Garnet's Life Adventures

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Who said that?

They also said, "I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on"

And another great one is, "You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do"

Well if you haven't guessed it already these are all quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman I have always really admired, ever since my 8th grade trip to Washington DC. I cannot recall what it was way back then that made me so interested in her. I worry it might have just been some thing silly, like I saw a cool statue or photo of her. I like to think it was that I remember some thing famous she said & that's why I admired her, but alas I was only in 8th grade and the reality is that more than likely I saw a statue of her & liked it so that made an impression on me.

On a different note, I had sorta had a crap day today - I went a meeting up in Oxford & presented my data, which not to toot my own horn, but I think it's interesting & good. But at the end when people were allowed to ask questions, a woman (Miss Netherlands as I'll call her) said, "I don't believe your data" . . . now I can't go into the details of it all here, but really who needs to say something like that??? A question of "why didn't you do x, y, or z?" I can answer, but what do you expect me to say to that comment? Miss Netherlands then sorta tried to explain why she doesn't "believe" my data, which really proved more that she doesn't like my protocol, more so that not thinking mine was good - her protocol is just different than mine - again the "why didn't you do it this way" in my mind would have been the way to go. When she was done speaking I said, "thanks that's an interesting point to think about for the future. Any more questions?" . . . long pause . . . nothing, so I walked to the back of the room & slumped down in my chair, feeling rather crappy!!

At the coffee break, my lab members all came over to say I'd done a good job & a woman who we'd all met in Thailand who works in Germany (Katrin B) said, "what did you think of that question?" so I explained myself a bit & Katrin B said, "I think your right, it's more relevant to in vivo that way" which made me feel a lot better, but as you can tell since this all went down at approximately 2.30pm I'm still bothered by the comment.

So I think my other "issue" with what happen today was that my boss wasn't there to back me up and I didn't feel I could really "argue" my point all alone. Ah well - live & learn . . .

It's now nearly 11.30pm & I've got a picnic to prepare for tomorrow (if the weather holds up) so I'm going to go to sleep now and try to forget about Miss Netherlands's comment!

Labels: eleanor roosevelt, presentation, quotes, science, thoughts

posted by Sara @ 11:03 pm