Melancholy Autumn

I have again neglected my blog for a solid month - my apologies. I haven't taken any big trips lately, hence the lack of updates. Instead of writing a huge entry with lots of random pieces of information, I think that I will try to do a few small entries over the course of the weekend and the next week to summarize what I've been up to.

This evening while I was waiting for my bus after doing some Lebensmitteleinkaufen (grocery shopping), I realized that in just a few weeks I will have been here for almost four months. Four months. That means that my time here is almost halfway over. In some ways I feel like it was just summer, yet when I look back at my pictures of my friends in Marburg, it feels like it was a lifetime ago.

These dark, cloudy German days are really starting to take a toll on my mood. The typical German autumn day is chilly, windy and cloudy (at least for 90% of the day). Even when it is sunny here, it doesn't seem to last very long. I've been told that this melancholy weather is kind of a mirror for the German outlook on life (and the apparent "closed-off" nature of the German people), and I believe it - since I'm beginning to fall subject to it myself. At least the Christmas markets will be opening up soon, which should help to take the edge off a little bit. =)

It is always easier to complain than to say something positive, so I will try to make this little snippet brief, but it suffices to say that things in the lab, while better than they were initially, continue to be a source of confusion and stress. One of my labmates more or less said to me the other day that people typically have years more experience than I do before they are even allowed to come to the institute. Not only does this mean that I don't have a "comrade" or someone to share my experiences with, but it also means that nobody really quite knows what to do with me. I have a small project of my own (which is very interesting to me) that I am working on as of last week, but I feel completely lost in it. My labmates are happy to answer small questions that I have about how to set up an experiment or purify a compound, but they are under so much pressure to produce results and do their own work, that nobody really wants the responsibility of taking me under their wing and providing me with some real guidance.

I hesitate to attribute my difficulties here to the fact that I am working with Germans. Yes, Germans are a bit more closed-off and less friendly than Americans would be in the same situations, but my co-workers are kind people. While nobody I work with has gone out of their way to make me feel welcome, I truly like them. Perhaps a very small part of my difficulties is the German science and educational mentality (standing on your own two feet without much help from others), but I think that the majority of my problems here are a reflection of the way this high-profile research group functions. I had a heart-to-heart with a German labmate the other day who told me that his first year year at the Institute was miserable because he was having similar problems that I am having right now. He had been a good student at another university in Germany, but also had significantly more guidance and support from his superiors there than at the Institute. He empathized with me and told me he truly felt sorry for my circumstances, but also essentially told me that nobody here will give me the time of day.

I feel like I am lost and floundering. I am doing the best that I can, reading relevant literature and textbooks to supplement my understanding of the research field, but I feel like no matter what I do, I cannot keep my head above water. Being a highly-motivated person, I have never really found myself in this situation before. I have always worked as hard as I possibly can and I certainly don't expect to be given any favors or have someone tell me exactly what I need to be doing with every second of my time - I know that I have to take responsibility for myself here. I want to work hard and I want to learn - I'm just not quite sure how to do either.

In general, I work very long days, and am exhausted - mentally and physically - when I come home, and as a result am not doing enough of the things that I need to do to keep myself happy and functional - knitting, (pleasure) reading, studying German, exercising. I also feel like I am missing out on some of the cultural experiences of living abroad, which is partially due to the pressure I feel to be at work every single day and not take a long weekend to visit a friend once in a while as all of my other fellow Fulbrighters are doing right now (which would probably really help me to feel better) and the rest of it, I'm sure, is self-imposed and the result of this self-deprecating rut I've found myself in (and the weather ;)).

Regardless of how this year plays out, I know that I will be amazingly well-prepared for graduate school next year. I will know how to work independetly in an organic synthesis lab, and I will know a lot more about the field of bio-conjugate chemistry. I will know what it means to synthesize and characterize molecules that I've only previously considered hypothetically and I will understand what it means to held accountable for my scientific work and ideas, just like I will be in graduate school. This will be an invaluble experience for me professionally no matter what - but at what personal expense?