The people who influence us

To a large extent we are shaped by our environment. Specifically people. In our early lives its our parents. Much more than character, and opinions are influenced. Parents also encourage or discourage certain behavior or inclinations that we have according to what they feel is right as well. Often people find on hind sight that even our career choices have been influenced to a large extent by our parents, either by encouraging us to study along a certain field that they like or feel is suitable for us, or by our own actions of rebellion against these encouragements. Encouragement/discouragement also enters into the child's development through other elders and teachers whose opinions we are taught to value.
As we grow older, these authority figures become less of an influence as we tend to form our own opinions and not take what is told as face value. But our opinions are still not entirely our own. It is still linked to the people we hang around. Living away from your parents mean you grow closer ties with friends as a support system and their opinions begin to matter. Having conversations with friends and colleagues lead you to broaden your perspective and you tend to assimilate some of the general opinions. Those who are more stubborn or strong willed tend to hold on to their preformed notions while those more weaker willed will tend to sway with a group opinion.
These are common people who influence everyone. But take a specific example of grad students and you find that a lot of them are influenced by their supervisors. More than in a common work environment where there is a chain of control, and people come and go, get promoted, work in different groups and so on; a grad student has a close relationship with their primary supervisor for 4 - 5 years in general and as this is generally their starting point of their professional life a lot of cues are picked up from the supervisor. From very basic things like presentation/writing styles to more character issues like how forceful, perfection oriented, organized etc. In some cases where there is a chance to evaluate and choose supervisors/students its likely that people of similar character choose to work together, however even when thrown together randomly, by the time of graduation a lot of the supervisors characteristics are mirrored in the students. I cannot say if my initial assumption that this is not so common in workplaces is true or not though.

Genetics Abortion Ethics

Congenital conditions can be scary - some develop only after adulthood (or methods of detection were only developed in later years), at this juncture you might have children and passed on these illnesses to them. If on the other hand you find out about them before you have children what are the options you have. Based on the condition you could have a 0 - 100% chance depending on whether it is recessive/dominant and your partner's genetics. Assuming of course that you want to have children (otherwise the discussion becomes moot), what are the choices you have. If the chances are especially high of passing on the condition there is always adopting children. Assuming then that you want to have biological children there seems to be two choices.
First there is preimplantation genetic diagnosis which requires the use of IVF. This means the testing is done before implantation but at the embryo stage (I believe after the third division). Of course this means taking the IVF route which is a costly procedure and becomes a longer route if the couple has no other problems concieving. Only certain diseases can be tested for and it assumes that one cell is representive off all - leading to more false positives/negatives. Not all countries provide this due to ethical concerns
Prenatal diagnosis is the other option which can be non-invasive for certain conditions or more invasive procedures like aminocentesis. Invasive procedures carry their own risks to the fetus.
Both these procedures come close to eugenic like selections - hence the reason for most ethical arguments against them. Although as a parent who is likely to pass on congential conditions to their children perhaps it would not seem this way as they are not using these procedures to select sex or traits.
The tricky part is if there is a positive result to these tests. In the preimplantation diagnosis it would be an easier proces to discard the embryo (as not all embryos generated for IVF are used anyway regardless of screening). In the other case it comes down to whether the parent wished to carry the child to term or abort the pregnancy. Some conditions would cause death or severe disability almost from the time of birth hence it seems ok to abort the pregnancy. Fetal corrective procedures are rare so this seems the choice that comes with prenatal screening. There is also the case of less sever cases where the child maybe able to live a semi normal - normal life with assistance - so are you taking away this right. The parents physical/mental/ financial ability to cope with such children I think needs to be taken into consideration. Of course if abortion is illegal in a certain country these tests can lead to no useful results except perhaps better prepareredness before the birth of the child. What about the extreame case of diseases which are late developing - i.e. person can lead a normal life until their 50s or 60s where the congenital condition starts giving problems. Does a parent abort or carry the child to term. The person might never develop problems (or they might), they might die earlier of unrelated incidents, a cure maybe developed in their lifetime. Is there some good to try to stop the continuation of passing on these genes which seemingly have a negative impact on the human being's health. Or is this a mild form of eugenics too.

Enjoy every moment of it

When we very young we look up at our seniors and want to grow up sooner. In college we can't wait to get out there and start working and earning. Always waiting to grow, and get out there from our protective cocoons. I am in a stage where I should be out but have formed another cocoon to keep me where I am and all I can say to those wanting to grow up is - wait, stop, enjoy the moment you are in school and college. We seem to have a delusion that stepping out on our own gives us freedom but those carefree days are the more free than what you get living on your own and tending to your own needs.
A friend of mine who came to visit me at the lab said when she saw all the undergrads walking around she wanted to go up to them, shake them and say "enjoy every moment of this!"
Perhaps not everyone feels this way though, perhaps its just those of us who have to grow up but don't want who keep clutching at the past memories.

Order and Chaos

My little menagerie sit guarding over my desk. Its a little cluttered they think; I agree. Its mostly chaos, perhaps something resembling the aftermath of a mini tornado or hurricane. But there is order in this chaos. I can reach out and grab whatever I need and I mostly know where everything is. Try as I might tidiness is not something that comes easily to me. I attempt to put everything into neat piles every so often but its back to the usual mess the very next day.
I have another desk, free of my personalization and a little abandoned. That earns me the title of being "quite a neat person" from my boss. Everyone else disagrees; they have seen my first desk.

Time

Time feels like its slowly slipping away. There are so many things still left undone. Will it be too late to them? Is there something else that will need to be done when I finish what I am doing now such that I can't do what I have planned? Whether it is the surroundings (of being in a university and not the "real world") or just my perception of things, I don't feel old. Things like family, responsibilities seem like an abstract concept. However things are rapidly changing around me. People graduate and leave, people talk about what to after graduate, people get married, have kids even - are they all grown up even though they are my age? Two more years seems like such a long time but then again it seems like only yesterday that I started and that was more than two years ago too, so would I be graduating tomorrow. I look forward to it in some sense of getting it all over and done with, moving on with life, to have some accomplishment, maybe even a better pay! But then again I don't seem to have much to graduate with, and the question what next that I haven't even figured out an answer to. Perhaps its just the feeling that while I am standing still, everyone I have know seem to be moving around rapidly - it is dizzying in a sense.

So what do you do?

I am really starting to fear this questions from acquaintances. Generally you meet or get in touch with someone after a long time or are introduced to someone new and the topic inevitably turns to what you do. While its relatively easy to answer those also in research (who generally don't pursue after the generic questions) it gets difficult to answer those who are not.

This is usually how such a conversation with me would progress...
Person - "So what do you do?"
Me - *thinks oh no* "Umm research..."
Person -" oh "- *pause* - "so you are studying?"
Me - "well both study and work actually"
Person - "oh - what do you do for your work?"
Me - "Umm research..."
Person - "Oh on what area?"
Me - *tries the simple approach but with two possible responses - neither works!* - a) "electrical engineering etc" b) " magnetics etc"
Person in response to b) - " But you are in electrical department?" *description of research has to follow*
Person in response to either - "oh that sounds interesting. What is your research/thesis topic?"
Me - *interesting - really?? - oh no* "long name on thesis topic with unitelligible sounding words"
Person who got response a) at this juncture - "That doesn't sound like electrical engineering"
At this point I would really wish the person was no longer interested but some still persist.
Person - *blank look* "ok ... what do you do for it - can you explain some of it?"
Me - *Must I? I don't understand half of it* - "ummm .... let me see.... " * proceeds to some sort of description of work*
Person - "That sounds interesting" *changes topic*
Me - *sigh - now couldn't we have stopped at the first "interesting"?*

I know its nice to have people interested in what you do...but in this situation it does put me in an awkward position of not being able to state a profession and be instantly understood on what it is I do.

That stupid feeling...

I've never felt more stupid than these days after I started doing my PhD. Some one asks questions about my work and I don't know the answer or I have all this data that just don't make sense and I don't know why. When something goes wrong most of the time I don't know why - I even don't know when it goes right!
Well I'm glad to know I'm not alone and this feeling of stupidity is not necessary a bad thing. Came across this article recently The importance of stupidity in scientific research from here. The last paragraph puts things in perspective:

"Productive stupidity means being ignorant by choice. Focusing on important questions puts us in the awkward position of being ignorant. One of the beautiful things about science is that it allows us to bumble along, getting it wrong time after time, and feel perfectly fine as long as we learn something each time. No doubt, this can be difficult for students who are accustomed to getting the answers right. No doubt, reasonable levels of confidence and emotional resilience help, but I think scientific education might do more to ease what is a very big transition: from learning what other people once discovered to making your own discoveries. The more comfortable we become with being stupid, the deeper we will wade into the unknown and the more likely we are to make big discoveries."