the days

what the fuck, exactly, is going on here? jesse is doing a dualthon? is that even how you spell that word? in the venn diagram of the center, jonny is the dualthoning overlap between the cycling jesse and the running liz (with a little bit of swimming thrown in there for shits and giggles. or so if we ever decide to adopt a penguin, it would have a proper place in the household). i don't know where i belong now.

things are hot here and that is miserable. there is no air conditioning anywhere, many people don't use deodorant, it's a huge fucking city full of pavement so it never cools off even at night, and you can't even buy a fucking fan anywhere, because apparently they don't believe in moving air in germany.

also: i'm not getting an education here. yes, i am doing experiments. through doing those experiments, i am learning things. but i feel like the things i'm learning from doing my experiments are things that phd students in the us learn from their professors telling them, "yeeeah, you might not want to do that that way. why don't you try it like this instead and actually get some publishable results?" they also don't really believe in lab groups. so this girl who was doing her master's in the same topic as my phd was helping me with my field work and was telling me that she got some interesting results and she had submitted her manuscript for publication. unfortunately, the reviewers really slammed her for her poor grasp of the english language. she told me, "but both my advisors [who are also advisors to me] looked it over and thought the english was fine." i told her to send the manuscript to me and i would look it over. she did get interesting results, but not only was the english bad, but it was like no one had looked it over for scientific content and clarity either. i gave her a bunch of feedback about not only the english, but the other aspects as well. she really thanked me. but i was thinking, jesus, no one told her how to write a science paper and they just threw her to the wolves by having her submit this. and that's what it's like here. no fucking advice whatsoever. everyone talks about how fucking busy they are and how they don't have time to read shit over and whatnot, but how is it that all the professors i knew in the us were on like, three times as many committees, writing just as many grant applications, and teaching classes (which most of the asshats at my institute don't actually do) and still had time to read over papers and give real feedback? it must be fucking possible then. i need to find a way back to the us because just thinking about this shit pisses me off.

that wasn't very funny. sorry about that.