Dear Moron,

I guess when you get to a major turning point, it's pretty natural to think about where you came from. Or maybe it's just that I'm in the process of packing up, and I found a few mementos from my high school days. Either way, it's related to the fact that I'm about to get married, move away, and start working for a living as opposed to doing mostly fun stuff for a living.

I was fifteen once, interestingly enough. Frankly, I was ill-prepared for being a fifteen-year-old male, which is probably why I did a pretty crappy job of it. The bottom line is that at fifteen, life, generally, sucks. There really isn't a claim you can make to the contrary. I know for a fact that every time my parents told me that "these are the best years of your life" (we've all heard it) my general reaction was "oh, shit."

So I've been realizing lately that the face looking back at me from the mirror is no longer fifteen years old. He's seen a not insubstantial amount of the world, and he's lived a rather interesting life.

Didn't seem like it was going to turn out that way at fifteen, but then it never does, does it?

At any rate, I was wondering recently what I would write if the laws of physics could be bent, slightly, for just a moment. What if I could write to the fifteen year old I used to be? What would I say?

Dear moron,

I figured this greeting would be the best way to convince you that I'm you. I mean, who else would greet you that way? Of course, if you want more proof, look up on the very top shelf of your closet. You'll find a shoebox labeled "playboys" (brilliant hiding place, by the way). In that shoebox, you'll find a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bottle of isopropyl alcohol, a package of double-edged razor blades, anywhere between two and six sterile gauze pads, and a roll of surgical tape. Nobody but you knows about that, right?

While we're on the subject, cut back a little (no pun intended). I'm not going to tell you to quit just what say that instead of three or four times a week cut it down to, say, two or three? You're not going to quit any time soon. And you're going to try (and fail) to do so a number of times between now and the time that you're looking at my face in the mirror, and the truth is, those blades helped you through a lot of rough patches in your life. As coping mechanisms go, you could do worse, I guess.

Okay, depending on when you're getting this, you've either just flunked a math exam, or you're about to. That'll be a first for you, won't it? You'll deal, and you'll be stronger for it. Take my word for it, it's not the end of the world. About five years from now, nobody's going to give a rat's ass what grades you got in High School. Believe me, you have a lot more school to go through before you're done. High school is gonna get lost in the flurry long before you're done.

I know that right now you're thinking that you're going to be a doctor, and that's all there is to it. Well, you're not. And interestingly enough, that's a decision you'll make after being accepted to med school. I know, weird, huh? The point I'm trying to make is that life has a nasty habit of never working out quite the way you plan for it to work out. If I were to tell you now that your first three publications in a scientific journal would be in astrophysics, what would you say? What if I told you that the next three would be in the American Journal of Physiology and the Biophysical Journal (times two)? Exactly.

If you're fifteen, you also just got dumped for the first time, or you're just about to. Sorry for the spoiler. It hurts. A lot. But you'll survive that too. Maybe you need things like that to happen. Maybe it's things like that that make you stronger. All I'm going to say is just wait 'till you meet your future wife. You've read Romeo & Juliet as well as all of the classic romances who talk about that one instant when they find that one person and they just know that their life is never going to be the same again. You don't buy all that bullshit, do you? Trust me: you will.

Don't worry. Let things fall the way that they should. Let them fall the way that they will, and don't freak out when they don't quite fall where you want them to. The only constant in life is that it's never what you expect. It's always moving, always changing, always persevering.

Oh, and when dad tells you that these are the best years of your life, you can call bullshit on that one. You're nowhere near the best years of your life. Not yet.

Keep an eye out for me. I'll be the one looking back at you from the mirror in about fourteen years.

Sincerely,
Drew

If you gotta move...

So I've finally found myself a post-doc position. I'm actually kinda thrilled at this one. It requires me to live in Honolulu Hawai'i for a few years, and may lead to a future faculty position at the U of H. I figure if you're going to move away from your friends and family, there are worse places to do it than Hawai'i. In honor of that, I've added two weather graphics to my blog. One showing the current weather in Calgary, one showing the current weather in Honolulu. I feel the need to remind you that that's the weather right now. Like, in December. Fun, huh?

Actually, I'm also excited about this for things that have absolutely nothing to do with invariably good weather,



beautiful sunsets,



beautiful women,



beautiful beaches,



the opportunity to go hiking twelve months of the year,



amazing sunsets (did I mention that already? Well, it bears repeating),



history,



wildlife,



and amazing photographic subjects.



Actually, I'm excited for a whole slew of reasons, but perhaps the most important one is that I'm simply excited by the work I'm going to be doing. The work will still be in the same general area I've been working in for the last five years, but it will be more on the molecular level. A little less cellular biology, a little more genetics, a little more biochemistry, and a little bit more gene-jockeying. I'm going to be doing both the insertion and deletion of genes in mice, working on developing a working hypoxia model in wild-type mice, and studying the expression of genes in the heart specifically, and what genes will show up in these systems. This is a kind of science I've never done before, and it excites me. It means that I get to spend more time in the lab and less time scribbling equations in a lab book. I'm going to improve on my recovery surgery (something I haven't done in a long time, and haven't done at all on something as small as a mouse), my RT- and QT-PCR, as well as running and analyzing microarrays. In addition, I'm going to be working with a mathematician who wrote a textbook that has effectively been my bible for the last five years. By fortuitous circumstances, I'm going to be working with a former classmate of my brother's, he's a nice guy, and I think I'm going to enjoy working for him. I think we have a lot to do and less time to do it in, but I think that this is going to be an amazing learning opportunity for me.

Oh, and the view out of my laboratory window is the Pacific ocean.

Can you tell I'm marginally excited by this?

It's over!

Okay, so I walked the stage yesterday. As predicted, I was dressed as a proverbial Hogwarts graduate, but all in all, everything turned out well. So now I have a PhD. adorning my wall right next to my BSc. My brother says I should get myself a Master's just to balance it out, but I think I'm good with two degrees, thank you very much.

'Course, the obvious question is "What's next?"

Well, I have a number of options, not the least of which being a Post-Doctorate at Oxford. I might also look at the industry route.

Or I might go back to school and complete an MD. With a Doctor of Philosophy under my belt, I think I probably have a reasonable chance of getting in. Or I can do an engineering degree.

In short, I have options.

Now, admittedly, my options need to be channelled somewhat. On a personal level, my life has got a little more complicated. Making a long story short, I managed to get myself engaged during my six-week odyssey across Europe. Yep, she said yes, oddly enough. How I managed to find someone who's crazy enough to go on week-long hiking trips, six-week odysseys, long bike rides, and who will put up with me for five years while I'm frantically completing a doctoral degree is still something of a mystery to me. How I convinced her to say "yes" when I showed her the ring is even more of a mystery, but it happened. Yay. We haven't set a date yet, and we're both fairly confident that it'll be a long engagement

So now I have a couple of factors that need to be considered before I decide which way I turn at the next fork in the road.

But at least I'm at a fork.

Guest Lecture (yay!)

So I got invited to do a guest lecture at Oxford. Yes, the one in England. Come to think of it, I don't think there's another one out there. But I got invited to do a lecture at Oxford. Cool, huh?

Okay, before I go on, I should point out that it's not as impressive as it sounds. I'd love to claim that they were dazzled by my brilliance from the opposite side of the Atlantic and offered to pay my air fare to get out there and spend a day lecturing and meeting the faculty.

I'd love to claim that, but that would be, at the very least, an exaggeration. A paper I wrote a while back got read and well received at their local journal club and my supervisor got contacted about it. As it turns out, April and I will be in the area in the not-too-terribly distant future, and they asked if I would be willing to give a brief (1-hour) lecture while I was there. So it's technically an invited guest lecture, but if not for the fact that I'm gonna be there anyway, there's no possible way they would've invited me. But, hey, it's Oxford. I mean, Oxford.

Yeah, if you haven't gathered so far, I think it's kinda cool. I have given lectures in the past. Many, many of them, actually. Of course, very few of those (like, one) have been given outside my own university, but I'm not exactly a stranger to lectures like this one. None of them have been outside the country, much less the continent.

So, yes, I'm kinda excited about this.

Doctor of Philosophy

So, it's over.

I guess when you get to this point in your life, it's normal to take a step back and say: hey, I did it. I guess when your entire life has been building up to one moment, and that moment finally shows up, you're supposed to have a huge sense of accomplishment.

Well, that hasn't hit me quite yet. Maybe it will on convocation day. Right now, I just kinda feel numb. It's over, I made it. All the papers have been turned in, all the forms have been filled out, all the signatures collected. All the exams have been written or spoken, all the experiments performed. It's over.

It's weird, I guess. Like I said, I just feel numb. Like I've just had some giant grab me by the legs and beat me against a wall for four years straight, then went to the hospital and got put on so many painkillers I barely even know my own name, much less that I was just grabbed by the legs and beaten against a wall. Honestly, I think I'm just tired.

So, convocation is in June. June 9th, to be exact. I haven't decided whether I'm going or not. Okay, that's a lie: I think my mom will disown me if I don't, but having seen what my older brother had to wear when he got handed his PhD back in November, I gotta say I'm not terribly thrilled at the prospect. For those of you who aren't firmly associated with an academic setting, PhDs in many institutions are required to wear something that, for some bizarre reason, is very different from the traditional cap 'n' gown. Every university has its unique academic dress or regalia that they hand out to doctoral students so that people will think they're special or something. That wouldn't bug me that much if the academic dress of the University of Calgary weren't the most godawful combination of colors and textures I can imagine. I swear, the person who designed it must've been colorblind; and I don't mean red-green, or blue-yellow colorblind. I mean, black, white and shades of gray colorblind. And on top of that, they had bad taste. Our academic reglia looks like it was put together by a two-year-old with fingerpaint. The only bright spot in the whole thing is the hat. Yes, it looks like a mortar board in desperate need of Viagra, but at least it's not as Mad-Hatter-esque as a lot of the hats I've seen. It's more of a subtle black beret-like hat that they call a John Knox Cap. I can't find a picture of it online, but it really does look like a flaccid mortar board.

I've gotta admit that I've never fully understood the need for a graduation ceremony. It always struck me as a somewhat cultish activity. Like the academic elders were saying "yes, you are worthy of joining us." Basically, you end up with a super-high-up guy who stands atop a stage proclaiming to the world that you are henceforth to be called "Doctor," then hands you a piece of paper, announcing your name to the crowd and pretending that he actually knows who the hell you are. I'm not saying I have an issue with academia; obviously, I don't, since I've dedicated the better part of my young life to it, but I have to admit that I don't fully understand all the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. So if I go to this graduation ceremony; and let's be honest, I probably will; it won't be for me that I'm going. I'm going for my parents. I'm going for April. I'm going for my two brothers who want to watch me walk across the stage in a suit that makes every rational human being on earth ask "I wonder how many of them can fit into a tiny car?"

All that said, I'm going to look into getting my hands on a Kilt. Dad has some thing about wanting to see me wear a kilt to my graduation. Hell, you only do this once.

Best. Week. Ever.

The democrats took back congress, which means that for the first time in his presidency, Bush might actually have to listen to the other side of the aisle rather than having them just rubber stamp the bills he sends his way. It also means that for the first time in six years, I'm actually cautiously optimistic about this country's political future.

Rummy's gone, and although his replacement is an ol' buddy of Bush's, he's also worked under several administrations that aren't Bush, and with a little luck, and a nod from the gods, I'm actually cautiously optimistic that we'll actually have an exit strategy some time in the near future.

A creationist whackjob in florida just got nailed for tax evasion, which just goes to show that although creationist whackjobs can manipulate school boards to force their particular flavor of christianity into the class room, they aren't completely above the law.

Stem cell initiatives have passed in one state, a ban on gay marriage was defeated in another, and a complete ban of abortion was defeated in a third, giving me reason to be cautiously optimistic that the US as a whole hasn't slid hopelessly far to the extreme right.

Oh, and I passed my PhD. thesis defense.

Tryin' to fly below the radar

Why won't my department get it through its head that the only thing I really want to do is duck under the radar and get my damned PhD out of the way?

I get an Email from my Graduate Coordinator congratulating me on successfully passing my candidacy exam. For a single, terrified, instant I was afraid that they were about to inform me that my candidacy exam had been declared invalid because I'd brought in my own dry-erase markers or something. That would be pretty consistent with the level of Red Tape I've had to deal with just to get this exam to happen. But I digress.

Apparently, I'm required to sit for a photograph and have them snap a picture of me so that they can post it up somewhere to let the world know that I have successfully passed my candidacy exam.

Which raises the obvious question: what if I don't want the world to know?

I've gone to a great deal of trouble (some would describe it as obsessive) to operate as low-profile as I possibly can. I've spent a lot of time and effort trying to be as invisible as I possibly can in this building, for the simple reason that I quite possibly have the single most recognizable last name in this building. My dad's worked here for 35 years. You ask any 50 professors about my last name, and I guarantee you that a minimum of 49 will recognize it.

I also lack a common last name like "Smith," where I could just claim that the similarity in our names is a coincidence.

To say that I've spent a lot of energy making sure that as few people as is humanly possible actually know my last name is a colossal understatement. I've given nineteen different seminars for various reasons in the three years I've been here. I have the powerpoint files from all nineteen. All nineteen have one notable omission: my name; and it's not accidental. Unfortunately, there are a few places that I can't get around; my classes, my committee, my graduate coordinator and department chair. The way I see it, nobody else needs to know. I'm perfectly happy being an anonymous guy who shows up for work every morning, publishes a couple of papers by noon, and heads home every night. That's an image I can live with. A recognizable face; an unknown name.

So, I'm trying to figure out a way to tell my graduate coordinator that I appreciate the offer, but I'd really rather not have my picture taken. And in a way that I won't insult or piss anyone off.

Here's my first draft:

Unfortunately, in an incident involving an improperly-discarded banana peel, a fllight of stairs, a laptop computer, and a four-year-old Cocker Spaniel, I have recently broken my nose, and am now wearing a large white bandage which covers a sizeable portion of my face. I could appear for a photography session, but the resulting photograph would be utterly unrecognizable as me.

If a photograph is absolutely necessary, I offer the following recommendation: acquire a photograph from the archives; preferably of someone who graduated many years ago, and use their photograph in my place. Since nobody actually looks at these things anyway, I cannot imagine that this will cause any trouble. We could start a pool to see if anyone actually notices.

I thank you for your time,
Drew

Well, it's a first draft. Maybe subsequent drafts will improve upon it. The only disadvantage to this approach that I can think of is that I will have to wear a bandage on my face until they forget about the photograph; but I can live with that.

SUCCESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I PASSED!

I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed.

(*deep breath*)

I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed, I passed.

I passed.

Oh, good lord I am so happy to have this over and done with. I have had this fricking candidacy exam hanging over me for almost a year, and now for the first time it's done. Oh, I cannot tell you how good that feels.

Lemme put it this way: I have not slept as soundly in months as I did last night.

Dr. Droo draws one step closer.

Okay, on to more pleasant things: like my thesis defense.

One hurdle down

I've survived the written. I turned it in this morning, for better or worse. So that's done. Now, I'm going to take 48 hours to recover from the written, then start hittin' the books for the oral.

Ten more days...... ten more days......

Whoever came up with the idea of a candidacy exam deserves to be thrown into the street and shot. I mean, I understand why they do it, but God, it's a pain in the ass.

All this so that I can get a few new letters after my name.

The things we do for academia.....

Neat stuff.

The universe has just become something of an interesting place over the last few days.

I'm now completing my candidacy exam; the written part anyway. I'm really, really, really looking forward to having that done; in part because I've seen practically nothing of April for the last month. I've seen more of my profs than I have of her. Doesn't that suck? At any rate, this'll all be over soon. I hope. I really, just want this to end right now. I want it over with, I want to have this chapter behind me, so I can progress straight to PhD.

Bak Fu Pai is going really well. Amazingly well, actually. My SiFu has arranged for his best and brightest (and me) to train with a grandmaster who lives here in Calgary. It means we need to start learning a whole new style of Kung Fu, but quite apart from the fact that it's similar to the style we're learning now, just training with this man is quite an honour. Suffice it to say, when my SiFu speaks of someone with tha t level of reverence in his voice, it's time to stand up and take notice.

Anyhow, must get back to the salt mines. See y'all later.

Idle musings of a skilled salt-miner.

I wrote to my boss this morning and told him I wanted to take August off. We're going to be publishing before too long, and with a little luck, we're going to have it accepted in short order. I'm not terribly worried about that.

Then I need to focus my concentration on surviving my candidacy exam.

Joy.