This Is Nothing

Insane Graduate School Edition

Monday, January 20, 2003

No Vacation, but what are you gonna do?

Ho-hum-ho-hum. Another day spent getting work done, of sorts. Wrote a response paper concerning ethics in animal research--hah, I scoff at your request for a two-paragraph, one-page response. I'm so much more hardcore than that, yo. Then discovered an old skeleton of a story I wrote last year which was a poor D&D metaphor for my situation. But it's really entertaining. I always like when I find something I wrote that I forgot I wrote. It's pretty close to an out-of-body experience. Bet you all can't guess what class and race I'd make you! Eh, you don't want to know. But tinkered with it some more, thinking maybe someday it would be an actual story worth sharing with someone. I doubt that very much though. Oh well! In the process of finding a good name for my character, I happened upon a really cool name generator

So, having taken the quizzes, I know that if I lived in Middle Earth I'd be:
Annúnhiriel who lives in Rivendell--although I'm most like Gandalf and I'm supposed to be a "Annoying Dunlending"

Oh, pray for me. Tomorrow I meet with Prudy to talk about the results of my research at Hawaii. It's rather tricky, because most of my time was spent constructing mutants, and I only got to do two actual colonization assays with them. And to top it off, none of MY mutants had the precise mutation in their amino acid biosynthetic pathway--but the lady I was working with did get one. I helped her with that one too, but it would've been alot cooler if it had been my personal mutants that I carried from start to finish. Oh well, it was just the luck of the draw. Mutations, even when induced, still happen mostly by chance, and I was lucky overall to have gotten as far as I did. But like I said, pray for me.

I'm not REALLY worried, because I'm just meeting with Prudy to discuss these results and figure out what I should focus on. I'd like to draw parallels between the successful mutant that I helped with and my personal mutant that looked like the right thing, but after a difficult procedure (that I performed) proved not to be correct. That way even though I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, I did see first-hand the importance of confirming your results in more than one fashion, to be sure. And I still made mutants, they just weren't amino acid auxotrophs (unable to make a specific amino acid). Ok, enough of this. I've just got to reassure myself. Mainly it just stresses me out a bit, because it's one more thing I've gotta do. On top of physics problems, and reading for two other classes.

Finally, I have to dissect a sheep's brain in lab tomorrow. I wish I was excited about it. But I just don't care much about anatomy. I like things that most people can't see, I like chemical reactions and shit. Hence my wanting to be a microbiologist, and not a macro-biologist or a doctor or something. Man. . .

Oh! and more finally, I watched "High Fidelity" again tonight, on Comedy Central. I've gotta re-assert what a great movie this is, although I realized--and this is a typical notsuprising observation--that the book (by Nick Hornsby) is much better than the movie. But I find the whole movie is really enjoyable, especially if you've been in any number of relationships. And it's worth it to see John Cusack flip out on several occasions, and once again be in the rain. And holy crap, what a great message for a relationship movie: that (oh man this is starting to sound old) other people will always be attractive, and you could live your whole life jumping from stone to stone, but in the end it's all the same thing. They all start off fascinating and wonderful, since you barely know eachother, and compared to the problems, the plateaus, the challenges of a serious relationship, it can seem so preferrable. Duh, everyone knows that part. But the thing is, eventually, when you get past the excitement, you're left going "who the heck is this person and what am I doing with them?" and then you leave again. But sometimes, you meet someone who's still so good even after the new-ness wears away. And baby, that's a keeper. Everyone starts off looking shiny and new, so don't feel bad and don't let it deceive you. In the end, who would you rather be with? This book/movie changed my freaking life. It's such a freeing concept. Although I'm still working on it, because I continue to have this fear of becoming boring, running out of things to talk about. But then again, who doesn't?