A roundabout excuse for not posting more often.

I love multidisciplinary studies. Specialization limits the accessibility of whatever topic you study-- sure, you might be an expert in the environmental theory of praying mantis egg-hatching dynamics, but if you can't communicate what you know to someone who studies the neurobiochemical interactions of crawfish mating rituals, what good does it do? We do need experts, though... it's just that, we need a few experts, and we need them to mentor people in a broader context than their own expertise. Multiple mentors-- that's the idea behind a thesis committee, I think.

I am writing about this today, not to change the face of science (I'll save that for another day, a greater blog), but to express my frustration with grad school lately. I work in a fantastic interdisciplinary lab that combines chemistry and neurobiology, and yet I find myself constantly tripping on the crack between the two. Imagine you have a study where you use a chemical technique to study a neurobiological phenomenon. Now you have a problem: write for a chemistry journal, and the chemists think you're doing chemistry wrong. Write for a biology journal, and the neurobiologists think you're doing neurobiology wrong. You're wrong from every angle, even if you're right. (My lab is really well established, luckily for us, but the problem still arises, especially when you're trying to do something new. Cough, cough.)

Now back to that age-old (beginning of this blog-old) notion that as a woman, I feel that I experience extra frustration. Most of the men I know are happy to step back and say "Yes, I'm a chemist-- who cares about the neurobiology?" or "The neurobiology is solid, so I am going to let it speak for itself." I feel this is easier for someone with a Y chromosome because society expects them to be great at one thing-- and everything else be damned. Women are supposed to be multi-talented: can you cook? do you keep a clean house? does your hair have bounce and shine? can you wiggle your hips attractively when Lady Gaga comes on at a club? please theorize about the themes in the Bronte sisters' literature as compared to Jane Austen's. how does NMDA antagonism in the hippocampus impact task-acquisition in various behavioral paradigms? etc. Maybe that's not true-- maybe that's just some neurotic pressure I feel because I can barely cook, clean, control my hair, and wiggle seductively, and I haven't read early 19th century women's lit since high school.

But my obvious neuroticism aside... my point is, taking a multidisciplinary approach to science is, in my opinion, the best approach-- and the most open for criticism. And unlike a lot of people, I don't let criticism roll off my back. I take it as a challenge to get better. Guess what? Being a first year grad student presents a lot of challenges (mostly because I don't know anything), and I'm EXHAUSTED. And that, my dear reader(s?), is why my posting has been lackluster lately. I'm just too tired to store up my vitriol. It leaks out of me all day like a car with a bad transmission. And your diaphragm (again, not the contraceptive) is the one that suffers. I apologize to diaphragms everywhere.

Harry Potter and the TransExtravaganza

I read all the Harry Potter books. I read some twice. I read some three times. They have a special little place in my heart and I don't care if you think that makes me lame. You know what're really lame? The Harry Potter movies.

Last night I headed over to a friend's place to watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Those kids really can't act. It's not so apparent in the first couple of movies because the audience is distracted by how little Dan Radcliffe is and by Alan Rickman's amazing portrayal of Professor Snape. But by this fourth movie, it's pretty obvious that the kids playing Harry and Ron (Emma Watson, i.e. Hermione, can act) are either receiving spectactularly inept direction, or that they have no skills for the director to work with. I vote for the latter, based on their performance in the fifth movie.

While we were watching the movie, I kept thinking about how much better these film adaptations would be if they hadn't taken them so seriously-- I would love to see a campy Harry Potter movie that takes all the semi-adult jokes in the book and expounds upon them, instead of being so plot and action-scene focused. Aside from the obvious jokes about Harry's wand, the movies could be improved simply by adding sparkly makeup to some of the male characters. Maybe the normal version needs to exist as a basis for a future campy movie. Maybe someday the world will be illuminated by the existence of another transvestite-filled musical. I can only pray that, if and when we are so lucky, Alan Rickman will reprise his role as Snape, and that he's willing to wear purple eyeshadow.

I would also like David Bowie to play Voldemort and Jake Gyllenhaal to play Harry, essentially reprising his role from Donnie Darko with the addition of teenage wizardry and a promiscuous romp around Hogwarts with Ron.

Want to know something that makes no sense? (If not: why are you reading this blog?)

In North Carolina, I have tons of crap to do all the time, and it's really important. It's my future that's at stake, sometimes. I get it done, and I don't feel overwhelming stress about it. I'm in Chicago now, and somehow every second seems overburdened with stress, making it hard to accomplish anything-- even though there are literally two things on my omnipresent "to do" list, and neither of them are particularly difficult.

Normally I'd be able to say it's because my mother is harping on me, or something... but she really isn't at all. It's been really nice, as if they are starting to admit to themselves that what they feel about my relocation is not outrage, but a sensation of missing my sometimes unpleasantly liberal and outlandish but otherwise irreplicable* quirky presence. I'm sure none of their friends gush adoringly about the differences between activation kinetics of sodium and potassium channels and how they influence the shape of an action potential. God, I'm getting hot just thinking about it.

*not a real word. What's an antonym for replicable?
** Should I start tagging my posts? Do people use tags?