Dad makes me laugh.

Email from Dad after reading previous post:

Guilt has overcome me after realizing the tragic mistake of teaching you to pedal before teaching you to steer, I am so glad Brian was able to teach you correctly.

Love,
Dad

Ne te quaesiveris extra

I just realized I hadn't updated my blog after the forecast of doom/gloom. That's ok, as no one reads this anymore.
So anyway:
This is a semi-public announcement that the liklihood stated in the below blog post was proven wrong. I passed my qualifying exam, thus admitting me to PhD candidacy. Unbelievable. (Reasons for this being unbelievable are touched on in the following and previous posts.)
After passing, I was relieved, but a bit perturbed because I didn't do as well as I should have. Ideally, it would have ended with my committee declaring that, had they been NIH, they would fund me immediately and without question. Unfortunately, it ended with them suggesting that I should probably learn the downstream pathways of the Insulin receptor. True, but not as glamorous.

The fact that I'm an advanced graduate student studying neuroscience seems to be in direct contradiction with the many basic bits of knowledge and skillsets that I lack. Following are some examples of things that do not befit a neuroscientist.

Things every 3rd grader has mastered, but I have not:

I cannot remember which months have 30 days, and which have 31. I have asked Brian to teach me this at least twice now. All I remember from his trick is that some of the months are on knuckles, and some in the valleys, but then you skip one in between...I don't know. Ask him about his complicated knuckle mnemonic.

Despite being an excellent speller, I still have to recite "i before e except after c" 80% of the time I am writing a word with the I/E vowel combination. Really, though- I'm in the top tier of spelling awesomeness. (Ignore typos here. Blogs do not count.)

I could not ride a bike until about 5 months ago. In case you were wondering, learning that skill is quite difficult for an adult. (Particularly so for an adult who has poor gross motor skills, and is a survivor of "floppy baby syndrome" (a.k.a. hypotonia). I have overcome.) Although I won't be racing any time soon, Brian says he will let me on the road once I can stand up and pedal. Not there yet. Still too wobbly. (I don't practice often.)

This deficiency was for many years a closely held secret, until I reached college and decided that it was kind of hilarious. College is a time when all the cool people become comfortable with who they are, and as such are able to laugh at themselves. People usually laugh along.**

I also preface the bike riding information with the fact that this is the only area in which my parents completely failed me. Way to go, Mom and Dad. I sometimes leave out the part where I ran directly into a cement post after Dad "let go" of the seat for the first time, thus nailing what I thought was the final nail in my bike-riding coffin. It should be noted that there was a wide expanse of street, sidewalk and grass surrounding that one post, but my bike was drawn directly into it.

I suspect magnetism, but whatever.


**All the uncool people think that the laughter surrounding said cool person's stories is directed at them, when, in fact, the cool people are laughing with the storyteller, and not at them. (This is indeed a direct reference to the least-cool person we know, in case family was amused and suspicious.)

observations

1. After sitting in almost complete silence for a few hours, the sound of myself eating chips is almost deafening.

2. I am likely to fail my imminent second qualifying exam. It will be my first major failure in life. I will have another chance to remain in grad school, but failure will stress me out greatly, and will have the following consequences:

a. huge blow to my delicate ego

b. increase in Id, decrease in super-ego (e.g. possible abandonment of hard things like science)
NOTE: I actually think Freud is an idiot.

c. explanation of failure through various pre-qualifier difficulties

(e.g. complete hard-drive failure (happened), full week spent re-analyzing data lost with previous hard drive (true), car going up in smoke thereby stranding me in another town (true), car going up in smoke again the next day thereby stranding me in...nowhere (true), total death of car, and subsequent organization and roadtrip to sell car (happened), husband deciding to buy new car on critical thesis work day, and needing me to help with financing (also happened), car dealership taking as long as humanly possible to do everything, thereby stranding me there (of course)...

but that's only the last couple of weeks.

you know, it probably isn't healthy when I've already considered walking haphazardly into the parking lot of my apartment complex as a car was rushing around a corner (but not too fast, because we are in a parking lot, you see?). The idea would be to get hit just hard enough to break a leg, but conveniently I'd be wearing a helmet to protect my favorite organ (brain). That should easily buy me a few extra weeks to prepare, right?

NOTE: IF the previous event or one similar actually happens, please know that I am joking. I mean, the thought crossed my mind, yes, but I wouldn't actually go through with it on purpose. I generally walk through the street in a daze at 5 am though, so it's possible that it happens without planning.

Laundry quandary

In the culmination of what can only be described as seething, burgeoning rage, she succumbed to the impractical solution necessary to redress the manifestations of an immature house-keeper, and threw away every single sock in sight. "From this point forward, only endless copies of the same sock will reside in this house", she resolved.

Match. (point?)

vanity*

Although it looks like I pasted by face into this picture, that's not the case. It was just a lucky, very in-focus shot. (difficult to do in a mirror, actually.)


I think about how people will respond to me much too often. This is a difficult thing to admit, as I loathe self-consciousness. Lack of self-consciousness is one reason I love my husband, who cares not what people think when he decides to climb the rock wall outside of an uppity shopping mall, and who wears a rotation of two or three outfits to work in any given week. To turn this around to myself (as perhaps I am prone to do), I generally fear that all his coworkers will know I am a terrible wife who doesn't do laundry or iron his shirts regularly. (Correction often made by Brian: awesome wife, but mediocre housekeeper. This, however, is justified since I work 70 hour weeks and am getting a PhD. See how I did that? Turned it around to make myself look not so bad. That's my modus operandi. lame.)
Anyway, this paranoia about people and their undoubted scrutiny (of me) often is expressed through ridiculous actions I take to avoid their disapproval. Note: this applies primarily to strangers, which is totally illogical.

One Saturday Brian was working, so I decided to spend my time reading my book (Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius- excellent). I planned on taking it to Barnes and Noble, and curl up on an overstuffed chair to bask in the rare gluttony of reading for hours.
When I drove up to the bookstore, I pictured myself, curled up, reading amongst the books, and then walking out after several gratifying hours with the book in my bag...

---Dream sequence begins here: Imagine harp music and foggy vision, or something.---

The store manager stops me.
"Ma'am...I notice you have that book in your bag."
"Oh, it's mine...I bought it a while ago" (smile!! I love books so much that I buy them brand new!!!)
"It looks brand new."
"Well, I am only on page 92, so, it isn't quite broken in." (I am gentle when reading...no cover creasing.)
"Hmmm- I'd like to take you to the back"

I know deep in my heart that "the back" isn't a glorious, book-stuffed room with sun rays beaming in to highlight the dust. It's the interrogation room- complete with a bucket of water to threaten my book if it must come to torture. (You see, water-damaged books are one of the tragedies in life**.)

---Ok, end dream sequence. Imagine the harp again, but in DESCENDING melodies. That's how you know it's the end rather than the beginning of another dream. Important.---

I needed to prevent this inevitable interception by the B&N manager. I am constantly frightened of people thinking I am stealing things. I blame this on my sister, although she doesn't know it (until now):

When I was very young, I was in an electronics store with my family. My Mom asks a simple task: to hold the calculator we were going to buy. I: obedient, unquestioning, and valiant, follow through. I follow through until we leave the store. In the car, I realized I was still holding the calculator, and it wasn't in a bag.
"Mom! I still have the calculator!"
"Oh- we decided not to get that! Ooops."
No one relieved me of my duty.
Anyway, it was my sister who went off on a dramatic spiel about how I stole this calculator, that it was a really serious crime, how the cops were already after me, et cetera, when we conveniently heard sirens in the distance.
I panicked.

My mom laughed more, and ran it back inside the store.
My sister continued to goad, and wield her power as the elder for evil. (She's since grown out of that habit and apologized. I took that apology as confirmation of my perfectly righteous childhood.)

But back to Barnes and Noble: I had to find a way to undeniably prove the book was mine. I decided that the only irrefutable proof would be an inscription...to myself...as if it were given to me. I know. Ridiculous. Why am I admitting this? (To unload my shame.)

So I had to write something in it that NO ONE would EVER write to themselves. I sat in the car outside of B&N thinking on a clever inscription to myself.
I settled on this: "Kara, I hope your genius appreciates his. -B" (The book is entitled "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, just as a reminder")

I chuckled at what I thought to be an exceptionally personalized and creative inscription.
Two months later: loan book to a friend. mistake.

H: (reads inscription aloud) "Who is B???"
K: *uncomfortable chuckle* "Brian gave it to me." (quickly diverted eyes to floor.)

Summary: I wrote an unnecessarily flattering inscription to myself in my own book so that I might avoid an imaginary scenario of being accused of stealing, and then lied to a friend about it.

end story.

* title is referring to both the "trivial/pointless" use of the word, and the pathetic fact that I actually think people are caring enough about my presence to scrutinize my actions.
** Seriously- one time I saw a bag of encyclopedias on the street in Memphis sitting out in the rain and destined for the dump. I almost cried. You think I am exaggerating, I can tell, but the destruction of knowledge AND books in one sitting was too much to handle.