Forget having anyone attack me for any reason. I don’t need it. I’m a master at attacking myself. Lately, I’ve been quite snippy. Why? I’m angry at myself. I allowed something that happened when I was five to affect my entire life. I’m still allowing it. I hate it, and I don’t seem to be able to stop it. Since I’m such a masochist, I then beat myself up over the fact that I can’t seem to stop it. I’m such an expert in a perverse way at making my life miserable. Oh and then suffering over it willfully. Here’s hoping that this is over soon.

Fifteen years ago today, I stood before justice of the peace, seven months pregnant and got married. My mother was there. I don’t remember the other witness. I can say that no one should do significant and life changing things on holidays–as you will remember it forever. I don’t remember every year, but it has come to mind this year. Perhaps because I have been going over a lot of stuff in my life–a lot of idiotic things I’ve done. This was one. Why? I got married because I thought it was the right thing to do according to family and society. Never, ever do anything for those reasons. I remember the horrible headache and voice I heard screaming in my head “NO!” when I was asked to say “I do.” It is the biggest regret of my life, and nothing seems to change that. Not time. Not other people telling me I should have no regrets. All the signs were there that I chose to ignore because I was caught up in doing the right thing.

I have been divorced for nearly 14 years now. I have yet to figure out if that really means anything. If my life had gone a different course, perhaps I’d still be unmarried.

I had no party. No dress. No cake. No honeymoon. No friends. No family–except my mother. Our relationship was a bit strained at the time. While it sounds unusual, people in my family get married that way: civil ceremony, immediate family only. My sister has been the only one who had a wedding.

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!

This comes from BlogTalkers.

My first love was a French exchange student. While most might think it was someone else, it wasn’t. I remember not thinking much of this guy at first. I also remember my mother telling me that she was sure that he was my type. I couldn’t believe that she would have clue. I was in high school, and I didn’t think that my mother knew me at all. She had met him before I did because he was staying with her friend’s family. Turns out she was right, which made me a bit angry.

He was tall, thin with light brown hair and green eyes.  His tan skin, hair and eye color tended to blend together. His English wasn’t that good. Well, not good enough to keep up with my quick talking and unusual use of words. I still get comments about my use of English because I use words (perfect for the situation) that are uncommon. I have a picture of the two of us together somewhere.

His stay was only for the summer. It was a different kind of program since he didn’t go to school. He had graduated from the French equivalent of high school at 16. I had just finished high school myself. He was from Lyon, and his main interest was in Formula 1 race cars–driving them. We spent hours together.
I don’t even remember what it was that made me so crazy for him. Our personalities just seemed to click. It appeared to be mutual, however we never kept in touch after he went back to France. I don’t have clue what he ended up doing. He was supposed to go the University of Lyon. I remember talking a lot about the differences between here and France. I remember all the kissing. He was the first one I wanted to sleep with, but I never did.

I am curious as to what happened to him. Maybe he’s married and has children. I wonder if the car thing ever worked out in some form or if he gave up that dream to please others.

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.

While I was the university, I met the guy I would later marry. I shouldn’t have, but I did. We weren’t seeing as much of each other when I graduated since he lived in a different city. There were lots of signs that things weren’t right, but I didn’t really see them at the time. I guess I saw the problems, but didn’t see them as really big problems. So my first job out of college was in corporate communications with a really bitchy boss. I was fired from that job. Why? Well the boss hated me, but the reason sent to HR was that I couldn’t perform the job. And why? Well I had developed carpal tunnel in one wrist which made typing all day long and cutting photos for print painful and difficult. I was fired after the second occasion when the photos weren’t cut perfectly straight. I didn’t have the strength to hold those thin photo pages (not photo stock paper) and cut them with an exacto knife. Publishing was so different then. Now straight photo edges wouldn’t be problem. You import the photo into a box with perfectly straight lines every time. Anyway, the job sucked. Pretty miserable experience. After being out of work for a few months, I found myself pregnant. Yep, happens even to smart people who should know better. I didn’t want to tell my mother, and I didn’t until I couldn’t keep it from her. I remember writing a long letter to her before Thanksgiving. I would be going home then, and I was showing. I found another job that fall before Thanksgiving. Pregnancy was not much fun. I was sick a lot. I got up several hours before I needed to be ready for work. It sometimes took two to three hours to get ready. Sometimes I had to start over after getting sick. I went though a lot deciding to keep the baby and what I was going to do after it was born.

A few months before I was due, the father came back into my life and decided that he’d like to get married. I didn’t want to move back home with my mother at the time. I wasn’t sure how I would take care of a baby entirely alone, so I agreed. Biggest mistake of my life. Short version: We got divorced a year later. Well, it takes a year to get divorced, so officially two years later. So a couple of years and $20K later, I was divorced, living with my mother and going back to school to get a degree in chemistry. Oh, the cost of the divorce? Well, I couldn’t deal with all the crap I was constantly bombarded with by my son’s father. Letters every week. Legal bullshit. I had the attorney handle it. Although he probably overcharged. I didn’t get what I wanted anyway. Four long days in court listening to how awful I was. The attorney was overly confident and didn’t really do his work.

So back to school I went. I traveled 100 miles round-trip every day for two years to take undergraduate courses in chemistry.

This picture shows a few buildings. It’s a small campus. I had my classes in the white building on the right. My goal at the time was to get into graduate school and be a professor. I spent the entire drive seeing myself graduate with a doctorate. It’s the only thing that got me through, and most likely made the doctorate a reality. The courses were sometimes a bit difficult, but not too bad. Organic chemistry was not my strongest course. I got to do several semesters of undergraduate research in various projects. I went through graduation with my new degree in chemistry, packed up my things and my son’s things and went 400 miles east to graduate school. I specifically picked the school based on researching professors and my visit there. I began graduate school with my research group already picked out. In fact, I went there in the summer on a special program where I got paid for the months prior to fall classes and worked in that professor’s group. I worked with lasers like in “Real Genius.” I was excited. I had wanted to work with lasers back when I was in mechanical engineering and saw a group doing research there.

As promised, I am continuing the photos and story about college. I wish I had some really great stories to tell. You know…the typical college stories. I don’t. I was focused on school. I had to focus my attention on classes while in engineering. I had a few tough classes. I had joined a sorority as a freshman, which took up a lot of time. Friday afternoons were often pledge meet and greets. Our sorority and another fraternity would meet in the late afternoon, sometimes early evening. These meetings were a source of endless frustration for me. The favorite conversation starter was “What’s your major?” Once I told any guy that my major was mechanical engineering, I see a stunned look across his face. Sometimes the guys might try to make other conversation, but usually they disappeared within 30 seconds.

Not far from the tennis courts, there are four tall buildings. Those were dorms. There are some small houses just to the right. My sorority house was the one closest to the field. We were far away from Greek row. The sorority didn’t work out well either. It was fun as a freshman. Everything was new, everyone was nice. I had things to do on the weekends if I wanted to. Rush (the time when prospective members and members meet) made me think that this particular house was focused on academics. They pay lip service to it. Everything went sour when I lived in the house as a sophomore. My roommate was weird. The girls weren’t that nice. I was tired of the parties by then. And I was sick of being asked if I had a boyfriend and if he was in a house. I realized that all that mattered to most of the girls was getting married. I had bigger aspirations. I remember an occasion when I got dirty looks from the girls in the lunch line because I dared speak to a guy on the other side who happened to be in one of my classes. I left the house the same semester that I changed majors. Actually I left the house first thinking that all those activities were hurting my grades. There was some truth to that. But after a semester of the sexist professor and even more sexist interviews for internships, I marched into the engineering dean’s office and told them what I thought of their school. Writing appealed to me, so I changed over to journalism. It was fun for awhile, but then I began to miss science classes.

After leaving the sorority, I moved back into the dorms I lived in as a freshman. I stayed there for a semester before finding an apartment off campus.

The tallest, narrow white building was the dorm I stayed in. It was co-ed by floor–half women, half men. Many of the dorms were co-ed, but men and women lived on different floors. I remember being asked a lot what I thought of having guys down the hall. It never much bothered me. My best friends have always been men since grade school.

I was often asked how I could be in a sorority because I was too nice. Not a snob. My answer is that I felt so out of place in high school that I thought this would be a nice way to meet other people like myself. I was so wrong.

I wish I could show you a photo of the apartment I lived in, but I don’t remember the address. It was much of a building anyway. I did live just a few blocks from the Capitol building. I could have walked there. This building is pretty unique. You can’t see the statue on the top, but it’s a man sowing seeds out of a pouch–”The Sower”. The craziest thing that happened at my apartment building was being awakened at 2 am by some guy screaming. Apparently he came into the building to escape being beaten by several guys for being gay. The words “fag” and “queer” were yelled by the others. Someone in the building called the police before I did because they were there in five minutes. We once had a homeless man living in the basement where we had storage too. I went down there one winter morning and rammed the door into a mattress with the guy on it.