Stephen met me at my place beforehand to carpool over and then afterwards we talked over mountain dew for almost 2 hours! Stephen is a 3rd year grad student in my lab at FSU. I've worked with him on at least 2 different projects and introduced him to the potlucks and other social activities amongst the grad students. On the way back from Joe's we got to talking about how our lab functions and before we knew it we were venting. I mean serious venting! It was such a relief to get to share with him some of the feelings I'm been having about working in our lab (about our professor, the work load, fellow lab mates)...it wasn't gossip at all. It just helped to know that I wasn't alone in how I felt. Being a grad student in our lab is so demanding and draining.
I often thought that I was the only one struggling with juggling my research, classes, teaching, and life outside the lab...or that I was the only one who thought that our professor's requests were too much to handle sometimes. Need an example? It takes 2 weeks to raise flies from egg to embryo to larvae (3 phases) to adult...and we have weekly meetings with our professor...so if we meet with our professor one week it's almost impossible to do the experiments needed and results obtained before the next week's meeting. Yet knowing this, our professor gets disappointed (and sometimes angry) if we don't have results with each meeting. Ugh! It's aggravating...more so it's such a personal let down for me. I always beat myself up over such let downs (I'm working on this trait...but old habits are hard to break). Stephen and I reasoned that our professor is human too...it could be that his reactions are cultural (my professor is from China), or that he has forgotten what it is like to be a grad student, or that he might be having issues in his family affecting his interaction with us...or a combination of all of the above. My professor is not always disappointed with our work. On the contrary, he always finds something positive to say about what we are accomplishing :) While sharing stories about why we were late to lab (for one reason or another), we started talking about God...actually I started talking about how much I enjoy going to First Baptist and how the sermons for the month of September were related to the workplace (I was trying to relate Dr. Dortch's message to our everyday work atmosphere). I was telling Stephen that before one of the sermons a woman at my church performed a dramatization. In the mini play, she was a new Christian heading to work in the morning and she was having a conversation with God about how she was going to face her co-workers that day as a new Christian. I was telling him that I thought it was so funny...but so true...that as a new Christian I still talk to God about how I should handle situations at work or at social gatherings even before they happen. With one particular example I just had to laugh at myself. I was telling him that when it was my turn to have the potluck at my house, all week I had thought about how the potluck was going to play out (on a side note, I am super anal about entertaining...I try to make the evening comfortable and very relaxing for guests and for me to make that happen I have to have every little thing planned out ahead of time). I had everything figured out from food, to serving dishes and utensils, to entertainment for adults and kids, to topics of conversation...and one more thing...I really really wanted to pray with everyone that night. I just wanted to thank God for giving us such an great opportunity. I am so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life, to do research with, and to socialize with. And what meals we have!! Oh my goodness...let me tell ya, a grad student never ate so good. And even if everyone in my group doesn't believe in God, or doesn't pray, or believes in something that I don't...I still wanted to give praise and glory to him for I know he makes all of this possible. So getting back to the story, I had to laugh at myself because even though I had planned on praying with everyone, I got so busy and so wrapped up entertaining that I completely forgot to pray!! I didn't realize it until I was back in bed after everyone had left. Oh well. I'm going to make it a priority next time :)
Our conversation about God led to defining marriage which led to gay marriage
which led to the vice presidential debate which led to genetically inherited homosexuality which led to the bible which then somehow led to 7 dimensions (as in, 3 dimensions past what we know, i.e., length, width, height, and time). Don't ask me how, LOL! I think the only reason we ended the conversation was because Cali was ready to go to bed. I'll have to write about Cali another night but let me just say she's awesome! On that note, I suppose I should try to sleep too. It's after 2:30am. Allen's going to call me at 7am my time (12pm his time).
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