Brief rundown of Melissa’s life, which seriously I swear is a soap opera:

My appeal to the executive committee of my department so that I could try to remain a PhD student was denied. I am now transferring to be a masters student, and working on my masters thesis. I will defend my thesis sometime in March, and graduate in May. My boss says I can stay on in the lab as a lab tech until August (which is when the grants roll over for the fiscal year) if there is enough money in the lab budget.

My good friend and host of the podcast Girls Gone Geek I co-host Liana Lehua is ill and in the ICU in the hospital. I am trying to upkeep all of the Girls Gone Geek web presences and update our audience about what I can of her condition. She is a very private person, so please don’t be mad if I don’t directly answer some questions; I’m trying to protect her privacy. I’m collecting postcards/cards/letters/etc. to send to her, email me or DM me on Twitter for my address if you want to send stuff to Liana via me.

My sister’s baby shower is next weekend, and I’m frantically trying to put together a menu, favors, and decorations. Luckily I have tomorrow off, since I’m working an overnight study tonight, and Kevin and I have no plans for the weekend, so I can get some shopping and cleaning done. Still need a Halloween costume though….

I’ve decided to take next year off from school, and work at least for one year before going back to finish my PhD. There are very few places that do the sort of research I do, so I will have to relocate to stay in this field, so it needs to be well-researched, and Kevin’s job situation needs to be stabilized.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me emails, Twitter DMs, etc. and been so supportive through this rough patch! I’m working on it!

This coming weekend is Labor Day. Kids are heading back to school, college students are starting semesters back up again, it’s starting to get a little cooler, leaves are slowly changing colors. It’s been a very different summer for me, so I feel like a bit of a review and some reflection are needed.

I’m used to not having summers off. I went to Drexel for 5 years, had Fall-Winter co-op, and classes Spring-Summer. So 6 months out of the year I was working full-time and taking a class or two; the other six months I was taking classes full-time and working a part-time job or two. The summer between undergraduate and graduate school I worked as a science teacher and substitute teacher at a day camp in a Philadelphia charter school. Last summer, I worked in my thesis lab; I wrote at least two end-of-year reports for NASA and helped write a year 2 grant proposal on top of working phase shift and overnight shifts for various experiments.

This summer’s been different. I failed my prelim (qualifying exam, whatever you want to call it) at the end of June/beginning of July. The head of my examining committee told me to take the summer off to study, since I had 3 months to retake the exam. I’ve been in lab a few days this summer, but most of my summer has been spent at home in my apartment with my kitties. For me, that’s been a big change. The first week or so was great, because I could sleep and get caught up on some things, but then it got tedious. So I’ve filled in the days with entering the world of Web 2.0, which I love, and reading books, something I haven’t had a chance to do in a long time.

I’m now loving blogging, podcasting, using the Twitter, and attending Tweetups. I’m attending Philly Podcamp September 5-6. Recording Girls Gone Geek is one of the highlights of my week. I’ve been a guest blogger on LiveCrunch.com. I’ve met some incredibly awesome people through Twitter and the Tweetups I’ve been to in NYC, and plan to meet some awesome Philly people at the Tweetup tomorrow night.

Going into this summer, and for the past few years, I thought I had my career plan all worked out. Get my PhD, do a post doc or two, become an associate professor, get tenure track somewhere, and just teach and run a lab. Now I’m not as sure I want to stay in academia. The politics involved (which I did know about previous to this summer) are just seeming to be more than I want to deal with. If Kevin and I ever want to have kids, a tenure track faculty position is not very conducive to that. If I need to take time off because of my health, tenure track faculty positions aren’t very conducive to that either (for those of you unaware of my litany of health problems, I’ll blog about them at some point, I’m getting a little better about not hiding them). Then there is the fact that I’m loving social media, and having a blast at it. Frankly, I enjoy it a lot more than the crap I deal with in grad school at the moment.

No worries, I will retake my prelim. I’m scheduled to get my written questions September 10 and take my oral exam on September 24. I’m much better prepared this time, so I hope/think I will pass. I’ll take a few years to get my PhD, especially since human research takes time (I study the effect of light on body clock rhythms in humans). I’m just not so sure I’m going to stay in academia once I’m done. The interview we did with Dr. Kirsten Sanford on GGG a few weeks ago definitely gave me food for thought.

For now, I’ve got a few more weeks of studying to do, and a bunch of meetings to attend to set up stuff for the new semester coming up. I’m going to keep podcasting and blogging and tweeting, no worries there. I just have to see where the balance strikes itself.

I think part of the problem of working from home is the inability to unplug from technology. The computer, phone, TV, and Internet are always there, unlike a project you could leave at an office or job. This week’s Girls Gone Geek, which will be on iTunes Thursday, discusses this topic. The more I think about it, the more I think this is part of what is burning me out this summer while working at home. So I’m trying the following to help me disconnect:

~close my laptop and read an actual book at least once per day
~screen my phone calls
~work out on Wii Fit and ignore the computer for at 30 minutes

Suggestions? Thoughts? Please let me know!

I failed my oral prelim this morning. My committee felt that I didn’t know enough about molecular experimental methods, and that I knew a lot about my research area, but not enough about other areas. And I agree with their thoughts. So I have three months to study, work with my committee to learn all the stuff I’m deficient in, and retake my exam and pass it this time. I only get one retake. I’m a little upset with myself, mostly disappointed. Nappage and Wii Fit workout, followed by GGG podcasting this evening (we interviewed Lisa Loeb!) has helped my mood some. Heading up to NYC on Thursday for a geeky Tweet-up, so at least I have something to look forward to.

Between the Wii Fit that came in the mail yesterday, and the full version of Spore Creature Creator I picked up at Game Stop yesterday for my Mac, I’m turning into a gamer, I think. I’ve pre-ordered Spore already….Wii Fit is going to be a daily thing, and Spore Creature Creator is definitely a fun time sink. Going to blog about the Wii Fit on GGG sometime this weekend.

It feels pretty good

So this is my jump into having my own website….I blame the rest of the GGG squad
More once I get through finals this week and my prelim exam the next two weeks!