I spent several hours hunting down a photo of an event I wanted to talk about. It happened in graduate school. I have a picture of it somewhere that someone gave me, but after several moves, I can’t find it anywhere. I went through a box that I keep on my dresser because the last time I saw the photo, it was on my dresser. Seemed logical. It wasn’t there. Instead I found a stack of wallet-sized photos of me, my son and my sister. The box has old coins in it, but those didn’t interest me too much. I did find old jewelry from grade school though–a bracelet and two necklaces that I think were from Avon.

My next idea was to find the box where I keep the stuff from graduate school. Again, it seemed like a logical choice. I found all of my diplomas from college. Funny how I’ve never framed a single one. Yet, I’ve seen many people who do frame them and hang them. I never bothered to get the special MU frame that they sell that would be appropriate for displaying my doctorate. I never made a big deal out of it. While it may be considered quite an accomplishment, I never liked how it separated me from everyone else. Somehow in social situations when someone finds out you have a doctorate in chemistry they suddenly don’t know what to say to you. They feel inadequate–you can see it on their faces. Other things in the box were envelopes of stuff from places I’ve been in California when I first moved here and stuff saved from the time with an ex. The box also has my cap, invitations and program from graduation. My hood is there also, nicely wrapped in vacuum-sealed plastic. Now that I paid for. One never uses their hood unless you’re attending graduation say as a professor or honoree. But since I didn’t know what I might be doing later, I bought it. You can only get your hood at the time of graduation, and they tend to change over the years.

So after about an hour of hunting, I never did find the photo. When I was president of the graduate student chemistry association, we held a fundraiser to put a pie in the face of your professor. The money was to be used for scholarships to meetings. We recruited volunteers from undergraduate chemistry and one from the graduate school. I was there in the auditorium when the undergrad professor who taught freshman got his pie. Several of us were TA’s for his class. He wasn’t very popular with the undergrads, so it was no surprise that he earned the most votes in money. There was a drawing among the current students to decide who would get to put the pie in his face. The class had quite the attendance that day!

The grad school professor who “won” was the chair. We gathered around in the foyer one day to do his honors. Professors and grad students were there. Even some of his friends from other departments were there. Again, everyone got to draw to see who got to give him the pie. I opened up my little white paper to find the mark. Many professors told me I could make some good money by selling my paper. In the end, I did the honors to the graduate chair. Something he never forgot. There was even a bit of teasing of revenge on my defense day about giving me a pie. No pie for me that day, but I was a bit concerned. Oh, the dry cleaning!

One thing that doesn’t change when you leave graduate school is the ratio of men to women in the sciences. I suppose I thought it would. I hardly noticed while I was in grad school. You do notice when you go to work. It’s very obvious when you’re the only female in a room of 30. All eyes are on you and your presentation. I have to say I was respected, but I think that was more out of being more educated.

I understand the desire to blend in and hardly be noticed as one of the few females in a sea of males. It’s easier because being noticed means for some very strange encounters. Weirdness on occasion is okay. Weirdness on a regular basis makes you want to shoot people.

As an undergrad in engineering, I dressed conservatively as well. My sorority sisters often begged me to go to the engineering library. I got interrupted every five minutes by some guy stopping by. The girls thought it was great. They were guaranteed to meet at least a dozen guys through me. Not even going in sweats without makeup made a difference. I hated going to the engineering library because I couldn’t get anything done. I had enough homework that I didn’t have time to play at the library. Going to the engineering library to “study” meant several more hours of study time back at my room. Worthless. Waste.

I dressed very conservatively for work as well. On the occasions that I wore a v-neck, all attention was on the skin above the “v.” It isn’t easy to work when your coworkers and boss are tyring to get a glimpse down your shirt. I was able to be more productive if I wore turtlenecks and long sleeves. No way would I wear jeans. I don’t own a single pair that doesn’t hug every curve. I like them that way, but they are useless for work. Even dressing so conservatively didn’t keep the guys from looking, but at least they could still work. Those lovely tops that are all over the stores were just too distracting for them.

As I mentioned before, there was a group of chemistry grad students who regularly went out to the bars on Thursday nights. Sometimes we went Fridays and Saturdays. Going out on Thursday meant very little work got done on Friday. We were lucky to straggle in by noon in time for lunch. Maybe do a few hours of work in the afternoon before going to the chemistry seminar, which I regularly skipped. It was just too boring to sit there in the dark while some visiting professor droned on about slide after slide of research. Most of these professors were used to the old way of doing things, which means you might get a chalkboard talk. Horrors! PowerpointPowerpoint and similar programs brought an interesting element since animation was possible. At least it was different. Kept the eyes busy.

So we went to the same bar on Thursday nights to drink and listen to music. They had a “band.” The “band” was two guys playing covers–one played piano or guitar, the other played the drums. They weren’t bad, but I can’t really call them a band. So the whole room drinks and sings along to songs they know. I’m sorry to say that I know the woDC’sto AC/DC’s “Big Balls” thanks to these Thursday nights. For some reason, every time we went someone wanted to hear this song. There were other regular songs as well, but this one sticks out in my mind. They played quite a bit of rock and some country. Even a little country was too much for me. Other songs we heard nearly every week: Piano Man, Brown-Eyed Girl and Ring of Fire.

There was this horrible little bar off the beaten path that we would go to because one of the group knew the bartender. This place was a real dive. Cider block walls. One night we were there, two men got into a fight. There was hair everywhere! They started howling and pulling each other’s hair. I don’t even know what it was about.

The best part of going there was the bartender’s own concoction. she made up this drink she called the seven-toed toad. Well it was green (Midori). It had seven different alcohols. She never told us what was in it. It could knock you over though. Tasted great! You couldn’t taste the alcohol at all. But after two (I don’t care how much you weighed), you were very, very drunk. I’ve never drank any mixed drink that has gotten me drunk faster. It knocked the guys a good one too.

Of course, we went there at the end of the night. So that would have been after 6-7 amaretto sours, perhaps a few shots for me, and at least a pitcher of beer for each guy. I never payed much attention to what the other gals drank (there was always a couple others, but they didn’t usually go to the dive bar with the guys). Why did I go? Seems out of place for me. One of the guys was always my ride home. I was stuck going wherever they went.

I have to say that even though all those late nights and hangovers probably increased my time in graduate school, I had a lot of fun.

Being a teaching assistant in grad school isn’t quite as easy as it looks. Ever have a TA? I know I had plenty as an undergrad. I feel sorry for them now that I went through the horrors of teaching. Again I’m bringing you a cartoon from Piled Higher and Deeper (what Ph.D. stands for). You begin with that B.S. and add to it until you get the Ph.D. But really getting a Ph.D. isn’t all about seeing how much crap you can put into your dissertation and get by your advisor. Back to teaching…

I had a student in my first freshman lab course who asked me which end of the thermometer to use! Funny how few people believe me. “You must be making that up!” No, I wish. That was one of the best though, and a great example of just how dumb freshmen can be. In a way, you feel sorry for them because high school certainly didn’t do them any favors. I had students ask me for the answers to the homework as well…just like in the cartoon above. Every semester I gave a lecture about “sharing brains.” See the students worked in pairs on the lab, so apparently they thought they could just write down the same answer word for word in their lab notebooks and answer sheets. I think they were annoyed that I actually expected them to think for themselves.

I had another student freak out when her beaker of boiling water began to spurt and boil over onto the counter. She didn’t know what to do. One of my friend’s students said she was only going to college because her parents made her. She just wanted to get married and have a dozen kids. Remember this is in the late 1990s–not the 1890s. Both of us shook our heads over that one.
I definitely had students who wanted to date me. Since I was a bit older than most graduate students, I was quite old enough to consider the freshmen “children.” They really did look young. I think that the fact that I look so much younger than my age confused them.

On occasion when we graduate students went out to bars, we would see some of our students. College town bars often let underage in, but they aren’t supposed to drink. Well, I’m sure we all know how well that works… It’s a bit odd to see your students out and for them to see you drunk. But at least they knew we did more than teach.

Most of my students were sadly unprepared for college. I often wondered how they got in. So if TA’s at Stanford get questions like above, well I think the whole country is in trouble. Guess that means that the students there aren’t much different from students at any state university.

I came across this website of cartoons about getting a Ph.D. If you want to see the cartoons large enough to really read, please click on them. It brought back memories. Very funny now, but not so funny then. The first is about how after getting through comprehensive exams you’re just dog-tired. For me, I completed the exams by the end of my second year. Classes were through too. then there was teh independent research proposal. Now our rules were that it couldn’t have anything to do with your current research, but still had to be in your major–in my case taht was analytical chemistry. I think I completed that in the third year. I had to get through classes and exams first. I was happy that I passed all the exams I needed to go onto the Ph.D. program, but that made it more real. The “oh shit” factor comes in. Suddenly it’s not play-time anymore. Now that you have more time, your advisor is on your case to complete research. You’re given a couple of years of slack because of commitments to classes, exams and teaching.

So I became an expert at procrastination. I did do research and repeated it many times. Funny how long it takes before you actually get “good” data. All the while, you wish you were somewhere else besides the cold, dark lab. I sat in the dark because of the fluorescence work I did with lasers. Darkness helps make the laser beam easier to see and keeps out extraneous light.

This next cartoon is just so me. I really hate to admit it, but I was exactly like this through undergraduate.

Graduate school causes a few changes. While I didn’t drink in college, but the time I was near the last few years of grad school I became quite the drinker. Gained weight too. That part sucked. Teaching was so stressful that Thursday nights we all went out. I probably delayed graduation even more with my added social life. More on that later…

As a graduate student, you tend to only see one building on campus, maybe two. I suppose it depend on your major, but graduate courses for a particular discipline tend to be held in the same building. I spent my time mainly between two buildings. On the rare occasion that I ventured out to a different building is was for some campus business that I never looked forward to. Who really enjoys dealing with the administration?

One of the most prominent features on campus was the six columns that stood in the middle of the lawn. They were the last remaining parts of the original administration building from the beginning of the university. I guess the old admin building burnt down. Even from the satellite photo, you can make out those darn columns. Since Google takes out people (I wonder how they do that), the lawn looks pristine. Normally there would be people scattered about, especially on a nice day. When this photo was taken, it looks warm. You might see people studying in the grass, sunbathing or playing Frisbee. The only time I saw the columns is if I walked off campus for lunch.

The large building south of the columns is the new administration building. All of the buildings here are part of the “red” campus. The next photo just seems cool. When they built the new biology building they made the sidewalk into a double-helix. I don’t think I ever noticed that, but it’s really obvious from the sky. I think I went into one of the buildings once. One of the buildings has a large hallway with stuffed, dead animals. All kinds. Ancient Missouri creatures. Other creatures.

Only my undergraduate school had an equivalent strange building. The archeology building had dead stuffed things too. Like Mammoths. I think it was recreated from bones though. The building was known for it’s bug collection. There were live Madagascar hissing cockroaches that you could pet. I don’t like bugs enough to ever pet a cockroach that covers my hand. The hissing is a bit much for me too. IckIck. My nephew thought it sounded like fun though. I told him about them when I saw him at Christmas.

So after chemistry classes, teaching freshmen and research, what did we do to relieve stress? Drink, of course. It’s a little known fact that chemists can really hold their liquor. Well, I can’t very well, but then I don’t weigh much. Even the professors could be seen drinking heavily at conferences. Who knew that chemistry was so full of such characters? I saw drinking habits that I would associate with writers…like Hemingway. The next installment will be stories of students, teaching and drinking. You will get all the who’s, wheres, whens and hows.

On to graduate school… I took a great leap, packed up all my stuff and my son’s stuff into a U-haul with my car in tow and drove to my new place. Excited and scared. I still had worries about my grades. In undergraduate, I could worry myself sick and get so nervous before a test that I would forget my name. I didn’t always do my best. Graduate school had the added pressure of requiring a B-average. I truly came into my own in graduate school. I met some great people. Finally, people more like myself…although I was older than they were by a few years. Most of my fellow graduate students were there directly from undergrad. They were young and a bit silly. I hardly had time for silly with the responsibilities that I had.

This is the the campus…not all of it, but most. I think I cut off part of the campus to the north. I didn’t go to football games here either, but I did see a few basketball games. I spent most of grad school years in three buildings. I did research, taught and took classes beginning in the first year. I met the guy who would become my best friend that summer. We didn’t speak to each other then. It wasn’t until we had a couple of classes together that we began to be friends. We were lab partners in one class with another student who later left graduate school to go to pharmacy school.

It’s hard to tell in this photo, but the old union is about in the center. It has old architecture like you might see at Princeton. It has spires and gargoyles. The second brown roofed building from the bottom right is the chemistry building and it’s new addition. The other brown roof belongs to the physics building. We referred to different parts of campus as “white” campus and “red” campus. It’s really clear here because you can see the red brick plaza. The “red” campus begins there and all the buildings are in red brick. “White” campus has all white or cream brick buildings.

We used to have lunch on occasion at the union. I don’t think there was a single day that went by that I didn’t see my best friend. We either had class together, taught at the same time or went to lunch. Sometimes we had all three in a day. We spent so much time together that students and even the professors thought we were an “item.” He thought it was funny. I didn’t. He was married after the first year of graduate school and had been living with his fiancee before then. I suppose I was concerned that rumors might get back to her, but I don’t think they ever did.