I started writing this blog post Sunday night I believe and abandoned it in a glassy-eyed torpor since it was probably too late for me to be up. Then again, it's 2 AM now and here I am anyway. I think I'm getting to like this blog thing.
This past week was good. And by good I mean lazy. I think I was productive Monday and I know I wasn't productive Sunday. Tuesday, I was counting down to elections and partaking in Starbuck's and Ben and Jerry's new-found election day enthusiasm. Both were disappointments. Let me just offer a word of warning. If you ever wonder what could be bad about an ice cream flavor named "Peanut Butter Cookie Dough", let me tell you. Plenty. It's salty. I still shudder. But it was free, so it wasn't that big a deal.
R came over for election night, and while I was convinced that I would do work while we were watching the results, I was, in fact, lying to myself. It's good I'm so forgiving. There's something fascinating about realizing (or pretending) that the next four years of your life or more can be affected by this one night. I'm a fan of Barack Obama and have been following him since the primaries so I was very happy to see him win. I'm not very political though, but I will say I'm very reassured about some of my uncertainties by the way he's been handling things since the election.
I also stayed up until 3 AM reading election night coverage that night, so I spent the rest of the week paying for that. The one thing I do recall was talking a lot about picking rotations. I have it narrowed down to four (I think) after some hemming and hawing and I really should have it down to three, but that looks hopeless.
There's the plant computational biology lab, where the professor, who works for the school and the Department of Agriculture and said her lab was all about yield, yield, yield. If you've read my post from yesterday or the one from last April, you'll know I don't need to be told that twice. Then there's the lab(s) that work on genetic profiles for various diseases, including cancer and autism (I've mentioned that one before also). Then there's the more procedural lab, which is huge and has lots of opportunities, but may pigeonhole me as a computers guy, where I'll live out my days looking at increasingly cool computer screens while the world moves on around me. Lastly, there's the guy who does protein analysis with chemistry techniques (proteomics) in ways that have never really been done before. He's already done some amazing stuff that I kinda grasp and he might be interesting. Then there are the ones I don't want to rule out, but kinda have to. It's good to have to choose from options like these.
I suppose with all the uncertainty, I'm lucky enough to realize that my thesis project isn't set in stone as what I do for the rest of my life. One of the professors (the proteomics one) used to be a plant biologist and never had any PhD chemistry study...and look where he is now. My supervisor at my old job was very helpful when he said it's not worth banking on technology you have now to carry your career for 20 or 30 years at least when that technology will be gone in 10. Oddly enough, one of the lessons I've already learned in getting a biology PhD is that the key to succeeding is evolving. So while I may work on this stuff for the rest of my life, I might also be doing something completely different. And I'm alright with that.
Today was a good way to wind down from last night's all-nighter. I napped between and after classes, then gave myself the night off (from when I woke up at 8:15 PM). Knowing that time off is invaluable, I headed to the kitchen and made myself some stir fry. An hour and a half later (the prep was loooooong), I had some lovely chicken/broccoli/green pepper/mushroom stir fry with a soy sauce and mirin. Yum. And I have enough for me and R when she comes to visit this weekend. If there's one thing I got out of this summer, it's that you don't have to be afraid of cooking. Once you do it enough, you get a sense of what should go in a dish and what shouldn't and it just works out. You also learn neat little tricks along the way, like how to blanch broccoli and how to get chicken in stir fry to look like those tender white chunks you see in commercials. It's easy. And yummy. And after making about a stir fry a week over the summer, I can safely say that I'll eat what comes out of my frying pan (no wok yet :( ) and I'll probably be happy. Plus, cooking with the people you love (me and R usually spend some portion of every weekend cooking one thing or another) can be especially rewarding. Especially when said person is R.
When I think about cooking, I think about how great it would be to have a garden with all my herbs. Then I think it would be so great to work in a lab where I get to do that for a living. Then I wonder if I want to take a hobby and turn it into a job. Then I wonder if I'd need to heat up the stir fry if I go down now to have some more. Then I realize it's time to pack it in for the night, because I'm tired.
Side note: thanks to everyone who reads this blog and I'm really touched. Also, please please please comment. I'd really like to hear what you guys think about what I write hear. It doesn't even have to be clever or witty! Lord knows I'm not...
November 12, 2008
November 11, 2008
Feeling Human Again
I pulled an all-nighter last night and this post was going to be all about how great it is when you push hard and give something your all and it actually works out for you. I have a problem set due Thursday that I hadn't started as of 8:30 PM yesterday and now I have 2 questions left of 19. So there you have it, yay all-nighters.
When I have the chance, I like to read the NY Times front page. It's part of what I do while I slog through science papers and classes to remind me that I'm still human and that things are going on outside my little bubble. Up until last Tuesday, my news time was all about the elections. Now that it's all over and Bush is handling himself like a gentleman and Obama seems to have himself more or less in order, there's a lot less to read on that front. So I get to read about the real world instead. The real world isn't doing so hot.
Last April, in my first post on this blog, I wrote about how biofuels were inflating prices of basic cereal grains that people in Third World countries rely on to sustain themselves, so while there's plenty of grain to go around, it's too expensive for poor people to get enough of and it's too expensive for food organizations to purchase enough of for those people. So far as I know, that hasn't changed.
Imagine my heart-break today when the headline for the Times reads:When the Cupboard Is Bare . Apparently the economy has gotten so bad in parts of these United States that food pantries, food banks and soup kitchens are struggling to feed the people who come through their doors, if they're still open. People with jobs and kids can't afford to put food on the table and pay rent, even with food stamps, and have to figure out ways to scrape by. According to the figures quoted in the article, 35.5 million people don't always have enough to eat and 10.1 million people often go to bed hungry. One in three households will have someone go hungry sometime this year because there wasn't enough money for food. Many people who do contracted work such as plumbers or electricians haven't seen a decent paycheck in months and don't know when they'll see one again.
Personally, I've never gone to bed hungry if I wasn't too tired to eat. My family might have struggled in years past to pay the bills and balance the budget, but my parents always put food on the table. It's shocking that now, some people can't even have that.
It might seem quaint, but people do deserve the basics. That means food, warmth and shelter. When a society fails them in that most basic sense, something is wrong. Hopefully it's just the economy, but if it's not, I'm hoping the "Change that's coming to America" gives that back to these people.
When I wrote last April about the way biofuels were affecting world food prices, it was a step in a direction that I'm still exploring. Increasing crop yield is an important step in making sure people have enough to eat. And I'd be remiss if I didn't even give a try at helping out in that regard. But this is a little different.
I pulled an all-nighter last night and when I got home, I had a hot shower and hot meal. It seems now that's a commodity for far too many people. So this year, and this upcoming holiday season, help feed a family. If my words count for anything, it's worth more than a new iPod or iPhone or whatever new gadget there is out there anyway.
When I have the chance, I like to read the NY Times front page. It's part of what I do while I slog through science papers and classes to remind me that I'm still human and that things are going on outside my little bubble. Up until last Tuesday, my news time was all about the elections. Now that it's all over and Bush is handling himself like a gentleman and Obama seems to have himself more or less in order, there's a lot less to read on that front. So I get to read about the real world instead. The real world isn't doing so hot.
Last April, in my first post on this blog, I wrote about how biofuels were inflating prices of basic cereal grains that people in Third World countries rely on to sustain themselves, so while there's plenty of grain to go around, it's too expensive for poor people to get enough of and it's too expensive for food organizations to purchase enough of for those people. So far as I know, that hasn't changed.
Imagine my heart-break today when the headline for the Times reads:
Personally, I've never gone to bed hungry if I wasn't too tired to eat. My family might have struggled in years past to pay the bills and balance the budget, but my parents always put food on the table. It's shocking that now, some people can't even have that.
It might seem quaint, but people do deserve the basics. That means food, warmth and shelter. When a society fails them in that most basic sense, something is wrong. Hopefully it's just the economy, but if it's not, I'm hoping the "Change that's coming to America" gives that back to these people.
When I wrote last April about the way biofuels were affecting world food prices, it was a step in a direction that I'm still exploring. Increasing crop yield is an important step in making sure people have enough to eat. And I'd be remiss if I didn't even give a try at helping out in that regard. But this is a little different.
I pulled an all-nighter last night and when I got home, I had a hot shower and hot meal. It seems now that's a commodity for far too many people. So this year, and this upcoming holiday season, help feed a family. If my words count for anything, it's worth more than a new iPod or iPhone or whatever new gadget there is out there anyway.
November 4, 2008
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I've been a little delinquent in my self-imposed once-a-week post-a-thon (putting dashes between words is addictive...), but happily, I'm back, well-rested (see?) and ready to start cannily letting details of my life slip out online.
There's been a very good reason, you see. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my grad school program, I only have four months of classes, whereas I believe most programs have between 1-2 years of classes. The logic is fairly good--I'm not going to be done learning forever once classes are finished here in grad school, at this point the premium is on knowing how to learn new things rather than polishing a few last details before I let my grad school knowledge get fossilized over time. Affectionately, this part of the program has been called a proving ground. Less affectionately, we may call it boot camp. In our darkest moments, which sadly can be fairly frequent, it seems like hell. Needless to say, it's not easy.
The past few weeks have been focused on neuroscience. "Neuroscience" is a very broad field encompassing topics like electric circuits, cell biology, cell signaling, physiology, systems biology, genetics and something some people like to call "neuroeconomics", among others. I didn't know it was a word either. Suffice it to say, my head's been in a lot of places. I've cursed the school, the class, the homework, the teachers and almost anything else (except of course, R) all under my breath. I've also learned to reserve judgment now more than ever. Because at the end, I actually think I understood a lot of the class. And enough to pass as well.
One of the things you get to see a lot of in classes here is what I'd like to call "science personalities". There are plenty of us grad students, post docs and professors (our numbers dwindle as you climb the ladder though I think) who are fairly normal. Then there are others. I like to think their "quirks" stem from having been the smart kid all through school, always having the right answers in class, getting good grades throughout school and generally cruising, because let's face it, they're brilliant. I exclude myself from their company because in my honest opinion, there have been times and there will always be times when I will be way off, from college math and physics to who knows what in the future. These people are in fact nice people, good people, but might have very different values than me. I recall one professor who described his good days as: "You come in, you kill an animal, let it sit (or whatever it is you do to a rat before you harvest its brains), go to lunch, get your slices, kill another one and do some tests". He thought it was great. I have nightmare visions of poor mice being chained to walls in dark dungeons with no food or water (this sometimes is actually the case) and then being killed while no one looks on. Think of Russian gulags. Again, these people aren't bad people, not mean-spirited or anything. They just think of things differently than I (and others like me) might. So I'm happy I got to think about it, learned to appreciate the professors for who they are and what they do, learned to separate the person from the (sometimes anti-social) attitude and got to learn about brains in the mean time. Braaaaaaains!
This is also the time of year when I have to start thinking about which labs to rotate through as I get to the research part of grad school. If you haven't guessed from the above paragraph, my interest in performing research on animals is precisely none. Which is why in writing to my adviser to discuss mentors, I had this paragraph:
I completely understand the value and applaud the people who do this research responsibly. But I'm a kid who used to cry when my parents killed a mosquito or a moth or an ant. I cringe when I see road kill. Papers that talk about killing mice or flies make me cringe. A week ago, I was reading a neuroscience paper and I glossed over a sentence talking about how a mouse was killed for some experiment. When you gloss over a death, you've crossed a line. I chose to step back. In my mind, you have to be damn sure when you're sacrificing a living animal for research. Damn sure. And IF I ever reach that point, I'm going to use those animal models carefully and sparsely. So this is why I'm a computers type of guy when it comes to biology. I certainly see my horizons expanding and I definitely do want to be able to carry hypotheses from the computer to a practical application, but it's gonna be a long and winding road. And hopefully one that doesn't involve any killing of anything.
In lighter news, R and I went to a cousin's wedding this weekend. It was a pretty calm affair, morning wedding, good food, plenty of family and of course, time with the loveliest woman I know. R got to meet more of the family, she likes them, they like her, so all is good. My aunt told my parents that she's a keeper. While I value my aunt's opinion (she happens to be very smart), this is not news to me. We're visiting her parents for Thanksgiving, so hopefully the good news can be reciprocated.
After the wedding, we drove my brother and his wife back to the heights, went back to R's hood (which is awesome), got a lap desk to keep my lap from burning when I sit the computer on it, got a Steinbeck to keep my brain from overflowing with scientific jargon, and watched The Office on R's Tivo. Okay, her roomie's Tivo, but still. It's way better than Hulu. I'd been kicking around the idea of going into plant biology for a while, when it occurred to R and I (okay, really it occurred to R, who then told me . . . she is my second and better brain) that we'd like to have a good life and I have what is considered a "shit ton" of student loans (that is the term I believe), so I'd better make sure that whatever I'm getting myself into, it doesn't pay too badly. Of course, R's plans involve me and a successful and rewarding career in law, so who knows, maybe I get a sugar momma. And the thought of a real honest to god herb garden is damn tempting.
There's been a very good reason, you see. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my grad school program, I only have four months of classes, whereas I believe most programs have between 1-2 years of classes. The logic is fairly good--I'm not going to be done learning forever once classes are finished here in grad school, at this point the premium is on knowing how to learn new things rather than polishing a few last details before I let my grad school knowledge get fossilized over time. Affectionately, this part of the program has been called a proving ground. Less affectionately, we may call it boot camp. In our darkest moments, which sadly can be fairly frequent, it seems like hell. Needless to say, it's not easy.
The past few weeks have been focused on neuroscience. "Neuroscience" is a very broad field encompassing topics like electric circuits, cell biology, cell signaling, physiology, systems biology, genetics and something some people like to call "neuroeconomics", among others. I didn't know it was a word either. Suffice it to say, my head's been in a lot of places. I've cursed the school, the class, the homework, the teachers and almost anything else (except of course, R) all under my breath. I've also learned to reserve judgment now more than ever. Because at the end, I actually think I understood a lot of the class. And enough to pass as well.
One of the things you get to see a lot of in classes here is what I'd like to call "science personalities". There are plenty of us grad students, post docs and professors (our numbers dwindle as you climb the ladder though I think) who are fairly normal. Then there are others. I like to think their "quirks" stem from having been the smart kid all through school, always having the right answers in class, getting good grades throughout school and generally cruising, because let's face it, they're brilliant. I exclude myself from their company because in my honest opinion, there have been times and there will always be times when I will be way off, from college math and physics to who knows what in the future. These people are in fact nice people, good people, but might have very different values than me. I recall one professor who described his good days as: "You come in, you kill an animal, let it sit (or whatever it is you do to a rat before you harvest its brains), go to lunch, get your slices, kill another one and do some tests". He thought it was great. I have nightmare visions of poor mice being chained to walls in dark dungeons with no food or water (this sometimes is actually the case) and then being killed while no one looks on. Think of Russian gulags. Again, these people aren't bad people, not mean-spirited or anything. They just think of things differently than I (and others like me) might. So I'm happy I got to think about it, learned to appreciate the professors for who they are and what they do, learned to separate the person from the (sometimes anti-social) attitude and got to learn about brains in the mean time. Braaaaaaains!
This is also the time of year when I have to start thinking about which labs to rotate through as I get to the research part of grad school. If you haven't guessed from the above paragraph, my interest in performing research on animals is precisely none. Which is why in writing to my adviser to discuss mentors, I had this paragraph:
. . . I'm realizing that I don't feel comfortable with the idea of using animal models for research. While that doesn't mean I won't work in a lab that uses animal models, I'd want to have some certainty that the models are used sparsely and with high confidence of getting good results.Also, not mentioned explicitly, is that I will never be the one dissecting, killing or generally coming near them. I want to keep my distance. I've talked to people about how they cope with handling animals in research (including a vegetarian who works in a mouse lab) and it seems to me like the people who are bothered by sacrificing an animal for research do find solace either in the fact that these mice are bred for research purposes and for the fact that this is in fact for a greater good. The research they do now on mice could lead to untold scientific advances that help humanity, the earth, other animals, and hopefully mice too.
I completely understand the value and applaud the people who do this research responsibly. But I'm a kid who used to cry when my parents killed a mosquito or a moth or an ant. I cringe when I see road kill. Papers that talk about killing mice or flies make me cringe. A week ago, I was reading a neuroscience paper and I glossed over a sentence talking about how a mouse was killed for some experiment. When you gloss over a death, you've crossed a line. I chose to step back. In my mind, you have to be damn sure when you're sacrificing a living animal for research. Damn sure. And IF I ever reach that point, I'm going to use those animal models carefully and sparsely. So this is why I'm a computers type of guy when it comes to biology. I certainly see my horizons expanding and I definitely do want to be able to carry hypotheses from the computer to a practical application, but it's gonna be a long and winding road. And hopefully one that doesn't involve any killing of anything.
In lighter news, R and I went to a cousin's wedding this weekend. It was a pretty calm affair, morning wedding, good food, plenty of family and of course, time with the loveliest woman I know. R got to meet more of the family, she likes them, they like her, so all is good. My aunt told my parents that she's a keeper. While I value my aunt's opinion (she happens to be very smart), this is not news to me. We're visiting her parents for Thanksgiving, so hopefully the good news can be reciprocated.
After the wedding, we drove my brother and his wife back to the heights, went back to R's hood (which is awesome), got a lap desk to keep my lap from burning when I sit the computer on it, got a Steinbeck to keep my brain from overflowing with scientific jargon, and watched The Office on R's Tivo. Okay, her roomie's Tivo, but still. It's way better than Hulu. I'd been kicking around the idea of going into plant biology for a while, when it occurred to R and I (okay, really it occurred to R, who then told me . . . she is my second and better brain) that we'd like to have a good life and I have what is considered a "shit ton" of student loans (that is the term I believe), so I'd better make sure that whatever I'm getting myself into, it doesn't pay too badly. Of course, R's plans involve me and a successful and rewarding career in law, so who knows, maybe I get a sugar momma. And the thought of a real honest to god herb garden is damn tempting.
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