To Be a Doctor

I find there are fewer and fewer movies out there with the power to inspire people. You have to dig. You have to get past the Matthew McConaughey rom-coms, the red-letters-on-a-white-background formulaic comedies, the insipid Bruckheimer productions… and you keep digging. Once in a while, you find something that makes you forget you own a watch.

I would also gather that it’s rare to feel oneself changing. It sometimes happens to people after they undergo a trauma. Some people will start becoming different, then freak out and revert back to their old selves. Other people will use this life-changing event as a gateway to the next level. They will become less self-involved; they might even let go of their metaphorical crutches and change careers.

Maybe it’s not so rare. Maybe it’s because I’m approaching 30. Maybe all late-twentysomethings go through this phase. My values are crystallizing. I’m recognizing my full potential for the first time in my life. My self-confidence is growing every day. The way I relate to other people and behave around them seems to be changing from week to week. It’s a bit like being fully awake for the first time after spending a lifetime sedated.

AVATAR was much, much better than I anticipated. The trailer, seen on my computer monitor, was not convincing at all. But to experience the movie on a giant movie screen was an all-involving sensory and emotional experience. I left the theater with a renewed confidence in myself and in my place in the world.

I’m surrounded by people who know for a fact that will go for my Ph.D. They think it’s only a matter of time. Going after that coveted title of “Doctor” is something that’s been germinating in my mind for almost two years. It’s not an easy decision to make, because it literally is career changing. The field in which I would want to “practice” is relatively small, especially in my home city. It’s a closely knit circle, and getting my Ph.D. would most probably mean moving out, possibly to another country altogether. There simply are not a lot of positions available for lab directors in that discipline.

For a total of almost four years, I have been not-so-secretly groomed to replace my boss when he retires. The problem is that *his* boss, the Grand Poobah, is a pseudo-omniscient, overly confident, slightly bullying megalomaniac. And I simply could not work for him. I would also have as my co-director a racist, homophobic, and sometimes chauvinistic Bible-thumper. There is only so much of his personality, beliefs, and words I can take in the name of civility. I could not imagine working for one and working with the other.

So tonight, the door in my mind has been opened to think about the possibility of quitting my job, perhaps this summer, and going for doctoral studies full-time. It will mean a drastic reduction in salary, of course, so I’ll need to study the situation and see if it’s feasible. There’s also the possibility of doing my Ph.D. part-time in my current lab and keeping my job part-time as well. More money in my pocket, but it would take me at least 7 years to complete my Ph.D. this way. Plus, I would be continually torn between my duties and it would be a seven-plus-year fight with the people on either side of the divide, saying “no” time and time again.

I think I need to break free, take the pay cut, and complete my Ph.D. in 3-5 years instead.

Maybe it’s just a crazy thought. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and think, “What the hell was I thinking?”.

I’ve been seriously thinking about this move for the past couple of months and it seemed that every compromise was fraught with obstacles I didn’t want to put up with. This solution, of breaking away from my current lab and starting fresh in a new lab, has only one obstacle: pay cut. And I might be able to work around it.

Other than that, it sounds like the way to go. It makes almost too much sense right now, but it’s getting late.

To be a doctor would mean to be in charge. Everyone’s got a boss, of course, but I could have a chance at making things happen, reorganizing a lab, streamlining it, and really making a difference.

Let’s dream on that.

Along for the Ride

Maybe there is wisdom in surrendering. I’ve been wondering recently about the worth of fighting for what one thinks is right when all you do is hit the same wall over and over. Should I let my health and my mood deteriorate because I think I’m right?

My mom burned out because that’s what she did, and my dad and I kept telling her afterwards, “don’t try to do everybody else’s work”. And I thought I had learned my lesson, vicariously, but obviously I hadn’t. I used to care deeply about my workplace and I used to involve myself in ways in which it could be improved. There is a lot of work to be done in the management of the place, and the people above me seem to not care about these things. Instead, they’re like eight-year-olds on a trekking expedition, half a mile in front of you and pointing ahead, screaming “I see mountains!”, and running ahead, completely oblivious to the setting sun.

I had meetings with them where I discussed my strategy to improve these things. I kept mentioning that, before you can build a first and second floor on a house, you have to solidify the foundation. Our foundation is wobbly. We need to solidify it, so that the routine work gets done with minimal intervention on the part of management, which will then let management get involved in the future of the workplace, and new this, and new that.

After tirelessly dragging them back into my frame of mind and getting them to agree, I found myself every time gazing at them running ahead, pointing at the mountains. They would bring in new projects, and new instruments, and new ideas, and I’d have to stop them again, and remind them again of what we had agreed to. “Oh yeah, that’s right, no, you’re right, we should….”

How does that shampoo bottle read again?

There were lots of rinsing and repeating.

Why did I do that? Because it’s in my nature. I’m a smart cookie and I can pull back, look at a situation, assess it, and come up with a plan. The people above me are not trained in management: they actually don’t want to manage the place. We were in the middle of a trench war for six months at least when two employees stopped talking to each other. The results? Management staying in its office and cutting all lines of communication with the staff. It was a “difference in personality idiosyncracies”, way outside their sphere of responsibility. It didn’t matter that employees were actually in tears over the atmosphere in the workplace. It was not their responsibility.

I’ve tried for the past year to implement a variety of systems that will take our work to the level of quality it should be at, constantly fighting their impulse to ignore these “boring” things and think ahead at the fun stuff, and now constantly fighting the Grand Poobah above them who apparently went to the School of Mild Megalomania.

He does not listen when you speak. He does not weigh in your opinion and knowledge. He thinks big and he has big projects for us.

This means we are being thrown into an ever bigger arena, for which we are not ready. The people above me are practically pissing in their pants out of sheer excitement, and I’ve had it.

This move to a bigger arena is codependent on an officialized interaction with another department from which we seceded a few years ago. Said department is being led by a dictator who is making all of his/her employees miserable and has been for years. Our Grand Poobah assures us that the situation is under control; I feel as though we are handed back to the Dictator on a silver platter. I don’t doubt our Grand Poobah’s intentions; I doubt his resilience and strength in handling the Dictator. Just a few months ago, a situation arose involving those two and the Grand Poobah dealt with it in the following way:

1. “We’re taking control of the situation. The problem goes away in one week.”

2. “Well, you can’t expect them to do all of this in a week! I mean, come on! We have to be understanding.”

3. “Well, it’s not going to happen for now, so we’ll just have to continue dealing with this, OK? And by the way, why did you make one of their employees cry?”

“We didn’t.”

“Yes, they say you did, and I believe them. I don’t believe you.”

In light of this, do I think he can handle the Dictator? No, not at all. He, overconfident as usual, is sure he can.

The people above me finally came to their senses and realized this was serious, after I led them into the logic of the situation, step by step, as if they were little children. They lost sleep over it. They came back and we had a game plan: to meet together, make a list of solid arguments as to why this was a bad idea, present it, very calmly to the Grand Poobah, who thinks the only arguments we have are emotional, and to close by saying that, if it happens, we will quit.

Instead, one of the people above me barged into one of our meetings with the Grand Poobah, which did not concern the situation at all (as he knew), and started almost yelling, “Did you guys talk about the Dictator??”. Obviously, Grand Poobah was wondering what the problem was. Too late. We tried to say we’d talk to him about it later. He wouldn’t listen and needed to know NOW.

Why? Because he wants to be in control. He knows the people above me were not ready; he’s always ready to argue, he’s just like a politician. So instead of spending a half an hour in his office being in control, they spent five minutes arguing incoherently, and he spent ten minutes convincing them they had no real argument and everything would be just fine.

So they come back, pretty much with smiles on their faces. “Everything’s gonna be OK.”

So I let go.

I decided I’m done worrying about these things. I just realized my place in the hierarchy. I think I have the potential to make enlightened decisions and to help the management of the place, but they won’t let me. They hear me out, agree with me, then go behind my back and do the opposite out of sheer excitement.

So they want to run the place, they can run it. I’m done worrying, I’m done offering my opinion, I’m done debating as to what we should do. They will continue managing the place the way they’ve done it and doing everything the Grand Poobah tells them to do.

Then we’ll be thrown into that big arena, we’ll have an influx of employees, and we’ll be lost. But I won’t care. I’ll show up, do my work, collect my paycheck, and check out.

I’m just tired… so very tired, and I feel it’s not worth my energies.

I’ll concentrate them on what I do outside of work.

I’ll just be along for the ride. I know where the ride is ending and my CV will be ready when we approach the cliff. But I can’t be the only guy with binoculars trying to stop the joy ride, because he’s the only one with ulcers while everyone else is laughing and having a good time.

Learning Curves

I’m at a point in my life where I’m finally realizing and coping with how different I am from most people. This is having serious implications on my expectations. I used to think whatever I could do in a few weeks, other people could too.

I’ve been practising digital photography for a few years now. I’ve only been doing it “seriously” for the past year, however, when I bought my first digital SLR camera last January. How did I learn about aperture, shutter speed, ISO setting, focal length, and all these things? On my own. I read a book, one book, that’s it. It’s a good book. But the rest, I experimented.

I didn’t take a single class. I just did it. I bought 3 or 4 magazines and picked up a few tricks here and there, but I never participated in a class where a teacher went over my pictures and told me what was right and what was wrong about them.

Now, I take pretty solid pictures. I get very positive feedback almost every week from the people who see them. And they tell me they too would like to take good pictures and they’re wondering what course they should take.

This weekend, I met with a fellow amateur photographer. She has taken two full courses in photography and she came armed with a top-of-the-line, full frame digital SLR camera, the kind used by professionals for fashion shoots. On it was mounted the thickest lens I have ever seen this side of a telescope. This expensive baby allows her to go from wide angle all the way to a decent telephoto without changing lenses.

Impressive.

And we talked about her pictures, and her training, and the fact that she had worked as an assistant to a wedding photographer last summer, and what pictures mean, and what tells you you’ve got a great picture, etc.

I had never seen her pictures before, but I was imagining the kind of stellar art that would put my amateur photography to shame.

She posted her pictures and I was underwhelmed. They were all overexposed and the colors were washed out. There were some pretty good ones in there, but they were inserted in between “shots”. You know when you look at a photo so good, you lose yourself in the emotions it generates? You know when the photo tells a story? Well, the other kind of photo is “the shot”, the one that reminds you that there was a photographer there, and he/she decided to take this picture. It doesn’t tell a story, it’s just a shot. She posted a lot of shots.

And I thought to myself, how come? She went through two classes of photography! She should be a pro! She should be booking art galleries and signing wedding photography contracts at this point! What happened?

Then it hit me: I’m not like her. I’m not like most people.

When most people want to learn photography, they have to enroll in courses. And they slowly get progressively better and better until they become… proficient.

Not great.

Proficient.

I read one book and I “get it”.

I’m not writing this to make myself sound like a pompous ass. This was really a moment of revelation. I don’t learn like most people.

So, when people ask me what course to enroll in, I should stop telling them to save their money and buy a book.

Drag Me Through Hell… No, Really!

I have a pretty clear vision of where my section of the workplace needs to go and what to do to get there. This is my fourth non-consecutive year working there. I know my boss very well and I’ve got a pretty solid grasp on everything we do and how the pieces of the puzzle fit in. I see how disorganized we are.

And I have been trying for the past year at least to get our section better organized. My boss wants the technicians working with us to be more autonomous, something they can’t be if they can’t find their work documents and the reagents they need. We’re in a situation where they are 75% dependent on us, which means I get to answer a ton of questions on a daily basis. “Where is this? Where is that? What does this mean? What do I do with this?”

I have the solution. The problem is, it always feels like I’m dragging my boss through these changes. He’s always very recalcitrant. The fact that he’s old fashioned means he’s very pen-and-paper and still has trouble typing at a decent speed and finding a file on the hard drive. All the systems I come up with to get us better organized in order for the workplace to run smoothly are met with resistance… and more resistance… and more.

I shouldn’t have to fight for this. My boss has very clearly stated that he wants the techs more autonomous and that we need to be better organized. However, whenever we actually are about to do just that, he starts panicking.

It’s been going on for over a year. The problem is that I can’t let it go and do other things and turn a blind eye to it. Either we follow through on my vision or I’m out of there. It sounds selfish when I put it that way, but it is so unbelievably irritating to see the situation so clearly and know what the solution is when everyone around you is wearing blinders.

I have implemented systems in the past that have greatly eased things at work, but I’m getting incredibly frustrated with this resistance. My boss does think very highly of me, so it’s nothing personal; yet, each and every time, it’s like we’re back at square one.

I would love to be given the leeway to make these changes (with his consultation and approval, of course) and not have to fight for it every single day.

Moreover, my boss’ boss, who is also in many ways my boss too, is overly confident and incredibly impulsive. And now, he has just realized that I don’t have an official contract, that mine is a verbal agreement. He wants me tied down and next week we’ll be discussing my “position”.

I’m at a point where I don’t want to be tied down by a contract. My boss just revealed to me that he’s told his boss that I’m young, talented, and I’ve got my whole career in front of me. The Grand Poobah has announced a super secret decision of his that has all of us in the know shitting in our pants. One more apparently imbecilic and quite catastrophic decision on his part. My boss told him I’m also scared and could very well leave to jump-start my career elsewhere. So now he knows that I’m not tied down and could leave at any time, so he wants to stick a lengthy contract on my ass, no doubt.

The reassuring thing is, from what I can see, I hold the winning hand. I don’t have to sign a contract. I can tell him that I don’t want to be tied down and that, if he’s not happy with that, he can fire me. I’ll find a job elsewhere. What is he gonna do? Force me to sign a contract? I’ll just hop off the boat.

Squeezing the Image and Babies on a Plane

OK, two quick rants:

1. What is up with LCD televisions? They are crap. The picture quality on some of the bigger ones is terrible. Pixel trailing galore, poor resolution: why do people buy them? Because other people are buying them? And the worst part: you go to a sports bar, you got to the airport, pretty much any place that has giant LCD screens projecting a TV show, and they ALWAYS stretch the image to fit the widescreen format of the television set. Is this supposed to be high quality? You are STRETCHING the picture. A few years ago, people were complaining that movies got hacked when converted from widescreen to 4:3 for home video release; now, we’re seeing the opposite problem! If it was shot in 4:3, please show it in 4:3. Those black bars on either side of the screen are not distracting: they’re black.

2. If you have a kid under 4 years of age, do not bring him/her on a plane. Please. It’s called respect for the other people on the plane who do not want to hear a baby crying whenever the air pressure changes, whenever the plane takes off, or whenever a new tooth starts to pierce his/her gums. Maybe it’s because I’m gay and I don’t think kids are our future, but I cannot understand parents who bring babies on board planes to go on a cruise. The baby will not enjoy it and you won’t enjoy it either, because you’ll have to shush the baby every 5 minutes. Wait until Junior is old enough to appreciate the plane ticket and the ride. Sheesh.

Was that too harsh?

The Men Who Stare at the Screen

… thinking “I just spent $12.50 to see this crap”.

I just came back from a screening of THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS. The trailer made it look like a smart and funny film. The reviews were positive.

And there I am, sitting in the theater, watching as nothing happens.

Bland, unfunny script. Miscasting of the leads. Snail-paced editing.

Jesus, how can people fund this stuff? Who sat down reading this script and thought, “That’s mighty funny!”

A miscast Ewan McGregor (affecting a somewhat shaky American accent) ends up on an interesting lead: after the Vietnam War, the Pentagon funded a special program to develop super-warriors. Jedis. Soldiers who could stop fights with the power of their minds… and a little help from the Predator (arguably the funniest bit in the movie). The best Jedi of them all? No, not Ewan McGregor (OK, we *get* the joke, movie), but an equally miscast George Clooney. Clooney’s character leads McGregor’s from Kuwait to Iraq on a non-mission while reminiscing once in a while about the good old days of his psy training. The flashbacks are not involving or particularly funny, and they usually stop just when they’ve accumulated a mediocre momentum.

Just when the movie’s about to get funny, it stops. And then starts again.

Rolfe Kent, whose music I generally adore, let me down with a rather minimalist, uninvolving score. This is a movie that screams for an over-the-top score and Robert Downey Jr.

Can someone post this movie on YouTube, digitally replacing McGregor with Downey Jr.? Anyone? Does anyone have Cameron’s phone number? Or Lucas’s?

Invited at the Table

You know how, when your college application gets rejected, you get the small envelope (the we-didn’t-want-to-waste-stamps envelope) and, when you get in, you get the big envelope, with the full brochure, and the rules, and the registration forms, and the pictures of the kids laughing in the quad as if studying organic chemistry for four years is one big party?

I got the big envelope today.

Mensa finally answered back.

From the half-torn envelope (from the mailman trying to squeeze it into my box) fell a business card with the Mensa logo, my member number and name and, to boot, the expiration date: Dec. 31 2010. See, the proctor had told us that, if you get in, Mensa gives you free membership for the rest of the year. Her smile had soured when she said, “Since you guys are taking the test in September, well, you won’t get as much mileage from it, but it’s better than nothing”. Either Mensa is usually this generous or they felt bad for the huge delay in processing, but I got myself a nice 13.5-month membership for free. Thank God. The $90 exam fee is a little steep.

I got the latest magazine from Mensa Society, a handbook (so detailed about who gets to vote when it made me think I had joined a political party), and the results of my exams.

I underwent two exams back-to-back. The first was this ridiculously old SCAT test (from the 1950s or something, I swear, you could carbon-date the thing), which consisted of a timed verbal section, followed by a timed arithmetic (or more logical) section. I got 91 answers right out of a total of 100, which places me in the 99th percentile. Mensa admits members in the 98th percentile and above.

The second test is the crazy one. It’s called the Wonderlich test and it’s 50 questions… in 12 minutes. Never in my life have I been more focused on a task. My brain was racing and I managed to finish the damn thing, leaving only 3 questions unanswered. The proctor admitted that most people don’t finish the test, and it’s a really hard one.

I scored 35 out of 50 (a little disappointed in myself ). The average score on the test was reported as 24.

So, fine, I guess the tests confirm I’m gifted, which is somewhat of a relief even though, true, the test does not evaluate every kind of intelligence.

Now I get to meet other gifted individuals living in the greater metropolitan area. And now we’ll see if I manage to make some friends who can talk about something other than the latest Vince Vaughn movie.

I just hope I don’t end up in a room with 45 people solving puzzles every month.

Ruminations on Death

A post on someone else’s blog has inspired me (hopefully) to write something about death before I go to bed. It’s just a little something. It won’t hurt at all, I promise. Now… close your eyes.

And imagine it stops.

Everything.

Your senses. Your heartbeat. Your thoughts. Your breathing.

Time. Time stops. And you cease to exist.

Now tell me this isn’t the scariest thing you can think of.

You’re not even there to contemplate the end of the road. Your consciousness dissolves. You no longer are.

It is such a scary thought… one that I find almost impossible to fully imagine. You cease to be. I’m an atheist so, for me, it’s the end of the line. Other people are “luckier”: they have Heaven to look forward to, or Nirvana, or some variation thereof involving Mozart and Bach playing the harpsichord or 72 dark-haired virgins lined up, debating what they should do for the talent portion.

For me, it’s The End. Your thoughts end. The final period.

 

 

No wonder people turn to religion. If people have trouble keeping up with friends, I can only imagine how impossible it must be to wrestle with a finite existence for the average person. That’s the appeal of religion. “Well, it doesn’t really end, you’ll understand; it goes on, and everyone’s happy, and everyone’s held accountable for what they did, and it’s all right.”

I wish. I wish it were that simple.

I just don’t buy into the wishful thinking.

So I’m left with The End.

Better do something worthwhile before The End, then. Because when I reach that final period, there’s no rewind button and there’s no “Please Insert Disc 2″.

Mensans in Disarray

I took the Mensa entrance exam 7 weeks ago, wanting to know my IQ to see how different I was from the people around me. I’ve been expecting so much out of everyone all of my life, thinking we were all the same; now I’m thinking that might have been wrong.

The fact I hadn’t received any news from Mensa in 7 weeks (even though we were supposed to get our results within 4 to 6) made me think I wasn’t in. Which, as full of myself as it might sound, was extremely puzzling to me. It’s a bit like you’re looking for the solution to a problem, you finally find one that fits perfectly, and then you realize that wasn’t it.

Well, I just got an email from the local rep for Mensa saying that there have been some changes in personnel over at Mensa and this explains the lack of proper follow-up on entrance exams. So our exams might not even have been looked over yet….

So… there is hope, I guess.

The Positive Strand

Every gifted person is different in his or her abilities and flaws. We’re all unique: just because we’re very smart doesn’t make us into facsimiles.

I would love to hear from other gifted individuals and the things they can do and how their brain works.

A lot of the things I can do I took for granted all of my life. I thought this is what everyone else can do. Now that I know “what” I am, I am trying really hard to distinguish between the things an average person can and cannot do.

When I’m part of a discussion involving more than one other person, I’m able to put myself in their heads. I not only follow the verbal exchanges; I also feel their reactions, anticipate what they will say, analyze every word, gesture, and facial expression to get an accurate representation of their thought process. This works extremely well if I know the people. And all this is empathic. If they are suddenly shamed by something someone has said, I feel the shame too, right down to the blushing. I used to think everyone did that, but I’ve recently begun to doubt that.

I can impersonate a lot of people really well, right down to the vocabulary they would use, the way they pronounce individual sounds, the way their faces react to certain situations, the way they move, their verbal cadence. I’ve fooled a few people over the years (sometimes over the phone, and sometimes in the same room). The way I do it, my brain splits the audio stream into two whenever someone talks to me, because I’m equally interested in the content and the messenger. So I notice inflections, individual sounds, choice of words, while also understanding what they are saying. I love hearing a new person talk, trying to figure out where they’re from using subtle phonetic clues. I find that most people don’t do that but, again, for me, this is natural. It’s how I build a construct of a person in my mind.

I pay special attention to music. My library currently holds almost 10,000 songs or pieces (22 days of music), and I can usually identify a piece after the first 2 seconds, just by the note, chords, type of recording, instruments used, amount of reverb, etc. By listening to pieces over and over, including a lot of orchestral pieces, I start memorizing every line and rhythm, until I can hum the whole piece and anticipate awkward meter jumps.

I learn a lot of crafts by myself. Photography is a recent one. I’ve received a lot of very positive feedback on the pictures I take, and most people ask me if I’ve taken courses, and the answer is no. I just understand the language of photography almost instinctively. I picked up one book, to learn more about aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. The rest is experimentation. I take a picture, learn from it, and get better with the second one, learn from that, and repeat.

Dabrowski called it overexcitabilities of the senses. A lot of gifted people apparently “suffer” from it. Your brain analyzes more data in the visual input, the auditory input, the tactile input, etc. You see better, hear better, taste better. Of course, the downfall, for me anyway, is that a mess is extremely distracting, bright lights give me headaches, and arhythmic noises can be particularly nagging. It’s hard to develop filters.

I can write. I can compose. I can take great pictures. I can shoot video and edit it into a pretty strong film. I can do science really well, too. I have an affinity for languages. I can philosophize and debate pretty well.

But none of it seems strange to me. It’s just a part of who I’ve always been. I look at an art form and know I can be good at it. So I attempt it and it works out. It doesn’t seem special to me, and it always surprises when the people around me are amazed by it.

Then, how do you explain to them that, no, you can’t spend your entire life doing that. That that is not the only thing you’re good at. That it’s not that easy.

What do you choose to do with your life when your talent is apparently limitless?