Tag Archives: judgement

The Corner of My Brain Where Ann Lives

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People leave impressions on me all the time– big ones, small ones, profound ones, good ones, bad ones, green ones. All different kinds of impressions.

But some people do a bit more than just leave an impression. Some people seem to inhabit a corner of my brain in a way that reminds me a lot like a photograph in the magical world of Harry Potter — more than just a picture, you know? Rather, an interactive depiction of the person captured.

I started thinking about this the other day as I watched someone give a PowerPoint presentation and found myself repeatedly distressed about things like hanging widows, inconsistently bulleted lists, and, worst of all: “neiserria gonorrhoeae.” Not italicized. Not capitalized (i.e. Neisseria gonorrhoeae) and I was just horrified. I found myself mentally screaming at the presenter: “You’ve got to have respect for the pathogen!!! Geez!!!” It was only after the fact that I realized where that intense feeling came from– it was Ann’s!

Ann was my advisor in grad school. I suppose when you spend 6 straight years under the tutelage of any one person, they’re going to leave a pretty big impression, yet… it’s so much more than just an impression. She truly inhabits a corner of my brain at this point and the thoughts that come from that corner belong to both Ann and to me. I was just as upset about the non-italicized pathogen name as Ann would have been– the thought was independently mine, yet clearly planted by Ann.

A photograph of the actual brain transfer in progress just before my dissertation defense.
A photograph of the actual brain transfer in progress just before my dissertation defense.

And there are other people occupying other corners and niches… most of them for the better.

My high school biology teacher, Ms. Bertsos (because I am completely incapable of calling her Gen, no matter how old I get and how long we’ve been Facebook friends) has her own space. I channel her when I make jokes about science and when I let my weirdness shine even in professional settings. Turns out, people seem to like me better when I’m genuine– and to be honest, that’s probably why I always liked Ms. Bertsos so much. I also channeled her every time I ever skinned a mouse, but that’s another story for another day…

Somewhere I have a picture of Ms. Bertsos making scrambled eggs over a bunsen burner for our AP biology breakfast bash... but it must be in Ypsilanti somewhere. Dang! No matter, this photo of Kelly and me was taken the very same day (see breakfast items in the background) and I've basically recreated the scene for your viewing pleasure. (Yes, this really happened.)
Somewhere I have a picture of Ms. Bertsos making scrambled eggs over a bunsen burner for our AP biology breakfast bash… but it must be in Ypsilanti somewhere. Dang! No matter, this photo of Kelly and me was taken the very same day (see breakfast items in the background) and I’ve basically recreated the scene for your viewing pleasure. (Yes, this really happened.)

My boss from the Writing Center, Sylvia, she occupies another area– it’s the area that makes me patient and thoughtful about my words. It’s the area that encourages me to be empathetic and to try as hard as I can not to judge other people. It’s the part the always assumes the best… or assumes not at all.

At this point I should think it would be obvious that I have only one picture of Sylvia and me... sad face! Brain transfer happened big time this weekend though, we were at a Writing Center conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
At this point I should think it would be obvious that I have only one picture of Sylvia and me… sad face! Brain transfer happened big time this weekend though, we were at a Writing Center conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Unfortunately, I recently recognized another occupant– one that’s not so good. It seems that there is a big chunk of my brain devoted to housing what essentially amounts to an amalgamation of every “mean girl” I’ve ever encountered. The thoughts and attitude of that mean girl are, as with the good occupants, both theirs and mine. And, without a doubt, the mean girl in my mind is a huge source of insecurity.

This morning at church, Seth and I ran into someone we knew up at Michigan Tech. She was an RA at the same time that we were and she was a pretty big fan of Seth (ahem). She was gorgeous then and she’s gorgeous now. Not only is she gorgeous, but she’s also the mother of a couple kids with another clearly on the way. Gorgeous, fertile, everything I am not… begin downward spiral.

The mean girls in my mind were after me with full force.

Seeing her, talking about her, the Facebook friend request she immediately sent Seth, sent me into a series of crazy thoughts– Seth could have been with her and, no doubt, he would have preferred it, seeing her makes him see how much he missed out on and how ugly I really am, if Seth had married her, he’d probably have kids by now and he’d have a pretty wife, I can’t be either of those things for him…  and so on and so forth… all the way to crazy town…

So in that moment of insecurity, I texted my friend Adriane (who was my RA when I started at Michigan Tech and is still one of my most favorite friends of all time). Her response, and I quote:

“Just be nice to everybody, maybe she’s not so bad. Besides you’re better than her anyway. Don’t let her ruin a minute of your day, it’s not worth it.”

Yesssssss.

I was letting the mean girl in my brain do all the thinking, rather than appreciating the thoughts of the crazy and awesome lady scientists Ann and Ms. Bertsos or the kind and compassionate and non-judgmental Sylvia.

In reality, it wasn’t ever a contest and it isn’t now. Seth and I are Sleepless in Seattle style MFEO and I’m sure that our Tech friend’s family is happy too. We’re doing our thing, they’re doing theirs, and we just happened to end up in the same small town. We have MTU in common, we were all RAs, and we have all, no doubt, had some time to grow up. The person I am now is still, admittedly, jealous and insecure a lot of the time– but being a nice, albeit crazy, scientist overrides all that. So nice to everybody I shall be.

Thanks, Adriane! You can hang in my brain too 🙂

 

PS: A “hanging widow” is what we in the biz (of being crazy) call it when one word of a longer title on a PowerPoint slide gets bumped to a second line and it makes everything look crazy unbalanced. Three options to get around it: 1) re-word the title to make it shorter, 2) make the font a bit smaller, or 3) hit enter somewhere else in the title to make it two relatively even rows of text.

Honestly, I was anal before I ever even met Ann– she just helped to shape that crazy into what it is today. I think I’m actually glad for that. She knows how to make a presentations look nice. And I do love presenting things; total adrenaline high. More on those nerdy highs to come!

Rach and the Dino Hat

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It’s so sad for me to sit down at my computer and to log in to Under the Tapestry only to realize that all those ingenious blog posts I wrote in my head never actually made it onto the computer. Fevers’ll do that to you, I suppose. I don’t know what I had and I feel terrible for spreading it (so sorry, my darling, Michele!!) (not sorry for licking the door handle), but I’m finally feeling considerably better. With the exception of the bits of liquefied brain that are clearly trying to leak out of my head through my sinuses, I’m feeling pretty good and my grossness is significantly diminished (P < 0.05).

So onward and upword! First things first: you guys are SO freaking awesome for giving me such a positive response to my STD news. I mean… STDs, right? Ew and stuff. But you totally clapped for the clap anyway and it was awesome! Thanks for that!

But today, what I’d really like to talk about is dinosaurs.

I don’t have enough material for a real dino-focused post at the moment, but I did see a seriously sweet dinosaur hat on a little boy last week and it got me thinking…

At what age do you become “too old” to dance in and out of buildings wearing a dinosaur hat?

I passed a family headed into a building one day last week. It was a family of three. A mom and two sons– one a sullen teen or pre-teen, tall, gangly, peach-fuzz mustache, and permanent scowl. The mom looked beat. But the younger boy? He was grinning and spinning! He was dancing and flailing his arms and having a good old time on his way to the building.

He’s the one who made me light up. It was adorable!

But then I came to my question above. Because had the older boy been doing the same thing, I probably would have affixed my scowl and thought something rude about his immaturity or whatevs. Could he have done anything right? I mean, I was annoyed with him for his scowl in the face of his brother busting a move… but I’d have been annoyed if he’d busted a move himself. He couldn’t win! I was being too much a judge-y jerk!

YOUTHS!

And I thought about how that made me a total Rachel… like Rachel from Friends. And not in a good way. Rather, in the way she was in the episode where she and Phoebe go running together– Rachel taking little perfect strides, breathing in time, while Phoebe ran all arms and legs akimbo, just having fun with it.

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I’m such a Rachel sometimes! (Not in the enviable hairstyle kind of way, more the stick up her backside kind of way.) It would probably suit me to loosen up a bit (I know you’ve been saying that since I was like 8, mom, I know)… perhaps to drop the -el… yes, I think it’s the -el that’s weighing me down.

 

More Rach! More dinosaur hats! More fun! Less judgement!

 

But baby steps. Because I am not ready to rock a dinosaur hat on my head any more than I’m ready to bust a move on the skywalk between the Lawton and the Laird. (Busting a move in the office hallway? Maybe… so long as I’m not doing it alone.) It is something important to think about though.

Because, clearly, there’s no doing right by me when you’re an awkward teen. The thing that should probably change? My attitude. Less -el.  More blog posts 🙂

 

Fun fact: I went through a brief period from approximately consciousness through about 8 or so where I hated, hated, hated anyone calling me Rach. And I would totally correct people. Now I totally love it and consider it a sign of natural and unforced intimacy. My sister calls me Rach. My big in grad school (because I sometimes pretend grad school is like a really effed-up sorority) calls me Rach. Some of my super sweet new Marshfield friends call me Rach. I just love it! Granted, I cannot fault those who have known me much longer for not as, to be fair, I would have ripped their heads off over it once upon a time. But now you know.

 

Not-so-fun fact: I had the same two teachers for sixth and seventh grade– Ms. Fisher and Mrs. Johnson. I adored those two and they had nicknames for everybody, probably because they were absolutely brilliant at making you feeling like you were welcome and loved in their classrooms. They used to call me “Ra-cha-cha” (got to admit, I didn’t love it) and sometimes it would get shortened to just “Cha” (better because my friend Em always called me Racha from the time we were like 2 and 3). One day in science class, we were reading from the textbook out loud in class and Mrs. Johnson was announcing the next reader by name. I heard her say “Chaaaaaa” so I started reading. Loudly. Confidently. Like the nerd I was then and am now.

And it was awkward… super, crazy awkward… because she said “Chaaaaaaad”, which is not even kind of my name, and rather, the name of the boy I’d been crushing on since the moment I’d walked into the Miss Dimitroff’s fourth grade. The horror! I remember the mortification distinctly, the desperation of my hurried explanations in a tiny voice (I thought you said Cha…?) and the extreme desire to disappear.

 

Fun-ny fact: Chad was not worth the crush. The more you know 😉