As I came into the building I found that the stairwell door to the third floor was locked. I went back to the second floor and got in the elevator instead. The elevator took me to my floor and I noticed that the door from the medical school was open. So why lock the stairwell door? Oh well. I’m just glad I could get to my office.

8:33
I panicked when I couldn’t get into the fourth floor coffee room but I found coffee in the second floor copy room. I’m also going full speakers today. No earbuds for me!

10:29
I found one article that references another article we could use, that references another three articles. This is getting complicated. A little while ago, someone who works on this floor walked by but I haven’t seen her since. Someone from the second floor was here as well.

10:55
I saw someone I didn’t know in the student lounge. She was watching the same slideshow that has been on the TV there since I started this job. I’m afraid that if I describe this person to one of my coworkers, they’ll say “Why that person died five years ago!”

12:10
Let’s see what the cafeteria has for lunch!

1:12
Their special was ham so I just got the usual pre-fab hamburger, onion rings, and a soup. Their soup was a super thick wild rice and chicken stew. I forgot to get a spoon so I ate it with a plastic knife I found in the lounge.

Later
As it turned out, the rest of the work day was uneventful. I got a lot done, took a few walks around the deserted floor, and left for home, ready for my flight to San Diego!

GradHacker
I actually found this site after starting my own tips series. The posts there are extremely valuable for grad students and benefits from having many opinions on an issue instead of just one. Start with their recent posts (which range from “Grad School Extracurriculars” (an interesting take on my own Tip #1)to “Writing my Dissertation”).

Chronicle of Higher Education
My advisor was the first person to tell me about the Chronicle of Higher Education when they were predominantly a print publication. Over my years as a graduate student, I have seen their website grow tremendously as a resource for the grad student or budding educator. Some sections are for paying subscribers but there is plenty of free content to browse. There are helpful articles for every aspect of handling a career in academia, from being a student, to teaching students.

Academia.edu
Basically Facebook for academics. This is a great place to find people who share your interests. You can follow other scholars, their papers, and journals. I think this site is a great place for the more timid to reach out and network without the gravitas of sending an email or talking at a conference. If you’re uncomfortable adding professionals to your Facebook friends, definitely use Academia.edu as a alternate way to keep contact with other scholars.

The aviary was especially cool, with birds hanging out only a few feet from the visitors with no barriers in between.

The SeaLife Center had an observation deck that overlooked Resurrection Bay. Outside, I saw a wild sea otter sleeping in the water.

The SeaLife Center was a good end to the ship cruise. At Seward, the passengers split up into separate ground tours, though many shared the same destinations. We were placed on busses that drove us to the train station. Thus began the ground tour!

Our next port of call was Skagway. My brother and I went on the hiking trail to Lower Dewey Lake.

Back on water, we headed north where there were more glaciers to be seen.

There was a lot of sea life, including one of my favorites, the sea otter.

Musician Ashlee Rose performed nightly in one of the lounges on the ship. She had a huge repertoire of songs and was very enthusiastic about music performing. She also told many stories about her travels from Texas to Alaska, and her obsession with train whistles.

The ship went through the College Fjord, named because the Euroamerican explorers who mapped it named each glacier after a prestigious university (minus Princeton, which they purposely snubbed).

Lastly, here are the panoramic photos I took of the glaciers. They should really be appreciated in Flickr, which you can access by clicking each image below.

The first sea mammals we saw were sea lions. There was a large group on some rocks and several others swimming nearby.

We found three humpback whales, two adults and a calf, swimming together. The calf was swimming upside-down, waving its flippers around. I also saw the calf breach (leap out of the water and fall back in), but it was so random and fast that I couldn’t get a photo.

A pod of orcas swam alongside our boat until we reached the limit of our tour’s range. We headed back to Juneau and ran into several more humpback whales on the way.

Here is why you should check out your school’s hopefully-free counseling/mental health services.

• It’s good to get an informed and impartial evaluation of yourself. Many of you are in the sciences so you appreciate the value of objectivity. However, concerning your personal life, objectivity is hard to obtain. All of your friends, family, and coworkers have their own judgements (good or bad) of you so these people won’t be able to see you impartially. If you want the best assessment of you as a person, you have to move outside your social circle and meet with someone who will be the scientist to your data.
• You also don’t have a fair view of yourself. Here is the paradox: you trust your inner voice because, hey, it’s you! The problem is that your inner voice is not inherently right. Like the rest of you, it needs training to do be the best at it’s job and your inner voice’s job is to keep the rest of you going. If you’re like most people, your inner voice didn’t do the training, but now it acts like it owns the place. A counselor will help give your mind the training it needs to do its job. You’ll learn that your thinking process is not the only one that is out there, and you’ll learn better ways to treat yourself.
• While in TV shows and movies, it seems like seeing a counselor involves only listing the bad things in your life, in real life you get to share your victories as well as your defeats. As counseling continues, you get to recount the little achievements you’ve made in getting a better sense of self, and both you and your counselor will be happy for you!

Give this suggestion some thought. If you happen to be assigned to a counselor you don’t get along with, ask to be transferred to somebody else. Remember though that you may face some hard truths, but just as your counselor is trained to show them to you, he/she is also trained to help you resolve the issues that are holding you back.