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....

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When I try a protocol for the first time: 

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Lab cleaning day: 

(at least once a quarter for my lab)

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Coming home after a day of failed experiments:

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Trying to reduce my to-do list:

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