Wednesday, June 06, 2007

I'm All Heart Mother Fucker....

Oh Wait...no no. That's not me. That's Cuba Gooding Jr in Jerry Maguire.

I loathe (that's right loathe) being off a rigid schedule. This week was kind of up in the air because of the GMR relay this weekend. I did the first week of marathon training last week and will do week two next week......so this week was kind of just....well I want to get miles in.

Yesterday we were at the lab for about 13 hours because of a career night...which unfortunately was terrifying. Basically the older scientists said, "There's no more positions at the higher levels." I take that to mean don't bother staying because you'll get screwed because there are no positions. I have been hearing that for the past 3 years. The kids that had left the field terrified me because the one guy that works for Allstate says he gives people he interviews live coding tests during the interview. I am a pretty good coder, but a lot of what I do is doing it to get it done. It's not pretty, but it's functional. Of course I realize that I can always work on making it pretty but I would hope that hiring managers would take me for what I am (which is awesome) and realize that I can learn the neatness and better organization as I go along. So if anyone out there is looking for a super cool PhD physicist I'll be graduating in about 8 months. :-)

We decided to not run last night since we got home at 10pm but to run this morning. 5 miles. Very Very Blah. Just not good. Some walking thrown in, averaging about 9:30 miles, just really off our game. We did run into the Lovely Lisa on the way though which was fun and talked to her about the race this weekend that we are all looking forward to.

I know that I do better with a schedule. For example, if I knew I had to do whatever the prescribed run was, I would have done it before the career night and showered here. As it stands though, I was like, ehhh I'll do it tomorrow. I'm chalking it up to bad mental, bad everything yesterday and hope that upcoming runs are better. I have never understood these bad runs. Weeks and weeks of good stuff and then all of a sudden BAM! craptastic run. I know it happens, it's just never fun when it does.

Another long day at the lab today, but then 1/2 day tomorrow and it's onto Wisconsin tomorrow night! Stay tuned for what will be a wacky filled few days.

7 comments:

Bridgette said...

Good luck at the GMR!!

Anonymous said...

Have a blast at the GMR! I've done Reach the Beach (the New England equivalent) for the past two years and it's a blast. You are going to be EXHAUSTED when it's over, but the memories and experience are worth it!

Full Metal Lunchbox said...

Isn't it strange how an event like the GMR just doesn't fit into any training schedule?

Fortunately, you have an excellent base.  I look forward to seeing you in action.

Scott said...

Leah-
Like FML said you have so much in the bank that a bad day here or there doesn't blow you out of the water. Have a fun run this weekend.
(Oh, nice title...GO TO YOUR ROOM!)
DAd

Runner Susan said...

I love saying that! Good luck at your race this weekend.

Jonathan said...

Good luck at GMR. I hear those relay races are a lot of fun (I'm planning to do two next year). Out of curiousity, what do physics PhDs do after they graduate? Post-doc, academics, industry?

LeahC said...

jonathan-

we can do *anything*. Getting a PhD in physics has taught us so many skills that we wouldn't have gotten just in a regular job...you can do postdoc work which would then lead into academics or you can move out and get a job doing programming or some such thing in industry.