RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youmugen_edamameMay 12 2016, 03:40:15 UTC
Sorry for replying even later, my god. I got discharged 3 days after I got put in, and with meds in me I'm doing really really well c: Mum on the other hand still isn't feeling the best and she has another doctor's appointment this Saturday :c
Both in my field of study and in my literal body, I am quite flexible. The exploding happened in the shape of getting hospitalised, so after that I kinda feel a lot better? I have a lot of work this semester, more than usual when a teacher who used to organise stuff suddenly quit and I'm taking over a portion of her work for extra-curricular stuff (plus my research lab that is super interesting but super intensive), but I feel okay. It's been getting sunny and whoa- *GETS SWUNG AROUND IN A CIRCLE* I got the support of world-class lady so I feel okay. Fail often, fail harder, fail better, is pretty much my motto especially in my Japanese. Just goddamn why does failing have to hurt so bad sometimes??? When it happens so often????
We actually got snow this winter so that was fun, but spring was like maybe 3 weeks long and it's pretty much midsummer at this point. Babe, you're in Illinois, right? Place strikes me as fuuuucking cold, but then again 2 days ago I met a Russian girl who oh-so-casually went the coldest I ever felt was -54 C, and then looked deeply disturbed when I said the average temperature in Malaysia is 29. What's involved in the job of a postdoctoral researcher, though? Also, what are you researching? (You cool ass lady you). DGM is back up again, but aside from reading a shit lot of manga and investing too much money in gay, I pirate stream loads of movies and am filling my mind with meaningless fluff. So far, so good (?) lmao
Hope you're well Sofia! Also holla at a girl if you use LINE or what!
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfMay 31 2016, 23:23:54 UTC
Oh geez, I fail horribly at replying in a timely manner, and I haven’t even really been *that* busy with anything lately, but I’m still so behind. I blame part of it on the weather; summer decided it suddenly wanted to be here (which is how it usually goes), but normally it works up to it gradually and you don’t realize it’s summer until it is. This year we just sorta ended up with July-like temperatures at the end of May, and nobody quite trusts that it’s not going to get cold again because that’s how the weather rolls in these parts, so we’ve all just been kind of roasting along while being unsure if it’s time to bring out the anti-roasting measures. I’ve totally forgotten how hard it is to get anything done when it’s too hot. In another few weeks, I’m sure I’ll have forgotten how hard it was to do anything when it was too cold ^^;;
*SNUGS!!!* Hope you’re still doing good and that you and your mom haven’t needed more doctor’s appointments =( Glad you’re feeling better, but hopefully if there’s another explosion it’s not a hospital one ^^;; Though sometimes that abrupt throwing everything out of whack and being forced to focus on something else is what gets you out of the grind of the rut and gives some perspective on things. Or just a feeling of relief sometimes, really. But yeah, sounds like you’ll be/are super busy again (in a good and productive way, but it’s still stressful!), so good luck with everything, but take care and I hope you manage to juggle it all in a way that gives you something back instead of just burning you out <3 I’d give tips, but I am the poster child of the “small furry animal attacking the first thing that comes its way then getting distracted and trying to attack the next thing while still wrestling with the first until it’s buried under a mound of stuff and feels like it can’t get out” way of doing things, and that’s not very useful :p I hope the sunshine helps, though! I’ve found I’m somewhat solar-powered, and it helps my motivation and productivity a lot when it’s bright out.
Ahhh, more hugs! Yeah, it’d be a lot easier to feel better about failing if it didn’t hurt so much. I’m still wincing about a stupid thing I did a month ago that wasn’t even a big deal (and I feel like part of the reason things blew up so much also had to do with how polarized the environment already was even if I totally could have worded things better when I chimed in), but I still feel bad about having kind of started the firefight, as it were.
Pretty close, I’m in Michigan =) The southeastern part of it, so our winters are usually a lot milder than what people get even a little further north or west, but definitely not temperate, especially compared to the tropics/subtropics :p Though oh god, -54C, I don’t even want to think about it o.0 Let me know if you’re ever going through Detroit Metro Airport (DTW); there are buses to the airport now, so I can go say hi without having to jump through all the transportation hoops there used to be :D
i didn't even see there were two comments gdmugen_edamameJune 8 2016, 15:33:37 UTC
I just replied in a watsapp chat to my Spanish host mother like a solid month late, so so far we're doing pretty good! We're getting to the rainy season now, but you'd think a Malaysian would be used to hot humid weather??? And yet here I am, melting, bitching, and lying down in boxer shorts staring at the ceiling. One thing you gotta say about the cold, at least food doesn't rot p much the moment you open it.
Mum had a nasty spur in her foot that was gouging her from the inside out, and last week had surgery to take it off and she's recovering nicely cccc: !!!! Health-wise it's a rough year for my family, but that's not super unexpected, considering we're all the oldest we've ever been. And as for being busy.... Every semester I go, this will be the semester where I don't stress myself out! And every semester, I join something or volunteer something or am asked to do something and BOOM!!! I'm wrecked until semester holidays. The big Holy Shit factor this sem is having to read an entire book (in Japanese ofc) every month and do a report on it. It means a lot of long, long days drinking too much coffee and trying not to scream @ how many words I still need to look up, but it's pretty nice when I get to the end and I think, whoa, I might suck, but even being able to suck this much is amazing. And I'm definitely solar-powered! I need more of it than the average person, I'm sure, but I also spend so much time walking around in good weather I get plenty.
lmao any firefight you start I'll join in on. I think it seems to be a common trait w lovely ladies to stress like hell over even tiny things, which in itself isn't necessary a bad thing, but my lil sis' resolution for the year is To Rock The Hell Out Of The Boat Righteously, and I think she's got a good thing going.
My knowledge of American geography is limited to airports of states I have transited through, and Michigan unfortunately is not on the list. Had to look it up, and I like how lake-y it is lmao. It also looks like it would be super, super frigid. Not -54 frigid, but I don't think hell would be -54 frigid. Also I will!!! Though with how damn difficult it is getting an American visa, this isn't a likely occurence orz
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfMay 31 2016, 23:24:36 UTC
It depends, but usually the bulk of the work is still research, whether academic or industry, depending on where the postdoc position is. In academia, on top of whatever research projects they have going on, a lot of times postdocs will help with writing grants and manuscripts, or be expected apply for funding/publish research results on their own, and sometimes they can/have to do some teaching, either lecturing or just training people in the lab. It depends pretty heavily on the principal investigator of the lab and how they run things/what sorts of activities they place emphasis on. So pretty much like grad school, haha ^^;; Which is kind of the point, since the postdoctoral period is technically supposed to be for “further scientific training”, but there’s always been a lot of debate over how necessary it is/if there’s any way to streamline the process, especially for attaining faculty positions, since in fields where the postdoc is important (mostly the biosciences, far as I can tell, though that might just be because I know it the best :p), it takes a lot more time for people to “move on” to “real jobs”, compared to fields where most people don’t do postdocs, and get “real jobs” right away. In my current lab, we work on understanding biological mechanisms (mostly molecular biology and genetics) that are important for helping the brain develop properly, since there’s billions of neurons involved and they all need to (generally :p) get to the right place at the right time and connect to the right things to make a functioning brain. I knew nothing about the brain when I started, and still don’t know that much really, but I think it’s super cool, and my boss likes trying new techniques/crazy things, so we’re often trying something cutting-edge, and that’s pretty awesome as well.
Ahh, if I still had easy access to manga I’d still be reading ridiculous amounts of it as well! In the meantime, I read way too much fanfiction of varying quality, often for fandoms I’m only passingly familiar with so I don’t end up with quibbles about characterization/canon, and thus have nothing read. Or I click through picture lists of “21 Cute Cats in Shoeboxes” and learn about “10 New Ways to Eat Ice Cream” or something. So, meaningless fluff here, too ^^;; Go team! *fistbumps*
I have LINE on the tablet and tried messaging people a few weeks ago, but it appears nothing is going through even though it says everything is fine at my end? And people on the other side say they can’t actually find me on it? Maybe I need to have it on my phone instead??Or if I can get it on the computer I’d actually be more likely to see any messages…TECHNOLOGY IS COMPLICATED~~~:ppp But I will hit you up if I ever get it to work!
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youmugen_edamameJune 8 2016, 15:22:21 UTC
A lot of my friends have started applying for jobs and internships and stuff, so I'm giving serious thought about my future, and for now it looks like I need more qualifications before I can do anything helpful (that is, contribute to rainforest conservation) so higher higher education looks like the best choice. I had a talk w a teacher, and he said if you're gonna be in the sciences, you need at least a Ph.D to get tenure at a Japanese university (though w Japan trying to become more international, he said the odds of me getting employed are pretty high). That's a damn long commitment to gird my loins for since I'm just into my 3rd year of my 4 years of undergrad, so I'm trying to get informed >A< I hope you don't mind more questions babe. I don't mind the teaching stuff, that's been my part-time job for like a year and a half now and it's like ascetic training to build patience at this stuff. But if you don't mind me asking, how does a postdoc work? Is it like a job, wherein by getting a grant or what you're getting paid to work? Or are you paying for it like you would for a regular degree? Because for real I don't want to harass my parents once they retire orz
School has been a bit busy lately, which pretty much means I have been in the mood to write fic like there's no tomorrow lately ;9 And my whole family links each other clickbait posts about cats so I totally, totally get your feels.
Idk about abroad but in Japan to be able to add other people you need to verify your age? When you set up the account. In any case, my account! Is! spacecaptainzura in case you get it to work!
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfJuly 20 2016, 22:10:34 UTC
(Part I of something something)
Oh man, I think I’ve broken your record here; I should really really just reply right away. Every time I think I’ll have more time to do something later something comes up :p Summer’s decided to back off a bit here recently, though it’s supposed to be blazing hot for exactly the duration of the summer art fair again, as per tradition. Now we just need another thunderstorm to hit when there’s a bunch of people with fragile pottery and big paintings out on display and we’ll hit all of the art fair checklist. Heh, I’d say I can probably tolerate heat and humidity a bit better than most of my coworkers having lived in a subtropical area before, but I can’t say that I actually like hot + humid. One should still be allowed to complain about weather that they should be used to =) Otherwise all the people here complaining when winter hits would be out of most of their conversation topics =) Agreed that I do like how well the food stores in winter though, especially when you can just lob something onto the balcony if the fridge is full :p
I think in general it’s a good thing to go out and do more things if the opportunities are there <3 I feel like I should have done more volunteering and stuff when I was younger and there were more chances; I probably could have learned a lot from the experiences/people (in both good and bad ways) that would be very useful now, or at least help me to be less of a socially awkward mess in a lot of situations ^^;; So go you for going out and doings things that will have impact! But I hope it’s been more rewarding than stressful this year <333 And good luck with the reading, I hope it’s been getting faster and easier! I totally think you’re super amazing and it’s awesome that you can read and communicate in so many extremely different languages <3 Hope everything’s good health-wise for you and the family, and I totally approve of your lil’ sis’s resolution! That’s one of the things I should do more as well, but I’m pretty fail at presenting things in a way that gets my points across the way I want, haha. I’m much better at supporting the people who can do so ^^;; Hope she’s been rocking everything <3
Michigan is quite lake-y! I’m not near any of the lakes and haven’t really had a chance to visit yet (I hear the lake beaches are really nice in the summer), but it’s plenty river-y and pond-y and other small bodies of water-y where I am. I think where I am in the southeastern part of the state we’re a bit buffered from the worst of the winter weather by the relative locations of the Great Lakes, so I’m not sure I could deal with some of the more wintery weather people get in Canada or the northeastern US, either. And definitely not -54 :p Yeah, I heard they were trying to make American visas a bit less of a hassle to get, but it’s still not easy =/ And I don’t know if things have been going screwy lately with everything else going on in the US/world…
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfJuly 20 2016, 22:11:35 UTC
(Part II!)
No worries babe, ask away! I’m mostly speaking from my pretty limited and narrow experience of being in the biological sciences in the US, but I could prolly ask around for more specific resources if it comes to that. So a postdoc is basically a temporary “further training” position that you can take after graduating from a PhD program. In theory it’s designed to prepare people to be future principal investigators (PIs), that are heads of and running their own research labs. In practice, the level of career development support/type of training you might get on say, how to write grants/design research projects/mentor other people depends heavily on the PI that you’re working under during your time as a postdoc. In the biosciences, it’s pretty much the norm now that in order to get a faculty position you’d need to do at least one, and possibly more than one postdoc, and be pretty productive scientifically during that time (which mostly translates to publishing papers in my field. There are waaay fewer tenure track faculty positions available than there are PhD graduates, so it’s extremely competitive to get one.) I think in a lot of other fields, doing a postdoc is really not necessary unless you wanted to use it as a chance to try out a different scientific system/get experience in something different from what you’d been doing, since the norm is to apply for a “real” job right after graduating. Postdocs get paid a salary (so you don’t have to pay to do one!), but due to their vague employment status where they’re something between a grad student/trainee and actual university/institution staff/employee, the position often has fewer benefits and way less protections/support available if issues at work come up. The salary is also usually pretty low compared to what a “real job” would get you, since you are theoretically still “receiving training” and not actually “working”. Also, postdocs tend to get paid off their PIs grants, so staying employed is heavily dependent on the financial state of the lab. There are some grants and fellowships that you can apply for as a postdoc, but obviously those are limited and usually awarded to people very committed to becoming tenure track faculty, so postdoc positions are generally still dependent on the state of the lab they’re working in.
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfJuly 20 2016, 22:12:36 UTC
(Part III, which prolly would have fit with II, too late o.0)
And I totally know what you mean about not wanting the parents to be helping out with the higher/post degrees. I’m not sure how the grad school systems work in Japan or say the UK, but for the biosciences in the US, a lot of the grad school programs come with a stipend and the tuition is covered by the program/from grants funds from the advisor, so even if you won’t really be making any money (the stipend is small), but you’re not paying for the degree, either. One of my criteria when applying to grad school was to find programs with “guaranteed” stipend coverage until graduation. At a lot of the Ivy/big name universities, they’ll have vague wording about how the student can find support while working toward the degree, which usually means there are scholarship/training grants/TA positions the student can apply for, but there’s usually a limited number of positions with a lot of students applying. Obviously, there’s no such thing as an actual guarantee, and if the program/advisor runs out of funding, the grad student can end up in a tight spot wrt finishing the dissertation, but in a functional situation the student wouldn’t be paying for the degree. International students might have a harder time getting in though, because most of the mechanisms that grad programs get funding from the NIH etc. for training applies only to domestic students =/ (Also, this ties into the whole complicated thing where there’s been a trend for a good long while of PIs using grad students/postdocs as cheap labor to work on the PI’s grants instead of focusing on their training and how to help them develop their own projects as an independent scientist, because the PI feels that if they’re paying for the student from the grant, the student should just do as they say, and a lot of people get out of grad school without really having gained anything scientifically from the experience =/)
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfJuly 20 2016, 22:14:23 UTC
(The Wall'o'Text that is Part IV that was what I really wanted to separate from the lesser walls'o'text...)
If you wanted to be tenure track faculty/a professor in the sciences, then I’d agree you’d probably need to go the whole higher higher education route, because that’s how the whole system’s been rigged. On the other hand, for molecular biology type life sciences, at least, most of the professors spend most of their time juggling writing grants to get funding to do lab research, balancing their teaching/mentoring responsibilities, overseeing the lab (regular lab operations, giving direction to the research, designing projects and figuring out how to carry them out/analyze the results), and trying to publish/patent/otherwise get the word out about what they’ve been doing at conferences, etc. so they can get more financial support to keep carrying out the research they want to do. I have no idea how it might work in a field that’s less bench science focused, though I know a lot of labs are partnering with businesses/companies nowadays to work together on more application-based research, and MD PhDs that have both research labs and a clinical practice will often be doing research that involves clinical trials or analyzing large cohorts of patient data/samples, so not all of it is about academics puttering around in the ivory tower. But speaking blindly as someone who knows nothing about how these things shake out in different areas of study, I feel that if you wanted to lead research on conservation efforts and their effects, tenure track would probably be a good way to go, but if you were just really interested in doing research, getting a whole bunch of higher degrees might be less essential than finding some good research groups/organizations to work for. If you wanted to be more out in the field doing things (once again I’m guessing since I have no experience with these matters), my feeling would also be that higher higher education would be less essential than having lots of experience working with organizations that carry out conservation work, but the extra degrees or some other relevant certifications might help with getting promoted/moving to a position where you could become one of the decision makers. I think grad school is good for helping you learn how to analyze (data, the literature, etc.), carry out research/think scientifically, and how to present your results well to various audiences, but grad school is really truly not the only place to learn these skills, and it *is* a big (and looong commitment). If you think a bit more higher ed would be helpful, maybe look into a worthwhile Master’s program instead of a PhD? I don’t know if there’s Master’s in Japan, but they’re usually not the best investment if you’re going to a US program, because in the case of a Master’s the student would have to pay tuition, and the tuition fees for US programs are usually exorbitant, and not worth whatever boost in salary the degree would give you. So yeah, that was pretty rambly, but to sum up, from what I’ve seen, professors seem to end up being very professor-y and stuck in universities/research institutes, but I don’t know how much sway, say, an ecology professor might be able to have if they had links to the government and stuff, while there might be professional conservation organizations out there who would be doing things a bit more directly/hands on like if that’s more what you wanted to be doing.
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youlavenderscarfJuly 20 2016, 22:15:15 UTC
(Random super short Part V, oops, the spam stops here ^^;;)
Ahh, most recently I’ve tried downloading the computer version of LINE, but either they’ve still got some bugs to figure out there, or my laptop has once again become outdated, because half the functions the help manual says that should show up don’t, so I have no way to log in (or make a new account really, since I don’t think I remember what the original one was…). I may have to try putting it on the actual phone (which I only use wifi with), and hope the fact that I already used the phone number when I put it on the tablet won’t cause problems. Too bad no one hands out Nobel Prizes for or writes thrilling novels about tech-impaired people eventually overcoming basic app usage problems through very occasional poking and troubleshooting…
Hope school is/went well! (oh god, is it like, summer vacation for you now? Timely replies, I has them!)
RE: oh my god it's been so long how are youmugen_edamameAugust 18 2016, 14:06:10 UTC
WE ARE AS BAD AS EACH OTHER IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A GODDAMNED MONTH
thanks so much for dropping all that info on me babe. postdoc is a dream a long way away for a girl who's 3 years into a 4 year degree program, but I got less time to burn compared to other people in my year so i just wanted to have a clearer view of things. i think i'm gonna try to push and get an internship of some sort in my 4th year to try and get that hands-on experience. i reckon i know what i want to do, but it's been getting further and further away from bench science that it hi-key freaks me out.
that said, at least once i finish my undergrad i can kinda figure out how to find my bearings. esp now that i know post-doctorates are a pretty different beast from Ph.Ds, though publishing is another terrifying thing. BABE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED if y please hit me up so that i can read it and show off uhm. you've been an absolute goddamn gift baaaaaabe <3
your struggles with LINE are hilarious but i also feel you. my big sis and mom are a lot better w apps than i am i have like 5 things i use all the time and that's it...
SCHOOL WENT OKAY (maybe i'm still waiting for results and i am not sure they are going to be stellar lmao). im on summer break but i finished one fieldtrip a couple of weeks ago and i'm going on another one next week so i'm not gonna be having a super relaxing holiday orz how are you and what are you up toooooooo?
Both in my field of study and in my literal body, I am quite flexible. The exploding happened in the shape of getting hospitalised, so after that I kinda feel a lot better? I have a lot of work this semester, more than usual when a teacher who used to organise stuff suddenly quit and I'm taking over a portion of her work for extra-curricular stuff (plus my research lab that is super interesting but super intensive), but I feel okay. It's been getting sunny and whoa- *GETS SWUNG AROUND IN A CIRCLE* I got the support of world-class lady so I feel okay. Fail often, fail harder, fail better, is pretty much my motto especially in my Japanese. Just goddamn why does failing have to hurt so bad sometimes??? When it happens so often????
We actually got snow this winter so that was fun, but spring was like maybe 3 weeks long and it's pretty much midsummer at this point. Babe, you're in Illinois, right? Place strikes me as fuuuucking cold, but then again 2 days ago I met a Russian girl who oh-so-casually went the coldest I ever felt was -54 C, and then looked deeply disturbed when I said the average temperature in Malaysia is 29. What's involved in the job of a postdoctoral researcher, though? Also, what are you researching? (You cool ass lady you). DGM is back up again, but aside from reading a shit lot of manga and investing too much money in gay, I pirate stream loads of movies and am filling my mind with meaningless fluff. So far, so good (?) lmao
Hope you're well Sofia! Also holla at a girl if you use LINE or what!
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*SNUGS!!!* Hope you’re still doing good and that you and your mom haven’t needed more doctor’s appointments =( Glad you’re feeling better, but hopefully if there’s another explosion it’s not a hospital one ^^;; Though sometimes that abrupt throwing everything out of whack and being forced to focus on something else is what gets you out of the grind of the rut and gives some perspective on things. Or just a feeling of relief sometimes, really. But yeah, sounds like you’ll be/are super busy again (in a good and productive way, but it’s still stressful!), so good luck with everything, but take care and I hope you manage to juggle it all in a way that gives you something back instead of just burning you out <3 I’d give tips, but I am the poster child of the “small furry animal attacking the first thing that comes its way then getting distracted and trying to attack the next thing while still wrestling with the first until it’s buried under a mound of stuff and feels like it can’t get out” way of doing things, and that’s not very useful :p I hope the sunshine helps, though! I’ve found I’m somewhat solar-powered, and it helps my motivation and productivity a lot when it’s bright out.
Ahhh, more hugs! Yeah, it’d be a lot easier to feel better about failing if it didn’t hurt so much. I’m still wincing about a stupid thing I did a month ago that wasn’t even a big deal (and I feel like part of the reason things blew up so much also had to do with how polarized the environment already was even if I totally could have worded things better when I chimed in), but I still feel bad about having kind of started the firefight, as it were.
Pretty close, I’m in Michigan =) The southeastern part of it, so our winters are usually a lot milder than what people get even a little further north or west, but definitely not temperate, especially compared to the tropics/subtropics :p Though oh god, -54C, I don’t even want to think about it o.0 Let me know if you’re ever going through Detroit Metro Airport (DTW); there are buses to the airport now, so I can go say hi without having to jump through all the transportation hoops there used to be :D
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Mum had a nasty spur in her foot that was gouging her from the inside out, and last week had surgery to take it off and she's recovering nicely cccc: !!!! Health-wise it's a rough year for my family, but that's not super unexpected, considering we're all the oldest we've ever been. And as for being busy.... Every semester I go, this will be the semester where I don't stress myself out! And every semester, I join something or volunteer something or am asked to do something and BOOM!!! I'm wrecked until semester holidays. The big Holy Shit factor this sem is having to read an entire book (in Japanese ofc) every month and do a report on it. It means a lot of long, long days drinking too much coffee and trying not to scream @ how many words I still need to look up, but it's pretty nice when I get to the end and I think, whoa, I might suck, but even being able to suck this much is amazing. And I'm definitely solar-powered! I need more of it than the average person, I'm sure, but I also spend so much time walking around in good weather I get plenty.
lmao any firefight you start I'll join in on. I think it seems to be a common trait w lovely ladies to stress like hell over even tiny things, which in itself isn't necessary a bad thing, but my lil sis' resolution for the year is To Rock The Hell Out Of The Boat Righteously, and I think she's got a good thing going.
My knowledge of American geography is limited to airports of states I have transited through, and Michigan unfortunately is not on the list. Had to look it up, and I like how lake-y it is lmao. It also looks like it would be super, super frigid. Not -54 frigid, but I don't think hell would be -54 frigid. Also I will!!! Though with how damn difficult it is getting an American visa, this isn't a likely occurence orz
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Ahh, if I still had easy access to manga I’d still be reading ridiculous amounts of it as well! In the meantime, I read way too much fanfiction of varying quality, often for fandoms I’m only passingly familiar with so I don’t end up with quibbles about characterization/canon, and thus have nothing read. Or I click through picture lists of “21 Cute Cats in Shoeboxes” and learn about “10 New Ways to Eat Ice Cream” or something. So, meaningless fluff here, too ^^;; Go team! *fistbumps*
I have LINE on the tablet and tried messaging people a few weeks ago, but it appears nothing is going through even though it says everything is fine at my end? And people on the other side say they can’t actually find me on it? Maybe I need to have it on my phone instead??Or if I can get it on the computer I’d actually be more likely to see any messages…TECHNOLOGY IS COMPLICATED~~~:ppp But I will hit you up if I ever get it to work!
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School has been a bit busy lately, which pretty much means I have been in the mood to write fic like there's no tomorrow lately ;9 And my whole family links each other clickbait posts about cats so I totally, totally get your feels.
Idk about abroad but in Japan to be able to add other people you need to verify your age? When you set up the account. In any case, my account! Is! spacecaptainzura in case you get it to work!
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Oh man, I think I’ve broken your record here; I should really really just reply right away. Every time I think I’ll have more time to do something later something comes up :p Summer’s decided to back off a bit here recently, though it’s supposed to be blazing hot for exactly the duration of the summer art fair again, as per tradition. Now we just need another thunderstorm to hit when there’s a bunch of people with fragile pottery and big paintings out on display and we’ll hit all of the art fair checklist. Heh, I’d say I can probably tolerate heat and humidity a bit better than most of my coworkers having lived in a subtropical area before, but I can’t say that I actually like hot + humid. One should still be allowed to complain about weather that they should be used to =) Otherwise all the people here complaining when winter hits would be out of most of their conversation topics =) Agreed that I do like how well the food stores in winter though, especially when you can just lob something onto the balcony if the fridge is full :p
I think in general it’s a good thing to go out and do more things if the opportunities are there <3 I feel like I should have done more volunteering and stuff when I was younger and there were more chances; I probably could have learned a lot from the experiences/people (in both good and bad ways) that would be very useful now, or at least help me to be less of a socially awkward mess in a lot of situations ^^;; So go you for going out and doings things that will have impact! But I hope it’s been more rewarding than stressful this year <333 And good luck with the reading, I hope it’s been getting faster and easier! I totally think you’re super amazing and it’s awesome that you can read and communicate in so many extremely different languages <3 Hope everything’s good health-wise for you and the family, and I totally approve of your lil’ sis’s resolution! That’s one of the things I should do more as well, but I’m pretty fail at presenting things in a way that gets my points across the way I want, haha. I’m much better at supporting the people who can do so ^^;; Hope she’s been rocking everything <3
Michigan is quite lake-y! I’m not near any of the lakes and haven’t really had a chance to visit yet (I hear the lake beaches are really nice in the summer), but it’s plenty river-y and pond-y and other small bodies of water-y where I am. I think where I am in the southeastern part of the state we’re a bit buffered from the worst of the winter weather by the relative locations of the Great Lakes, so I’m not sure I could deal with some of the more wintery weather people get in Canada or the northeastern US, either. And definitely not -54 :p Yeah, I heard they were trying to make American visas a bit less of a hassle to get, but it’s still not easy =/ And I don’t know if things have been going screwy lately with everything else going on in the US/world…
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No worries babe, ask away! I’m mostly speaking from my pretty limited and narrow experience of being in the biological sciences in the US, but I could prolly ask around for more specific resources if it comes to that. So a postdoc is basically a temporary “further training” position that you can take after graduating from a PhD program. In theory it’s designed to prepare people to be future principal investigators (PIs), that are heads of and running their own research labs. In practice, the level of career development support/type of training you might get on say, how to write grants/design research projects/mentor other people depends heavily on the PI that you’re working under during your time as a postdoc. In the biosciences, it’s pretty much the norm now that in order to get a faculty position you’d need to do at least one, and possibly more than one postdoc, and be pretty productive scientifically during that time (which mostly translates to publishing papers in my field. There are waaay fewer tenure track faculty positions available than there are PhD graduates, so it’s extremely competitive to get one.) I think in a lot of other fields, doing a postdoc is really not necessary unless you wanted to use it as a chance to try out a different scientific system/get experience in something different from what you’d been doing, since the norm is to apply for a “real” job right after graduating. Postdocs get paid a salary (so you don’t have to pay to do one!), but due to their vague employment status where they’re something between a grad student/trainee and actual university/institution staff/employee, the position often has fewer benefits and way less protections/support available if issues at work come up. The salary is also usually pretty low compared to what a “real job” would get you, since you are theoretically still “receiving training” and not actually “working”. Also, postdocs tend to get paid off their PIs grants, so staying employed is heavily dependent on the financial state of the lab. There are some grants and fellowships that you can apply for as a postdoc, but obviously those are limited and usually awarded to people very committed to becoming tenure track faculty, so postdoc positions are generally still dependent on the state of the lab they’re working in.
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And I totally know what you mean about not wanting the parents to be helping out with the higher/post degrees. I’m not sure how the grad school systems work in Japan or say the UK, but for the biosciences in the US, a lot of the grad school programs come with a stipend and the tuition is covered by the program/from grants funds from the advisor, so even if you won’t really be making any money (the stipend is small), but you’re not paying for the degree, either. One of my criteria when applying to grad school was to find programs with “guaranteed” stipend coverage until graduation. At a lot of the Ivy/big name universities, they’ll have vague wording about how the student can find support while working toward the degree, which usually means there are scholarship/training grants/TA positions the student can apply for, but there’s usually a limited number of positions with a lot of students applying. Obviously, there’s no such thing as an actual guarantee, and if the program/advisor runs out of funding, the grad student can end up in a tight spot wrt finishing the dissertation, but in a functional situation the student wouldn’t be paying for the degree. International students might have a harder time getting in though, because most of the mechanisms that grad programs get funding from the NIH etc. for training applies only to domestic students =/ (Also, this ties into the whole complicated thing where there’s been a trend for a good long while of PIs using grad students/postdocs as cheap labor to work on the PI’s grants instead of focusing on their training and how to help them develop their own projects as an independent scientist, because the PI feels that if they’re paying for the student from the grant, the student should just do as they say, and a lot of people get out of grad school without really having gained anything scientifically from the experience =/)
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If you wanted to be tenure track faculty/a professor in the sciences, then I’d agree you’d probably need to go the whole higher higher education route, because that’s how the whole system’s been rigged. On the other hand, for molecular biology type life sciences, at least, most of the professors spend most of their time juggling writing grants to get funding to do lab research, balancing their teaching/mentoring responsibilities, overseeing the lab (regular lab operations, giving direction to the research, designing projects and figuring out how to carry them out/analyze the results), and trying to publish/patent/otherwise get the word out about what they’ve been doing at conferences, etc. so they can get more financial support to keep carrying out the research they want to do. I have no idea how it might work in a field that’s less bench science focused, though I know a lot of labs are partnering with businesses/companies nowadays to work together on more application-based research, and MD PhDs that have both research labs and a clinical practice will often be doing research that involves clinical trials or analyzing large cohorts of patient data/samples, so not all of it is about academics puttering around in the ivory tower. But speaking blindly as someone who knows nothing about how these things shake out in different areas of study, I feel that if you wanted to lead research on conservation efforts and their effects, tenure track would probably be a good way to go, but if you were just really interested in doing research, getting a whole bunch of higher degrees might be less essential than finding some good research groups/organizations to work for. If you wanted to be more out in the field doing things (once again I’m guessing since I have no experience with these matters), my feeling would also be that higher higher education would be less essential than having lots of experience working with organizations that carry out conservation work, but the extra degrees or some other relevant certifications might help with getting promoted/moving to a position where you could become one of the decision makers. I think grad school is good for helping you learn how to analyze (data, the literature, etc.), carry out research/think scientifically, and how to present your results well to various audiences, but grad school is really truly not the only place to learn these skills, and it *is* a big (and looong commitment). If you think a bit more higher ed would be helpful, maybe look into a worthwhile Master’s program instead of a PhD? I don’t know if there’s Master’s in Japan, but they’re usually not the best investment if you’re going to a US program, because in the case of a Master’s the student would have to pay tuition, and the tuition fees for US programs are usually exorbitant, and not worth whatever boost in salary the degree would give you. So yeah, that was pretty rambly, but to sum up, from what I’ve seen, professors seem to end up being very professor-y and stuck in universities/research institutes, but I don’t know how much sway, say, an ecology professor might be able to have if they had links to the government and stuff, while there might be professional conservation organizations out there who would be doing things a bit more directly/hands on like if that’s more what you wanted to be doing.
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Ahh, most recently I’ve tried downloading the computer version of LINE, but either they’ve still got some bugs to figure out there, or my laptop has once again become outdated, because half the functions the help manual says that should show up don’t, so I have no way to log in (or make a new account really, since I don’t think I remember what the original one was…). I may have to try putting it on the actual phone (which I only use wifi with), and hope the fact that I already used the phone number when I put it on the tablet won’t cause problems. Too bad no one hands out Nobel Prizes for or writes thrilling novels about tech-impaired people eventually overcoming basic app usage problems through very occasional poking and troubleshooting…
Hope school is/went well! (oh god, is it like, summer vacation for you now? Timely replies, I has them!)
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thanks so much for dropping all that info on me babe. postdoc is a dream a long way away for a girl who's 3 years into a 4 year degree program, but I got less time to burn compared to other people in my year so i just wanted to have a clearer view of things. i think i'm gonna try to push and get an internship of some sort in my 4th year to try and get that hands-on experience. i reckon i know what i want to do, but it's been getting further and further away from bench science that it hi-key freaks me out.
that said, at least once i finish my undergrad i can kinda figure out how to find my bearings. esp now that i know post-doctorates are a pretty different beast from Ph.Ds, though publishing is another terrifying thing. BABE HAVE YOU BEEN PUBLISHED if y please hit me up so that i can read it and show off uhm. you've been an absolute goddamn gift baaaaaabe <3
your struggles with LINE are hilarious but i also feel you. my big sis and mom are a lot better w apps than i am i have like 5 things i use all the time and that's it...
SCHOOL WENT OKAY (maybe i'm still waiting for results and i am not sure they are going to be stellar lmao). im on summer break but i finished one fieldtrip a couple of weeks ago and i'm going on another one next week so i'm not gonna be having a super relaxing holiday orz how are you and what are you up toooooooo?
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