Passionate N00bity

I was somewhat disappointed when I first started attending non-class seminars for my projects in the lab and my interests to find that there wasn't much rambunctious cheering or passionate cheering. Sure, everyone is very polite and asks Very Intelligent Questions and I understand that much of this is due to an inherent respect for the speaker's effort in gathering and interpreting their data and an abstract need for civility. However, if we're doing science because we love the intellectual challenge, why don't we get more worked up about it and express that excitement? I know that science is not the same thing as sports, but why can we not get up the same passionate lather as sports fans in our arenas of data and theoretical abstraction?

Part of this is due to my dream of one day delivering a data talk in the form of a power ballad, but it's also due to confusion as to when I may break down the barrier of formality and ask a douchey question within the cloak of excited admiration? I recently saw a speaker present some really awesome new biotechnology she had developed in the course of her project and its applications. The tangibility of the data (real-time fluorescent tracking of cells in a living matrice by 2-photon microscopy; which basically meant actually seeing immunotyped immune cells crawling around and interacting with each other) was surreal and exhilarating, but when she talked about her methodologies I was left wanting. I don't want to out the speaker, so I cannot say exactly what my beef was, but it had to do with the algorithms by which she chose to quantify her data. I refrained from asking this question in the Q&A session because of the very civility I mention above, it just seemed like too rude a question to ask in such a polite intellectual subculture as an academic presentation. Of course, on the other hand, there was also the possibility that my question would have revealed my ignorant n00bity, and to be honest that also played a part in me not asking.

Nonetheless, when can we whup it up and get excited about the science all around us? Can I ever high-five or fist-bump a speaker when they've shown me something awesome or would doing so break down this fifth wall academic politeness has surrounded us with?

E-mail Quandary

I find myself facing a bit of a quandary.

I need to send out emails to professors at places I would like to attend graduate school, but I am not sure how to write these emails. I want to write:

HEY DR. DOOD!
ZOMGFLUFFLES UR RESEARCH IS, LIKE, SO HAWT!!!!11!1! U R TEH AWESOMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) HAZ U ROOMZ IN UR LAB FOR ME!?
SQUEE!,
TOASTER

When I know that it wouldn't do to do so. I know that perhaps 3 professors might appreciate getting such an email, but in the vast majority of cases I am aware that to do this would be folly and most likely leave an irreparably bad impression. So I'm left with:

[Banal Salutations],

[Bland Statement 1] [Who I Am] [Something Vaguely Intelligent] [I Read Your Paper, By Which I Really Mean I Read the Abstract] [Bland Statement 2] [Something Trying To Be Intelligent] [Bland Statement 3] [Might There Be Room In Your Lab For Me?]

[Respect]
[Word.]

And this just seems so damn contrived and passionless that I don't know what to really do with it. It's so boring and flat and it communicates none of the enthusiasm or intelligence I may be able to bring to bear on their research focus. But it's what's right, kinda. If I try to inject personality by dressing up words just a little, I'm liable to come across as a sophist jackass or, as is more likely in my case, as a crazy person not to be trusted with pencils.

So this is my quandary, and I don't really see any good ways around it. How do I balance my enthusiasm with the need for propriety/formality? Suggestions!?

A Proposal

PROBLEM: At conferences and meetings of scientists, it is difficult to differentiate the academic ranks of the various attendees. This greatly complicates politeness and increases the risk of disrespecting a big shot who will then sabotage the entire rest of your career for your unwitting slight.

SOLUTION: Conference attendees shall wear hats, with the fanciness of said hats increasing as their academic rank increases.

SCHEMATIC:

Undergrads = berets of various colors (by lab or school)
Grad students, pre quals = Fezs
Grad students, post quals = bowlers
Post-docs = tri-corner hats, add 1 feather to hat/successive post-doc
Profs w/out tenure = princess cone hats, add 1 sequin per publication
Profs w/ tenure = princess cone hats w/ gauze streamers, add 1 sequin/publication
Departmental chairs = fruit baskets with real fruit
Journal editors = appropriate hat + bling
Techs = top hats, fancier ribbons indicating greater experience
Lab managers = fedoras
Core facility staff = cowboy hats
Journalists = cat-earred head bands

Useful Uses for Anger

I have been rejected by all the institutions to which I applied for graduate studies.

Family and friends keep asked me if I was OK about it, and I told them that yes, I'm just peachy because there's always next year (there is, right?). But I'm not. I guess in reality I'm kind of torn up by this, as well as mightily pissed off, but I don't tell them this because I don't want them to worry and I don't want them to see just how much I care because then I think they'd share in my disappointment. I have an uncle or two in Scandinavia that I think went to graduate school, but I'm fairly sure that they went for professional degrees. But of the family that I grew up with here in the States, no one else has ever gone to grad school. And they're all looking at me expectantly smiling and prodding me on, expecting me to set a gleaming example for the younglings of my generation (I'm the eldest of the current generation). And in addition to this pressure, I put myself under more, muttering fervently the exhausting mantra: "Do more, be better!"

Failing to get into grad school, failing to even get so much as an interview, is not doing more or being better. And because of this I'm not so much pissed off at the institutions (they had very few spots, I understand) as I'm angry at myself. Angry at not selling myself better. Disappointed that I didn't find the wonderful advice that Eppendork, Dr. Isis, PhysioProf, Ambivalent Academic, et al have shared with the world via their blogs.

Part of this, I know, is that I am sick of being stuck in small-city Midwest, sick of the same grey weather, sick of the same fucking patterns of everyfuckingthing. Especially sick of the bougie locals who think science is just cute. But it's also largely that I'm restless, I want to move on, and as far as I am willing to see, the only direction to move on in is up.

But a larger part of it is that I am having a hard time separating my self-worth as an aspirant scientist from being rejected.

I want so badly to tear through some new applicable literature*, to sink my teeth into a new set of experimental skills and shake the living shit out of them until they splatter beautiful data everywhere, to learn further and deeper and have peers with whom I can discuss it all, to design and fail and design and fail again and again until I have hammered out elegance! Most of all, I want to be challenged!

The anger I currently hold is of a useful sort. I can use it as fuel. It was anger at being trapped in an endless surburban tract with people who cared more about their lawns' green-ness than the dynamics of molecular orbitals that motivated me to do well in high school so I could get the fuck out of the South**. It was anger at national politics that caused me to harrass the university newspaper's cartoonists until they let me into their club, and that later got me condemned by Catholics, fundamentalists, and Republicans across campus.

So it is this anger, me being mad at being mediocre, that will have me kicking in doors this coming summer and contacting specific professors instead of relying on the sparkliness of specific programs. It is this anger that will have me dissecting my essays several more times, and maybe even being more careful with whom I ask to write letters on my behalf. I am going to beat down the door to academia, even if I'm not sure I want a post-postdoc career in it, with manners and all the charisma*** I can muster. I'll keep the anger to myself, but I'm sure as hell going to bend it to a useful use.

*I frequently read papers on topics other than my projects, but it's always kind of bittersweet because I don't get to use them for anything.

**At the time I thought that I was getting out of the Midwestern mindset (I lived in the interface of Midwest and South) when I came to Michigan, but it turns out that Michigan was just as dopey and the food wasn't even nearly as good. Seriously, why do Michigan tomatoes taste like nothing?

***Note to self: get charisma. Best strategy likely to be attaching my name to a celebrity like a male anglerfish, but much handsomer.

Even Toaster's anger contains polka.