On Monday, really angry with the Lord
I’ve been praying a lot for different things for people at Emory this summer and fall (let’s say, apples). And when the Lord told me He’d surprise me last Friday, I was *really* hoping He’d answer one of these. Instead, He surprised me with really cool data (a.k.a., a metaphorical orange). That was really nice, but also, very disappointing, at the same time. It went something like this …
Me: … *stares at orange in exasperation* … an orange?? Really, seriously? That’s what you’re surprising me with? When I said that maybe You’d give me interesting data, I was kidding! I was hoping for an apple. What does an *orange* have to do with anything? Nothing! It doesn’t relate to apples at all. Can’t you see I’ve been really asking You for apples? I haven’t even mentioned oranges in three months at least. WHY an orange? WHY? Why now? Why not when I was asking you for oranges 3-4 months ago? You totally had me hoping you’d give me an apple. I can’t believe You.
AHHHHHHHHHH!! *headdesk* *FUME* WHY don’t you EVER make sense?! You totally suck. I hate you, I hate you, so much. *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk* *FUME* *fume* *poutypoutpout* *fume* *pout* *mope* *sulk* *fume* *headdesk* GRRRRRR *fumefumefumeFUMEfume* I hate you. You NEVER make sense. You never do anything I think You’ll do. You’re ALWAYS confusing. I never understand you. An orange?? ARGCHHGGHGHGGG!!!!! I’m just so incredibly mad at you, right now. You have to help me not be mad, because I’m just so mad. *FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME *
God: *eyebrow* You done?
Me: NO
*FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME* *flips table* *FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME* *throw random chairs in my mind* *FUME* *poutypoutpout* *hate* *flips more tables*
*FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME FUME* … ARGGGGGG!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUme
ok *sniff* yes
hmph *hurt, grumpy cat face*
And thanks for the interesting orange/data. And the speaker. He was cool. He talked about all my favorite things, some of which related directly to the proposal I have to write for Weinert, and now I have a lot more cool articles to read for it. Thanks. That’s convenient.
God: *wraps me in sweet, warm love like a fuzzy blanket*
Me: Hey! That’s cheating! I’m still mad at You.
[…]
*melt*
[…]
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I’m not so mad. *sigh* *grumblegrumblegrumblegggggrumble* *mini-fume*
God: *more inexplicable warm love and peace, as if He’s giving me a huge, comforting hug*
Me: *melts further* *sigh* Sorry for being so mad at you. *sniff* I guess. I guess, You know what You’re doing. And, if You want to give me interesting data … then … [hops off sulking chair] … then, let’s do some SCIENCE together!
*slowly un-wilts* *uncoil uncoil* *turns to sunshine* *shifts into curious/excited mood*
Conclusion
The problem about arguing with God is … you know, in the end, He’s always right. And who knows? Maybe my apples do relate to His orange, and I just can’t see it. God can see everything. So, I’ll have to trust He knows what He’s doing. I suspect He probably does. He is God, after all. But He was totally right. It was a surprise that I wasn’t expecting.
Hints of interesting data
So on Monday night, I *guessed* that the Lord was going to surprise me with cool data, since my DNAzymes worked so suddenly and unexpectedly. And then I got really mad at Him, because that didn’t make any sense to me. And then, after praying about it in the morning, I got over it and decided, well, He must know something I didn’t, so let’s roll with it.
I wonder if this rtcB cut and paste reaction will work?? OOooo wouldn’t that be cool? I had an extremely good feeling about it Tuesday morning and was very happy, curious, excited – the Lord was pouring all kinds of peace and comforting love upon me and I felt inexplicably euphoric and just happy.
I wasn’t sure it would work. I was worried about all kinds of things – all kinds of things could go wrong – I worried the intense amounts of Mg would do something weird to the rtcB or overwhelm the Mn – I had no idea what would happen. This reaction is very complicated.
The Lord reminded me to do the split reaction with GTP for the 37C five hour reaction. I had planned it, but forgot about it in my excitement, only doing a reaction without GTP. Then it popped into my mind – and I was like – OH YEAH! THE GTP! *scurry, scurry* *split reaction* *add GTP to one* *pop it back in* *stare at it suspiciously for a minute* Hmm. Good. I think that’s everything.
Acquiring the interesting data
And the gel came up there.
And I stared at it. *puzzled look* What does this mean?
Wait a minute! *stunned face* It DID work! Kind of … hmmm. Original products … […] […] *processingprocessingprocessing* *image two more times* *furiously processing* It almost looks like … the DNAzymes are templating the back reaction. That must be why there’s no ligation product. Makes sense.
I have to say… sitting next to Khalid the entire lab meeting and not shouting at him, “THE CUT AND PASTE REACTION WORKS!!” Was very painful. I had to wait a whole evening and morning to tell him this. Such torture. But I was determined. I wanted him to get to see everything at the same time, and have time to look at it, and be surprised.
But I told Kevin, very excitedly before I imaged the gel and after lab meeting, and then swore him to secrecy. *points finger imperiously* You better not say ANYTHING to Khalid or I’ll kill you. Well. I didn’t say I’d kill him. But that’s what I felt like.
Kevin was the one who suggested the one pot reaction at 25C overnight. I’m so glad he did! That provided some quite interesting data. On Monday night he was saying yeah, when experiments work, you just gotta pull all-nighters and do them all at once, because you never know if THAT will happen again. Just got for it! Do the one pot reaction, YYYEAAAHHH!! And I was like, YEAHHHH! Let’s DO it!!
And after lab meeting I told Weiwei about it – that I had secret cool data.
I showed Kevin the gel and the lanes. He looked at it, tilted his head and was like, “Huh. It looks like the DNAzymes are templating the back reaction.” And I was like …
*GASP* YESS!! That’s what I thought! I was annoyed he thought of it so much faster than I did. But he's Kevin! Of course he would.
And he said I should go celebrate. I was celebrating in my mind. I totally didn’t sleep at all. I was incredibly excited. I wasn’t sure I’d get this to work before the rotation ended. I had, in fact, absolutely nothing to do with it. I blame the Lord. Because – to me – it’s so incredibly obvious that it’s not me.
Lots of studying and then failing the test
I haven’t approached studying properly – I’ve studied semi-consistently but not enough and not in the right ways. I think I might finally have identified why this has been so difficult to get right – or why I have trouble setting a schedule – I think it's a mental block kind of thing. I subconsciously like things to be symmetrical, like to use blocks of time, start things in round numbers – do all kinds of ridiculousness – so that, it never feels like a “proper” time to study. That’s probably why it always feels off to me, anyway. I have to embrace imperfection and use little bits of time as I can get them. I could never put this notion into words before. But that’s harder for me to do – it usually takes failing something to accomplish this, I almost feel like – so that I get mad enough, and jolted out of my ridiculous patterns of stupidity, or whatever.
I was so incredibly upset about that test. I’m still depressed. I don’t know – it might be a WHILE before I’m not. Gokul was very sweet and comforting – I give him lots of +1’s for being sweet to me, even in my meltdown state. He sent me a funny Youtube video later and said he hoped it made me feel better.
I left immediately, of course, and ended up eating at Which Which and then randomly decided to study in Barnes and Nobles. I spent time with the Lord. He comforted me – though I don’t deserve it – it’s my fault. But the Lord is always comforting, even when I'm stupid.
Then I studied more bioorganic notes, read enzyme texts, studied biomolecular and got coffee. But by then it was too noisy in there and I had to leave. I got home and walked on the treadmill 3.5 miles. That’s always nice.
Conclusion, to this distress
I am planning the imminent, utter and complete MURDER of the final, if I can manage it. Yes. *makes threatening face* *slaps hands together* Oh, final of doom, I’m coming to KILL you. *threatthreat* *sigh* I’m a bit tired, presently, to contemplate total war, but it’s going to happen. Oh yes. I feel like some warrior on a battlefield in ancient Rome fighting with swords that just got their second wind after being pummeled by superior forces. It might kill me. I might die trying. But I’m going to take as many of them with me into the pit of doom while I’m at it. The war is on. I never give up on my classes. If I fail something, I feel like it’s on my honor for me to do better, and I will kill myself trying to do it, whatever it takes. And if I still fail, it’s ok. At least, I have the satisfaction of giving it everything I can possibly manage before going down. Never give up! Never surrender!
Dr. Weinert’s class is still my favorite class. It just also happens to be hard. They usually go together. It’s still depressing. I feel like I dishonor the Lord by not managing my time properly and I’m terribly, miserably ashamed of myself.
So then, paper grading, despairing, and a ray of hope
I circled things in people’s papers and said, “This is vague/unclear and could use fixing” – more or less – but that didn’t seem to help. One person didn’t even fix the introduction hardly at all that needed serious changes, that I TOLD him to fix. *fume* And then I thought, man, I have no idea how to help these students to improve. What do I say? I can't rewrite it for them. On some of these papers – where do I start? I can’t just hand it back and say – “Here, this is terrible. Fix – just fix, *everything,* thanks.” Because, presumably, they might not know how to fix it better. Some people it seems tried to fix things I wrote about with equally vague and unclear paragraphs. Obviously, I’ve completely failed at helping so far.
And then I considered and thought I probably wasn’t in the best mood to grade these papers. I was feeling angry enough to fail them all a second round. Then I worried maybe I was turning into Bijoy and expecting perfection out of everyone. *headdesk* No, no, no. I CAN'T let that happen to me! What am I going to do! How am I going to help these students! I was really at my wits end.
Then I remembered Dr. Hawley. Dr. Hawley at Oxford was the best writing teacher I ever had in college. I still feel like the writing he brought me up to in his class was the best I ever did and since then, I’ve only gotten worse. It’s unfortunate. But he’s an amazing writing teacher – I thought I could write well until I took his class – then he showed me how wrong I was and taught me loads more. I wish I could take his class again and relearn stuff.
I haven’t seen him really in four years, unlike other Oxford professors in chemistry that I visit. But I always see his posts on facebook. And somehow, he still remembers me. I definitely remember him. The only other time I've talked to him in the last year or so was when he was asking for recommendations on books on writing and I recommended him one that I’d read and really liked - it was short, 50 pages, and really useful: The Office Of Assertion: An Art Of Rhetoric For the Academic Essay. He picked it up, read it and liked it so much that he used it as a textbook in his class! This still amazes me. I'm very honored.
Dr. Hawley *teaches* a sophomore writing class. So, I sent him a note, along the lines of the following:
Dear Dr. Hawley, I’m grading papers of sophomores and I’ve never done this before. Their writing is terrible. I’m failing at helping them. I feel like a terrible teacher. I’m at my wits end and have no idea what to do. Can you give me any advice? Of all people, I figure you’d know what to do. I realize I’m asking a huge question akin to “please teach me everything you know in five minutes,” but I have to start somewhere and maybe, if you could point me in the right direction, someday I’ll be helpful to my students. Please let me know.
It was much longer and more specific than that, but that’s the general idea.
And he responded! In the next 15 minutes! And it was such a wonderful, concise and helpful response brimming full of advice of exactly what I needed to know!
I felt like a ray of sunshine just fell upon me and there was some hope left in the world, after all. Maybe I CAN help my students! Even if I fail my own tests, I have some comfort in helping other students not fail at something.
He gave me the short summary of his recommendations, what to do and what not to do, how to grade, how to make it easier to grade consistently, what not to even bother about, and said he’d send me all his book recommendations (which are very short books, he assured me), and his handouts and guidelines and everything he uses, to adapt as I see fit.
I cannot tell you how encouraging this was to me. I couldn’t imagine what to do before, but he gave me so much hope. I KNEW he’d know what to do! I KNEW it. Dr. Hawley is the BEST writing teaching I know! *sighs with happiness* I still haven’t looked at all his handouts yet. I’ll try to digest through them at some point in the near future when I'm not suffocating under work and then figure out how I can try to help my students. At least now I don’t feel hopeless. It made my whole day just better in general.
Writing this note and being interrupted by James
Talking to him actually made me feel a lot better about life too. I was amazed that James is starting to have some of the same epiphanies in different ways that I have had about the Lord, independently of me. He was telling me wasn’t it just so amazing how God made each of us differently and He actually wanted to use us in the unique ways that He made us, to show His glory and do cool things? He didn’t want to go take us and make us miserable doing something we hated, like He always imagined as a kid. And I was like, YES! Isn’t that GREAT?
He said there was one point he was just really mad at the Lord and confused about life and went to a service at college. And he said he felt the Lord tell him that He knew he was confused, that He *knew* him, what He’d put in him, and He wasn’t confused and knew what He was doing and was going to take care of him. James said he was like – oh. And for some reason, that made him feel so much better! I said yes, doesn’t it though? The fact that the Lord’s not confused when I’m always confused is always so incredibly comforting to me. In the words of Ezekiel, “Oh Lord, you know.”
He talked about things the Lord encouraged him about and told him and prayers He answered. James was having some horrible stuff happen to him on the terrible Tuesday with all the flat tires and nonsense – his classes were getting messed up by his advisers who were telling him he’d have to stay at college an extra year and half to finish – and he was SO upset and panicking about it. I heard about it from mom and prayed about it really hard that morning. The same time I heard about the microscope breaking and told James to pray for it, he texted me back and was like, oh, by the way, all that stuff with the classes totally got fixed just instantly today. It was weird. The Lord really worked it out! And I was so encouraged. I needed to hear that, at the time.
And James talked about how he was now becoming such a germaphobe – he was turning into ME! I laughed hysterically at this and his descriptions of his disgust at touching things and this new desire of his to be constantly washing his hands all the time – ever since he put his iphone in his mouth, while he was trying to hold something with his hands – then got a sore on his throat and almost got sick – and then he realized he’d put his phone on the cafeteria table – and – AND THAT’S THE SAME THING AS LICKING THE TABLE!! He said to me aghast. And now, he says, he can’t stop thinking about all the germs everywhere and he won’t touch his face or eat anything without washing his hands or just – anything. It was hysterical.
We talked a lot of silly philosophical stuff too – James and I both over think things in different ways – he talked about how he wished he could tell me literally every detail of what happened to him and he used to think – oh well, they know what I’m thinking because I told them! But, they don’t! They only know what I said! Which can be misinterpreted! And I said, ah yes, I have had all these thoughts myself, except about blogging, rather than speaking.
We just had a lot of good catching up hilarity, general harmonies about life and good talk. I’m amazed at all the ways James has changed, even just in the last year! And he said yes, he didn’t even think prayer was useful or effective really until THIS year. Ha. James is the greatest. I think really good things are going to happen in his life. In fact – I *know* they are. I can feel it.
FIN
I don’t know if I’ll have time to write over the weekend. If I missed something, I'm sure the Lord will make it obvious. I don’t know how I’m going to get the proposal draft written. I printed a whole bunch more articles for it, but by 9 p.m., I was just so completely drained in every way, I couldn’t push myself to work anymore. I wrote until 10 p.m. Then James came and talked to me until 12:30 a.m., pretty much. Now I’ve written until … 1:23 a.m. so far. *sigh* Why does it always happen the last few Fridays that I stay up stupidly late? That’s so depressing. Then I can’t get up early in the morning.
Well, it is what it is. I think hopefully, the Lord will use the bad test for something useful or good – at the very least, showing me what I need to work on and making me mad enough to do something about it. I like to think He even uses my failures and weaknesses – in fact, He does. I can’t ruin His plans. I can’t mess Him up. He’s bigger than my weaknesses. It’s hard for me to believe that sometimes. But He wouldn’t be very much God if He wasn’t bigger than me and didn’t have me figured out.
I need to update the Scripture section again. So much more to add. *ugh* So tired. It’ll all happen eventually. I’ve included some more of the J.J. Heller songs and lyrics below – they’re quite good. J.J. Heller is a lot of fun to listen to – I don’t like all of her songs, but at least 40-50% are spot on.
Appendix: Songs by J.J. Heller
Lyrics, "Red Against Your Black"
Note: If you read them, and you follow my blog, you can probably guess why I like this song.
I've made up my mind.
And you're not gonna change it this time.
I don't care what you did yesterday.
And I know what you'll do tomorrow.
When you run away.
I will bring you back.
Oh my love is the red against your black.
The dead will live again.
You will see those dry bones dancing.
In a death defying marvelous parade.
I'll make you strong.
I'll make you brave.
When you run away,
I will bring you back.
Oh my love for you is the red against your black.
When you run away.
I will bring you back.
Oh my love is the red against your black.
I ran a thousand miles for you.
Knowing you would break my heart.
And I would do it all again.
Because I couldn't stand to be apart.
When you run away.
I will bring you back.
Oh my love for you is the red against your black.
When you run away.
I will bring you back.
Oh my love is the red against your black.
Yes my love is the red against your black.
Do you dream of a home you never had?
An innocence that you cannot get back
The pain is real, you can’t erase it
Sooner or later you have to face it down, down
You have to face it down
You are loved
Do you keep your thoughts inside your head?
Do you regret the things you never said
You have a voice, you have to use it
You have a choice, don’t let them shut you down, down
Don’t let them shut you down
You are loved
You are loved
Do you feel the ache inside your soul?
You know you’ll never make it on your own
Sorrow is too great for you to hold it
You’re gonna break, why don’t you lay it down?
Freedom comes in letting go
Open up the window to your heart
Freedom comes in letting go
Open up your heart
You are loved
There are so many things about You I don't understand
But I believe
I keep moving forward when I'm holding Your hand
I believe
The truest things I know
Are those I cannot see
From my birth to my dying day
I believe
When I'm old I'll talk about the things that You have done
I believe
Brokenness made beautiful
The wars that You have won
And the storms You calmed in me
The truest things I know
Are those I cannot see
From my birth to my dying day
I believe
I'd rather have Jesus than houses or lands
I'd rather be led by his nail pierced hands
I'd rather have Jesus than anything…
The truest things I know
Are those I cannot see
From my birth to my dying day
I believe