment by spades. I read many unassigned books. Some of them were chock-full of woo. I moved six times, always trying to start over. I traveled. I worked. I wrote. A lot. I filled over seventy journals. I wrote and directed a play. I just remembered.

I also just remembered that I participated in over a dozen student theater productions. I've sporadically repressed these memories. My Drama Kid Experience is how I learned that I’d much, much rather be an audience member than either onstage or behind the scenes. I have little talent for acting and directing anyway. I'm not being modest.

Once, I helped some students at a small Ghanaian boarding school for girls produce an AIDS awareness play. I think that was one of only two plays I enjoyed participating in. These young women were refreshingly innocent and optimistic, and they wanted to communicate to other boarding school students the dangers of accepting money for tuition, books and food from well-off older men in exchange for sex. It was a common problem. The kind of man who preyed upon girls like this wasn’t likely to be the kind of man who used condoms.

Did I say I slept? Because I slept a lot. I slept whole days at a time. I was sad. Often, I wanted to die. In terms of companionship, I spent hundreds of days alone. I wanted to ask for help, but the words never came out right—on the occasions on which I actually tried.

After I left college, and up until I began science blogging last year, I loathed my artistic temperament. I couldn’t, couldn’t kill it, no matter how I tried, and I detested it. I felt that it was the reason for my loserliness. It wasn’t just because I secretly believed that artists were disgusting bohemian slackers as well as dilettante intellectuals. (No. I don’t have this stupid idea anymore. If anything, this idea is indicative of how fucked-up I was as well as the conservative environment I spent my girlhood in.) The main reason was because artists couldn’t be scientists.

Artists couldn’t be scientists! They especially couldn’t be hard scientists. And, as long as I had to settle for non-science careers—whether far removed or next door to what I really wanted to be doing—I would always balk at doing the work required to excel at what I was doing.

The other day, I shared the following experience on Dr. Isis’s blog. (I edited this.)

During my uninspired college career, I roomed with a Cambridge-educated grad student in mathematics who was to land a tenure-track professorship at Harvard at age twenty-six and his equally accomplished friends. I admit that I was not a great roommate to have. At that time, I was a bad one, actually. I was a mess. I didn't know who I was. I had no plans. I was electing to stay in a bad, intense friendship with someone who had no respect for me and comporting myself accordingly. I understand that this kind of person isn't easy either to live with or to take seriously.

Nonetheless, I still recall the kindly condescension with which they interacted with me-- especially over science topics-- with pain and a little anger. It was always something. They spoke of "people watching" when I invited Drama Kids to dinner-- like we were nearly akin to strung-out train-wrecks of D-list celebrities as well as only interested in artsy, "feminine", "useless", "easy" subjects. Then, after I revealed that I was taking ONE modern dance class for ONE semester, they kept referring to me as a "dancer". It didn't matter how many times I flatly stated that I wasn't one!

In this context, "dancer" = "airhead" or "non-intellectual". I am an intellectual. Meanwhile, I can't dance to save my life. I really can't. I really, really can't. (I WISH!)

Anyway. Isn't Acmegirl a dancer? She's also a scientist at a fucking Ivy League, isn't she? Motherfuckers.

At some point during the tortoise-paced writing of this NeverEnding Post, blog BFF Hermitage published her 100th post. I felt melty-warm gratitude for the following:

Of course no one wants to keep reliving the fact they, indeed, sucked epically at undergrad, but it's good to never forget that there are others like us out there, struggling to justify to others and themselves that they are truly, good enough. For that reason alone I need to stand louder and prouder, flying the proverbial one-finger salute to all the fuckers who think because you didn't have a 4.0 and save starving babies in ThirdWorldstania that you are unworthy to pursue graduate studies.

Thank you, Hermy. As surely as Harry Potter took heart of grace from the support of his true-blue Hogwarts friends, so do I from your example.

(P.S. Okay. So I’m not a gamer, and I therefore could not make a more appropriate allusion. Besides. When I first read this, I pictured you glorious in gorgeous Zahara Hair and viciously corseted Baroque-era gown, flying the proverbial one-fingered salute from the forecastledeck of an oncoming pirate ship while aforementioned fuckers squealed in terror and leapt from their targeted vessel. So I’m all mixed up.)

A pre-medical post-baccalaureate program is for uppity B.S.’s and B.A.’s who either didn’t get a 4.0 and save starving babies and/or major in biology as undergraduates, but who want to be physicians now. There are two kinds. They are both typically full-time. The first is remedial. Those programs don’t accept non-majors. The second is for non-majors. The non-major programs typically offer general biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, introductory physics and an elective; they also offer MCAT coaching and summer internships for clinical work.

Sometimes, the second kind of pre-med post-bac accepts non-majors who want to prepare for a PhD program in a biomedical science. My original plan was to enroll in one of these, earn perfect grades, ace the GRE subject test in molecular biology, and apply to graduate school in two years. However, several graduate student and professor bloggers took the time to warn me that research and laboratory experience were key to admission. It is very hard to get that experience within one of these programs. The director of one of the programs I visited said as much, too. The post-bac laser-focused on getting non-traditional students into medical school. Whole years passed in which no applicants, let alone enrolled students, expressed interest in using the program to prepare for training as a research scientist. This meant I’d largely be on my own. I should keep that in mind.

I next turned my attention to special master’s degree programs in biological science. Some of these are also devoted to preparing students for medical school. However, more special master’s degree programs than post-bacs are expressly intended to help students into PhD programs. Most of them require a given number of credits for undergraduate work in biology and chemistry. Still. Some of them make exceptions “on a case-by-case basis”. So, wouldn’t this be an excellent solution? I could take foundational classes. I could find a lab in which to volunteer or intern. I could even plead to write a thesis—many special master’s degree programs do not feature the writing of a thesis—to prove to graduate admissions committees everywhere that I can do good work.

In addition to her genuinely encouraging story, quietandsmalladventures dispensed this advice:

ok you're probably gonna hate me but don't do either of the damn programs listed in your titles. in the end, they take a few from the class and the rest are left with meaningless pieces of paper. i thought about it too. in the end $25k for an unmarketable degree wasn't worth it.

Dudette! I definitely don’t hate you. Unless one is an heiress, the expense is a real consideration. Some pre-med post-bacs award you a “certificate” upon completion of the program. Many don’t offer any certification whatsoever. (Harvard, for example. I suspect the privilege of taking classes there for grades is assumed to suffice.) Conversely, at the end of a special master’s program, you earn a degree, but I suspect the degree carries little more weight than the post-bac certificate, especially if you didn’t write a thesis. Yet these programs cost twenty-some thousand dollars apiece. I’m already in student loan debt.

I’m beginning to think that the pre-med post-bacs are worth it for aspiring medical students with no chance of admission otherwise. They need to select one with a high transfer rate (“over 95% of our applicants to medical school succeed each year”), and they need to earn nothing less than a 4.0 and bust ass as interns and volunteers. But, for them, it’s worth it. If I wanted to be a physician, then I’d do it.

For aspiring research scientists who want admission to a PhD program? Maybe not so much. I don’t know.

Recently, I checked out Stanford’s website. (Yeah. I know. You are all going to chastise me for doing this. But can’t a girl have a little fun?!) I chose Stanford arbitrarily. (Not capriciously, though.) I wanted to see a scarily competitive school’s curriculum for an undergraduate training in neurobiology. What did traditional students on this path study before they entered grad school? What did students widely acknowledged to have promise on this path study before they entered grad school? What was I missing? What was I up against?

Holy shit. I ain’t gonna lie. But is it sick to admit that it also looks exciting?

Stanford’s B.S. in Biology with Specialized Field of Study in Neurobiology consists of 23 to 25 prescribed courses, one individualized course for elective work and research requirements that biology majors with other specializations only have to do if they want to graduate with honors. It would be hard for a fuck-up like me to find and take the equivalent of every single one of these classes on my own**, work full-time, and volunteer in a laboratory long enough and competently enough for a researcher to permit me to participate in experiments.

Back to biopunk. As a senior student in biology, he has urged me to “immerse myself in chemistry”, as chemistry is the “basic foundational stuff of everything” I want to do. I agree. I figured out in a UCLA medical genetics seminar I had no business even auditing that the primary reason why I struggled mightily to grasp the literature was my ignorance of chemistry. I haven’t taken chemistry since my honors high-school classes in the mid-1990s; even I if were ten years younger, everyone knows whatever you did in high school means jack diddly squish. (Is there anything as laughably pointless as high school? Don’t answer that.) It’s not enough to Google or otherwise look up every term I don’t know. I can’t get what I want to get out of classes like “Genetic Analysis of Biological Processes” and “Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology” without the bedrock of chemistry. As DuWayne likes to say about relationships, it’s all about the foundation.

So. The Stanford undergraduate curriculum includes seven chemistry courses. I looked up their content to identify the concepts and skills I need to learn. The following descriptions of what these entail are from the course catalog:

• An introduction to stochiometry; periodicity; electronic structure and binding; gases; enthalpy and phase behavior. The beginning of the development of skills needed to address structural and quantitative chemical questions in the context of lecture and laboratory work. Obviously, this development continues throughout the series of classes.
• An introduction to chemical equilibrium; acids and bases; oxidation and reduction reactions; chemical thermodynamics and kinetics.
• Organic chemistry! Functional groups; hydrocarbons; stereochemistry; thermochemistry; kinetics and chemical equilibria.
• Organic chemistry! Oxygen and nitrogen aliphatic compounds.
• Techniques for separations of compounds; distillation; crystallization; extraction and chromatographic procedures.
• Organic chemistry! Diels-Alder, reduction and Wittig reactions and qualitative analysis.
• Organic chemistry! Aromatic compounds, polysaccharides, amino acids, proteins, natural products, dyes, purines, pyrimidines, nucleic acids, and polymers.

These descriptions! The whole pdf! It’s almost like looking at pornography that actually turns me on! (I learned in my Female Sexuality class that I’m not big on porn. But I digress.)

I’m not going to try to guess why Stanford organizes their chemistry lectures and laboratory sections the way that they do. For my purposes, that’s irrelevant. I did this because I’m not that much of a bumpkin and I get that not all community college, state university and Extension chemistry classes are created equal. Whatever their titles might be. It’s the content that counts.

That’s the thing: the content. Look. I’m thirty. I’m almost thirty. And I realized last week that impressing my parents and my sister doesn’t matter anymore, because, no matter how successful I am from now on, I’ll still be “late”. I expected this realization to sadden me. Instead, I felt a little more able to breathe. ‘Cause who the fuck cares now?!

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not like I want to dawdle. I don’t. I’m sick to my stomach of drifting and stalling. It doesn’t feel good. I would like to reach a certain point by age forty, and I will work like ten thousand stagecoach horses to do it. But neither do I want to work with one eye on my “audience” anymore. Because I really want to understand this stuff. Because I’m in it for real. And I don’t mind having to build my understanding brick by brick as well as with quality bricklaying. I don’t want to frenetically slop bricks together every which way, cement splashing into my face, erecting weak and crooked walls and trying to build arches from the top down in a race to be THE BEST
EVAH!!111!!!!!!ONE!!!ONE!!!!!!B!!!11!!B!!!11111!!!!QQQQQQQQQQQQQ!!!111!!!! I’m really okay with taking measured steps. I’m really okay with being the quiet, steady one who ignores the patronizing smiles when questioned about what she’s doing and what she hopes to be and returns to work and keeps on truckin’.

In terms of out-prodigying everyone, it’s too late for that, and it has been for some time. Dude. I don’t think I was ever capable of that in the first place. Thank God. Now I can just enjoy myself.***

Leigh, who seems against all odds to have totally pwned every negative bullshit stereotype applicable to her situation, told me this:

1. perfect is not real. i won't believe a graph without error bars, you know what i mean? people mess up, and they recover. you are intent on doing that. my now-boss interviewed me for grad school, and immediately pointed out my lowest grade on my college transcript (bc, same as a b-). the conversation ended with "but you still did better on your first-semester organic chem than our department chair."

2. the path of least resistance is a waste of time. anything worth doing is hard, anything worth achieving is worth the fight. this mantra gets me through the hardest days.

3. anyone who wishes mediocrity upon you needs to be told to shut the fuck up.

4. never underestimate the power of learning shit the hard way.

Amen.

This blog entry is eleventeen thousand words long and it took so long to write because I wanted to clear my head. I wanted to take my medicine and sit down and then clear my head and then put the blinders on and then move firmly on to what matters. Getting a full-time job. Returning to school. Escaping the Shoemaker House of Doom. Getting laboratory experience. Blogging almost every day on other subjects.




*This is the reason why you’re finally getting a blog entry. Better 100 mg over than 200 mg under. Juniper coked up on bupropion and caffeine is by far the more productive one.

**I do have university-level calculus and some statistics credits, though. I did not make bad or mediocre grades in everything.

***I am aware that graduate school is not exactly a visit to the spa. But you know what I mean.

Part 2: Pre-Med Post-Bac Programs vs. Special Master’s Degree Programs for Aspiring Biomedical Research Scientists Atoning for Their Academic Pasts

I HAVE NO PATIENCE WITH MYSELF ANYMORE.

Italics will abound as a result. Also: a temporary prohibition against writing long sentimental emails to a certain person will immediately take effect.

About my latest story? What the hell. I will continue my story. You know what, though? I have no excuse for this limbo. I began this story to explain the reasoning behind my action/inaction over the last year and a half, but, really, it doesn’t warrant an explanation as protracted as its description. I have been in limbo since August of 2007 because of fear.
Read more. . .

I knew when I came out of the biology closet and walked out on my archaeology master’s degree that I had no wiggle room left. Careerwise, I had sampled too many wares with too little discipline. How on Earth could I make a comeback now? Such an astronomically low probability, unless . . . So there was no more room for mediocrity, let alone failure. From now on, I had to complete every course I enrolled in with irreproachable grades. Cue the indefatigable Greek Chorus in my head. Don’t make a move, Juniper, until you are sure you can be perfect! Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh. Riiiiiiiiight.

This is not a meritless conviction, though. I can’t be “perfect”. I know. I really don’t have any room to fuck up anymore, however. I have to get straight-As and be reliable in all other respects as well. I have to inarguably prove myself. That’s reality-- but that’s also my ambition. Honestly? I don’t like half-assing things. You only get one life.

I spent college maturing, confused, disenfranchised, ashamed, unwittingly mentally ill and cathartically acting out. I began my master’s degree in archaeology as one begins an impromptu marriage in Vegas. None of this made me proud. When’s the last time I felt proud of my life? I was eighteen. I was proud of my future.

I won’t listen to platitudes, either. Don’t try it. “Even if you wound up managing a community theater . . .” began my former calculus teacher, once. Out of the motherfucking blue! Yeah! You would love it if I chose a non-prestigious job associated with an erstwhile hobby of mine I only took up because I worshipped some drug-abusing mental-illness-denialist snobby racist white male trust-fund baby Drama King of Chronic Existential Crises eleventy years ago, solely to help reassure you that pretty women English majors can’t handle math and science. You would love it more if I, too, never got a PhD from any university, much less a R1, and therefore remained an ignominiously smart gal from the working classes whose laughably provincial high school dubbed her Most Likely to Succeed but who failed to achieve any significant measure of worldly success and who wound up just like everybody else. Well. I will NOT grant your pious wish for my mediocrity. Remember, I’ve only got one life. I want to live it. Moreover: I’m not some rich white ingénue spawned by a pack of physicians and CEOs. I’m a motherfucking female minority half-breed with a US Passport full of exotic stamps and a wardrobe full of preppy cardigans standing on the shoulders of brown sharecroppers and street urchins who barely loved each other-- much less themselves-- and whom the upper-classes treated like garbage for generations. They deserve everything I can achieve with every last bone in my body and every last ounce of brainpower that I’ve got. So don’t you DARE quote that fake Emerson shit at me!

(I didn’t sleep all night. I refuse to censor that last bitchy paragraph.)

For the last decade, I’ve worked arduously to improve myself. It was often like performing surgery on myself in the dark. It was often achieved through subconscious realizations effected by emotional breakdowns and exposure to Ivory Tower ideas my family had never heard of. In the messy process, I’ve taken the paths of least resistance. I’ve never wanted to remain the kind of person who did. Therefore, I refuse to rush into a course of study now that I’ve entered a healthy courtship with biomedical research science.

Know what? I can’t write anymore today. I intended to finish. This is surely the most disjointed and misleadingly titled series of posts I’ve produced. I’m sorry. Please bear with me.

Sometimes, After a Phone Conversation, I Remember Why I Have a Strained Smile in This Photo

This is from two years ago, though. My sister and I get along much better than we did that summer.

I need to remember to be fair.

Part 1: Pre-Med Post-Bac Programs vs. Special Master’s Degree Programs for Aspiring Biomedical Research Scientists Atoning for Their Academic Pasts

What a week. I wrote the bulk of this entry on March 26th. I’ve been fighting to complete it since then. I have been trying so hard to get my head together and take action. I have been trying so, so hard. It terrifies me, how slooooooowly I’ve moved and how ridiculously idiotic I’ve been OVER THE LAST YEAR AND A HALF. I'm beginning to panic. I can’t remain stuck. I just can’t remain stuck anymore.

Deep breath. I recently interviewed for a laboratory internship at a Major Research University. After I blogged about it, two of my favorite bloggers, Comrade PhysioProf and Candid Engineer, admonished me for my ostensible insensibility to my repulsive academic history.

Of course they did. That’s because I haven’t made it crystal clear to all my readers that I do NOT think I’m entitled to be taken seriously. Not at present. Yeah, right! If I didn’t know myself, and I had nothing but my current academic record to go on, I wouldn’t take myself seriously. I may be arrogant, but I am neither lazy nor delusional.
Read more. . .

I went on an interview for a laboratory internship because a very kind scientist and supporter of mine offered to introduce me to my interviewer. Beforehand, I firmly reminded myself that the internship would probably not fall into my lap. It was an enormous opportunity, and I gave it my best shot. I failed. La la la . . .

Then I contacted Dr. Isis for advice, whined a little on my blog, and included valuable suggestions from blog readers and the scientist who made the introduction in the first place in my consideration of what to do next. Certainly, I did not think that I’d been wronged: “Well, I never! Isn’t it obvious that despite my awesomely shittastical (h/t Hermitage) 3.4 undergraduate GPA as an English major and the overwhelmingly shittastical 2.4 GPA with which I quit my master’s degree program in archaeology and that I would rather stick pins through my eyelids than admit to on my blog, I exude the unmistakable vibe of a spectacular neurobiologist in the making?” Uh, no. That thought did not earnestly cross my mind; that paragraph did not escape my lips. I don’t do stand-up comedy.

I am twistedly grateful that the interview went the way that it did. Sure, the shame I felt afterwards hurt. It bothered me to the bone, feeling so pangingly ashamed of myself as self-assured medical students and professors bustled around tiny me and my quaint wool Godet-flare suiting skirt. However, I’ve been avidly reading the blogs of professors, postdocs and grad students in the medical sciences for several months. Accordingly, I would bet the prototypically staggering amount of my student loan debt that my interviewer’s mercilessly helpful dismissal was mere child’s play in the tea-room. Therefore, she did me a favor. As I’ve already told several of you, I will take an ass-kicking over a coddling any day of the week. Why would I do otherwise? I’m not in this for fake. I tried that already.

It’s not a pain in the ass to start at Square One. It is what it is. I am enthusiastically willing to start at Square One. I always was. Here is what happened:

In August of 2007, I terminated the loveless marriage that was my master’s work in archaeology and came out of the biomedical sciences closet. I moved back into my worriedly astonished parents’ house. Surely, I decided, I would need to start with community college classes. No one would take me seriously otherwise. The advanced courses had basic science prerequisites; the prerequisites had long waitlists. This was okay. I’d make it work. I’d take as many as I could.

I fell to plotting. Due to my extant bachelor’s degree, I did not and still don’t qualify for federal assistance with undergraduate classes. I would have to pay upfront for each class I took. I was broke, though. So I took a part-time and minimum-wage job that barely covered my car, auto insurance and medical expenses. A few months later, I found modestly-paid full-time work. Now I would earn enough money to take science classes at a community college—of which there are hundreds in Southern California.

However, community colleges surprised me by exclusively scheduling the biology, chemistry and physics classes that I wanted during the day. Due to the hellish commute undertaken by every working Los Angeleno, I could not enroll in even the earliest or latest of these classes—if I actually wanted to be present for them, let alone on time. I had always disliked the grimily infinite suburban sprawl of impersonal chain stores that is Los Angeles as heartily as the "Millionaire Matchmaker" attitude towards women that rules this town. This discovery transmuted my dislike into furious despair.

I responded to this by trying to convince supervisors to let me work at home as much as possible. My last real job was as an underpaid copywriter, marketing research assistant and web designer for a shady tattoo business. I don’t want to talk much about it. Literally dozens of frustrated employees had held this position before me. I’m only talking about the seven months before my arrival. The sales executives with whom I had to work were so sick of pestering their best clients with new marketing researchers forced by my boss to throw out the data of their predecessors and call people with the same questions that they refused to cooperate with me for weeks. They didn’t tell me why, either. My boss yelled at everyone. He looked at me, and my skin crawled. He asked very personal and irrelevant questions about my life at every meeting. Importantly, he also asked me to work on a project that I thought and still do think constituted a significant public health risk. Regular Unleaded cost $4.95 a gallon at the time, and there was nothing I did that I couldn’t do from this MacBook at home.

I planned to stick it out. I needed the money. I quit only when something exhaustingly bad happened the day after I was offered a permanent position. I was to officially accept at the end of that week. No way was I committing myself after this incident, though.

If I’d planned on making marketing or business my career? Maybe. Probably, in fact. I’m no slacker. I’m not lacking a capacity for innovation, either. But that was just the thing, wasn’t it? This nonsense had too little to do with my career of choice. It had nothing to do with my career of choice. So. No fucking way.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I haven’t been regularly employed since. In the interim, among attempts at other kinds of work, I’ve applied for glasswasher positions. I figured there was nothing obstructively arrogant about me asking to be paid to conscientiously help take the most basic care of someone’s laboratory. I would jump at an unpaid internship, of course. I’d go back to night shifts in a coffee shop and take an unpaid lab internship in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, though. The job advertisements were there, and I tried for them.

At this juncture, the idea of enrolling in a full-time program specifically intended to prepare people like me for graduate school in research science rose uppermost in my mind. They had to exist. I could not be the only one in my position.