20080115

The beginning of structures

Today began with two classes, ten minutes apart, on plant biochemistry and crop ecology, respectively, both of which covered photosynthesis. That was three hours of photosynthesis, which is a lot of repetitive information if you happen to be a plant biology major. However, since there are only about twenty of us in existence here, the classes are mostly targeted toward molecular bio majors and crop science & management majors. We plant people are sort of tagging along, regardless of what the classes may be listed under.

Our ecology professor spent a few minutes this morning informing us that no, he's not trying to be abusive, he's trying to be challenging, really. I forgive him for problem set #2, but that's mostly because he calls Avogadro's number "avocado's number" and sings "rubisco" as a jingle.

I started two pots of chives in my room, which I've decided to take one picture every week of, as a sort of visual progress report.

Made more solvent-buffer type things today, and autoclaved stuff (Clare was right, you really do autoclave practically EVERYTHING that's autoclave-safe). Now must go back to lab notebook, any one of them, but before I do I'd like to share this poem I found, called "The Rose Family" (Rosaceae), by Robert Frost (and you can't NOT like a poet who's got his plants right):

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only know
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose.

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