Continuing on a new path

Sorry for the second hiatus. To get you up to speed: I moved back to Halifax, started teaching, am continuing writing, and just picked up a 2nd part-time job doing program-related research for a Geography prof...

I don't think I'll be writing on fieldwork any more for a while, mostly because I haven't done any in almost a year. What I can write about is teaching while writing your thesis while doing research.

Teaching is actually much more fun than I thought it was going to be (don't tell my students I said that!). I teach a first year course, and I enjoy shaping developing minds (the students take everything I say as absolute truth, which is nice for a change after being a grad student). The prep isn't fun, but I like to talk, so the lecture part is relatively painless.

The writing is going well. I'm finishing up the first draft of my last chapter, and my first chapter is almost ready for submission (to a journal, not to my committee!). If I can get it accepted before I submit to my committe, then I won't have to do any revisions! At the same time, my supervisor just went away for a month, so I'm not sure how soon I'll be getting his edits back...

And enough of the hiatus

I've been back from the east coast for two weeks now. My computer was fixed as soon as I got back. It's all shiny and new with a new keyboard (I was previously missing the Esc key) and everything. The pink screen cover is even a nicer pink, more of a rose, than the original salmon.

I haven't written anything for the past two weeks because I have been working day and night writing, editing, and packing. I'm moving back to Halifax next weekend. I have a sessional lecturer position for the fall semester teaching 1st year Environmental Science (Environmental Challenges) at Saint Mary's University.

The position was difficult to get as I am techinally not finished my M.Sc. yet, but as I am nearing the end I had to get my supervisor to write me a letter confirming that, as well as submit a recommendation from the professor who regularly teaches the course (he's going on sabbatical this year).

As a SMU alumna, the professors and administration are familiar with me (which likely gave me an advantage). Either way, now I'm in the process of writing and editing a thesis WHILE prepping for a course (which starts in less than a month). As far as I can tell, I'm a sucker for punishment!

There are many benefits to this turn of events:
A) I get to move back to Halifax (I'm not the biggest fan of Peterborough)
B) I get a job in September
C) I get teaching experience
D) I get to drop down to part-time and pay less tuition :D

D is especially important, because if I didn't get this job I would have had to stick around Peterborough and pay full-time tuition in the fall. There is just no way I'll be written, revised, submitted to committee, defended, revised, submitted to the grad student office before Sept. 26th (the tuition cut-off date).

So all in all, it's a good thing! And I'm looking forward to moving :)

Heading east

This week I'm heading back to Newfoundland (where I'm from) for some much needed summer vacay. I figure I don't have much time left to take vacation when I want, for how long I want so I might as well take advantage while I can. Once I get a 'real job' and stop living in this fantasy world called grad school days off become a thing of the past (though a real paycheck will be nice).

So, between flying half way across the country and sending my computer back to Dell, I may be internet challenged for the next two weeks or so. Consider this my warning: I may post half as often (given my current rate of 1 post a week).

I'm both looking forward to the break in writing and dreading it. I don't particularly enjoy writing, but I'm at the point where it's going to slow me down to have to stop for two weeks... and it will be hard to get back into the swing of things when I resume.

Update: Finished first draft of chapter 1 (of 3) and have received it with editing from my supervisor. Working on first draft of chapter 2 now :)

The worst possible thing happened to me... with not so bad results

This past weekend, as I'm starting to feel the pressure of my thesis looming, I decide to take papers home and work. On the weekend. Now I know many of my fellow grad students do this - all the time - however I do not. I made a deal with myself to not work evenings and weekends, and to treat my graduate degree as a job (and a low paying one at that) after the torture of completing my undergraduate honours thesis while doing six courses (in an effort to go to vet school, which I didn't even end up doing).

But now, with deadlines looming and the aspect of paying ANOTHER semester's tuition, I have decided to get my ass in gear. So I brought home papers and set myself up in my desk, upstairs in the house I am house sitting for a prof. Perfect office, with windows all around and a great breeze, a comfortable chair and lots of light. The only thing is it's as far away from everything else in the house as you can get. Mind you, this is just a two-storey house, so it's not that far, but when you're in the middle of reading/writing/searching, the walk to the kitchen seems like forever.

It was in the afternoon when I decided to take a break and do some laundry. As the TV and laundry are both downstairs, I balanced my laptop precariously in the laundry pile and walked down the stairs. On the very last step I shifted my weight and tipped the laundry pile... spilling my laptop onto the hard floor. I heard cracks and saw plastic fly.

Want to make a grad student have a meltdown? Throw their computer. My computer, with all my pictures, data, chapter files... I couldn't breathe. I picked it up (gingerly) and ran to the kitchen to plug it in. I PRAYED it would turn on. It did. The screen lit up. I signed in. Apparently the only damage was to the casing. I sighed a huge sigh of relief and IMMEDIATELY plugged in my external harddrive and backed up all my data/writing/music/pictures (something I had been lax about for the past few months).

Then I called Dell. Since I have complete care, they will fix all the broken bits. I just have to send my laptop to them. Unfortunately, that means 10 business days without my computer. Luckily I'm going on vacation next week, which makes up at least 5 of them. And I will borrow an old laptop from my supervisor until I get mine back. So after two years with my computer, it's going in for an overhaul and will come back (hopefully) like new.

Not too bad for throwing my whole life on the floor.

To graph or not to graph, that is the question...

I have generated most of my statistical graphs in Systat, the statistics program I use predominantly (learning R was too hard (read: time consuming), though I realize its MANY great advantages). The problem with these graphs is that they are not easily edited and often appear jumbled together.

I am preparing my thesis in manuscript form, which means ready to submit to journals for publication. I've been sending my supervisor bits and pieces, and the terrible Systat graphs were one of the things he pointed out as needing to change. Just regraph them in Excel, he says, no big problem. And it wouldn't be, if I could find my spreadsheet with all the data. Apparently I generated it in Systat, and then accidently only saved the graph, not the data sheet.

So after spending two hours searching through every data sheet I had on my computer (in Systat, Statistica AND Excel form), I come to the conclusion that I definitley do not have it. So I'll have to start from scratch. Redo it. The most dreaded of all stats problems (at least for me).

And then I did it... took all of 30 minutes! Some quick calculations and a pivot table and I'm done like dinner. I could have saved myself two hours if I had just done that to begin with. Sometimes I think it's subconcious procrastination. My mind knows it will be faster, so it convinces me that it would be more work... and then I go about it the roundabout way (usually with distractions).

Hybrid flying squirrels are not science fiction...

Recently the PhD candidate in my lab, Colin Garroway, along with our supervisor and other collaborators published a paper "Climate change induced hybridization in flying squirrels" in the journal Global Change Biology (see abstract/PDF here).

This is big news for climate change proponents... two species of flying squirrel at their respective northern and southern range boundaries have been shown to be hybridizing. The range boundary of southerns has been moving north with climate change, and therefore has increased the contact between the two species. This could in effect reduce biodiversity as two species merge to become one.

Anecdotely, I had southern and northern flying squirrels using the same nest tree at the same time, though I could never find the cavity and therefore I could not confirm if they were using the same cavity or not.

But more importantly, this story is not restricted to the academic journal. It has been featured on the Trent University website.

It is slated to appear in the Globe and Mail, and they have been in contact with science television programmers. This is great! Getting the story out to the public, those who influence change (since climate change is a policitically controlled issue) is critical. I'm glad the that the communications offices at Trent and MNR understand this and make an effort to publish these stories!

Wanted: A productive work environment

Graduate student offices have a reputation for being crappy. Crappy location, crappy desks, crappy ventilation, the list goes on. But here at the university who shall remain nameless they are especially bad.

Now that's an exaggeration. The old university buildlings have nice grad student offices, they even have windows! It's the new buildling that seems to have been built with a lack of foresight. The major grad student office is in the middle of the building, surrounded by classrooms and offices on all sides. So no windows. NO NATURAL LIGHT. How do they expect people to work without natural light? That must be an OHS issue (note to self: look up OHS regs).

At other universities I have visited, supervisors have an office and a lab, often in close proximity, where their grad students work/have desks. I like that idea because then the students develop a working relationship with the other students in their lab, and always have access to their supervisor. On the other hand, your supervisor would then ALWAYS have access to you.

That's the one thing I like about this windowless office full of corralled grad students. ONLY grad students have keys to this office, so there's no way your supervisor can sneak up behind you and catch you on Facebook... for the third time... this morning.

When it's all said and done, these offices aren't all bad. But, since I'm moving into a house with an open concept office (with windows on 3 of the 4 walls), I may just move my desk home. That way I can know the weather without having to look it up online!

Cold feet... warm heart?

One thing I try to avoid while doing fieldwork is getting cold. It makes everything seem longer and more trying when you are cold. If you are warm, you can go all day in the winter and enjoy being outside. It's not so easy if your hands or feet are freezing.

On that note, I'm not sure why winter hikers for men and women are so different, but I can tell you that men's hikers seem to be made with much higher quality than anything I can get for myself. After working in snow for a month in 'winter' hikers (and consequently, freezing my feet for a month), I broke down and bought snowboots. Huge rubber bottomed leather topped boots with a removable liner - they showed promise.

I worked with the PhD student often, tracking squirrels all day in the snow. Me in my honkin' snowboots and him in his winter hikers. Me in huge overall snowpants and him in lined khakis with gators. Me in a huge winter jacket and him in a light raincoat. Me in a hat and him with a bare head. Basically I was dressed for a blizzard and he was dressed for cool fall weather. Guess who ALWAYS got cold and started to complain? Guilty as charged.

Besides his man hikers, the other thing he wore that I envied were a pair of long leather mitts. They were from Mark's Work Wearhouse and I developed a false hope that maybe, just maybe, they would carry them in an x-small or small. I finally broke down and dropped by Mark's after one extra-frosty day in the woods. I found the mitts and searched the sizes. Medium and larger... probably all sold out I thought to myself. So I found an employee and asked to get a pair in - apparently Medium is the smallest size. Who makes mittens from a M up? Men's mitten companies, obviously.

So, to date I have not found comparable products... but I keep the hope that I was not the only woman requesting comparable winter hikers and mittens, and that maybe that information will get passed on to the powers that be. Maybe then women can get some decent winter work clothing.

Do I have permission to trap?

Trapping on or near private land is always interesting. I trapped on both public land (which was surrounded by cottages) as well as in a private sugar stand. Both situations had their benefits (and disadvantages).

Trapping on public land that is so close to property owners means their interest is instantly peaked. And yes, informing the public about research is very important. But EVERY day, EVERY time you go to do field work having to explain yourself and what you're doing (until each individual resident is informed) can be a bit time consuming. You'd figure, with human nature, that word would get around about what you're doing and why you're there... And then there's the dog owners who think it's a great idea to follow your trapline with their dog as their afternoon walk (which is obviously conducive to catching squirrels).

On private land it's a bit easier, as you explain yourself to the owner once and that's taken care of. BUT neighbors like to keep an eye on each other's property, and then send the cops in to check it out if there's a vehicle they don't recognize on the farm next to them. I speak from personal experience. Luckily I was wearing my Trent University t-shirt and pink rubber boots, so I looked pretty harmless... and the cop was really only interested about how the turkeys were in the sugar stand (apparently he hunts them there - I assume when he's off duty).

AND then there's the men who stop (usually when I'm parked on the side of the road with my field truck, getting ready to track my squirrels or check my traps) to ask me if I need any help. Because a girl can't just stop on the side of the road and walk into the forest... she MUST be in distress.

Or the gas station attendant, who assumes I am harvesting the squirrels for their furs!?!?! Honestly, these things are smaller than chincillas.

But overall, I usually get along ok. I don't ever have to worry about having to replace a flat tire or being broken down. Someone will always stop. Somedays it's good to be a girl :)

And now I'm writing, writing and writing some more

I haven't written anything since I got back from CSEE '09 because I've been incredibly busy doing and redoing modelling selection for my squirrel nests. Logistic regression + AIC by hand (and by hand I mean excel spreadsheet) is time consuming. And even more so when you input values as words and not as 0s and 1s, because Systat doesn't tell you which it labels as 0 or 1. Of course, I don't realize this until I'm sitting in my supervisor's office proudly showing him my results (which I hadn't looked at in-depth yet). He asks me, which is 0 and which is 1? I stare dumbfounded at the results.

So back to the drawing board, I recode my data and run 3 series of logistic regressions for 3 different questions... plus all the AIC model selection all over again. Needless to say, all my data will be coded from now on. Such a simple thing, but I assumed that it would tell me which one it coded as 0, and which one as 1. And you know what assuming does... Seems so reasonable, but I have to remind myself that it's a statistics program, it is made to be overly complicated and tricky. It can't have its user's analyses go smoothly :S

And so, finally, with the modelling done and redone, I'm actually at that point in time. ACADEMIC WRITING. The bane of my life, the culmination of two years of hard work, sweat and tears.. I'm not looking forward to this.

On the bright side, it means I'm ALMOST done. Almost being a vague word meaning anytime with the next 2-6 months, depending on my work ethic. Too bad I live in Ontario, land of tempting camping trips and sunny afternoons too nice to sit in an office.