singing and dancing

Fair warning - I am no theatre critic, so my vocabulary to describe my impressions/experiences of the NY Broadway scene are limited...

By the middle of the week, I was exhausted from spending all my days on my feet looking at things hung on walls, so I couldn't exactly wrap my head around going to yet another museum, even though I really wanted to. I did, however, still want to get student/rush tickets for Evita. Why Evita? It was one of the few interesting-sounding musicals playing this week. That's about it, I knew nothing about it. However, I made it to the box office a bit too late and couldn't get a ticket, so while refueling with a snack at the Times Square Starbucks, I realized I still could make the Newsies rush ticket lottery if I hurried. After elbowing through the crowds of times square at high noon (more people than you'd think), I made it to the lottery with 1 min to spare! There were only 30ish people waiting for tickets, so chances were good, but one never knows with ticket lotteries! I ended up getting one, which was awesome! and the show was excellent! I didn't really know the story, nor had I seen the movie, but the show was fun, entertaining, and well performed. They got the Tony award for best choreography for a good reason - all of the actors were incredibly athletic and excellent tappers. I thoroughly enjoyed the 'King of New York' tap scene, which if you have a few minutes, you should watch here:

While waiting for Newsies to begin, I made my way to the NY Public Library, as they always have the most interesting exhibits in the hallways and I do love the Rose Reading Room. I will say, though, that after the quality time I've spent in our Reading Room here at the UW, I do prefer the architecture and grandness that is present at the UW, but both are incredible to spaces to spend time in. The library always has some exhibits going on and this time they was a photography exhibit, Echoes of Silence: Philip Trager, Early Photographs, 1967-83, that contained some incredible images of NYC.

The next day, I made sure to get up extra early and found myself again in Times Square, waiting for an Evita ticket. It apparently was one of the most popular musicals last year and stars Ricky Martin (yes, that Ricky Martin, the latino pop star), so I thought I would check it out. Weirdly, I got the same exact seat number as the lottery ticket for Newsies! The show was excellently performed, however it left me confused as to why a musical like Evita was created, because it seems to celebrate a women who was highly manipulative and didn't actually help her country much, if at all. The actress who played Eva Peron was very good and the creators moved the story in time with her costume changes  - she came out in a different wig almost every scene - as we barreled through her whole life story. Martin's character of Che also confused me, until I realized he's kind of the narrator. I actually looked up the story line in wikipedia during intermission because I was confused enough during the show... I'm sure other people will appreciate the show more than I did, but it was still an excellent Broadway experience. The crowd here was distinctly more mature and fluent in spanish than the Newsies crowd!

Also, though technically it wasn't on Broadway, I took advantage of a $7 Tuesday night ticket+popcorn deal at the East Village Theater and took myself to see Les Mis! It was most excellent and I actually really like the way it was shot - with the extreme close ups - as it doesn't seem to me to be a musical that has a large need for a stage. The actions all seemed somewhat limited (no group dancing here), so the ability to see the emotions playing across an actors face was much appreciated. I'm guessing that should I ever see this in a traditional theatre, I may not be as emotionally affected, because I'll probably be on a small budget and won't spring to get good enough seats to see the actor's faces.

5-3-2-1

5 museums
3 bakeries
2 Broadway plays
1 dance performance
lots of delicious food
an exciting, exhausting week

That basically sums up my whole week in NYC over break, but if you're curious, keep reading for more about what I saw and experienced while in town!

I decided that I would attempt to go to every museum that I could in the week that I was there, so I began with the American Museum of Natural History. I took too many pictures, so I'm trying out a slideshow, but you can also see the original pictures here.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

And after spending 5 hours there, I decided that this museum is best with kids, as it is an excellent introduction to cultures and animals and history that you might never encounter in real life. Since I've been to a number of excellent zoos, I was a little bored by the number of taxidermied animals, but it was incredible to see so many of them! I didn't really know what to expect before coming to this museum, except that everyone said I should make time to go see it. I was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is to look at and did not do the museum justice by any stretch of the imagination. I did determine that you could leave the museum and come back in the same day, which is really nice if you get hungry in the middle of the day and want to go the Shake Shack around the corner. I highly recommend the planetarium show about the stars, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, it was excellent. I didn't love that the museum charged for most of the special exhibits, so I didn't get to see any of those, as I wasn't really interested in any of them to shell out another $6+. While you can pay whatever you want for the normal museum admission, if you're willing to pay full price you can skip the line and either get tickets online or at a kiosk there. The suggested student price is really reasonable, but if you're going to only pop in for an hour or so, paying the full price of $20+ is not really worth it in my opinion. Of all the exhibits, the dinosaurs never cease to amaze me - it still boggles my mind that I was staring at real fossils and not just someone really skilled with plaster of paris. The gemstone exhibit made me laugh - if you read closely enough in one part of the showcase, you'd actually learn about what the kids in my intro to MSE course learned about crystal structures and classifications! I do like that you can pop in and out during the day, so that if you need food, you can dash over to Shake Shack and get a delicious (minorly overpriced) burger and then continue winding through the museum.

After the Natural History Museum, I dashed across Central Park to quickly look at the Museum of the City of New York - I highly recommend this one if you're ever in the area. I don't think they have any permanent exhibits, but the ones I got to see were very interesting and the one I missed also looked great! I originally went there for the DD and Leslie Tillett exhibit, as they were incredible textile designers, but I also found a number of other interesting exhibits, all focused around NYC.

 just look at those awesome prints

They had a short film playing about the history of the development of the city, Timescapes - why it is planned out the way that it is and how different neighborhoods developed, died and redeveloped with time. The other interesting exhibit was one about the different types of activists and their causes in NYC, spanning time from the first Quakers to the nurses who revolutionized public health to the current day bicycle activists. With lots of little snippets of information and a few historical items to look at, it was a nice exhibit - not too much information overload! This was probably my favorite image, that gal on the end just makes me laugh:

I ran out of time to see the World's Fair exhibit, but oh well! I'd say you only need ~2.5 hours to make it through the whole museum, so it's easy to slip in on a day when you're out in the city. Oh! I just found that they have a sweet haute couture online exhibit! I find online exhibits a bit strange, but those thoughts are for another day.

The next day was a bit slower, but I made it out to Queens for the first time! I had found the Museum of the Moving Image online and it looked really interesting (also it promised a look at some sweet posters that were at the Hobbit's NZ premiere), so I hopped a train out there and spent a solid 2 hours wandering. They have a great core exhibit that introduces you to much of how a movie is made, including a large collection of old movie cameras, TVs, and sound systems.

I will say that after watching all of the extended extras on the LOTR DVDs, not much of the information was new, but it was cool to try dubbing over some lines from the Wizard of Oz and to see how a live sports broadcast is 'directed'. They also had a place for you to try out stop-motion filming, which is great for small children, but I had fun as well :) I made a short 4 second 'movie', but apparently waited too long to download it and it exists no more! The LOTR posters looked like giant versions of those bookmarks that I used to have - that were kinda 3D and if you looked one way and moved your head the image changed a bit. Oh wait, I still have one of those - NASA produced a sweet one for phases of the moon! The Museums screens movies throughout the day, but I did not stay for one (Puss in Boots was playing) and they seem to have space for 2 traveling exhibits. When I was there, they were featuring a history of sorts of video game consoles called Spacewars. I am absolutely horrible at gaming and the few games I tried out just reinforced that fact.

Old (Original Nintendo) or New (Wii), arcade style or not, I'm just bad at it. I couldn't even figure out how to use the Atari console they had available. Oh well, it was still interesting to see and play the first video game created! They were also showcasing the new Pixar film, The Guardians, and had some really interesting character development mapped out, as well as a featurette about how the movie was created, highlighting the extensive use of motion-capture for each character. Overall, I was surprised to learn the museum was over 27 years old, as the space and exhibits definitely felt fresh and modern. I was glad to have gone earlier in the morning, however, as the museum filled up with loud small children after lunch! A side note, but I was struck as to how Queens is apparently developed - there seemed to be a main road, and if I wandered off it more than a block (happened by accident when I was trying to find the place), it was a very different place. Reminded me of Yakima in a sense, but not quite.

Also in Queens is apparently the Indian area of NYC, as I wanted to try to find the Sari Palace for some pretty sari material. I found it and picked up some beautiful material, but I'm pretty sure I was one of 3 non-indian people I saw the whole trip! There were lots of sari places, but Sari Palace was the only place that actually gave you the prices for each style (that I could see) and since I was only looking for material and not to get a sari created, it worked for me! I'm still designing what I want to use the material for, so no pictures yet :)

mental break

instead of reworking my failed presentation, I filled my mind with some good TED talks this evening - watch one!

 

the c-word.

Cancer.

Yep, it has entered the vocabulary of my family.

I mean, I always thought this day would come - statistically speaking, the chances of my family escaping all whispers of the word 'cancer' were always rare, seeing as the rates of diagnosis have increased with better/earlier detection, and really, cancer is a broad term that generally just means 'cell that are out of control.' Actually I just looked it up on the CDC, some 19.0 million people in the US have been diagnosed with cancer. That's a lot of people!

Long story short - my grandpa fell, broke his hip, said broken hip was examined, doctors found a mass in the area, second exam revealed that the mass was myeloma (which, apparently, is more common in men than women, and generally seen in older people, and composes 1% of all cancers diagnosed - thanks wikipedia), then my grandpa got his hip replaced and the surgeons got 90% of the cancer removed in the process. All this in the past week or so, culminating with the surgery today. I don't know yet what next steps will be taken or what to think about the cancerous 10% remaining in my grandpas body.

And even though I know all these facts, it's still a scary thing. And I've been forced to compartmentalize it all - I have, have, have to get my giant to-do list done: papers for class, homework for class, spacesuit to sew, qualifying exam report to finish writing, qualifying exam presentation to prep, research to complete for said qualifying exam, etc, etc, etc.

But sometimes I just can't compartmentalize it well enough and so tears of fear, tears of sympathy, tears of reality fall while I'm trying to justify nanoparticle synthesis in a report for NASA while sitting in a coffeeshop. And the reality of it all keeps me up at night and crosses my mind as I attempt to use tabular surface energy data to estimate contact angles.

Without fail, situations like these remind of me of my own mortality and so I was doubly thankful when I casually flipped through a book on the dining room table this morning, left by one of my roommates, and opened to this passage:

“A whole lifetime is short,

and sometimes very short indeed.

How do we know that ours may not be so short

as to end an hour, 

or even a minute after

we have determined to give ourselves wholly to God?

It is quite possible,

for we cannot depend on anything

that passes away,

much less on life,

on which we must not reckon

for even a single day.

We may be among those who,

worldly as we still are,

have some deep desire

to do what is right. 

At time, rare as they may be,

we commend ourselves to God’s care.

We think about our souls every now and then.

Busy as we are,

we pray a few times a month,

even though our minds are filled

with a thousand other matters.

“Where your treasure is, there also is your heart.”

We need, therefore, from time to time

to cast aside our daily concerns.

We need to reflect upon the state of our soul,

and to realize

that we will never reach our goal 

by the road we are following.

We need to withdraw from time to time 

from all unnecessary cares and business.”

(Teresa of Avila, via Let Nothing Disturb You)

I desperately want to play golf again with my grandpa and see him fully healed, but my prayer tonight is for the peace of Christ above all else - peace for my grandparents, peace for my family, peace for me, as we all begin to tread on this new road.

Multi-tasking?

I just got an email today about a potential job position (not that I'm looking, but the Nanotech mailing list likes to send out nano-related jobs) and the first thing the position description lists is that the best candidate is able to multitask.

I can't multitask to save my life. Seriously.

I have found that if I'm doing lab work - that's all I can focus on. I tell myself that I can let my experiment run or the instrument do it's job while I work on writing/reading/homework/whatever else is on my list, but the reality is that I just can't. I also can't write a paper while in the vicinity of my lab, as I like lab work so much more than writing papers or reading literature and will always come up with more things to do in the lab.

There are some interesting articles about how multitasking is kind of a myth:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-myth-of-multitasking
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627309004589

and from a prof from my undergrad university:


and this guy from the Economist



anyways, that's my mini-rant about people asking job applicants to be 'multitaskers.' I guess if they want less productive engineers, that's fine, I just won't be working for them.

FOCUS

Somedays, I wish my friend Josh lived a little closer than down the coast of CA. He will always be king of the FOCUS sign and I'll forever remember the hectic paper writing night that didn't involve him, but he still made my friends and I a focus sign, ran up to our front room window, stuck to the window and then disappeared in a flash.

I desperately need some focus for the next 48 hours, as I have one group paper draft due and a draft of my qualifying exam paper due, a combined total of 30+ pages that need to be written. I'm currently sitting at 5 pages and already mentally exhausted. I dislike that my writing process is still so last-minute; I thought I had kicked this habit over the past two years.

Related, and interesting - here is a AsapSCIENCE animated discussion of procrastination (originally found on the fantastic brainpickings.org):

Also in my procrastination tonight I ran across this article about overcoming a creative block on brain pickings, and I'm pretty sure it also counts for scientific blocks, as I would posit that sciences takes a large dose of creative thinking.

 

So, I guess in light of a lack of a focus sign and a foggy brain, I think I'll procrastinate productively by sleeping early tonight. I can always cram more tomorrow, right?!

(and only somewhat related, I have my eyes on The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business and Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired and

Imagine: How Creativity Works)

back in the big apple.

I'm currently in NYC for a week-ish, so I thought I'd dust off this poor blog and write about all the fun things I get to see here! Fair warning - every post might be a bit boring if you're not a museum/fabric shop/bakery/theatre lover, as my week is planned to generally revolve around those themes :)

After the second-worst red-eye of my life, I made it safely to NYC, napped for a few hours and then ate the spiciest indian food of my whole life. The naan was awesome and so were some of the dishes I tried, but overall, it was spicey. And not just Olivia-can't-handle-any-spice spicey, I would say it was in the 2-3 stars range, which for this girl who gets 0s at any place, was quite a bit to handle!

spicy indian food assortment. lovely delicious large garlic naan!

Yesterday, day two of my mini vacation to NYC (yes, I'm still working on research things in the evening - that's what you get when you don't love the typical NYC nightlife and all the places you want to go close up by 6pm...)

My morning started with attending a church service at Redeemer Presbyterian - a beautiful space hidden between some buildings on W83rd - where I heard a great sermon based on Colossians ___. Apparently this is a traditional text to follow Christmas, reminding me again as to the significance of the Incarnation and how the way I view my life, others, and my community changes because of Christ.

Following church, I wandered a bit waiting for Hannah and Dan to catch up so that we could take some engagement pictures :) and ended up at a coffee bar that I think even my most coffee-'snobbish' friends in Seattle would like, though I'll readily admit that I only drank tea :) But, since the shop offered pour-overs, single-origin coffees, and sold Chemex's and Aeropresses, I think it qualifies as a good coffeeshop. Tables were scarce, but I managed to snag one and start reading the copy of The Hobbit I picked up on the way.

Before taking pictures though, Hannah, Dan, and I booked it down to the NY City Center to pick up some rush tickets for Alvin Aliey. I love love love this dance company and the rep we saw this afternoon was incredible. The company started utilizing social media recently and has excerpts from all the works I saw, which I have embedded here to remember them :)


I saw Petite Mort at PNB earlier this year and knew I would love the piece again, though it looks so different on the Alvin Aliey company! Due to the slightly different training, one gets more of a sense of 'strength' from these dancers than from PNB. This version was missing the humorous section that was present in the Seattle version, but I think the absence lent the whole piece a more serious air.
Strange Humors - the first video gives you a better looks at the Aliey staging, but the second video is actually the whole piece. This was Hannah's favorite and was quite interesting. I like that Aliey consistently does pieces for two or three males, as many companies don't (I think I've seen one in Seattle and that was with the W'him W'him contemporary company). The dancing styles of the dancers we got to see were more differentiated than the ones in the videos, which I really liked, as the dancer who frequently represented the drum beat was stiffer and sharper than the other dancer, and it seemed to fit the music quite appropriately

This third piece, Another Night, was so much more fun than this video portrays. I'm not sure if it was because today was the last day of the season and the dancers were just going all out or what, but the version we saw today was much more lively and loose! While still technically excellent, the dancers seemed to enjoy the piece immensely and that translated well to us in the audience.
I forgot to read any of the information about the last piece, Grace, before it began, but apparently it is about the journey to the promised land - something I kind of guessed based on the spiritual music and the costumes/lighting. The dances began in sets of red and white, but all had changed to wearing white garments by the end of the piece. The audience actually got really into this, audibly engaged with clapping sprinkled throughout, so you can tell just how captivating it was! What actually struck me the most about this piece, which isn't really obvious from the clip, was how frequently the dancers faced the wings while dancing, turned 90 degrees from the audience. It was visually interesting and thoroughly entertaining.

year one.

I forgot that this was still in my drafts folder....so here are some year 1 reflections, just a couple weeks late!
---------------
Give or take a few days, it has been one year since I began graduate school - wow.

Though I've shared most of what has occurred over the past year, I've learned some valuable lessons, many, unfortunately, the hard way. Between TAing, research, classes, homework, and commuting more than a few blocks, I'm so happy just to make it to this day. The transition between undergrad and graduate school was tougher than I envisioned, but I'm not sure exactly why.

Maybe it was the expectations of those who I respect and needed to work well with?  I just realized recently that I always get nervous before meetings with my professor because I always feel like I'm headed into an oral test. and I never feel like I do well when I leave. (Though, about two weeks ago, I finally finished the first meeting with my advisor without feeling like I failed my test!)

Maybe it was trying to get a new project off the ground with the weight of it being my entire thesis hanging over my head. New projects at NASA always had an end date - I couldn't work on it past my 10 wk internship and typically nobody continued my projects into the fall, so if it didn't work, oh well! Now, if something doesn't work, it means I may not graduate in the time I have remaining on my funding.

Maybe it was because my head knew that public school undergrads were different from my private school undergrads, but my heart didn't get the message - it was difficult to see the students not care and remain disengaged with the material of the courses I TAed for the whole quarter. This one aspect that turns me off of teaching for a career - how do you work with students who just don't want to be there? (yes, I know it happens at schools like SPU, but it wasn't as obvious to me. They at least knew they were paying lots of money, so some effort was required.) I respect great teachers all the more, as I know they work hard to keep their courses interesting and engaging for all levels of students.

Maybe it was the giant qualifying exam I faced right before the new school year started - memorizing has never been my strong suit and I literally memorized a textbook. This one, in fact:

(I think I actually realized at that moment that my sound was on in the super quiet reading room in the library - whoops! It still expresses the overwhelming task memorizing 700+ pages of information!) It was not small task - the test itself lasted ~4.5 hours :/ (However, I just found out that I squeezed by and passed the exam! Yay for not having to re-take it!) Since I've checked off all my core coursework, the next step is will be to give an presentation (followed by an oral examination via questions) and then I will actually be an official PhD candidate. Fingers crossed that goes well, it will hopefully happen in the next few months!

So, yeah, overall - it was a rough transition. But at the same time, I do really like my project, I like what I'm learning, MSE is definitely where I'm supposed to be, and I'm super super excited that I'm now fully funded through one of NASA's graduate research programs! (the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship, to be precise). I love the flexibility of graduate school and I'm finally starting to get trained on a bunch of instruments, so my research is becoming increasingly more interesting. I'm trying to capitalize on my current enthusiasm and work a bit longer hours to get more things completed :) Only taking one class is also totally awesome. I'm not looking forward to home-work laden classes again, though I know there are a few more to come.

I'm still not sure where I want to work for a career, though I feel like I'm asked that quite consistently - industry, academia, and a government lab are all still options :) Finally, this year has started off much, much better and I can only express my sincerest thanks to all of my friends and family members, close-by and far off for putting up with me and helping to keep me sane last year!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

(Confession)

This week's Confession of Sin during services at Grace Seattle was quite apropos:

Almighty God, we want life. We want full life. We want life that satisfies
     our deepest longings:
     our longing to belong,
     our longing to be safe,
     our longing for comfort,
     our longing for purpose,
     our longing for relationship,
     our longing for life. 

Giver of life, you are the only source of life that satisfies these longings. 
     but we reject you. We are often ashamed of you. 
     We are more comfortable fighting for ourselves than trusting you.

We repent. We now turn to you
     and away from our lifeless, uncaring, and unsatisfying gods.
Forgive us and renew us. Amen.

I pray I will continually remember and reflect on this prayer.

Super Guppy!

I can't believe it's been a month since I spent basically my entire weekend at the Museum of Flight watching the Guppy fly in and then getting to see the front section of the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT - a fancy term for a wingless space shuttle that is used for training the astronauts).

The Guppy is one of my favorite planes; it just doesn't look like it is supposed to be able to fly!

Apparently, this plane is a composite in the sense that the wings come from the B-class bombers, the fusualage is from another plane, and the cockpit is from yet a third plane, and the cargo area was built up on top. In a lecture on day 2, one of the astronauts, Greg Johnson, who flies the Guppy talked a bit about its history - apparently the first version, the 'Pregnat Guppy', completely disconnected midway down the cargo area to load items. Now, the Super Guppy opens on a hinge on the left side of the plane:

The guppy was flown in by Johnson and then a female astronaut showed up - I never did catch her name, but I guess she was important? Johnson is actually from West Seattle and a UW grad, so it was fun for him to fly the Guppy here. One favorite moment happened when some person just showed up in an EVA suit mock-up. I've worn one before and, while kids love them, the one I wore was not comfortable at all!!

While the Guppy crew maneuved the plane into posistion in the museum's parking lot, all the VIPs and speakers mingled before the small welcoming ceremony, including the governor and Bonnie Dunbar, another local astronaut.

And in true Seattle form, it started to rain, though fortunately it started after the plane had landed! A rain delay would not have fun to stand through!

On day two of my weekend at the MoF, not only did I get to hear Astronauts Johnson and Foreman (I think Foreman spoke at a MUST conference once) talk about their experiences on the ISS and the history of the Guppy, but I got to the front end of the FFT up close!

It was actually to large for the lens I had with me that day, but I realized that I saw the FFT fully assembled in Houston when I flew on the microgravity plane a couple years ago:

Fun fact: on the other side of the FFT in the picture above, astronauts trained to detect thermal tile damage, right underneath the open cargo bay door!

I have oodles more pictures, but since I think everyone who reads this blog is also my friend of fb, you can see the rest of the pictures there! (Click here!)

today.

 

 

Astronauts and Aerial Artists

Tonight I experienced one of the most incredible mixes of science and art. At an event hosted by the Seattle Science Center, part of their Science Luminaries Series, I experienced one of the most incredible evenings of art and science.

The evening was hosted by the Museum of Flight, in their new Space space - where the shuttle trainer will be arriving next weekend in the Supper Guppy!!! - which is an incredible building. I loved the giant images of the Milky Way and other beautiful parts of space spread across the walls in giant mural form.

First to speak was Pinky Nelson, who was an astronaut, is an astronomer, and works at WWU. He began with a compelling story about his flights on the shuttle and how he was one of 6 (I think that was the number) astronauts to fly solo in an untethered chair outside the ISS. First off - flying untethered would terrify me. Secondly, his mission was to catch a satellite IN THE MIDDLE OF SPACE. And guess what? An engineer made a mistake and gave a measurement for a vital pin as 1" longer than the actual. Thus he could not grab the satellite with the grapple he had and eventually tried gripping with with his hand via the solar panel - scary idea, as the edges could have cut through his gloves and he'd be dead faster than fast :/ I found some of the footage he showed us - I got chills watching it - click here to start at the appropriate spot. Also, he loves the Hubble. Which makes him close to my favorite astronaut, however I met one that worked on the last Hubble servicing mission, and so Pinky can't rate quite as high :)

I still want to get one of the Hubble Huggers patches...

They integrated the art really well into the program, as next came a couple from the Seattle Opera, performing a piece from Rachel Portman's The Little Prince, based off the book by the same title (which, incidentally, I own in French and English. Children's books are great for learning new languages!) Though there were no costumes and the scene was just verbally set for us and then the excerpts were sung, it was still powerful. My favorite line came when the pilot was describing his emotions when flying: I hold the stars in the palm of my hand. It was just captivating. Here is a clip with more than what we heard, the part that was performed is just the very beginning of the clip, before the pilot is asked to draw a sheep:

Then Dr. Bonnie Dunbar shared her story, which is eerily similar to mine: hailing from a small ranch in south east Washington (in the same area code as my grandparents!), she actually did her undergrad and PhD in my department at the UW - Materials Science and Engineering. I knew this about her, as we have lots of pictures from her and of her and of the space shuttle, all signed by her, hanging in our conference room. We even have a teeny tiny WA state flag flown with her on one of her missions. Granted, though our backgrounds are similar, our futures are likely vastly different. I'm not entirely sure I'd want to be an astronaut. I did run up and shake her hand during the intermission, as well as get a slightly awkward photo with her, but it's so hard to know what to say when you meet someone in an event like this. I really wanted to ask her about her experiences as a woman in the sciences, if she has any family of her own, etc, but I wanted to respect her time and the others waiting to shake her hand. It was really important to me that the little girl behind me meet her and hopefully be a bit more inspired to pursue a STEM career. I may still email her at her Boeing address and maybe I'll get a response, but in the meantime, please enjoy the awkward levels of this picture:

You can't really tell from this pic, but I'm definitely rocking both my NASA meatball and Zero-G pins on the lapel. I'm probably breaking some rule about wearing too many pins, but I love them both so much! 

Post-intermission, the event transitioned into private space access, appropriate, seeing as WA has a number of companies working towards creating vehicles to ferry passengers to low earth orbit and beyond. Chris Lewicki, of Planetary Resources, gave a brief introduction to asteroids and why his company wants to try to access one - I mainly understood that there are SO MANY asteroids!!!

The next section was incredible - there's apparently an aerial arts school in West Seattle (where a person moves around high above the ground utilizing two strips of silk fabric), and they had a few performers come out and perform two pieces, Weightlessness and Space. The first piece featured a woman dressed in a bodysuit, painted in a way that reminded me a 'warrior princesses'. While her piece and ability was amazing to watch, it seemed kind of flashy, as she would grin at the audience and kind of 'show off' in a way. The second artist, however, was leagues more enaging. Not only was she dressed in a highly stylized, faux-astronaut suit, she wore a white helmet to complete the look, and her movements really evoked the idea of space. While her piece had just as many amazing moves as the first one, she really slowed down her movements, remaining still in a position for a number of seconds and included shapes that reminded me of someone gazing with wonder at the universe or crammed in a small exploration capsule. She also didn't show off as much, but was very much into creating this idea that she was in space, looking across the vast black spaces and exploring the area around her. It was a phenomenal combination of strength, grace, and trust in a piece of silk. (Materials note: I think that silk is considered the strongest natural fiber, as it is the only natural fiber that is in filament form, which means the long strands can be aligned to increase the material's strength.)

Beautiful. 

I also couldn't help but be a bit envious of their upper body strength. I'm working on strengthening my arm and back muscles through rock climbing, but I still can't do a single pull-up :/

The evening ended with Mark Sirangleo, of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, talking about some of the cool NASA missions his company has contracted for, including the Mars Science Laboratory, and about the new crew vehicle they are developing based on some old Russian/NASA designs - it looks pretty sweet! He was showing an animation about the MSL's landing and frankly, I'm terrified. It just doesn't look like it's supposed to work and apparently they haven't tested all the parts together because it was too big!!! While trying to find the video he showed, I stumbled upon this terrifying video: 

I know I'll watch the landing live if I'm awake, but gah! I hope it works!!

And that was it! 2 hours of some of most inspiring space, science, and art I've seen a long while. I wish whoever is reading this could have experienced this event. I was simply blown away with the evening and I really hope the Science Center continues to increase access to the sciences for adults, not just kids. I would love, love, love to see something like the Cal Acadamy's Nightlife at the science center, even if only once a month!

Hej!

Hej! Tack! Hej dä!
Hello! Thanks! Goodbye!


This past Monday, I began taking Swedish language classes. The above is about all I learned - and I even had to look up goodbye in my text... Why take Swedish? Because I'm hopefully traveling there next summer (or maybe the summer after that) to work with a collaborator! There is a professor at KTH, the technical university in Stockholm, who is developing a system that I want to use and/or replicate. Well, and going to Sweden is cool and my advisor believes that each student should spend some time abroad, learning to work with scientists on a global level :)

KTH in the summer sunshine

Anyways, I'm sure that the students and professors at KTH will speak English with me, however I firmly believe that I'll get more out of my experience in a foreign country if I can understand some of the language. I didn't really want to take a course at my university, partially because it meets every day at 9:30am for an hour, but also because I don't need to take it at the university level to achieve my goals. Fortunately for me, Seattle has a large scandinavian population and we have a great Swedish Cultural Center! I found out that they offer inexpensive, low-key classes that meet one evening a week. Perfect for me and I'll be able to continue to take courses throughout the school year, hopefully gaining some basic conversational skills. So far the pronunciation hasn't been too tricky, but I've never tried a germanic language before (I've tried learning Spanish and French previously) so I know things will come up that I'll find difficult. The most interesting thing I learned in day one was that there are no verb endings! All verbs stay the same, regardless of case, and are differentiated by the pronouns that precede them. Which is only a bummer because when learning other languages, verb conjugations are my strongest point in the whole course, thanks to my Latin background - where all we basically did for 1.5 years was conjugate verbs! 

Isn't Stockholm colorful?! 

I'm also excited that Stockholm is a port city with many ferries to outlying islands. That's one thing I love about living in Seattle - the easy access to water and islands in the sound, San Juans, and Canada. I'm keeping my fingers tightly crossed that it all works out for me to travel to Sweden for the whole summer, goodness knows I will also check out as much of the rest of Europe as I can!

leading females.

books. Oh, how I love them. Though I've read few 'for fun' books in the past 5 years than ever before, I still love to read - I'm currently working through The Most Human Human, testing out my new Kindle :) Recently, when I was back at my parents home, I was searching through the bookcases and experienced a small 'aha!' moment - while I know my independent and feminist tendencies today are partially a product of being a first born and my awesome roommate, I realized that the majority of books I picked up during some pretty formative years all featured strong female protagonists, doing all sorts of fun things.

All my boxcar children books. Not pictured: all the ones I borrowed from the library! Love the independence and fun times had by all the Alden siblings.

With the number of historical fiction / biographies I read, it's surprising I didn't love history more. I certainly didn't read any books about chemists :/

 I had two big loves growing up: horses and ballet. Granted, there are not many books about young ballerinas, so my shelf has many many more books about horses, usually featuring a girl. And while some people may think ballet is super girly and wondering why it's listed here, I remember Drina as being a very strong and independent young woman who worked hard at her craft.

I didn't seem to enjoy many books with leading male characters, probably because I didn't identify with them as much as a female lead - just going to show me, once again, how powerful the young adult literature genre can be.

Oh, and American Girl dolls / stories - love, love, love them. So accessible for young girls and subtly taught so many good life skills. Plus, my first foray into designing clothing was for my doll, Molly. Oh, and my cat, but she wasn't as great about posing as Molly.....

Other favorites included pretty much any book by Tamara Pierce and many of Anne McCaffrey's books about the dragons of Pern:

to read: Sophie's World, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Space Trilogy, The Evolution of Adam, and sooo many others!

to finish: The Most Human Human, The Design of Everyday Things (had to go back to the library :/), The Problem of Pain, Hood, Apollo's Angels, and sooo many others!

Clearly, I'm not just reading books with female protagonists now :) but I am glad I'm finally finding some non-fiction to enjoy. Generally I find non-fic kind of boring, but that's because I grew up on fantasy fiction....

Also, does anyone have good sources to borrow ebooks? I have four different library cards but can always used more resources :)

suits not required?

Last December, I blogged a response to quote I had read from Zooey Deschanel, concerning wearing girly things to work versus being taken seriously in the workplace. This response was pretty much just based on my own experience and perception of how I was received in the very male-dominated scientific community.

An article I read earlier this week entitled "Forget the Glass Ceiling, We Have Hemlines to Consider" was very intriguing. Apparently, it has been shown that as a job applicant, females are more well recieved if they dress in a more feminine manner, more along these lines:

rather than something like this: 

which is all just so interesting to me. I just bought my first skirt suit last year, partially because I thought it was the best blend between my love of dresses and the current male-like 'requirements' in my industry. Now I have to ask myself - maybe I'm just playing into the whole stereotype unintentionally? The article does bring up a question - how can we get this female judgement trend to stop? What will it take for men to seriously consider any female candidate, regardless of what she comes in wearing? My qualifications should get me the job, regardless of whether I am in pants and flats or heels and a skirt! I don't see how change can effectively occur if women have to play into the stereotype to get a job, which just reinforces the bias, and the cycle never ends. It is such a tricky line right now for women to walk along. In some ways, this reminds me of what I've read about bloomers coming into fashion for women, but not so extreme. This is just subtle gender biasing that should not occur. I just want to wear something that I feel comfortable in, flatters my body type, expresses my personality, and does not cater to the men in my industry who think women should be weaker and less dominant. Is that too much to ask for? 

Maybe you're reading this and think it is silly that I think so much about what I wear, but it is precisely because I, as a female, am so quickly judged based on my appearance (and interacted with accordingly), that I have to think carefully about the way I dress. Cyclic, ain't it?

women, tech and commercials (kind of part 2)

You probably don't remember, but earlier this year, I blogged a bit about the surprising backlash against a Best Buy commercial that only featured male tech leaders in the phone/app industry. I still don't have a huge issue with the commercial, but somebody in Best Buy's marketing department must have heard because just recently this new commercial started airing:

Thanks Best Buy for not only featuring women, but diverse women in science and technology! Plus, the commercial is doubly awesome because the first woman featured is my fantastic friend and fellow microgravity flyer, Meredith Perry! So great!

23 and a week.

time has certainly flown. how did I go from this:

to this: 

so quickly?

while I'm not in denial about being 23, it is slightly surreal. the 20's were always for people older than me, people more mature me than me, people somewhere between me and my parents. I think it might be a weird age for me because I never knew 20-somethings at any point growing up until I arrived here. People in their twenties populate TV shows, but the lives they portray are only distantly similar to mine. I doubt that a Jesus-seeking, science PhD student who lives with 5 great female roommates, spends most of her time at school with perpetual goggle lines, and rarely goes out anywhere for 'fun' would make sellable television...and one of my life goals is to live with as little drama as possible. sometimes, it's incredible to me that I already went to college - weirdly, I never remember a time when I was like "I am going to college and then am going to get a job" (well, the job part won't happen for a number of years still....) but I also don't remember a time when college seemed like a large obstacle - I just started applying to schools when people told me to. the future is ever-present and sometimes I think that I look to much into the future and forget to just 'live' everyday life, if that makes any sense at all. and maybe that's why 23 is a bit surreal - the future is here, now. what does year 23 have in store? I'm excited to find out :)

also, sometimes I enjoy not starting sentences with capitals. the shape of the sentence is different. that's all.

oh, and I received a kindle for my birthday from my parents - probably should have waited until post-finals weeks to open that gift...

sun sun sun

The sun has been out for a whole week now. I can still barely stand to stay inside even though I'm getting used to waking up to sunshine. Seattle is totally making up for the terrible, terrible winter/spring we had last year - where the sun did not come out until after I left for CA for the summer. I love the sun. love love love it.You may not believe me, as I'm still whiter than white - but I'm a firm believer in sunscreen and will not go outside for long without it. I learned my lesson last summer when I went biking sans sunscreen on my legs. I'm pretty sure I'll never get rid of my bike shorts tan line. ever.

 

{I've spent lots of quality time with books and napping in the park near my house lately}

{my sister and I went biking! I'm really bad at self-portraits - clearly I missed the myspace training in middle / high school.
uhh - I just noticed the guy in the background. we framed that pretty nicely...}

  
friends and tacos and sunshine - what a great cinco de mayo!}

I will admit, it feels a bit weird to be staying here all summer and not planning to take my finals early, pack up my stuff and drive (or coast, rather, in my giant buick) down to Ames for the summer. I'm kind of sad that I won't get to see all my friends in that one place - not sure when I'll actually get to see them again at all :/ I've got a bit of wanderlust in my bones now, staying in Seattle for a year might be more challenging than I'm expecting (anyone want to have me visit? I love flying places...). I do find it amazing that of the 6+ internships I applied for and dozen companies I contacted via email, only one company actually responded about an internship (they said 'thanks, but no') and one company emailed back (though the 'careers' email was answered by the CEO of the company....definitely a startup in the middle of OR...).

Right now, it's looking like I'm going to have to pay to do research for my PI this summer, so I'm hoping that my research starts picking up quickly. Making a new material is not a trivial exercise and so far research has been going slowly. It has been affirming (in some ways) that I'm finding that I'd rather be frustrated, but working in lab on research, than doing my homework, going to class, or doing my TA responsibilities - don't worry, I haven't really shirked anything, just thought about it. Frequently. This last two weeks were the busiest I've been all quarter - grading midterms for both my classes, doing my own assignment, and making an extremely detailed dress. I can't show you the dress now, but I should have great pictures after the weekend. It's going to be headed down a runway on a really tiny model (have I ever mentioned how hard it is for me to make things that will not fit me? It's really really hard - good indicator that fashion should not be my career :) ) during this event called Locavore, with the Kirkland Arts Center. If anyone who reads this is local and wants to come this Saturday, here are the details. But we did take sweet pictures last weekend, so those will pop up soon on my other blog!

On another, somewhat unrelated note, one of my best friends is back from India! She wasn't here in Seattle for long, but at least I can go visit her in CA for the next few years.

 I had really good biscuits and gravy! Oh, and the company was fantastic :D

And this is totally not related to anything except that I love cats/my cat. I went home for mother's day and this is a picture of my cat, acting weird and wrapping herself around the planter.

 

That's all, in case you were wondering where I disappeared to for the last bit of time :)

Research Reality

So, I was going to write a text-heavy post about how I had forgotten in the past few months how hard research really it. I had spent two quarters reading and building up to getting in the lab, and now that I'm finally getting to try things, everything that makes research difficult has appeared. I recently found this tumblr called whatshouldwecallgradschool that explains everything with gifs....

 -----------------

When I try a protocol for the first time: 

------------------

Lab cleaning day: 

(at least once a quarter for my lab)

-----------------

Coming home after a day of failed experiments:

-----------------

Trying to reduce my to-do list:

But don't worry, I still enjoy my research :)

Fellowships! Yes - that's plural!

Long story short - last Friday I was awarded a second fellowship, this time from NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist. It's a newer fellowship, as the first class of fellows was selected last year. Now I had a choice between NASA and NSF for my PhD funding - which is a position I was thankful to be in - not many people get offered one fellowship, let alone two! Here are the fellowship stats:

NSF:
30k/yr stipend
All my tuition covered
Health Insurance
3 year duration

NASA
36k/yr stipend
$10,000 towards tuition
$1,000 towards health insurance
$9,000 for research supplies
$10,000 for relocation and housing while at a NASA center or other government lab during the summers
4 year duration

What to choose?! After some long email chains and lots of short-term stress, I think the university will cover the remainder of my NASA tuition, like they would if I had taken NSF. Monetary issues aside, the NASA Fellowship is doubly great because it has the summer opportunities built in - basically I have extra funding to go to each place I already wanted to go: NREL, Sweden and a NASA center. With NSF, I would have had to find more funding to get to NREL or Sweden and probably would not have gotten back to a NASA Center. While it was a surprisingly nerve-wracking choice in the end and I didn't tell NSF 'no' until the very last minute, I'm excited to say that I'm staying in the NASA Education Pipeline and am now one of the NASA Space Technology Research Fellows!

{side note: I love all of these prints from the who-knows-what-they-actually-are website Wander}