Chasing after sleep and perspective

Lately seems like I just can’t get a good night’s rest. Last night I even took some Tylenol PM—which tends to guarantee me a consistent straight-through-the-night sleep—but woke up feeling even more groggy. Lately, according to an eye-witness, I’ve taken to sitting bolt-upright in my sleep and gasping in fear. I only vaguely remember this myself.

It seems like the luxury of an adult, to overanalyze and wring my hands over sleep when people suffer violence and starvation elsewhere. But it’s making it hard to think at work in a “big picture” fashion, which I need to do lately. Especially lately.

I want to send a shout-out to my dear Alice, who sent me a very heartening e-mail about figuring out what to do with one’s life. She’s totally right, I need to leave room for serendipity. Know where I am at point A and only worry a bit about point B. I take my Dad’s life as inspiration, because he is a serendipity lightning rod. Seriously. He’ll mention somebody in conversation and he’ll just run into them later on at the grocery store. He’ll go to a conference a make friends with a random person who ends up being exactly the guy he needed to run into to set up a podcast for his radio show.

Now [as the coffee starts to kick in] I think maybe at best I got 50% of this latent ability. I mean, you know how I got here into this PhD program?

1. Fall of 2000: I had to pick a topic for my microbiology class at Hiram. I liked glowing stuff so I went to the index of my textbook and found a chapter on Vibrio fischeri and the squid. I really enjoyed reading the journal articles as well, and gave a nice presentation.

2. Spring of 2002: I wanted to do another summer internship, and I thought, what the heck, I’ll e-mail a bunch of people who have published on the squid system and just say “Hey, I know how to do basic science and I love your system: do you have any money to support an internship?” and it actually worked. I spent the summer in Hawaii doing science and being IN HAWAII.

3. Fall of 2002: I kept in contact with the post-doc I worked with in Hawaii, and she said “hey, heads-up, my boss is moving to UW. You should apply to graduate school there.” And I did.

4. Spring of 2003: I was accepted into the program and liked it all so much that I moved here.

It is just weird to think how much hinged on that one textbook, or even just that one professor’s idea for an assignment. I’m sure wherever else I’d have ended up would have been good too, but I’m very happy with this one.

Some days I don’t really know why I went to graduate school. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have a burning desire to do benchwork. I love learning new stuff. I do feel like it has taught me to be more critical and more ballsy, for me at least. Time for some deep breathing, and soul-searching in a non-panicky fashion.