Am taking a short break from the middle of putting everything to order (e.g. water & put plants somewhere darker, tossing out perishables from fridge) before flying out early this afternoon. Week has been intense -- started training undergrad on two different tasks and so set her up with hopefully enough to keep her occupied for the coming week, gave my committee presentation again after receiving email notice on Monday that the PI in question missed it because his calendar program failed to sync between computers and thus obtained his signature yesterday. I have, as well, put together the first draft of my training grant application proposal (finished @ 6:13pm last night), which I left a printed out copy with my fully-signed spring evaluation in the mailbox outside of my thesis advisor's office (since he has to look through both)as well as sent a digital form of with all my various questions and comments attached along-side. This is on top of running experiments and trying to finish all the last minute little things for my little trip, such such getting new bus pass (current one expires Jun. 30th, new bus pass is issued in the campus office only, I need to take the bus to get to campus) and transferring additional credits to account, since I'll apparently be missing the end of the month billing and who knows what I'll need while in another country.
So, in as far as I am able to given the circumstances, everything is wrapped up. The experiments are all halted -- cells cryo-protected and frozen, mice taken care of until Jul. 5th (no, seriously, the first thing I will need to do upon returning to lab is wean mice), the bills all more or less paid, paperworks and forms submitted at the last hour...
...and now I shall return to the cleaning and packing. I will be flying back evening of Jul. 4th. Annie will have her lab top. We will have internet at some point. However, outside of email checks, all the posts and photos will have to wait until I return, I'm afraid.
Cheers!
20110624
20110618
Maybe it's logistics?
Greece in less than a week! The thought itself in exciting (and now that the date is fast approaching, a little scary-- but there's a first time for everything) enough that I'm wondering how I will be able to sleep the night before. Which reminds me to mention that I have discovered doxylamine succinate, which is effective but requires me to time it better so I don't end up drowsy until 10am the next day.
So right: this weekend? Packing. And chores. Everything must be done to cover this week and the next two upcoming weeks. Am ditching class right now to blog about it, which is extremely inefficient of me but if I don't blog now I will forget later, as there's just too much going on. I also mostly failed at Greek, given that I may be done with the beginner level by the time of departure by my grasp of declensions is atrocious and I have no idea what to do with my pronunciation. Conclusion: learning a language without a textbook is difficult, though not impossible.
My spring eval was sent back to me via the program office on the account that I need signature from all the members of my committee, including the one that I been currently emailing and failing to hear back from. (What do you think? Is it time to start committing academic stalking yet or should I give him a few more weeks until the Greece thing is over and he's not expecting? Am I more likely to get a response if I manage to startle a PI?) The summary is that I am apparently still not done with my presentation / eval thing, which now inspire similar feelings as the tag on the back of one of my long-sleeved tees that jabs at me, but only on the occasions when I move a certain way.
Undergrad starts next week, no idea of project yet because have no idea what the undergrad will be like, at all. Well, no, that's a lie; she'd emailed my PI who had cc'ed me in the reply so I know now that she's majoring in biology. However, given the breath and depth of biology as well as the levels of experience undergrads have, which varies also depending on the institution, I have no idea what will be suitable. The current strategy remains "wait and see".
I am aware that this is, on the whole, poorly timed: 4 days of training and then an entire week with the trainer gone? In my defense: I planned my trip long before I was assigned an undergrad and FAR before they gave us the date of arrival (read: last week). At least my behavioral tests are done so the timing for nearly everything else is on schedule.
Okay, now onwards to the rest of the day.
So right: this weekend? Packing. And chores. Everything must be done to cover this week and the next two upcoming weeks. Am ditching class right now to blog about it, which is extremely inefficient of me but if I don't blog now I will forget later, as there's just too much going on. I also mostly failed at Greek, given that I may be done with the beginner level by the time of departure by my grasp of declensions is atrocious and I have no idea what to do with my pronunciation. Conclusion: learning a language without a textbook is difficult, though not impossible.
My spring eval was sent back to me via the program office on the account that I need signature from all the members of my committee, including the one that I been currently emailing and failing to hear back from. (What do you think? Is it time to start committing academic stalking yet or should I give him a few more weeks until the Greece thing is over and he's not expecting? Am I more likely to get a response if I manage to startle a PI?) The summary is that I am apparently still not done with my presentation / eval thing, which now inspire similar feelings as the tag on the back of one of my long-sleeved tees that jabs at me, but only on the occasions when I move a certain way.
Undergrad starts next week, no idea of project yet because have no idea what the undergrad will be like, at all. Well, no, that's a lie; she'd emailed my PI who had cc'ed me in the reply so I know now that she's majoring in biology. However, given the breath and depth of biology as well as the levels of experience undergrads have, which varies also depending on the institution, I have no idea what will be suitable. The current strategy remains "wait and see".
I am aware that this is, on the whole, poorly timed: 4 days of training and then an entire week with the trainer gone? In my defense: I planned my trip long before I was assigned an undergrad and FAR before they gave us the date of arrival (read: last week). At least my behavioral tests are done so the timing for nearly everything else is on schedule.
Okay, now onwards to the rest of the day.
20110616
20110615
20110613
20110612
In which I contemplate the horrors of 18th century French aristocracy
The next major item (not counting the poster presentation next Thursday) in my grad career is the application of the NIH training grant due at the start of August, so while doing laundry (preparation and conclusion of any trip, it appears, will always include massive loads of laundry) I've started going through the three different sample grant applications that I was given. Well, technically 4 documents, since Wendy was kind enough to supply me with both versions of hers so I can get an idea of the type of editing that I need to perform on mine to increase my chances of award. The other copies are from a classmate (well, former classmate, since she's graduated last year) and from my thesis adviser (since the lab-funding grants are the level that we are supposed to aspire toward) and I have observed that:
1) The amount of preliminary data necessary to prove to the award committee that your experiments are feasible is roughly equivalent to the amount of data needed to generate one manuscript. This is not an exaggeration as that in one of the applications the prelim data for one of the aims was a manuscript in submission (that was later published).
2) A lot of repetition is key. I was a little skeptical at first of my PI's mantra in writing, which is "tell them, and tell them again", but in all applications the hypothesis and reasoning for each experiment were repeated, nearly word for word, at least three times in the paper (in the abstract section, the special aims section, and the experiment design section, usually). I suppose, then, that it helps to view an application as a tool to educate the committee on your project, because as we all know, repetitiveness is a common and extremely effective method of teaching. (The other method frequently employed by professors everywhere, I think, is the type where they figured if they flood you with information at regular intervals some of it might stick. Accidentally. In the sense that one cannot stand in a downpour without getting wet. But we only get one shot with the application, so regular interval is out, and most PIs frown upon them being flooded with information. Especially if they think it's extraneous information that will not be applicable to their own lab.)
3) The PI's comment about the by-gone eras of French aristocracy is terrifyingly accurate, if the page where authors of resubmitted applications (one resubmission is usually permitted per application for mine, I think) must address the concerns of reviewers is any indication. It's less of smoke and mirror and more along the lines of "I appreciate the concerns expressed by reviewer #2 and regret any confusion that may have been caused by the phrasing of statement such-and-such in aim 2 of my application...". A page full of that is enough to send my mind spinning away from my own application and wish for the time to spent on my sudden inclination to fling paint at a giant canvas with my hands, which will no doubt be satisfying messy and straightforward and give my landlady a heart attack, as I tend to leave traces of paint all over the place when I really get into the mood of things. Instead I have a giant sketchpad and pencil and can, for the time being, smudge graphite everywhere instead. I considered the benefits of writing everything in bullet form, but this blog in itself in fairly damning proof that I am not entirely composed of science and logic as I sometimes wish I could be. Not to mention I do have half a bookshelf of fiction with me and my resolve will not last five minutes of re-reading any of Bradbury's work. Or the things like The Little Prince. It makes me think wistfully of the power of words. Being a science major does not mean that I cannot appreciate them, and words do serve very importance purposes within the realm of technical writing. I am thinking, however, of the anecdote of Michelangelo's perfect circle, and a very similar ability that can be demonstrated by certain types of engineers. There is no doubt a great deal of difference between the illustrations of a master engineer and the painting of a master artist. Both involve levels of training and mastery of techniques. The key difference, I think, is that an engineer's drawings is first and foremost lined towards information, where as those of an artist are lined toward emotion. Obviously the two are not divorced from each other and aesthetically can play equally important roles, nor is an engineer's diagrams devoid of emotions any more than an artist's paintings are devoid of information. And even the name can be misleading, since people associate engineering with designing while artists with art and art and design are by no means separate things. There's an art to science and a science to art.
It's a shame that all the passion and dreams that went into each project must be distilled into so many pages of "this is why I'm doing this" "this is what I did" and "this is the result", is all. It's a shame that with all the languages in the world scientific writing is, if you expect the writing to be accepted as having any merit, a conglomeration of logic and facts, while any hints of personality in reviews and responses must be veiled and so carefully constructed that I fantasize about Plato's philosopher king and what a mad world it will be in if the world were run by scientists (not necessarily mad, though the stories from Girl Genius is full of possibilities). It is a crying shame that, a few notable personalities and their writings aside (Feynman being one of them...he's quite a character), the bulk of writing in science is dense and dry to the level of a brick of concrete decomposing in the middle of the Sahara, about as exciting, and even for someone who's as invested in it as I am I frequently find myself yawning halfway through a research article. It doesn't take any stretch of imagination at all to imagine the reaction of the general public who are much less familiar with all the field-specific terms and shorthands.
If the general public is misinformed, the scientific community is as much at fault as any of the other parties.
I have completely forgotten what the original point I was going to make was, but a friend of mine's gotten into fixing and using antique cameras, had recently acquired a Soviet camera from the 60s, and loves it for the fact that it's easier to use than Japanese cameras from the same era and apparently gives the impression of being able to break rocks and still be useable afterwards. Not sure how much of this is an exaggeration, but the comment mostly gives me ideas for terrible puns about hardcore, Communism, and possibly the Communism being hardcore (those types of cameras are apparently fondly known as "Commie cameras") and then, you know, inappropriate giggling is inappropriate.
Right.
1) The amount of preliminary data necessary to prove to the award committee that your experiments are feasible is roughly equivalent to the amount of data needed to generate one manuscript. This is not an exaggeration as that in one of the applications the prelim data for one of the aims was a manuscript in submission (that was later published).
2) A lot of repetition is key. I was a little skeptical at first of my PI's mantra in writing, which is "tell them, and tell them again", but in all applications the hypothesis and reasoning for each experiment were repeated, nearly word for word, at least three times in the paper (in the abstract section, the special aims section, and the experiment design section, usually). I suppose, then, that it helps to view an application as a tool to educate the committee on your project, because as we all know, repetitiveness is a common and extremely effective method of teaching. (The other method frequently employed by professors everywhere, I think, is the type where they figured if they flood you with information at regular intervals some of it might stick. Accidentally. In the sense that one cannot stand in a downpour without getting wet. But we only get one shot with the application, so regular interval is out, and most PIs frown upon them being flooded with information. Especially if they think it's extraneous information that will not be applicable to their own lab.)
3) The PI's comment about the by-gone eras of French aristocracy is terrifyingly accurate, if the page where authors of resubmitted applications (one resubmission is usually permitted per application for mine, I think) must address the concerns of reviewers is any indication. It's less of smoke and mirror and more along the lines of "I appreciate the concerns expressed by reviewer #2 and regret any confusion that may have been caused by the phrasing of statement such-and-such in aim 2 of my application...". A page full of that is enough to send my mind spinning away from my own application and wish for the time to spent on my sudden inclination to fling paint at a giant canvas with my hands, which will no doubt be satisfying messy and straightforward and give my landlady a heart attack, as I tend to leave traces of paint all over the place when I really get into the mood of things. Instead I have a giant sketchpad and pencil and can, for the time being, smudge graphite everywhere instead. I considered the benefits of writing everything in bullet form, but this blog in itself in fairly damning proof that I am not entirely composed of science and logic as I sometimes wish I could be. Not to mention I do have half a bookshelf of fiction with me and my resolve will not last five minutes of re-reading any of Bradbury's work. Or the things like The Little Prince. It makes me think wistfully of the power of words. Being a science major does not mean that I cannot appreciate them, and words do serve very importance purposes within the realm of technical writing. I am thinking, however, of the anecdote of Michelangelo's perfect circle, and a very similar ability that can be demonstrated by certain types of engineers. There is no doubt a great deal of difference between the illustrations of a master engineer and the painting of a master artist. Both involve levels of training and mastery of techniques. The key difference, I think, is that an engineer's drawings is first and foremost lined towards information, where as those of an artist are lined toward emotion. Obviously the two are not divorced from each other and aesthetically can play equally important roles, nor is an engineer's diagrams devoid of emotions any more than an artist's paintings are devoid of information. And even the name can be misleading, since people associate engineering with designing while artists with art and art and design are by no means separate things. There's an art to science and a science to art.
It's a shame that all the passion and dreams that went into each project must be distilled into so many pages of "this is why I'm doing this" "this is what I did" and "this is the result", is all. It's a shame that with all the languages in the world scientific writing is, if you expect the writing to be accepted as having any merit, a conglomeration of logic and facts, while any hints of personality in reviews and responses must be veiled and so carefully constructed that I fantasize about Plato's philosopher king and what a mad world it will be in if the world were run by scientists (not necessarily mad, though the stories from Girl Genius is full of possibilities). It is a crying shame that, a few notable personalities and their writings aside (Feynman being one of them...he's quite a character), the bulk of writing in science is dense and dry to the level of a brick of concrete decomposing in the middle of the Sahara, about as exciting, and even for someone who's as invested in it as I am I frequently find myself yawning halfway through a research article. It doesn't take any stretch of imagination at all to imagine the reaction of the general public who are much less familiar with all the field-specific terms and shorthands.
If the general public is misinformed, the scientific community is as much at fault as any of the other parties.
I have completely forgotten what the original point I was going to make was, but a friend of mine's gotten into fixing and using antique cameras, had recently acquired a Soviet camera from the 60s, and loves it for the fact that it's easier to use than Japanese cameras from the same era and apparently gives the impression of being able to break rocks and still be useable afterwards. Not sure how much of this is an exaggeration, but the comment mostly gives me ideas for terrible puns about hardcore, Communism, and possibly the Communism being hardcore (those types of cameras are apparently fondly known as "Commie cameras") and then, you know, inappropriate giggling is inappropriate.
Right.
20110611
In which a professor goes AWOL and I will soon have mice-free weekends
How shall I start? Several things have happened within the past week that I would like to mention but have yet found the time to, and though all (or almost all) of them are related to graduate school, they are not a connected series of events. In the order that they appear in my mind then. I'll claim artistic license with punctuation and it should be easy enough to keep organized.
//And now we start:
First of all, I've had my annual committee meeting on Friday. There are several points of distress, one of which being that one of the professors who had initially answered that he could make it that day failed to show up. Not late. No email. No excuse. And not even an answer to the email query I sent later that day. At this point I have emailed our program coordinator asking whether it's absolutely necessary for all members of the committee to sign, or whether missing one is okay. Wendy claimed that she only ever needed three signatures. However, due to the various changes in the program over the years, neither I nor my thesis adviser are certain what the current requirements are. Hence the email. Furthermore, because he is on my committee and has missed the once a year update, he can theoretically request a separate meeting with me, which means that yes, I have to go through the presentation two separate times.
Even not taking into account this unpleasant development, the actual presentation itself was...well, it was less traumatic than the candidacy exam, to be fair. The second time around being picked apart does serve as a proof of principle for desensitization to all kinds psychological abuse (only mildly exaggerated -- have you ever given a 50 slide presentation that you've practiced and practiced to get the flow of just so only to be interrupted every five seconds during the actual presentation and then have someone make a subtle dig about the lack of flow?). In theory, I can also appreciate the fact that it's better to go through and get used to this process now, with people who are smarter, more experienced than me, who are genuinely trying to help me rather than deal with harsh reviews later on on my own. In practice being verbally grilled for just over two hours is, even with a decrease in overall trauma, still a gruesome experience. Especially given that most of the complaint is about the format of my slides and not the science (for which I suppose I should be grateful) (I kid you not, one of the comments was about moving one of my labels down the slide by about 1/5 of the slide length).
On the bright side, my adviser was very nice about the whole thing afterwards (to a degree that I actually found a little unsettling because is he trying to placate me? Why? Did he think I will get discouraged about my project? Which depends on my skills as a bench scientists and has no link at all to my skills at public speaking?) and two different people told me that it's an odd compliment of sorts when that particular professor (most of the objection, for the length of two hours, came from one person, yes) decides to fire question after question at you. They think it may mean that I may have promise. Which would be promising but you can see the level of tentativeness we have to associate with interpreting the opinions of PIs, fickle creatures that they can be.
And in any case, I'm done for another year. In any case, absentee professor or not, I still get my end-of-the-quarter udon, the acquisition of which involved a rather large dose of sympathy from Wendy, who also reminded me that one of the reasons why we should graduate is so that we no longer have to deal with committee meetings.
For the short term, at least, it seems like a pretty good incentive.
... ...
I want to briefly mention that for the snacks for this week's lab meeting, the PI bought us "Susan's cookies". Lucy will know what I'm talking about. (Yep, they're from Vons.) Needless to say there was some teasing.
Oh my god my labmates can be such dorks. They are awesome. And apparently Wendy's children will one day rebel by not liking chocolate. And genes are weird.
... ...
I am getting an undergrad on Jun. 20th. I have narrowed possible projects for her down to three though at this point it's mostly uncertain because I have no information about her aside from the fact that she's coming from New York, and I'm going to try to tailor projects to her interest. People have been giving me advise on mentoring (most of which are, discouragingly enough, along the lines of "there's no right way to do it" and "it's a skill that you'll never be done learning"), which mostly boils down to the same advises as TAing, except with the added benefit of potential bodily harm if the student does something wrong. I have concluded from this that there has to be another level of project tailoring done once I know how good she is with her hands. Not all brilliant theoretician are, after all, good with physical tasks. My only hope is that I would get someone who still retains memory of enough high school chemistry that I don't need to explain how to dilute a solution one to ten.
It is very discouraging to find people who have trouble figuring that out in a research lab in one of the top universities in the country.
But speaking of discouragements and undergraduate students. One of the undergrads in the lab will be applying for grad school next year, and she is thinking of applying at the level of UCSD to MIT, just to give you an idea of the height of her aims. However, she is one of the undergrads who have more trouble with the concepts of dilution, still contaminates her reactions after nearly two years of doing the same type of experiments, and has a GPA of around 2.0. Recently she received a B on a exam and was thrilled to bits, while Wendy and I, both from a program full of straight-A over-achiever variety students, looked at each other and tried to decide what to tell her when she comes to us for advises on grad school application. We didn't want to be too harsh, but when a good portion of the higher tier programs claim that people need not apply if their GPA is below 3.2-3.5 range...well, what should we say? She has lab experience, which is an excellent point in her favor even if she is not the best student we've worked with, and if she can get in contact with a specific professor she keen on working with in the specific institute, it is apparently (according to some) possible for them to forgo the GPA requirement enough to look at her application...provided the rest of her app is top par.
Now, I think there may be a correlation between GPA and GRE score, based on what I hear from my classmates and the fact that both are measurements less aimed at applicability and more aimed at how well you can do a specific kind of task for the sake of doing it. (Some classes are not like this, but I think the overall way GPA works / is used is.) Which means she's likely to not perform as well in GRE either, though I hope I am wrong.
She could have a stellar application. I'm not entirely sure what weight the increase-student-body-diversity program she's in has. It's mostly a limbo of "we don't want to crush her dream but...we're not really sure if she has what it takes..." and we suggested safety schools. She is really set on grad school, so if anyone has any idea of better advice to give, please let me know.
Then we reflected if this is what professors feel toward their grad students, specifically toward the grad students who obviously are not cut for the academic track.
It was a thought depressing beyond belief.
... ...
I got one of my experiments to work! Maybe! I am waiting to hear back from my collaborator since I am not an expert on fruit fly anatomy, much less fruit fly embryo anatomy when I'm looking at embryos that are a mixture of all 16 stages of development. (To be honest, half of the time I have no idea where the head is, even.) Ah sweet anticipation. I have waited three days now. If I don't hear back in a week I may have to poke her with emails.
I am also almost done with the behavioral tests that I'm running. Specifically, everything that I have to run, long-term, ends next Tuesday so there will be no more weekends where I absolutely have to be in lab (though there will always continue to be weekends where it'll be more advantageous to my project if I were, but life's not perfect), hallelujah. Which means this is my last 7-day work week that is essential for my data for the foreseeable future. I celebrated the ending of the candles-burning-at-both-end-or-so-it-feels-like phase of my grad school career with ice cream.
... ...
I need to sleep now.
//And now we start:
First of all, I've had my annual committee meeting on Friday. There are several points of distress, one of which being that one of the professors who had initially answered that he could make it that day failed to show up. Not late. No email. No excuse. And not even an answer to the email query I sent later that day. At this point I have emailed our program coordinator asking whether it's absolutely necessary for all members of the committee to sign, or whether missing one is okay. Wendy claimed that she only ever needed three signatures. However, due to the various changes in the program over the years, neither I nor my thesis adviser are certain what the current requirements are. Hence the email. Furthermore, because he is on my committee and has missed the once a year update, he can theoretically request a separate meeting with me, which means that yes, I have to go through the presentation two separate times.
Even not taking into account this unpleasant development, the actual presentation itself was...well, it was less traumatic than the candidacy exam, to be fair. The second time around being picked apart does serve as a proof of principle for desensitization to all kinds psychological abuse (only mildly exaggerated -- have you ever given a 50 slide presentation that you've practiced and practiced to get the flow of just so only to be interrupted every five seconds during the actual presentation and then have someone make a subtle dig about the lack of flow?). In theory, I can also appreciate the fact that it's better to go through and get used to this process now, with people who are smarter, more experienced than me, who are genuinely trying to help me rather than deal with harsh reviews later on on my own. In practice being verbally grilled for just over two hours is, even with a decrease in overall trauma, still a gruesome experience. Especially given that most of the complaint is about the format of my slides and not the science (for which I suppose I should be grateful) (I kid you not, one of the comments was about moving one of my labels down the slide by about 1/5 of the slide length).
On the bright side, my adviser was very nice about the whole thing afterwards (to a degree that I actually found a little unsettling because is he trying to placate me? Why? Did he think I will get discouraged about my project? Which depends on my skills as a bench scientists and has no link at all to my skills at public speaking?) and two different people told me that it's an odd compliment of sorts when that particular professor (most of the objection, for the length of two hours, came from one person, yes) decides to fire question after question at you. They think it may mean that I may have promise. Which would be promising but you can see the level of tentativeness we have to associate with interpreting the opinions of PIs, fickle creatures that they can be.
And in any case, I'm done for another year. In any case, absentee professor or not, I still get my end-of-the-quarter udon, the acquisition of which involved a rather large dose of sympathy from Wendy, who also reminded me that one of the reasons why we should graduate is so that we no longer have to deal with committee meetings.
For the short term, at least, it seems like a pretty good incentive.
... ...
I want to briefly mention that for the snacks for this week's lab meeting, the PI bought us "Susan's cookies". Lucy will know what I'm talking about. (Yep, they're from Vons.) Needless to say there was some teasing.
Oh my god my labmates can be such dorks. They are awesome. And apparently Wendy's children will one day rebel by not liking chocolate. And genes are weird.
... ...
I am getting an undergrad on Jun. 20th. I have narrowed possible projects for her down to three though at this point it's mostly uncertain because I have no information about her aside from the fact that she's coming from New York, and I'm going to try to tailor projects to her interest. People have been giving me advise on mentoring (most of which are, discouragingly enough, along the lines of "there's no right way to do it" and "it's a skill that you'll never be done learning"), which mostly boils down to the same advises as TAing, except with the added benefit of potential bodily harm if the student does something wrong. I have concluded from this that there has to be another level of project tailoring done once I know how good she is with her hands. Not all brilliant theoretician are, after all, good with physical tasks. My only hope is that I would get someone who still retains memory of enough high school chemistry that I don't need to explain how to dilute a solution one to ten.
It is very discouraging to find people who have trouble figuring that out in a research lab in one of the top universities in the country.
But speaking of discouragements and undergraduate students. One of the undergrads in the lab will be applying for grad school next year, and she is thinking of applying at the level of UCSD to MIT, just to give you an idea of the height of her aims. However, she is one of the undergrads who have more trouble with the concepts of dilution, still contaminates her reactions after nearly two years of doing the same type of experiments, and has a GPA of around 2.0. Recently she received a B on a exam and was thrilled to bits, while Wendy and I, both from a program full of straight-A over-achiever variety students, looked at each other and tried to decide what to tell her when she comes to us for advises on grad school application. We didn't want to be too harsh, but when a good portion of the higher tier programs claim that people need not apply if their GPA is below 3.2-3.5 range...well, what should we say? She has lab experience, which is an excellent point in her favor even if she is not the best student we've worked with, and if she can get in contact with a specific professor she keen on working with in the specific institute, it is apparently (according to some) possible for them to forgo the GPA requirement enough to look at her application...provided the rest of her app is top par.
Now, I think there may be a correlation between GPA and GRE score, based on what I hear from my classmates and the fact that both are measurements less aimed at applicability and more aimed at how well you can do a specific kind of task for the sake of doing it. (Some classes are not like this, but I think the overall way GPA works / is used is.) Which means she's likely to not perform as well in GRE either, though I hope I am wrong.
She could have a stellar application. I'm not entirely sure what weight the increase-student-body-diversity program she's in has. It's mostly a limbo of "we don't want to crush her dream but...we're not really sure if she has what it takes..." and we suggested safety schools. She is really set on grad school, so if anyone has any idea of better advice to give, please let me know.
Then we reflected if this is what professors feel toward their grad students, specifically toward the grad students who obviously are not cut for the academic track.
It was a thought depressing beyond belief.
... ...
I got one of my experiments to work! Maybe! I am waiting to hear back from my collaborator since I am not an expert on fruit fly anatomy, much less fruit fly embryo anatomy when I'm looking at embryos that are a mixture of all 16 stages of development. (To be honest, half of the time I have no idea where the head is, even.) Ah sweet anticipation. I have waited three days now. If I don't hear back in a week I may have to poke her with emails.
I am also almost done with the behavioral tests that I'm running. Specifically, everything that I have to run, long-term, ends next Tuesday so there will be no more weekends where I absolutely have to be in lab (though there will always continue to be weekends where it'll be more advantageous to my project if I were, but life's not perfect), hallelujah. Which means this is my last 7-day work week that is essential for my data for the foreseeable future. I celebrated the ending of the candles-burning-at-both-end-or-so-it-feels-like phase of my grad school career with ice cream.
... ...
I need to sleep now.
20110604
Can't say it was unexpected
Those of you who had taken PE with me in high school are probably wondering how I can take any kind of physical education courses, much less my current choice, without some kind of accident happening regularly. Well, today I accidentally elbowed my sparring partner and soon-to-be test mentor, Cathe, in the face (she was thankfully okay and we spent a few minutes trying to work on my timing so it won't happen again). I think I may also have sprained my toes. Didn't know this was possible -- the toe spraining. Though obviously from a physiological view it should be possible since toes have muscles and tendons and therefore, like all other things that have muscles and tendons, can be sprained. Nevertheless, I was expected arm / wrist / hand injury first, from either lab or class...or possibly neck, I guess -- toes didn't even register on the radar.
Life can be sneaky like that.
To follow up on some of the things I mentioned last week:
a) Insurance: went in to the insurance / optometry center (they are located conveniently right next to each other) to ask about it, and confused the people at both places before the very nice lady at the insurance told me to leave my email and she'll contact me after she figures it out with the insurance company. I was emailed yesterday-- apparently the insurance company made a mistake and my claim got filed twice. Somehow this resulted in me receiving only one copy of the claim, in which my glasses' frame was not covered, despite of the fact that it was and the claim has been processed.
"I'm really sorry about this," said the lady who works at the insurance office, once she found out that I'm a grad student. "You really don't need any more confusion."
"No. No, I really don't," I replied, because saying "Oh you have no idea" didn't seem very gracious.
b) Weird review session, maybe: contacted one of my classmate who TA'ed with me last year as well as the professor she TA'ed for. Turned out the person who emailed me is not in the class, I have no idea who she's organizing the session for, and my classmate also was emailed but he thought it was "fishy" so ignored the email. I emailed the undergrad again, pointing out that it's a really good idea for her friends, who will be taking the exam, to talk to the TAs because they can both arrange extra sessions / individual sessions as needed, have access to the course material, and oh, have an idea of what will be on the final. To which she replied that she wasn't really looking for someone with material or knowledge of the final, per se, but more of someone to give the students their attention as they study the night before the exam, and she suggested a session from 8-11pm. At this point I just decided to forgo the entire thing because I'd rather not go home by myself at midnight, especially given we just got another police notice this week that there was an attempted rape what? Wednesday night? And also? Not a babysitter.
c) Committee meeting next Friday. After I scheduled the thing and emailed the professor who couldn't make it and told him I can meeting with him separately at one of the time he said he will be available, his secretary emailed me back and said that he can make it after all so I will not have to give the talk twice. Huzzah.
Speaking of undergrads and dissertation, I am apparently getting an undergrad in two weeks. From New York. The exact details aren't clear but she's in some kind of program to promoter undergraduate research. I'm not entirely sure why New York is necessary, given we have loads of undergrads in California but well, I suppose I can ask her when she gets here. In the mean time I am frantically trying to figure out which part of my project can have a branch-off project for an undergrad who has never worked in a lab before. It will have to start with PCR. Everyone likes PCR right? Or at least, everyone who works in a biology lab (that has a bench work component -- comp bio labs are another kettle of fish altogether) had to have gone through the PCR phase at some point. It's practically a rite of passage.
She can even have her own aliquot of polymerase.
Okay, onwards.
Life can be sneaky like that.
To follow up on some of the things I mentioned last week:
a) Insurance: went in to the insurance / optometry center (they are located conveniently right next to each other) to ask about it, and confused the people at both places before the very nice lady at the insurance told me to leave my email and she'll contact me after she figures it out with the insurance company. I was emailed yesterday-- apparently the insurance company made a mistake and my claim got filed twice. Somehow this resulted in me receiving only one copy of the claim, in which my glasses' frame was not covered, despite of the fact that it was and the claim has been processed.
"I'm really sorry about this," said the lady who works at the insurance office, once she found out that I'm a grad student. "You really don't need any more confusion."
"No. No, I really don't," I replied, because saying "Oh you have no idea" didn't seem very gracious.
b) Weird review session, maybe: contacted one of my classmate who TA'ed with me last year as well as the professor she TA'ed for. Turned out the person who emailed me is not in the class, I have no idea who she's organizing the session for, and my classmate also was emailed but he thought it was "fishy" so ignored the email. I emailed the undergrad again, pointing out that it's a really good idea for her friends, who will be taking the exam, to talk to the TAs because they can both arrange extra sessions / individual sessions as needed, have access to the course material, and oh, have an idea of what will be on the final. To which she replied that she wasn't really looking for someone with material or knowledge of the final, per se, but more of someone to give the students their attention as they study the night before the exam, and she suggested a session from 8-11pm. At this point I just decided to forgo the entire thing because I'd rather not go home by myself at midnight, especially given we just got another police notice this week that there was an attempted rape what? Wednesday night? And also? Not a babysitter.
c) Committee meeting next Friday. After I scheduled the thing and emailed the professor who couldn't make it and told him I can meeting with him separately at one of the time he said he will be available, his secretary emailed me back and said that he can make it after all so I will not have to give the talk twice. Huzzah.
Speaking of undergrads and dissertation, I am apparently getting an undergrad in two weeks. From New York. The exact details aren't clear but she's in some kind of program to promoter undergraduate research. I'm not entirely sure why New York is necessary, given we have loads of undergrads in California but well, I suppose I can ask her when she gets here. In the mean time I am frantically trying to figure out which part of my project can have a branch-off project for an undergrad who has never worked in a lab before. It will have to start with PCR. Everyone likes PCR right? Or at least, everyone who works in a biology lab (that has a bench work component -- comp bio labs are another kettle of fish altogether) had to have gone through the PCR phase at some point. It's practically a rite of passage.
She can even have her own aliquot of polymerase.
Okay, onwards.
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