Into hiding. . .

Oh man, clearly I should have had better foresight to see what kind of week this was going to be. Basically, nothing happens until Thursday, but ON thursday I need to:

1. Be able to draw all nucleic acids and base pairs, all amino acids and side chains, have the single letter codes for both memorized . . . not to mention actually remember all the stuff from all my notes for my Sequence Analysis exam.

2. Have snacks and self prepared for a run-through of my commitee meeting talk with the folks from my lab. This has the benefit of making me be somewhat ready a week and a day in advance of the real thing, and involves really awesome friendly lab folk. However, combine this with #1 task and. . .

3. Need to get a final copy of my research proposal (really only 1.5 pages single spaced to brief my committee about my project before they come see my actual presentation) done and off to my committee by Friday.

Overall, I have an exam, a presentation, and a writing assignment all done by the end of the week, and to prioritize among them is difficult.

And to top it all off, my sinuses seem very upset by the recent change to dry weather.

HOWEVER! I'm really excited about my project. I'm really excited to get to pick the brains of my committee about what classes to take, who my fifth member of the committee should be, and generally get their insights into my project and maybe where I can take it. I need to cut out SO much of the presentation--it could easily be a half an hour, and it really should be more like 20 minutes. I'm thinking lots of supplemental slides at the end so if people have questions, I will have the extra slides ready so as to be awesome. I am learning the art of presenting only a top fraction of what I know, so that I have alot left that I know and have ready to tell them when they ask.

I swear I'm not nervous!

It is amazing that even though I'm worried about not being prepared, on some level I am accepting the fact that I can't know everything about my project yet. I've been thinking about it, but if I knew everything and had a handle on everything, why would I need several years of rsearch and coursework? I AM LEARNING. THERE ARE THINGS I DO NOT KNOW.

Anyway, I'm nervous, and likely about to go down into some serious work without fun. I will emerge on Friday at some point, and the weekend should actually be really nice. I need to read papers and settle some questions about my presentation, and practice throughout next week, but by then it should be awesome. OK! off I go . . .