I Want To Do Something That Matters

Yesterday, I woke up at 5: 30 am.

I took a shower, I got dressed, I had breakfast, I came to the University to teach a class at 8: 00 am. It was cold and I just had a thin sweater. 

I spoke about resilience, about a couple of soccer players who grew up in pretty different environments and became so important to their countries –one of them won an U-17 World Cup and played with Ronaldinho and Messi in Barcelona; the other one was a victim of the War of the Balkans, won the most important award a soccer player can receive in Europe and the last year led his national team to the final match of the World Cup– and that, currently, are on very distinct situations.

One of my pupils asked if adversity is a necessary condition for resilience. 
A couple of students spoke and clarified the point. 
I didn't know they were so informed about this topic.
It was a nice surprise. 

I spoke about a couple of books of war and about aggression and violence in modern society.
I wanted to be clear: Thomas Hobbes wasn't wrong at all. 

We (human beings) are violent. Despite we don't own letal weapons, we're able to create letal weapons. In comparison to another animals, we don't have a biological restriction to kill another human and so we kill another humans just for pleasure or just to steal something that the other human owns and that we desire so badly.

I spoke about plagiarism and social networks and the dilemma nature versus nurture. 

It was a class of History of Psychology. 
We're reviewing British empiricists and nativists such as Descartes and Leibniz.

Before the class, I read a few pages of a few books and papers I have on stand by, I qualified some examinations of Statistics and I wrote some notes for another class.

At 11: 00 am I left the office and moved to an appointment. 
My boss and I had an academic meeting at Mexico City. 

We took the University transportation –it was a black Jeep with polarized glasses, very new and comfortable– at 11: 40 am and we moved to the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía. 

We have an academic collaboration with a couple of researchers in there. 
They own a San Diego Instruments' apparatus that we need so bad. 

We had this meeting at 13: 15 pm. 
It lasted an hour, or so. 
They even spoke about politics and the bad things scientists of the institute are dealing with due to this new government. 

I particularly didn't like the meeting at all.
I felt these researchers were sort of arrogant and that they saw me as a PhD student with just one paper and no experience at all. 
It's really though.
You just can't speak about all the things you have done... when you first meet someone. 
You need to be patient. 
Sooner or later, things will fall apart. 

If they knew half of the things I've done –exclusively regarding my academic career–, maybe, they would change their attitude. Maybe they would be the same.  
Though I'm not pretty sure if I want to be recognized by them, it's annoying. 
It sucks. It's a pretty common issue on academy. 
You have to deal with someone else's ego all the time.
It's obvious why people see us as a team of cocky and hurtful guys.  

Then we moved to the other point of the city, to UAM-Xochimilco. 

At 15: 30 pm, my boss had another appointment there. 

After his meeting, he introduced me to the responsible of the bioterium.
She reminded me so bad to someone I have recently met. 
They basically spoke of another issue I have to deal with. 
We have another collaboration with researchers of UAM-Xochimilco.
We have a prenatal immune activation model with rodents. 

They also spoke about the bad things scientists of UAM –including myself– are dealing with due to this new government. 
It seems that each time I'm finally about to get an academic tenure track position, things fall apart. (Should I devote myself to another activity?) 

As my boss went to his appointment, I walked around the University.
It's awesome. It's really an enormous University. 
I understood why it is so desired by academic mobs. 
On the last strike, UAM–Xochimilco was a big issue.
Everyone seemed to be interested on employing it as a weapon of power. 
I even found a building that has appeared in many of my dreams. 
It was the first time I ever saw it. 

This meeting lasted half an hour and my boss had told me that it would last an hour and a half. 
As soon as this meeting ended, he called me on the phone, but my phone had no battery, so I arrived at 16: 45 pm. 

We moved to Lerma again.

Our driver took the Second Floor of Periférico. 
It was my first time, too. 
The city looked fantastic. 
It even looked like another city of another country.

We arrived to Lerma at 18: 00 pm.
I arrived home at 19: 00 pm.
I'm still so tired. 
I still don't get used to this rhythm. 
I want to do something that matters.
I need to write a lot more.  

I Want To Do Something That Matters

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

Almost fifteen years ago, I started to teach at undergraduate level. 

One of the reviewers of my thesis was a young researcher.  

He studied timing on rodents. 
I had just written a thesis about numerical competence on pigeons. 

At the end of the revision process, I told him that I was interested on teaching and he got me an interview on a private University. 

It was one of the most expensive in the country, or they said so. 

When I went to the interview, the appearance of the school surprised me. 
It seemed really modern. It seemed a first world school.

Everything looked so new and clean.  

http://www.marca.com/

I began three months later.
I had an awful schedule and a boring topic. 
Nevertheless, the experience was the best I could ever have. 

A few of my pupils were really concerned in learning.  

Since it was the first time I was completely responsible for a full course, I must have been a lousy teacher. 

Two years later, I started to teach at UNAM. 
I worked there for four years. 

On the last years of my postgraduate studies, I was so stressed that I did not enjoy teaching and then I quit. 

The relationship with my PhD advisor was so unpleasant at that time.

I had even found a way to teach my classes when it was lunchtime at the lab, to avoid any kind of conflict between us.

Sadly, it didn't work. 

He was not personally mad with me, but in general. 

The lab was full of undergraduate students. Most of them were apathetic and lazy. 

He treated me like if I were one of them. 

One day I got sick and I told him that I would not go to work. 

Unfortunately, that day none of the lazy undergrads was in the lab at that time. 

He got furious and wrote an impulsive e-mail. 

He wrote the worst things he thought about each one in the lab. 

In my case, he wrote that I had no ideas and that I just followed his instructions. 

He sent that e-mail to all of us. 

I still conserve it. 

Obviously, it hit me. 
Specially 'cause he made it public. 

I trusted him and he trusted me –I was the one who took charge of his classes when he couldn't do it–, but it was completely disappointing. 

Maybe I was apathetic and lazy, too. 

However, everybody is able to check my track record at his lab and draw their own conclusions.  

The last paper I published with him was my idea, but he refused to accept it. 

It looks like he just wanted to show how powerful he was.
Also, the most important issue above all: he never get wrong. 
Specially when it's about judging people. 

He recently published a review including part of the data of my published papers.

Not only he did not include me as a co-author –he could ask me to write the corresponding section of the paper or to redo the plots, or whatever–, but he did not even put me on the acknowledgements of the review. 

On each one of my papers he put people who actually did not collaborate at all.  

2011 SfN Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA

I was so stupid. 

I should have leave his lab sooner than I did. 

I quit as a professor. 
I should never have given up.

I would have almost fifteen years teaching at UNAM. 

I became SNI soon after I received my PhD and I had a post-doc position for three years at UAM-Iztapalapa on which I acquired several abilities related to training of human resources and to Grant's writing.

I've been teaching on a regular basis, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. 

I also have been invited to speak about some research topics on diverse academic forums. 

I was advisor of a graduate student and also co-advisor of a postgraduate student. 

I am about to send the response to the reviewers' comments to my last research paper. 

Nevertheless, what I do is barely attractive to society. 

September 19th earthquake' damaged an important research building in the institution I have been working in the last four years.  

Obviously, it worsened my chances to find a researcher position there.  

A month ago or so, I sent my CV and my independent research plans to compete for a researcher position in a provincial University. 

A colleague told me about this opportunity.
A week later, he also told me that I had just passed the first candidate filter.

This researcher position was offered by an institution interested in conducting studies on addiction to drugs of abuse. 

They wanted to have evidence to apply it on public health policies. 

They expected from the young researcher all the abilities I had acquired as a post-doc. 
This opportunity sounded like real fun. 

Besides, my postgraduate studies were conducted in a lab focused on cannabinoids and I have an expertise on behavioral tests employed to evaluate diverse stages of addiction on murine models.

My profile could be of interest for the institution.  

Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago, while I was watching a FIFA World Cup game between Brazil and Belgium, I received an e-mail from this institution. 

I was so nervous.

Then I started to read: 

"We're sorry to inform you..."

It seems the epithet of my academic life. 

I asked them what had been exactly wrong with me. 

They told me that they didn't have the necessary resources to support my research purpose and that they were looking for a social researcher.

My profile was too oriented to basic research. 

In other words, they wanted a profound thinker rather than an expert on behavior and basic research. 

It was kind of weird, 'cause on the announcement of the vacant they asked for an expert on evaluating the effects of drugs on health. 

What the hell does that mean? 
Were they just too polite to me?
Was my PhD advisor right about me?
Am I an average untalented researcher?

I hate my situation. 

They say it cannot rain all the time.

However, this has been the second bad news I have received in the last month. 

At this rate, the best news I will have is that I can have a child. 

Perhaps I am overreacting.

I guess I should have learned how to fix cellphones and cars. 

I am a disaster. 

I fail over and over again. 

https://libero.pe/rusia-2018/

http://grantland.com/features/beck-phases-out/

I'm A Loser Baby, So Why Don't You Kill Me

Un ' Estate Italiana

Gus was my friend. He was older than me. 
I was on the last year of elementary school and he was in junior high. 
Everyday, after school, we used to hang out.
Basically we just rode our bikes here and there. 

Sometimes we even played soccer. 
There was some sort of soccer fever in our neighborhood. 

One day, we rode our bikes as usual, but Gus asked me to follow him to another neighborhood. 

It was July. 

A few hours earlier, Italy and Argentina had played at Stadio San Paolo, in Naples. On the previous years, Diego Armando Maradona had managed to get Naples soccer team' to win important tournaments in Europe.

He was an idol and had a lot of fans.
Some journalists believed that Italian fans would support Argentina, due to the devotion that some of them professed to Maradona. 

Nonetheless, tifosi supported their national team and booed and insulted the South Americans from the beginning of the match. 

Maradona had been the best player of the previous World Cup in Mexico 1986, but he was injured and his national team was a disaster and depended on his geniality. 

On the round of 16, in Turin, against the powerful Brazilian team -one of the favorites to win Italia 1990 World Cup- Diego appeared out of nowhere and dribbled almost the entire rivals midfielders' and then gave a pass to Paul Caniggia, leaving him alone in front of Claudio Taffarel. 

Caniggia took advantage of his position and scored the only goal of the match.  

On the round of 8, in Florence, Diego had failed a penalty kick against Yugoslavia, but Argentina -with an astonishing performance of Goicoechea- had made up to the semifinals.

In the beginning of the championship, Gus supported Brazilians, but he was so impressed by the geniality of Diego, that he supported Argentina on that semifinal match in Naples. 

We couldn't believe that Argentina had defeated Italy. 

Though Toto Schillaci scored first, PaulCaniggia tied the game and scored the first goal that Walter Zenga received in the entire tournament.  

We arrived to a fancy neighborhood. 
We stopped in front of an old house. 
He knocked the door and a bearded guy opened it for us. 

The living room was a disaster. 
It was full of drunk people and it smelled so bad. 

There were 10 guys or so, around a table.
They were older than us and the air was so filthy.  
They were dumbfounded.

Then she appeared. 

Her name was Toby. 

She was a gorgeous woman. 

Though she was clearly stoned, she could barely walk and her eyes couldn't stay quiet, she told us the price of the stash. 

Even though it seemed a very expensive deal, Gus agreed and Toby had no problems to fix and to sold us a joint.

We left the house and rode our bikes to his house. 
His dad had died when he was a child and his mom worked at a furniture store all day long. 

He turned on the TV and lighted the join. 

He smoked desperately. Later he coughed.

As the penetrating aroma of the burned grass flooded the living room, a sports' TV program was about to commence. 

The opening song was this song. 

Whenever I smell the penetrating aroma of the burned grass, for a second I think of Gus and Diego Maradona. 

tribunero.com

[Un ' Estate Italiana-Gianna Nannini & Edoardo Bennato]