Book love.....

The Girl in the Spider's Web. 

Naive......

Some silly part of me thought that after I submitted my thesis and started a job with reduced hours (to start) that my life would fall back into place and I would be able to catch my breath. Wrong. So wrong.

In the last post I mentioned that I started my job the same week I submitted my thesis. With all that excitement happening I thought I should celebrate. So, in true workaholic fashion, I took a single day off. No PhD work. No Zoo work. I spent the day wandering around Wellington, sipping an iced coffee drink, perusing books at the bookstore, picking out a pair of Abstract Design earrings and finding the perfect modern style tea cup and saucer. Yes, after nearly four years we have caved and are exploring the bizarre world of tea drinking. :) I toted all my goodies home and bam! I was hit with a double bug that laid me out for over two weeks. I spent my days and nights coughing, unable to sleep for the pain. In short I was a mess and no matter how much I tried to rest and force fluids I wasn't getting any better. I missed an entire week at the job I had just started and eventually visited student health when I had completely lost my voice. Everything is funnier in retrospect but at the time I wasn't laughing when I had to lean over the reception counter and attempt to whisper that I needed to see a doctor, stat. Thankfully, I didn't have strep or bronchitis but I was still laid out for a few more days. Finally, I decided to go to work even though I wasn't completely well. My supervisor and officemate was also sick so for the next few weeks all you heard from our office was silence punctuated by chest rattling coughs. Bleh.

After my protracted recovery I started preparing for a short contract I had secured on campus: a month's worth of post doc level pay to complete molecular analysis of 43 tissue samples. I was already late on completing this work before I got sick so I was experiencing serious guilt. On top of that I knew how long the process, in its entirety, would take. Working every minute and putting in seriously long days I could've finished everything in three weeks. But that didn't account for the fact that for this type of analysis you need to schedule a machine that other people use as well. Additionally, I was also working three days a week at the zoo. So that meant every minute I wasn't at the zoo I was on campus hogging the qPCR machine and running as many samples as possible. It took about two weeks to finish the first two steps of the process for all samples. Then I proceeded to actually run them in the machine. You can run a single 96 well plate in the machine at a time. It takes about three hours to set up a single plate. Then it runs in the machine for two hours. To ensure non contamination in your samples you need to set up each plate in a laminar flow hood: translate that to sitting at a cabinet that blows cold air on you the entire time. Sigh. The best (ahem, worst) part of all of this is that with the primers I was using I could only set up three samples along with all of their controls on a 96 well plate. Double sigh. With that in mind I had to put my game face on and get to it. I tried to take advantage of the weekends because I could hog the machine as no one else was scheduling it on those days. That meant that instead of working delightfully light hours doing fun work at the zoo I was spend everything other minute on campus trying to finish running my samples. It was like being back in the midst of intensive, never ending lab work I experienced during the program. I thought this kind of schedule was behind me! Finally, at the beginning of December I ran the last of the samples!! I then spent a few more days entering, collating and analyzing the data. With great relief I am so happy to say that the work is behind me!!

So in the weeks since finishing with those samples I've been able to enjoy some time away from both jobs and it has been amazing! Now I need to put my game face back on and prepare for my upcoming defense. It was tentatively set for the end of January but I need to confirm the actual date. It is very difficult to imagine that we are approaching this point in time. Miracles do happen. :)

Choice.....

Let me take a moment to bring you up to speed on what's been happening since thesis submission. First, yes, it actually happened and I have to admit in the ensuing months I've made a conscious effort to avoid thinking about it. As soon as it was printed I was tempted to page through it. Wisely, I did not. I would've just found infuriating typos and formatting errors. Instead I walked away.

Actually, the same week I submitted my thesis I also started my dream job. Wow, I feel like a self-obsessed jerk just saying that. When I was finishing up my thesis I was checking the Wellington Zoo website compulsively waiting to see the job offer for their newly created Animal Welfare Advisor role. And one day it was there so, excitedly, I started working on my application and wondering if this was actually happening. During my time as a volunteer data collector as Wellington Zoo I had continually fantasized about doing the same type of work as an actual employee. Remember this was happening when I should've been concentrating on my thesis and final lab work but instead I ran between campus and the zoo like a crazy person. I must tell you that this volunteering opportunity was really important for me. And not just that it started a conversation about potential employment. Rather when I started collecting "small cat" data for the zoo I had just finished a particularly stressful portion of my PhD lab work. I know I've mentioned it before but I lost some, if not most, of my humanity completing those experiments. So even though the last thing I needed was more work my time spent at the zoo was downright therapeutic. Every day I went in to collect data I breathed a sigh of relief. A change of pace was exactly what I needed at the time.

So with this in mind I was exhilarated to think that I might be hired as the Animal Welfare Advisor at Wellington Zoo. But just like applications for PhD programs I was nervous. What if I didn't get hired? And what if I did? This is an entirely new type of work and I'd been traipsing through the halls of academia on and off for more than a decade. With a deep breath I submitted my application and waited to hear about an interview. I was actually on my way to visit a lab group that focuses on animal welfare research located about an hour north of Wellington. The call was great news - I had an interview for the following Monday! The rest of the day I spent touring the various laboratory facilities, learning about the specific research projects the group was working on and presenting my own work for discussion. It was an amazing day and to my great surprise I was offered a 2.5 year post doctoral position with the group!! I was gobsmacked! I had wanted to visit this group because they do a wide range of animal welfare research and considering I was preparing to enter the field it only seemed prudent to get spend some time with them. I never imagined I would be offered a position on the spot. I spent the weekend hemming and hawing about my options; both the post doc and the position at the zoo would be amazing opportunities and offered comparable compensation. I fully recognized how fortunate I was to have to options. I would have to make a decision. All I could figure is that I'd see how the zoo interview went and go from there. I mean, who knew? I never expected that I would be a shoe-in for the job and so didn't count on it being mine until an offer was made. 

I went into the interview excited and nervous as is standard for job interviews. It went well and I had a great conversation with most of the senior management team of Wellington Zoo Trust. At the end of the interview they had me scared when they said: "Right, so we had nine other applicants from all around the world apply for this position....". My stomach dropped and my mind began to race. Nine! And out of those there is a great possibility that someone has actual experience doing this type of work! Where I've barely begun and am looking to embark on a major shift from neuroscience to animal science....I have innumerable things to catch up on...... . I said my goodbyes and was escorted out of the conference room. Checking my watch I saw that I was in luck and could grab a bus up to campus within the next ten minutes. I ducked into the ladies room at the zoo entrance and then was starting to run for the door when one of the women at reception intercepted me. She said, "Are you Bridget?". To which I said yes. She went on to explain that one of my interviewers wanted to talk to me for a second before I left. I wasn't sure what to think but waited until he arrived. He asked if I had time to chat over coffee and I said yes even though I knew I was missing my bus. There would be another one in an hour. While we were waiting to put in our order he turned to me and said, "So, it didn't take us long to make our decision: we'd like you to come work with us". I couldn't reign in the huge smile that was spreading across my face - it was actually happening!!!!! From there we sat down to discuss details regarding my contract (it would be couriered out), uniform, start date and the like. I floated out of there on a cloud, caught the next bus and gave Timmy the great news!

Then I needed to make a decision: which job should I take? Weighing pros and cons didn't really work and in the end I chose the zoo. The decision was made easier because I was assured that whether I took the post doc position or not I would still have the opportunity to collaborate with these researchers and their students even while working at the zoo.

So here I am, three months into the job, buried with work but so very, very happy!!!!

Book love.....

Tricky Twenty-Two.

The Rosie Effect.