Boxing mentality

I’m a pro-gym-class-boxer. Put me into a real life fight with a girl of equal strength and I would have no idea what to do. But inside the safety of a structured gym class, watch out! I can punch that bag with a structured timing that frightens me.

‘Go team!’ shouts the instructor. ‘Punch, punch, kick, kick,’

The girl on the other side of the bag is out of time. Our kicks coincide on the same side of the bag and our toes crunch together

painfully. This annoys me. We both end up standing there awkwardly trying to jump back into the timed rhythm, lifting one knee then the other, hopping about awkwardly like a pained grasshopper. The set ends and we’re standing there almost at resting heart rate, sweat-free.

After a year of sporadically attending these ‘boxing’ classes, I’m now an expert at following instructions. I know the style of my particular instructor; I know what’s coming next, and when the end is nigh. I know that you need to follow directions, not think too much, and go with the flow. Otherwise you achieve nothing. Lateral thinking and intelligence is not rewarded. I’m like a thug or a hit man.

I was once a moderately active person. I spend my entire teenage years training as a gymnast, and until recently danced intensively as a hobby. Now, I occasionally attend gym ‘boxing’ classes merely to get the blood flowing faster than its now normally stagnant rate. As my PhD progresses, so too has the length of time I spend sitting in front of the computer, eating chocolate, and drinking wine. Lower back pain is reaching an all-time high.

But there’s something good to be said about gym-class-boxing as a PhD-stress-reliever. Once a week, I get the opportunity to punch that boxing bag like my life depends on it. “Take that, stupid microscope that I can never get to work, take that!” Relief ensures.

So surely it’s all about my boxing mentality. Perhaps now, during my PhD, isn’t the time to be mourning the lack of competitive sports in my life. So, I’ll appreciate these classes for what they are: the easiest way to get the blood flowing, improve my mood, and make it through my PhD.

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Facebook sucks

I remember when I first joined Facebook, about 5 years ago. It was probably before most other Aussies, as I was living in Canada at the time, closer to Facebook's roots, and The Social Network hadn't yet filtered it's way Down Under.

I don't think I fully understood what this social networking thing was all about.       Working in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, I lived in a communal house, and in these early days, the people I lived with where the only people on Facebook that I knew. Don't I see these people every day? Why do I need to talk to them on-line as well? I cared little.

But as the months passed and I left to travel around the Americas, I realised how convenient a tool Facebook was for keeping in contact with people who you don't see every day. As my friends and family back in Australia joined the Facebook crowd, suddenly I understood the purpose of social networking.

I was quickly addicted. But surely all addictions have negative connotations? Facebook definitely did for me. In my early twenties at the time, I was interested in some boy or other that I met whilst travelling, and found Facebook an excellent tool for casually keeping in contact, where phone calls and text messages would have been inappropriately forward. Eventually of course, I discovered the painful sensation that comes from watching the desired suddenly change their relationship status to 'In a Relationship', followed by the excessive 'lovey dovey' wall posts that followed. Every time I logged on, there was something new staring me in the face, and I swear the relationship status hangs around in the news feed longer than any other type of notification.

I started hating Facebook, but I was still addicted. Depressed, I tried to find ways to stop myself logging on. I failed most of the time, and had to live with the extreme mood fluctuations that ensured. Eventually I found the 'hide posts from this person' function, and life was bearable again.

Now I'm 'In a Relationship' myself, and have several years of mental growth buffering me from these on-line social challenges. But Facebook's negative associations have stayed with me, and I seem to have undergone an extreme reaction in the opposite direction. Not a particularly social person to begin with, the early addiction to Facebook may have to just reflected a growing stage in my life and attempt to fit in with my peers. 5 years later, I don't give a sh!t about my peers and actively avoid any kind of on-line social contact.

I HATE FACEBOOK. My computer remembers my password for me as I can't remember it myself, and every time I log on (probably once a month, maximum) I have to teach myself to use it again, because something else has changed. (What's this timeline thing?).

I guess you could say I survived the Facebook revolution. Perhaps now I've just grown up and care less about fitting in with other people. But I imagine that for a growing teenager, having to watch these unnaturally public displays of affection and personal rejection thrust in their faces could have lasting effects.

However, maybe I didn't escape so unharmed either. Whilst I'm no longer stalking some un-reciprocated potential lover, (I've caught one since then ;) ) I still feel a sense of inadequacy when forced to compare my own life to the on-line persona of those peers from my youth. "She's done this, he's done that, everyone else is having fun!!" blah, blah. It's all so fake, and I feel the urge to retreat to my shell. I'd say that I've developed an unhealthy aversion to on-line social interactions, and in today's age, this severely limits my friendship potential.

Social networking is here to stay. Facebook has outlived its predecessors such as MySpace and Bebo in popularity, but surely this can't last forever. Google+ waits in the wings to take over. But scarred from public on-line personal interactions, I prefer the relative anonymity of Twitter. More on that later...

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Lab Rules

Lab induction. Tick.

Boredom. Tick.

Apprehension about working in a lab? Tick...

Any workplace has its rules. But if I ignore the office rule about not printing double-sided and accidentally jam the photocopier, big deal, I'll unjam it. In the lab, I could forget to unscrew a bottle of chemical and cause an explosion that endangers human lives. Or leave the door to the minus 80 freezer open and be kicked out of the university for destroying years of work.

'Always work with liquid nitrogen in an open environment.'

'Never go into the cold room after hours by yourself.'

'Phenol can give you third-degree burns, ethidium bromide can intercalate with your DNA and possibly give you cancer, etc.'

'Do this, don't do that, somehow you need to remember everything I tell you or else you could cause serious injury.'

If I hadn't worked in a lab before, then I would be feeling pretty anxious about working in this lab environment. Good thing I've seen all this before and am feeling totally fine about all of this. Ha.

Gulp.

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