Weekends

It's been a lovelier weekend than I could have anticipated. Friday night was 80's night at the Cardinal, and Saturday night was dancing at the UWMBDA spring kick-off dance. It's just so amazing to go the UWMBDA events, because there are all levels of ballroom dancin' skill, from people just doing the same step over and over again across the floor, to the those in the center of the room looping and swinging and dipping all over the place. It felt like being in one of the final dance scenes in a teen movie, where everyone is having a grand time and the credits are rollin'.

So all in all, the evenings were full of dancing and merriment, the afternoons were spent in lab, and the mornings were spent lazily trying to get towards going to lab.

What's in store for this week? Getting ready for my journal club presentation, working on getting my mutant constructs done, and generally reading up for my classes. Here we go!

P.S. the Conan comicbook series continues to rock my face right off, as does season 3 of Buffy.

Feeling effective and affected

In my younger life, would I have ever imagined that my happiness could be so tightly bound to my effectiveness in lab? Probably not, but that is how it inevitably goes. I've been working at the computer for awhile to design little strands of DNA that I can use to amplify regions of a gene I'm interested in, as well as a gene for antibiotic resistance. Low and behold, I was able amplify DNA from these regions successfully on the first try, and now I'm doing a reaction to knit them all together. That will place a huge antibiotic resistance gene in the middle of this gene I want to mutate--totally freaking messing up its function when I stick it back into Vibrio fischeri's genome. That's the goal, and if I get my mutants I can finally do interesting work and know what strains I'm working with.

So to summarize, lab is going much better, and since I'm returning to molecular biology work, I can work much more independently and with confidence. It feels so good.

On the polar end of that good feeling is the looming dread of presenting a journal article at the departmental journal club on Friday. I wish our journal club wasn't open to everyone who wanted to wander in, because I may only have students for an audience, but probably since I'm the first presenter of the semester I'll get lots of professors as well. Maybe. It's just a little scary. But it's going to be good for me. For one thing, putting together presentations makes you a better speaker and hones your ability to communicate to the scientific community (text book reason). Also, it will be good for the lab to have someone do something for the department. Finally, it will let me get the last credit hour I need to complete my coursework, and I'll get it out of the way by Friday. Then I can focus on much more fun and less horrifying things. At least until March, when I have to present my research at the yearly Squid-Vibrio Pow-wow. However, it's much more fun when it's your project, and not some freaking paper. So yeah, I teeter between very nervous to just "it will be good to get it over with, and good for me, and I can totally handle it."

Scared!

If anything, this semester is impressing upon me how good a student I can actually be when I focus enough. I have no tests, but 3 presentations to give. Very teaching-oriented this semester. My lab kids are super awesome, even if I cringe every time I hear myself calling them kids. In all actuality, they're maybe 2 years younger, but they are getting younger and younger and my senior year seems farther and farther away. I am finding some success in just pretending I am the peer of everyone else here. Maybe I am. That's a hard call to make, but in a year I have changed in ways I would have never anticipated. I am not the best student here, but I belong here, and I can make it to PhD here. Just keep repeating that "Fear is the mind-killer" mantra . . .

Quick update!

I'm at lab right now, and should be going home to sleep, but I haven't posted in five million years and I always get bummed when other people stop posting, so here:

1) I reaffirm my assertion that graduate school isn't so much intellectually challenging as psychologically challenging. Every day is this battle to work hard for your work, even when it isn't freaking working. Blind ambition, sometimes

2) I am now officially a lab T.A., and it's for a lab section filled with senior-level microbiology folks, so my undergrads pretty much know what they're doing, but freak out about writing assignments.

3)My current ideal perfect day/vacation would involve a 1-day road trip that would lead to Florida. I'd drink tropical drinks in the evening, eat shrimp, and listen to the surf. My grandfather has a home in Clearwater, Fla. and in my small vacation I would stay there, and in the morning I would get up and drink coffee on the dock and smell the fishy sea, then go back to bed till noon. Then I would get on a bike and ride over to the beach, and spend the day lookin' for shells and maybe reading a book. The rest of my ideal day is too mushy for publishing online, so you can thank me later folks.

GOODNIGHT!
-Amber-

Repetitive-task and organizational fiesta

Man, titles don't get much sexier than THAT, do they? This has been the first full week back in Madison, and hasn't it been full of adventures?

On the workfront, well, I haven't made any good discoveries, other than I need to backtrack and check the guy's work I'm basing my work on more. A very classic grad-school lesson: always cover your ass before you start running around trying new stuff. I'm learning. I counted bacterial colonies on over 200 plates I think this week. This is an extremely boring task, but I am finishing up my work from before the break and getting it presentable, and that feels good.

On the financial front. . . oh jesus is this going to be a bad month. Christmas debt, 300 dollars of student fees, car insurance, rent, and who knows what else. Between just student fees and rent, we're talking about 700 dollars. I'm working on eating dinner at home more, and not buying random random stuff (except comic books, because I need SOMETHING to indulge in).

On a meteorological(?)front: Wisconsin has been host to not only a tremendous ice storm on New Year's Day, but also a significant amount of snowfall last night. Ironically, I feel like I get more exercise now in the winter than I did in the summer. I have a well-situated neighborhood, so that I can walk to get groceries or to Borders or to visit several friends in vicinity. Sure, I can't drive, and I had a hell of a time extracting my car from the plowed-in side of the street to move it to the other side so that the plowed-in side could be plowed-out, but really it is magical and sparkly and sunny during the days. Even if your face is frozen and wants to fall off.

On a personal front: I'm enjoying the calmness that is the time before classes start again. Everyone, though working hard, is coping and not going utterly batshit. That will change shortly. I will be TA-ing a lab course, and taking a difficult 3-credit class. And of course, it's Friday, so I hopefully will go out dancing with my crew. And maybe a spot of sleeping in on Saturday, if I'm good.

First Entry o' 2005

Well, I made it back from West Virginia alive, even after the near 12 hour drive from there back to Madison. I could go over all the details of x-mas break, but really that would be boring. It was the lowest stress christmas ever, and it was absolutely wonderful. My distinct status switch from engaged (last year) to disengaged (this year) was only mentioned once, and not even directly. For that I am eternally thankful. Furthermore, I recieved so many wonderful things this year that weren't necessarily monetary in value. Are you ready for my entry to continue to be boring in its happiness?

New Year's Eve was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC. I had the best and most social time, and tried out a punch recipe that involved 7-up and frozen juice and rasberry sherbet, and a huge amount of vodka. I have decided to call it "Fantastic Voyage" for lo you could not tast the alcohol and so indeed you were transported somewhere fantastic--and I can't resist a sci-fi reference with some microbiology in it. My friends and I had a really grand evening, although I didn't drink enough water before going to bed, and just watching the Tournament of Roses Parade the next morning made me ill. I haven't been THAT hungover in a long time, So that is how I start 2004.

Do I have any predictions or resolutions for 2004? Hell no. If I've learned anything, it is that you have no idea where life is taking you too far down the road ahead. I can expect that life might stay boring for a little while, because I am perhaps the happiest in my life that I have ever been. Seriously. It probably means disaster/drama is up ahead soon enough, but whatever. But yeah, I love my program, I love my lab, I love where I live, I love my friends, and I have a dreamy boy to hang out with, and a family that loves me, I am still relatively cute, and I have no student loans. I just have to try not to fuck any of these things up too much.

I guess that's about as close to a resolution as I'm going to get.