Today was my first day of what unfortunately is looking like a truth of this semester: not having lunch.
In fact, it is nearly 6 and I have not eaten yet today. As Winnie the Pooh would say, "there's a rumbly in my tumbly." And I won't be eating until the boyfriend gets out of his senior design project meeting. About which I'm not complaining, since I know he has done exactly no work on it yet this week and it is sort of required of him if he plans on graduating.
But my schedule this semester is not conducive to the standard 3 meals a day. Neither is my friends' latest habit of having movie nights that start at 10 PM. I like movies too, but I can't sleep through my morning classes because Braveheart ended at 2 AM.
Anyway, I have my first major report due in G&P lab, which has to be written in the format of an article for the Journal of Bacteriology. Yikes. Bookmarked that webpage, it's a new BFF. Fortunately all lab reports have rewrites, which will be essential for me, as I've never written a science journal article before. And I'm going to have to magically understand microbial metabolism overnight, because I can't explain the results right now.
Research is going slightly better. We have weekly group meetings on Fridays, and then there's a mini-group meeting for me and this kid in Computer Science (hereafter referred to as CS Guy) on Tuesdays. Except the first one was today due to a scheduling error. Basically, I'm going to start out annotating phylogenetic trees until CS Guy has written a PERL script that will get through GenBank and BLAST searches faster. Oh and we have about 50 pages of reading on nicotine metabolism that our director wants us to understand backwards and forwards. A preliminary glance at it seems reasonable, a lot of organic chemistry and gene regulation, but I have the biology background for this. CS Guy hasn't had biology since the 9th grade. It's gonna be fun.
Well, that's all for now because my room is cold and I need to read for class.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Week 1- Homework, ghost movies, and labs, oh my!
Oh School.
I'm very obviously procrastinating on homework at the moment (2 papers, nearly 300 pages of reading, 2 pre-labs, and a survey that VT Survey refuses to let me access) and I've got a sore throat, so let's recap on the week before I get dressed and hit the books. Man I wish the library opened before noon on Sundays.
Monday was a day off from school, so I spent it attending meetings, stalking the necessary people to sign my undergraduate research form (adviser, dept. head of Biology, academic dean of the College of Science, etc), and relishing the last few hours without work. Tuesday I was off and running, with Microbial Physiology, Gender in 20th C. Africa, and Physics II, followed by dinner on-campus with the boyfriend, one of his roommates and the roommate's girlfriend. Wednesday was the long day, with 3+ hour sessions each of The Great Depression and Microbial Genetics and Physiology Lab (aka Class Lab), and I made the mistake of taking cold medicine in the morning and nearly passing out in Depression. Decided I would not be re-dosing for lab, as sleepy Beth + open flames is surely a recipe for disaster. As it is, I've already burned myself in that lab. Thursday was the same as Tuesday, but managed to grab lunch with the evil twin as Physics II lab doesn't start until the second week, and as soon as I got out of Physics, I went home, jotted a post-it of my homework, and officially called it a week.
I'm becoming a bit of a Guillermo del Toro fan. I've always liked Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, and this weekend I watched The Orphanage and The Devil's Backbone with the boyfriend, both of which are excellent movies. While The Orphanage is trippy in the same way as Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone was a pretty straight-forward ghost story. Also, after seeing The Unborn last week, The Orphanage was reminding me of that a little as well.
Well, that's all for the moment. Gotta get dressed and start on that reading, so I can write the papers...and everything else.
I'm very obviously procrastinating on homework at the moment (2 papers, nearly 300 pages of reading, 2 pre-labs, and a survey that VT Survey refuses to let me access) and I've got a sore throat, so let's recap on the week before I get dressed and hit the books. Man I wish the library opened before noon on Sundays.
Monday was a day off from school, so I spent it attending meetings, stalking the necessary people to sign my undergraduate research form (adviser, dept. head of Biology, academic dean of the College of Science, etc), and relishing the last few hours without work. Tuesday I was off and running, with Microbial Physiology, Gender in 20th C. Africa, and Physics II, followed by dinner on-campus with the boyfriend, one of his roommates and the roommate's girlfriend. Wednesday was the long day, with 3+ hour sessions each of The Great Depression and Microbial Genetics and Physiology Lab (aka Class Lab), and I made the mistake of taking cold medicine in the morning and nearly passing out in Depression. Decided I would not be re-dosing for lab, as sleepy Beth + open flames is surely a recipe for disaster. As it is, I've already burned myself in that lab. Thursday was the same as Tuesday, but managed to grab lunch with the evil twin as Physics II lab doesn't start until the second week, and as soon as I got out of Physics, I went home, jotted a post-it of my homework, and officially called it a week.
I'm becoming a bit of a Guillermo del Toro fan. I've always liked Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth, and this weekend I watched The Orphanage and The Devil's Backbone with the boyfriend, both of which are excellent movies. While The Orphanage is trippy in the same way as Pan's Labyrinth, The Devil's Backbone was a pretty straight-forward ghost story. Also, after seeing The Unborn last week, The Orphanage was reminding me of that a little as well.
Well, that's all for the moment. Gotta get dressed and start on that reading, so I can write the papers...and everything else.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
So I Guess I Should Introduce This
So I've finally succeeded in something I've been threatening to do for the entirety of college: have a semester where I spend so much time in the lab that no one will ever see me.
I've already got mixed feelings about this. I'm excited to be in the labs, one for a class, the other for research, but I know both are going to consume copious amounts of time. Time that recently has been spent playing Guitar Hero, watching Law and Order, Scrubs, and The Office, denying that many of my friends will be graduating this semester, and the occasional drinking.
So about my labs. They will be known, until I get bored of code-naming everything, as Class Lab and Research Lab. Class Lab is a 3-credit, writing intensive, likely-to-become-7-hours-a-week-nightmare, if only because I have a nagging fear that I am not cutthroat enough to be a research kid in a room full of pre-meds. It will be covering molecular and microbiology techniques and we'll see how I feel about my lab group on Wednesday.
Research Lab...well, I recently just got into it, and odds are I'll be sharing all the boring details with you (not boring to me, but probably dull as paint to people who aren't into systematics or genetics). Basically, I e-mailed Dr. J a month ago, met with him last week, got the offer to work in it yesterday, and will hopefully be meeting with him Monday.
Interspersed with Lab Talk will probably be occasional mention of my life outside the lab -- other classes, friends/boyfriend stuff, the news, maybe touch on the roommate issues. Who knows. I guess I'll write as I feel like writing, and we'll let it go from there.
I've already got mixed feelings about this. I'm excited to be in the labs, one for a class, the other for research, but I know both are going to consume copious amounts of time. Time that recently has been spent playing Guitar Hero, watching Law and Order, Scrubs, and The Office, denying that many of my friends will be graduating this semester, and the occasional drinking.
So about my labs. They will be known, until I get bored of code-naming everything, as Class Lab and Research Lab. Class Lab is a 3-credit, writing intensive, likely-to-become-7-hours-a-week-nightmare, if only because I have a nagging fear that I am not cutthroat enough to be a research kid in a room full of pre-meds. It will be covering molecular and microbiology techniques and we'll see how I feel about my lab group on Wednesday.
Research Lab...well, I recently just got into it, and odds are I'll be sharing all the boring details with you (not boring to me, but probably dull as paint to people who aren't into systematics or genetics). Basically, I e-mailed Dr. J a month ago, met with him last week, got the offer to work in it yesterday, and will hopefully be meeting with him Monday.
Interspersed with Lab Talk will probably be occasional mention of my life outside the lab -- other classes, friends/boyfriend stuff, the news, maybe touch on the roommate issues. Who knows. I guess I'll write as I feel like writing, and we'll let it go from there.
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