Tonight my friend, who shall remain anonymous to protect the innocent, and I rented a little movie called, "Whiteout". It was not a great movie, in fact, it was a bad movie, but it did allow for two awesome things to happen. One, my friend and I talked through the entire movie because we were bored. Two, at one point this conversation happened:

At some point in the movie (I'll not spoil it for you by going into too much detail), Kate Beckinsale decides that she needs to stick her hand into the chest cavity of a cadaver because she thinks there might be treasure in there.

Friend: "That's gross! Can you even imagine sticking your hand in a dead person's chest?"

Me (with all earnestness): "I know, right? Without gloves? That's so gross."

Because that's how I roll. I'll dig in a dead body, but for the love of god I'm going to need a lot of layers of protection between my skin and the germs. I'm not some kind of sicko.

In other news, I believe that the secret ingredient at Jimmy John's is crack. For the past two days for lunch and dinner, my friend and I have eaten the same meal: A #6, no mayo and a bag of chips. You think it'd be tiring, but there's nothing I like more than routine.

Well, I have to get up tomorrow and write some dissertation type writing, so I am going to say goodnight to the internet now. I know this post was short and sort of a tease, but so is _______ (insert name of enemy in blank).

It's Not Me, It's Them.

Today brought me two rejection letters, but I've got to say, save for the time I got a frosty for a break-up of a relationship that never really happened***, these were by far the nicest rejections I've ever had. Especially the second one. That one is from a southern university. They do it right in the south. It's like they told me that I'm too good for them. I like it. Lie to me people, lie to me.

Rejection #1

Thank you for taking the time to speak with the search committee via telephone for the position of Assistant Professor of Psychology. The Search Committee enjoyed discussing your credentials with you and the opportunity to get to know you further. Your qualifications made you an extremely strong candidate. Our apologies for the length of time it has taken to get back in contact with you, however the filling of such a position is a carefully considered process and can take some time. We were fortunate to have had an exceptionally well-qualified group of applicants.

The search committee was impressed with your candidacy however this letter is to advise you that they have extended an offer and received a commitment from a particularly strong applicant who brings a wealth of experience with them and whose specific qualifications more closely fit the needs of the position.

The search committee thanks you for your interest and wish you the very best as you consider your future career path.

Rejection # 2

We have completed our initial and second reviews of candidates for our Assistant Professor of Psychology (General Experimental/Cognitive) job opening. It is with regret that I inform you that we will not be able to offer you an opportunity to interview for our open position. Our consideration of candidates like you whose background is appropriate to our opening focused on our needs as an institution whose primary mission is teaching (within and outside of psychology) and general service to the institution. While your references were positive, your materials engaging, and your research and professional development accomplishments impressive, we do not believe that our position will fit your professional goals. Your work (and teaching evaluations from Cognitive Psychology) make it clear that you are a scholar whose talents will be in demand and that you will make in impact on our field.

We thank you for considering our college and wish you only the best in your job search.

***If you understand this we've been friends more than 10 years or I've bored you to death and told you every story from my life.

Two Weeks

I came to the realization today that due to my poor math skills, I actually only have two weeks until my dissertation goes out to my committee, not three like I thought. Apparently, I will never master that whole "counting" thing. Thankfully, I married a man who is able to do math and all sorts of things that I can't do. That's a plus or a division sign, honestly, I'm not sure how math works.

I think there is the possibility that I will actually finish the dissertation, turn it in, defend it, and graduate in May. It feels as though it could happen. It also feels as if I will fail miserably. I'm a woman of extremes. I want to put out to the universe that I will do well. But honestly, it's a lot of work and I'm just getting tired. So tired.

But I suppose that's life. We all make choices. Some of us choose to get a Ph.D. and then work at a McDonald's. That's fine though. I'm still going to make everyone call me Dr. Rose. They'll be yelling, "Dr. Rose, let's get a move on, I need two large fries over here!" And I'll be like, "Yeah, you do." Then I'll launch into a little discussion of cognitive dissonance - how the people who are ordering the fast food know it is bad for them, but are still eating it so there is a disparity between their beliefs and their behaviors which is uncomfortable for humans. So the choices are to either not eat the food or to somehow justify it, "I only do this once in awhile. I got the diet coke, etc." No one will be listening to me, but I'll feel good about putting some of my education to use. I really hope that the dishwashers have master's degrees and we can all go out on smoke breaks and talk about the glory days of graduate school. I don't envision making it to manager because I don't think I could handle the stress (and I'm actually not mocking McDonald's managers- I really don't think I could deal with it). So I'll probably just work the fry-a-lator and bide my time until I can work my way up to the cash register. Although, there are two things about that job that will likely prove to be obstacles. First, I don't like touching money (germs! everywhere!) and second, as previously mentioned, I can't do math. Either people would be very happy with the change they got back or very angry.

I guess there's a lesson to be learned in all this. I'm pretty sure that life is all about the teaching of lessons. But I'm not quite far enough away from all this yet to see the lesson. I'm hoping that with all that time working the fry machine, I'll be able to figure out the life lesson from these past 6 years.

Did You Miss Me?

Hi Internet,

It's been awhile. I'm trying to write my dissertation and let me just say this about that - it's just as fun as you've always thought it would be. Because I am writing (read: not writing and feeling guilty) the dissertation, I have very little brain power left to string together coherent thoughts. In fact, if you were to look at the dissertation you'd probably say I don't have enough power to string together coherent thoughts for that either, but I digress.

I decided that I need to practice writing something that I enjoy. And as many of you know, there is nothing I enjoy more than writing romantic comedies. No, just kidding. That's not true. I'm lying for the attention. But in the shower today I thought, "I'll write a nice entry a day or something to keep my on my toes (not literally)." As a side note about the shower, I had to get back into the shower after drying my hair and then realizing that I had shaved my right leg, but not my left leg. That's how well I'm doing lately. But don't worry, it's not visual neglect*, so there's the upside.

Anyway, I think we all know that my best work comes when I chose a topic and then write about it. Well, not a topic, a letter. So without further ado, today's blog entry is brought you by the letter A.

I have a couple choice words that start with A that I could string together, but my parents always told me that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. So I'll choose different words.

A is for Abstract - an abstract is the beginning part of scientific paper in which the Author or Authors (look at me going for the bonus points) sum up what the paper is about. It's usually about 150 to 250 words and goes through each section of the paper in short order and lays it all out. This is done for anyone who is lazy and doesn't want to read the entire paper, and really, why would you? But the abstract can often be misleading. To use an Analogy, often the abstract is written as though by Cliff**. It's close to what goes on, but you probably should have read the book. Here's what the abstract to my dissertation should really look like:

Here lies the dissertation of Rose Danek. She began this research with a zest for research and a love of the topic. She ends this research with a desire to never do research again and a cynical view of the research process. The following experiments reported are the ones that worked. There were about 10 more that were run and didn't work. This is common in research. Anyone who says differently is lying. She wrote some things down and at this point can't really remember what they were. If you are still interested you should read the paper. This is the last hoop that I had to jump through and by God, if it didn't kill me, I think it made me stronger.

Tune in tomorrow when our Blog will be brought to you from the Letter B.

*That's a little joke for my neuroscience friends.

**That's a little joke about Cliff Notes.***

***That's a reference to my insecurity about people getting my subtle humor.

Hello Again

Things I Should be Doing:

1. Writing my dissertation

2. Preparing for a phone interview on Saturday

3. Applying for more jobs

4. Cleaning my house

5. Losing 50 pounds

6. Analyzing data

7. Programming new experiments and testing them

8. Preparing a job talk

9. Preparing for my Brown Bag Presentation on Feb. 17

10. Loads of other things

Things I Feel Like Doing:

1. Eating

2. Sleeping

3. Watching television

Do you see the problem here? I keep denying that there may be a problem, but I'm starting to think that maybe I should start working on some of those things I have to do. It feels so much easier to just stick my head in the sand and ignore the things I have to do. Oh, winter malaise. I miss the sunshine. But oh well, such is life. I did do some exercise today and I have a plan to make a nice schedule of my time tomorrow...and actually stick to it.

In other news...I've failed at taking a picture of myself a day...but I did put up a bunch of pictures in my house in picture frames, so that's nice. The weather has been just delightful lately, cold, snowy and gray, very gray. I think everyone I know is suffering from it, but I suppose that at least when spring comes we'll all be overwhelmed by the beauty.

Until next time.

Clue - The Rose is 30 Edition

It's official, I am now 30. I can no longer be trusted, but it's cool. I feel pretty good about it. I mentioned in my last post that my awesome friends made me a Clue game. I believe you can follow the link below to see some pictures of the awesomeness:

Rose Clue

I usually use my birthday to make "new year's resolutions" because it feels like a new year of my life starts on my birthday. Plus, my birthday is the best holiday ever. Anyway, I decided to take a picture a day for the year...yeah, we'll see how long that lasts. Here's the last two days photos:

This is me at 30

This is 30 + 1

Arizona is Awesome

I come to you from the great and sunny state of ARIZONA. GO ME! It's actually slightly cloudy here today and there's the promise of rain...but really? I don't think it's going to happen. I think that we are safe. And even if it does rain, it won't snow, so AWESOME. I'm so happy!

My flight here went pretty smoothly. I was only delayed 1 hour and 20 minutes, which is the best I've ever been since moving to the midwest. My brother's plane came in a wee bit early the next day which was super awesome because the weather was horrible for both of us and they were predicting we wouldn't get anywhere.

Since arriving I've had some nice quality family time and some nice quality friend time. It's been awesome (guess my new favorite word). Last night my friends threw me a birthday party. Actually it was a funeral. They had eulogies and they made a Rose Clue board game. They transformed the Clue board and all the cards and everything into things dealing with me. They made little wooden figures that depicted each of us and they had a list of things that I fear will kill me as the murder weapons (mouth herpes, germs, stress, smoking, dirty needles, and clowns). Then each room was a location like friends' houses, Iowa, Penn State, etc. It looked amazing. I honestly thought that they had somehow sent away to the company to make a personalized Clue board, but they did it all themselves. So we played. In case you were keeping score at home, it was Jesse with Germs in Germany. I always knew he'd be my downfall.

Needless to say, it was an awesome night. Halfway through we turned the poster around and celebrated Adam's birthday (which is today). We're all turning 30. So crazy.

Other than that I bought a bunch of clothes, a new computer and I got my hair cut and slightly colored today. So that's the news from my world. My husband is at home plotting how to mass produce our podcast so that the world can partake. Then he's going skiing.

Until next time, enjoy this video about publishing articles. It's funny. Zach sent it to me.

Peer Review