I was in a workshop today and decided to ditch the breakout sessions. I hate those. The topics today interested me so little, that I couldn't bring myself to stay. Tomorrow I will need to go to one. The workshop so far has been interesting. Cari and I were sitting together and midway through the morning section she confessed that it was all Greek to her essentially. I have to admit that this made me happy. I adore Cari, she really is a neat girl, and very smart. But I (a physical chemist) am struggling to run a nuclear physics task on her project. I know I was selected for this task by she and the program manager, both nuclear engineers, because they have confidence in me and I have proven myself proficient. But I have worked my butt off and I continue to work my butt off to keep up with them.
The morning section was my former field of graduate study, ab initio molecular dynamics and cluster modeling and calculations. I was at home. I even felt the need to point out to Cari that one of the collaborators was someone who provided input to me on my dissertation research. I was at home hearing about density functional theories, hybrid orbitals, wavefunctions, Green's functions, the Dirac equation and Schrodinger's equation. (Enough being a show off...)
So I could follow along most of the sections this morning and there were a few I could have presented. Then this afternoon I had a Tabletop Safety training meeting and so I missed out on the sections I really needed to attend to learn about how the stuff I know is applied to stuff I don't know. Oh well.
One thing that made me smile inside today was when Mary, a level 5 I work with, came and cautioned Cari and I on who we talk to about our proposals. She told us there are sharks in the group of people and not only that, but sharks with money and post-docs to toss at projects. She wasn't so concerned about our nonlinearity experiments, but she mentioned in particular the "cute little project" that I proposed, that has not been done before and to make damn sure I don't even mention it. I know better, really I do. I was scooped in grad school by a damn Stanford group big time and it almost affected my ability to graduate in a reasonable amount of time. I learned my lesson and I don't say jack about proposals I have out now.
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The Safety training was an ominous experience. I am one of 6 people in my building who have roles in case of emergency. We got our bomb threat cards, someone made light about them and we were reminded that it isn't a joke, that there are many many more bomb threats than we would imagine. When pressed the presenter said that we don't want to know how many there are a week. (April sitting there thinking about tending her resignation...)
The safety topic today was about violence in the workplace and handling employees gone postal. I got an eery feeling. I have been there. When I was a TA in grad school I had a student threaten me by e-mail. I sent the e-mail to the prof and the head of my department. No one really took it seriously until he showed up pounding on my lab door screaming. It was all regarding an e-mail I sent out asking my students to turn in their lab notebooks by the end of the day. He misread it, thinking I was "accusing" him of not turning his notebook in. ?!?! His fellow students nicknamed him "the postman" from his first day as a freshman in the dorms because the guy was whacked. He was a senior in my PChem lab class.
Anyways, the day he showed up in the hallway screaming that he was going to kill me and take anyone with him who tried to stop him... well they started to take him seriously. The police were called, he took off. I was sent home where I sat shaking and crying most of the afternoon. Hans came home from work to be with me and man was he ticked. The guy was arrested that night. Spent the night in jail. All the time professing I was just "confused" by his intent. Oh yeah, that's it. What *killed* me was that he was allowed (by Judicial Counsel) to remain enrolled because he "only had 6 months more to get his degree and agreed to counseling". He was booted from my class with an F, from me, which was then re-evaluated by the professor of the course who gave him his grade to that point, a D. Mainly so he didn't have to retake the class. The experience still gives me shivers.
Anyways, I digress...
After the Safety Tabletop where we talked about how to handle different situation I went to see Leifer at daycare. It broke my heart. There were tears, hugs, and Miss Reca told me repeatedly what a neat little boy he is and what great parents Hans and I are. Today is Leif's last day at his daycare. The day I have been in denial about for sometime now. I can't believe what a sap we were all being, but it seemed like the end of an era, lol. Leif had no idea what all our deals were and was just wanting to play.
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After running back to the workshop and hanging out chatting with some people I know I realized I didn't want to do a breakout session and came back to my office. Deb had made progress on a task I assigned her (so now I am not completely fibbing when I fill out her SDR input sheet... the vast majority of her work this year was for her husband and she didn't want to use him on her input). She had asked me and I agreed to do input for her since last years input, well she worked through the end of September for me, but I did her input sheet in August... Anyways, I had agreed to do an input for her this year even though by the book she didn't work on my task. Now she did a days work on a different task for me, so it isn't a stretch!
Then the title of my post, all hope might not be lost. I mentioned yesterday that my proposal was "on hold" and not expected to fund. Well turns out that one of the other projects, which my project uses technology from got an unexpected increase in funds for the first 3 years and some money for years 4 and 5, that was not requested. My co-PI (and co-PI for the other project) looked at the numbers and realized that the $$ was exactly the amount he and I requested. He called his co-PI who also found it odd... called the program manager, who knew nothing. They called headquarters and haven't gotten a response back. But the program manager said he was shocked our project didn't get funded because he had heard there was a client already. He also said that our project was little and that is a concern. (Little projects get dropped when $$ gets tight.) So it appears preliminarily that our project was funded, but placed as a task under the larger project.
This for me is still success. For my co-PI, notsomuch. He is striving for his 3 to 4 promotion and needs that funded proposal and project manager (co-project manager... it was *my* proposal to start) status to get this. For me (going from 2 to 3 hopefully) this meets my needs more than adequately. So divying up the cash is then the question. And where do I fall. I might have to work hard not to get squeezed out... But man, anything not to have to go back to my former post-doc mentor and ask for work...
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