Intensity

Going to Georgia Tech means that you pass on at least 50% of the typical college experience.

Or that's what I gather from television.

There's the normal stuff like too many drunken parties and football.  But besides the rampant nerdiness what seems dissimilar is the sheer amount of work.

My memory of college is moving into a dorm in the fall, going to marching band practice and the football games, holding a few board game nights with my roommates and our friends, taking a 3-4 day trip somewhere over Spring Break, and until we moved out in the spring we were otherwise either going to class or doing homework or working on a group project for the rest of our waking hours.  That's how it was for everyone.  Of course there were a few activities, like my roommates and I would normally select a few television shows we would watch together (Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Heroes over the years).  But oftentimes one or more of us would either do homework during the show or not watch it at all in order to do work.  The constant state of being was work, such that someone who was not doing work was actively and mindfully taking a break from work in order to work harder when they returned.  There was not "free time" - there were activities deliberately carved out of work time to prevent insanity.  But sometimes you couldn't afford even that and you just went insane.

And all that work didn't mean anything if you didn't know your stuff.  There might have been A-for-effort classes at Tech but I didn't get to take them.  Professors made it clear that classes weren't graded on the premise everyone started at As and they took points off.  No, everyone started at an F and had to earn points to get to an A.  I actually took very few classes where points had any absolute meaning.  In most of my engineering classes everything was graded on a curve, so you did not need a certain amount of points to get an A - you needed to get more points than everyone else to get an A.

One class that didn't use a curve was Physical Chemistry II, which was the quantum mechanics class.  I took that class the year it was at 8 am, and the professor was the hairiest man I've ever seen.  In that class, getting 33% of the questions right on the test was a C.  An A was 66%.  I think that demonstrated well how impossible the material was that no one could know 100% of it.

When the workload at Tech got especially bad, like at the end of a semester when projects were due and everyone was studying for final exams and you had to move out of your dorm room within 24 hours of your last test so you had to pack your entire room while you studied, there was a special state you could get into that I can only describe as "intense".  It was a single minded focus on the tasks at hand with a cold and efficient prioritization of all the other features of your life.  Your mind became hypervigilant and you could lay almost all emotion aside and solely work.  Everything fell by the wayside.  You would know exactly how long you could go without doing laundry, without eating, without buying food, without taking out the trash, so you could work as long as possible before having to waste time on those things.  You would say no to friends and fun with no regret or guilt.  It was all gone.  You were just an automaton with one goal: survival.

Since college, the intensity has been very rare.  But now it's back, and it's almost comforting.  Being a single-minded extremely busy automaton is way better than being a pretty busy worrywart.  Cold, hard, and focused.

I will say, it's easier to deal with when you have a car, your own washing machine, and enough money to buy convenience foods.

Quieting the Voices

Sometimes I wonder if the way I think is fundamentally different from others'.

The first time I realized this might be true was in college, when I was having dinner with my roommate Karen.

The cafeteria that night had a chicken enchilada casserole.  We remarked to each other that it was actually quite good, then we each concentrated on eating for a few minutes, after which I volunteered, "I wouldn't care if there were insects ground up in here as long as I couldn't taste or feel them."

To Karen, this statement came out of left field and she made me explain my train of thought.

First, I had thought of how the chicken enchilada casserole was the least adulterated form of meat the cafeteria had offered in a long time.  The chicken was therefore the purest protein we had recently eaten.

Then I thought that chicken was actually one of the most efficient meat-producing animals.

Then I thought of how insects are actually the most efficient meat-producing animals, in terms of how much of what they eat is converted to meat.

Then I thought of how despite that insect meat isn't cost effective because there isn't a big enough industry to have economies of scale.

Then I thought how McDonald's is accused of padding their meat with things like insects but that wouldn't be logical because insects are more expensive.

Then I thought I wouldn't mind if more traditional forms of meat were padded with more efficient protein sources like insects as long as the taste, safety, or gustatory experience was not compromised.

When I explained that to Karen, she said, "That whole time all I was thinking was 'Mmm, food'."

What I wonder about now is if my thought processes influence my need for near constant audio distractions.  Over the years I've realized that the only time I don't want noise is when I'm talking with someone or writing and need to be able to concentrate on my mental narrative.  Otherwise, I prefer to have music or TV in the background or my brain gets impatient and it will choose to create its own, often pointless narrative which takes the form of endless worrying or complex and sarcastic Facebook posts.  At work, data analysis and lab work practically demand music or my brain is going to zone out and I'll make mistakes.  It's almost as if I don't get "quiet" - my brain will provide the noise itself so I get more effective "quiet" with actual noise.

One of my main disappointments with alcohol (besides the heartburn it gives me) is that it does nothing to quiet my brain.  I would be very interested in a product that could shut my brain up sometimes.

Lessons

Things I have learned the hard way:


Doorknobs: you have to turn them before they work.

Nail polish remover is capable of dissolving some scissors.

Vegetable stock, made in the crockpot, can putrefy if you let it cook longer than the recommended time.  The smell will wake you up from a dead sleep.

"Container compatibility issue" means "that bottle of sodium hydroxide is going to dissolve on your desk".

If it tastes rotten, stop eating.

If you are the youngest, most junior, and only female employee in a room, don't do anything they tell you without checking with your boss first.

Never serve salad dressing out of a cow creamer.  You will never get the garlic out of the hollow legs.

Apple pie, muffins, and toffee are all flammable.

If your date ever says "I don't know how I'm going to explain [you being here] to my roommates", leave.  Leave right then.

When you're somewhere unfamiliar, double check that the icon on the bathroom door has a skirt.

When it doubt, don't mix that chemical with bleach.

If you mix that chemical with bleach anyway, do it in the fresh air.

Just because you splash things in lab into your mouth all the time doesn't mean that anyone else does.  Stop mentioning it out loud.

Sick Day

Today is my first sick day in a long time.  I don't always make the best decisions at 3 AM, but this is a good one.

It took a while though.  When I started feeling bad in bed my brain thought it would be most effective to explain the discomfort through a dream.  The dream started explaining that I had a troublesome genetically modified cell line at work and it was giving me grief.  The rest of my brain wasn't with it enough to figure out that there is no possible way a cell line can give you a stomachache, but it did know that lately I hadn't been working with any troublesome cell lines.  After a while all of my brain finally clued in that this wasn't a problem with any of the eight cell lines it kept listing in my brain by name, and that the problem was me.

By 6 AM I had already gone through my entire day's schedule and knew I wouldn't miss anything too major if I didn't go to work.  Yesterday I had somehow had a very awesome day of getting things done so today's agenda was mostly make a set of slides even prettier and review two short documents I already had requested access to, printed, and tracked down ancient comparitors for.  While I wasn't sleeping I also had already mentally composed the emails to my boss and my reports so I fired those off too.

I know at work we're not required to say what we're sick with (and if I remember my manager training right your boss can't ask either).  But I volunteered that it was food poisoning 1) because I'm suspicious of the shrimp curry we had at our lunch meeting and 2) I think you get fewer emails if everyone pictures you barfing than sitting sedately on the couch drinking tea and wiping your nose every once in a while.  I don't know why I always think the lunch meeting food is going to someday poison everyone, but if it does, I want them to have all the information they need.  What? Everyone but the vegetarians are out sick today? Call the health department!

Or report it anonymously online!  I found that website once and work is technically in San Mateo County too.

Once several of us agreed that the two giant key lime cheesecakes at our meeting hadn't agreed with us, but that was more likely the unexpected richness than anything microbial.  That was back when we used to get two giant cheesecakes or a sheet cake for 10 people.  I wonder why that stopped.  That must have been a different caterer.  Plus, I see how the food is delivered about an hour early, and how the leftovers get sit out all afternoon.  I'm kind of surprised we don't have more food poisoning, actually.

But in truth, I probably gave this to myself.  Most of the leftovers I ate last night were only five days old but before dinner I snacked on an English muffin and I used butter from a butter dish I had only recently unearthed, and it didn't taste quite right.  Unsalted butter never tastes quite right, spread on things, which is why I was using old butter dish butter because I was hoping it dated back to when I had bought salted butter (yes, I realize how stupid this is as I write it).  But it was unsalted too.  And might have been a little rancid.

Once I can stand to stand I'll clean out the fridge.  Protect me from myself.

How to Facebook

If I had my way, Facebook would be different.

Instead of:
I'm in the ER again! OMG, what's going on?
It would be:
I'm in the emergency room for the third time this week for chest pain. The doctors have eliminated heart attack and angina. Today I'm in for an imaging procedure.  I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers during this time.

Instead of:
Well, guess what?  ____ and I are having a baby in August!  That's what happens when you can't take birth control pills.
It would be:
____ and I are expecting a baby in August!  We're thrilled.

Instead of:
My #$%^&* husband left today.  How am I going to explain to our four kids that Daddy just doesn't love Mommy anymore?
It would be:



Instead of:
[Below a photo of a newborn] One year. Miss you my angel!
It would be:
One year ago today my brother and his wife moved to Saint Louis.  I miss my little niece so much!


Otherwise I spend too much time worrying people's future children are going to find out horrible crap from future Facebook archives, or that someone is dying in the ER, or that a baby died. 

Decision Making

I greatly enjoy that Tuesday is garbage day.

This is not because I like taking out the garbage.

I have always disliked taking out the garbage.  In college taking out the garbage was one of the contentious chores between the roommates: we all hated doing it and unlike mopping the kitchen floor, scrubbing the shower, or wiping down the stove, we couldn't ignore it for entire school years at a time.  Living in a seven-person apartment made the garbage situation even more unpleasant, especially because the various randomly-assigned roommates who filled the spare bedrooms when true friends were gone for some semesters tended to do things like fill an entire trashcan with pizza boxes and beer bottles and then disappear into their room never to talk to us again for eight months (yes, that happened).

But taking out the garbage became a new height of difficulty after I graduated and lived alone for the first time.  The trash in college was an unpleasant game of chicken where someone would eventually decide nothing more could balance on top of the can.  Living alone, the issue was not volume.  It was smell.

To explain this I might need to explain a bit of how engineers think.  I don't have experience with it personally, but I imagine normal people make decisions based on a few straight-forward axes.  "What do I want to do?"  "What do I need to do?"  "If I want to do it, can I do it?"  "If I don't want to do it, can I delay it?" Etc.  Engineers have an additional criteria which complicates everything else.

Efficiency.

Efficiency can by itself be variable.  Do you want to be efficient in time usage?  Cost?  Effort?  Engineers know that it is unlikely you can have all at once, so the decision become which type of efficiency is more important in any given situation.

Left alone to my own devices, the garbage became a problem of inefficiency that I couldn't solve.

The main problem was that I didn't generate enough trash to fill the can before it began to smell.  I deemed it inefficient to take out the trash before it was full.  This is because taking out a partly full bag of trash was inefficient in all variables - time, cost, and effort.  I would have to take the trash out more often.  I would have to buy more trash bags.  And the trash bins were far on the other side of my complex, down a flight a stairs.

So the smell became the enemy.  I tried freezing food scraps to prevent them from rotting in the trash, but some scraps inevitably made it to the trash anyway.  I tried buying the odor blocking crystals touted by the radio morning show I listen to.  I tried buying scented trash bags.  I tried buying scent-blocking trash bags.  I tried double-bagging the trash can and then tying off the inner bag when it started to smell.

Nothing worked.  I was left with an inefficient system where I played chicken with myself of how long I could stand the smell of the trash.

I lost that game, over and over.

But now that I moved, Tuesday is garbage day.  Tuesday is the day the truck comes to pick up the garbage, so Monday is the night I have to move the trash cans to the front.  And since I have to move the trash cans to the front, I might as well use that day to take the trash out from the house.  There is unlikely any true efficiency benefit, since I spend more time taking out the trash, and I take out partially full bags of trash more now than ever.  But my perception is that I am "getting my money's worth" much more by having trash in the bin at the curb each week so that my $17 a month doesn't go to waste.  Monday comes and without question, I will empty the recycling and the trash into their bins and wheel them to the curb.

Sometimes I just really, really, really like to be told what to do.