pwnguin, thanks for that link. I have thought about Mills's post-bac in the past, and am curious about other similar programs.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:04 AM on April 14, 2013

If I were you, I would use a softsided duffel bag (easier to squeeze into overhead bins) and carry it on.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 4:15 PM on March 18, 2013

Seconding ZocDoc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 9:51 PM on March 9, 2013

Pat Barker's Regeneration (it's a trilogy; the first book has this quality most strongly, I think). Historical fiction about a doctor and his patients.

"Lunch and Other Obscenities", a really wonderful Star Trek fanfic by Rheanna, about people coming to understand each other despite their differences.

Nearly everything by speculative fiction and historical fiction author Zen Cho, such as her... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 11:02 AM on February 15, 2013

Punctuality is huge, and is a subset of reliability. People who keep their word, without anyone needing to remind them, seem far more mature than those who don't.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:59 PM on February 3, 2013

You mention that you find nonfiction books dull; how have you been learning your science, including recent science history? Documentaries, courses, word-of-mouth, blogs, or some other method? It could be that what you dislike is the book medium and you'd do better with, for example, the History of Rome podcast, the Crooked Timber blog, documentaries like Helvetica, clicking around Wikipedia, and lectures at your local college or at spaces like The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 9:28 AM on December 19, 2012

If you're looking for help with your more informal, off-the-cuff speaking and writing, chat channels might be better.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 8:50 AM on December 19, 2012

More and more jobs are completely fine with telecommuting. If you're in the same country as your employer, in some fields, you're unusual. Can you try remote work?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 8:49 AM on December 19, 2012

Check out Dreamwidth which actively encourages community feedback on site structure, features, etc. I'm linking to the dw-news community which has the site staff posting DW news and asking for comments.

Also check out how Wikimedia made its five-year strategic plan as a collaborative community effort (the process "lasted a full year and resulted in 1,470 content pages on the wiki").... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 3:37 PM on October 13, 2012

If you want more experience working with big data, you can get it without having to do it for a job -- OpenStreetMap, Open Knowledge Foundation, Wikimedia, and other open data sources are available, and Hadoop and other bigdata tools are open source.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 3:25 PM on October 8, 2012

How can I productively network with alumni contacts (at alumni functions, etc.) as my career trajectory starts to depart from theirs.

You could start a volunteer project and ask your fellow alumni to help out. I find that making/doing stuff with other people makes more useful ties and can turn into new opportunities. What are your favorite open datasets? (Plug.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 2:02 PM on October 1, 2012

Other people's advice sounds good!

If there is any company gossip you have ever been curious about (especially regarding harassment, and people whose personal problems get in the way of their work and yours), and you are good at subtlety, see if you can get the conversation in that neighborhood. Or wait to have that conversation until she's no longer at the company.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 1:45 PM on October 1, 2012

Michele, how many people have you followed? Also, have you tried saying anything ("tweeting")?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 11:48 AM on September 21, 2012

One wonderful thing about hanging out in female-friendly online spaces is that we barely ever know what our friends look like. Dreamwidth is great for this, and most people who hang out there are feminists. Maybe you should blog, read blogs, and feel more supported that way.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:56 AM on August 29, 2012

oDesk?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 11:42 AM on August 27, 2012

Speaking of open source projects: OpenHatch can help you look for design-related problems to work on, to build your portfolio and get critique from others in the community. Example.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:32 AM on August 27, 2012 marked best answer

Raidallinen, here's a short guide to quickly skimming the publicly available information about an open source project to see how active it is and whether it's amenable to new volunteers.

I work on bringing new volunteers into Wikimedia technical projects, and you might be interested in helping bring the new Wikidata project to fruition (background on Wikidata). This is only indirectly related to the underlying science, but given how many scientists end up referring to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:30 PM on August 20, 2012 marked best answer

"The Thing With Feathers" (Colbert Report).

"Theories About Nuclear Winter" (Calvin & Hobbes) - click through to Part II at the end.

"Amends, or, Truth and Reconciliation" (Harry Potter).

My recs on Archive Of Our Own. Especially "Lunch and Other Obscenities" as recommended above, and "Sisters of Bilhah"... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:58 PM on July 9, 2012

Alexandra Erin - self-publishing fantasy author.

Candlemark & Gleam - small press that focuses on e-publishing.

"Charitable Getting" and other e-published books by Sam Starbuck.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:17 PM on July 3, 2012

Francie Larrieu Smith.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 1:34 PM on June 16, 2012

I run a fair number of workshops and events. Hope this isn't condescending.

Define your goals really clearly and specifically, and then do as much preparation and structure as necessary to achieve those goals. The trick here is to just skip things that you might assume are necessary. You might not need any presentations at all, or discussions, or trainings, depending on your goals.

Example -- lessons learned by OpenHatch, which puts on lots of... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 11:21 PM on June 15, 2012

Thank you for posting this question, and thanks to everyone for the answers. I was constantly told, over and over, by my family, that I had "no common sense," and remembering that angers me to this day. I now believe there is no such thing as "common sense" and that anyone saying "oh that's just common sense" or "you/s/he has no common sense" is a thoughtless jerk. It takes active learning and training to get any skill other than sucking at a nipple.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:38 AM on June 8, 2012 marked best answer

I sit reminded and corrected!
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 4:50 AM on June 10, 2012

The hymn Finlandia, also known as "This Is My Song".
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:38 PM on May 24, 2012

Tips for you.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:35 PM on May 24, 2012

can I do this?

Yes.

taking 6 years to finish a BS degree that I don't even know if I can complete just feels embarrassing

I know that, from your perspective right now, it feels embarrassing. But think about it this way: when future employers look at your resume, you can just put the end date on there -- "graduated 201x" -- and they won't know or care about how long you took to get there.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 5:32 PM on May 24, 2012

Do you have a mentor, or someone else you trust to check in with you for 15 minutes a week? That kind of regular one-on-one appointment helps you set your goals for what's really important (not just urgent, but important) for you to focus on and get done.

Have a private accountability blog that you only share with that mentor or a few trusted friends, and every day, take 10 minutes to post:

* what you did the previous day
* what you... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 8:34 AM on May 17, 2012

I greatly appreciate all your answers.

The more I thought about buying a smartphone the more my sentimental side rose up in protest against buying an Android device, and I used to have a Nokia N900 so I'm somewhat familiar with that ecology and (as I realized) sentimentally attached to the Maemo legacy. So I got a Nokia N9. Maybe I'll regret it and get a WebOS or Android device if it doesn't work out for me.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 8:02 AM on May 17, 2012

Tact filter?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:13 AM on May 17, 2012

By any chance, are you doing Hacker School?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 1:23 PM on May 14, 2012

Alexandra Erin is doing online fiction - writes a lot of ongoing serial fiction, and gets enough donors and merch-buyers to make a living.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 10:35 PM on May 13, 2012 marked best answer

I'm at the Wikimedia Foundation (hiring), and I came into it from a few years working and volunteering in open source software. I'm the community manager on the engineering side. I help volunteers learn and grow, I contribute to freely-licensed software that anyone can reuse and contribute to, I help nurture the development community that makes the software platform for Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, and thus I'm helping empower people all over the world with information.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 10:20 PM on May 13, 2012

I meant to move Eyebeam into the not-hiring-right-now list, whoops.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 10:32 PM on May 13, 2012

Have you ever managed other people? You can get experience in management in volunteer projects and those skills do transfer (not 100%, but substantially) to the workplace.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:12 AM on February 2, 2012 marked best answer

Tally Hall. "Good Day", "Turn the Lights Off", "Cannibal" and "Never Meant to Know".
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 7:44 AM on December 24, 2011

Check out oDesk and similar sites to get small international gigs.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 11:55 AM on October 5, 2011

"And Then We Shot The Ox"
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:31 AM on September 27, 2011

Previously: "What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?" I've read & enjoyed several books from that thread.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:52 AM on September 24, 2011

The protagonists of Pat Barker's Regeneration, Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet, Cat Rambo's "Magnificent Pigs", Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 4:22 PM on September 22, 2011

For future reference: your insurance card may have on it a phone number for a 24-hour advice nurse. If so, keep that in mind for the next time you're dithering on whether to go to the emergency room, or otherwise trying to figure out how urgent your medical need is. The advice nurse is trained in helping stressed-out people make that very decision.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 12:39 PM on September 18, 2011

I especially like David Edgar's play "Continental Divide" (actually two plays, "Daughters of the Revolution" and "Mothers Against").
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:28 PM on September 17, 2011

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a political scifi trilogy that I haven't read but that sounds good and plausible:

Forty Signs Of Rain
Fifty Degrees Below
Sixty Days And Counting
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 12:35 PM on September 18, 2011

Can you move somewhere where EMTs make enough money to live on?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 2:13 PM on September 13, 2011

When I run across an interesting article, sometimes I send a link to a few old colleagues or acquaintances that it reminds me of. "This reminded me of you because [legitimate reason]" never goes awry.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:27 AM on September 13, 2011

I was often into guys who hadn't dated at all. I would say straight out, "I'm attracted to you!" and sometimes I got rejected and sometimes it led someplace more interesting. Rejection is not death, and embarrassment is not death.

Some additional experiences.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:09 PM on August 28, 2011

Dessa, "Children's Work"?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:16 PM on August 12, 2011

wz: have you already run into the beginner's guide How To Read A Financial Report by John A. Tracy? Or are you past that level?
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 6:39 AM on July 20, 2011

Jacques Pepin's The Apprentice, Ben Franklin's autobiography, Lee Iacocca's autobiography, In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild, Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown, the She's Such A Geek... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 9:11 AM on July 18, 2011

Tina Fey's Bossypants.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 9:03 PM on July 18, 2011

Another account from an OWL educator.
posted to Ask Metafilter by brainwane at 9:13 AM on July 18, 2011