9unm3741

So it seems like I update about once a year. Mostly because I'm not good at things, and keeping any kind of journal updated is among that list.

Biggest news: I am Dr. Bouchey now. Despite graduate school being, possibly, my most serious regret I am now done with it. I can now continue to do literally the exact same stuff that I was doing before I finished, but now I can select something new in drop down menus for name prefixes. Really, I expected to feel relieved, or at least a sense of victory. But I just feel bad. I almost don't like that I'm a doctor. I hated so much of graduate school that I wish I could make the whole experience disappear, and even the congratulations just make me feel sick to my stomach. It takes active restraint to not send my diploma through the shredder, because I just want to destroy anything that is even remotely related to graduate school or academia. I hate it. My partner is so openly proud of me, but even that makes me feel so angry I just want to scream at her, which in turn makes me feel awful and ashamed. Whenever I think about I feel literally nauseous. Not really a point to this, just needed to get it off of my chest because I don't feel brave enough to admit this directly to another human, and typing it feels more like just sending it into the void even though I knew exactly who is going to read it :P

Actual good things that are happening: My partner and I joined an adult soccer league through her work. I am very out of shape and that makes me pretty sad, but at least the rest of the team isn't that much better than me, so I just have fun playing.

My partner has been very involved in the local caving grotto. She has been involved in some volunteer restoration work at Carlsbad Caverns as well as mapping, exploration, and restoration at Ft. Stanton cave. She wants to help out with a mapping project for the lava caves at El Malpais, but there just isn't enough time. I've been doing the restoration work at Carlsbad with her, and was just invited to take a trip to do some mapping in Ft. Stanton, which is pretty cool. I enjoy caving, although I would say that if I had my choice of hobbies/pastimes and also the motivation to actually pursue them I would probably spend the time doing something else. However, if I just left caving to her, I wouldn't do something else. I would sit around at home doing nothing and beating myself up over not taking advantage of the time to do something I enjoy. So I let her drag me along and have fun doing stuff with her, which is pretty good!

The xeriscape in the front yard turned out really well. We are situated kind of on the sides of the Sandia mountains, so to account for the slope, our backyard has an upper and lower tier. Our upper tier was already pretty well landscaped. We're mostly just going to add some nice details and finishing touches. The lower tier, however, is most weeds. It is totally overgrown. So my next major project, which will be a lot more work than the front yard was, is to redo this lower tier. I want to plant two fruit trees and put in a compost bin on one side, add a pergola and a fire pit at the bottom of the stairs which lead from the top tier, and put some raised beds and a chicken coop on the other side. I think it'll be really nice when done, but I first have to clear out all the weeds. A note about New Mexico plants: if they can grow here without human assistance, they will almost certainly try to stab you. All the weeds have thorns, needles, or stickers. Just walking down there can be painful, much less weeding. I was planning on taking a fairly long time to get it done, but my partner's father is giving us some stone which I would like to use, so now I would like to try to get it done sooner rather than later.

Lastly, I've coauthored an article for a science and technology magazine. The editors have contingently agreed to publish it based on the pitch, but they reserve the right to reject the draft still since I'm a first time author for them (or any non-academic publication). I'm really excited about this, so I'll try to write an update when I find out about it.

This post is intended to provide some background on which to support subsequent posts.

Living In Canada
So far I have been living in Toronto, Canada for about four months now. I have to say, despite the modern counter culture obsession with Canada (ie if X gets elected again I'm moving to Canada) its not all that great. It is wet and it is cold and, despite our view of Canada as being just a colder moose filled US, there are subtle cultural difference that are substantial and numerous enough to cause significant culture shock. For example, Canadian niceness is different from American niceness. I have found that American niceness is primarily action based. You do nice things for people. Canadian niceness not so much. Its more along the lines of trying to be nice is nice enough. As a result, many more Canadians try to be nice than Americans, however, it has been difficult adjusting my expectations of people who are trying to be nice to me. An example. In Canada, people are more likely to offer to help you than in the US, however they are less likely to succeed in actually helping you.

Masters Degree in Science and Technology Studies (STS)
This is why I am in Canada. I am studying to get my MA in STS at York University. STS is a fairly complicated and ill-defined discipline. Areas of study encompassed within STS might be social studies of science and technology, history of science and technology, science and technology policy, and anthropology of science and technology. This is not a comprehensive list, and each of the disciplines listed here exist both inside and outside of STS. My area of specialty is science and technology policy. Specifically, my research focuses on space policy. I'm trying to publish an article analyzing the debate over the safety of commercialization, but more on that later.

Research
As stated, my current research is on the the debate over the safety of commercialization of human spaceflight to low Earth orbit (LEO). Essentially, my research discusses how the current debate over safety is disingenuous and a proxy debate for the differences in values of actors on opposing sides. I am pushing through my first draft for publication this month, and hope to have a final submission sometime in January or February of next year. When this happens I will make sure to post. In the mean time, I have presented my research at the Atlanta Conference for Science and Technology Innovation Policy in Atlanta, Georgia, hosted by Georgia Tech as well as the 2011 Society for the Social Studies of Science annual conference held in Cleveland, Ohio. An abstract is available from both conferences for those who are interested. I am also starting new research on public interactions with space exploration. I will be submitting my research proposal to my department here at York next month, so more on that when the time comes.

That's all for now. I don't want to inundate the reader with a wall of text, so more background will be provided in a subsequent post.