Passion

Wow, I really haven't updated in ages.

Qualifying was meh. They gave me a conditional pass. They loved my proposals and said they were well-written, creative, and interesting, but I lack a general knowledge of biochemistry and I need to know things "cold," so in order to receive a pass on my qualifying exam, I have to take an undergraduate biochemistry course next semester, write a 10-15 page paper on the structure and function of the ribosome (due end of March) and have another oral exam at the end of May, after grades come out (I must get a B in the undergrad course).
To some extent this really, really makes me angry. I have a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and there's no reason I shouldn't have been able to answer their questions, had I known that those topics would be covered. Ten minutes of review would have freshened all that stuff in my mind, and I would have been fine. I just wasn't prepared emotionally, and after the first two questions I was too thrown off to recover. *sigh*
On the other hand, this means I can't TA spring semester (THANK GOD). It also means I get to take another class (even if it's one I've taken before), and I love classes. I'm good at classes. This will be ridiculously easy for me, but who knows, I might learn something new. And lastly, this gives me a real chance to slow down, take a deep breath, and do some science before I qualify again in May. So what if I was the first person in our class to start qualifying and I'll now be the last to finish? I'm still a good two years younger than most of my classmates. I have soooo much time. The whole idea behind coming to Yale and not going to UCSF was that here I'd have a chance to slow down and be a real person, outside of science, in addition to being a graduate student. I have time, and an excuse, to breathe now. And furthermore, I didn't feel like I was ready to qualify, and I think that if I had passed I would have felt like I'd somehow fallen through the cracks and hoodwinked my committee. So at least now I don't feel like an impostor. The "worst" has happened--they've found me out--but they haven't asked me to leave. So I'm relieved.

Anyway. I will talk no more about this subject. For at least a few weeks. I'm so sick of the "q" word.

Turns out my packages have been being delivered down the street. The previous tenant of our house requested that we put a sign on our mailbox saying she'd moved to such and such a house, and apparently the FedEx people don't bother to read the names on our mailbox versus the name on the sign, and as soon as they see the new address they just march the boxes on down the street. So my books (and a bouquet of calla lilies!!) have been found, and all is right.

Wow, it gets warm and suddenly I don't have time for the internet anymore.

Summer came on my birthday. I woke up and it was warm and humid and WONDERFUL. You go outside and you're immediately sticky and last summer I HATED it, but this summer it means the return of the sun and the warmth and the opportunity to wear all my California shirts and not lug around my giant warm furry coat. BRING ON THE HUMIDITY!
My apartment, and its sad little single window, is perfectly warm and awesome during the winter, and is AN OVEN in the summer. Must... move....

My birthday was pretty good. It sort of slipped away into obscurity, but I'm trying to make myself realize that I'm no longer a) a child, b) an only child, c) having important birthdays. Twenty-two is not a landmark year, and when your birthday lands on a Wednesday you just sort of watch it slide past. But that's okay. It was actually pretty good. My parents sent me a 7.1 megapixel digital camera (the Elph by Canon), and I'm addicted to it. I took 170 pictures between Wednesday evening and Saturday evening. I deleted a good half of them (I'm going to try really hard to keep deleting the crappy ones), and uploaded a fair portion of the remainder to Facebook. I'll make another post here and put some up. I LOVE the camera. I haven't had one all year, and have wanted to take pictures of SO MANY things--New Haven, yarn, snow, my car, myself, finished knitted things, my messy apartment, et cetera. And of course I get one and immediately start taking pictures of trees. Why do I have such a fascination with trees and leaves?

Anyway.

I spent the weekend studying for my last final, which was yesterday morning. I already know I missed up a couple of questions, but I don't really care. I had an absurdly high grade going into the final, and I did FINE (finely?), so my grade should be plenty high. I just have to maintain an overall High Pass grade, and I've already got my two Honors grades, so if I get just a Pass I'll still be in the green, and to be honest I'll be somewhat surprised if I don't get an Honors.

My current lab rotation ends on Friday. Next week I'm going to start a 3-week long FOURTH rotation (or fifth, if you count the three weeks I spent sitting in a corner in the Zhong lab before I fled screaming as a rotation), this time in the Breaker lab. They're uber-famous, and uber-rich, and they study RNA, which is totally hot. My PARENTS know who Ron Breaker is (they read Scientific American, and he had an article in SA in December that my stepdad asked me about). So hopefully I'll fall madly in love with the lab, and they'll fall madly in love with me, and I'll get over the fact that there are 25 people in the lab and some of them don't have benchspace. Aaaaauuuggghhh... Meanwhile, my first choice lab might not take any grad students at all this year, and I'm panicking.

Other than that, though, I'm done with classes. Well, if I join Genetics I have to take the Genetics seminar as a second year, and I'll probably audit something like Immunology. But I'm Done. With. Classes. A lot of us are, actually, but some people will still be taking classes for grades next year, which enables me to make the following claim: I have just squished six years' worth of classes into four.
I am scientist. Hear me roar.

I came home early from lab today, slept for two hours, then got in my car and drove to North Haven to sit in a Barnes and Noble. I sat there for an indeterminate amount of time (I have no idea what time I got there-7:30?), maybe two hours-ish, reading Mason-Dixon Knitting (which I ordered last week but which has not arrived yet) and thinking about patterns and just generally hiding between the bookshelves. It felt really good; I haven't hidden in a bookstore in a long time, and the act of driving ten miles to do so made it feel like better hiding (I could have walked the four minutes to the Yale Bookstore and hidden there). Anyway, it was relaxing and I feel a bit calmer about life. And lab.
And I bought the fourth Kushiel book.

All right, off to upload pictures, and then to bed.

(P.S. The series finale of Gilmore Girls was tonight. I can't believe it's over... I'll probably comment about it tomorrow after I download and watch it.)

Oh, what a terrible week.
Thursday night I stayed up late working on the fake grant/term paper, and around 2 am I collapsed into bed, hyped up on caffeine but way too exhausted to write anything coherent.
At about 3 am, my eyes opened and I saw my room, and I "saw" someone come into the room to attack me. I distantly knew that I was asleep, and tried to get up so I could defend myself, but I couldn't move. I somehow flung myself out of bed, but couldn't get any sort of finer movement control, so I stumbled/fell in various directions, trying to get hold of something I could use to defend myself, but really not being able to move at all. I realized in the back of my mind that I had to wake up, so I started yelling at myself to wake up, except I couldn't speak either, so it came out as more of a croaked, "Kaaarrra! Kaarrrra!" Somehow I fell back into the bed and couldn't get up again, and the guy was going to hurt me, and I jerked awake, and the creepy thing is that I'm pretty sure my eyes had already been open, because I was looking at the exact same scene in my bedroom, just minus an attacker. I mean, lighting, angles, position of stuff on floor, all exactly the same. It was sooo scary. I jumped out of bed, turned on all the lights, and called Evan, who talked me down and gave me some good suggestions for how to recover. After we got off the phone, I curled up in front of the computer (all the lights in the apartment still on), and watched two episodes of Lost (okay, I see the irony in watching Lost to calm yourself down...). I think I got back to sleep around 5 or 5:30...

I woke up after about four hours and sort of got back to work. I finished the grant around 1, and went into lab around 2 to feed my cells. After that, I stopped by the Baserga lab to say hello, and to let them know I was okay, because I'd been in the day before twice and had not been in good shape. I hung out with them for an hour or so and then went to the dog park with Kat when her girlfriend picked her up with their dogs. Then all three of us went to Emily H's going-away party (she's transferring to Dartmouth). And after THAT I went waltzing with a couple other classmates. It was a crazy night, but lots of fun, and it felt great to not be writing that stupid grant.

Yesterday morning I woke up to go shopping with Nolan (Kat's girlfriend). We went to Target, and I got a navy blue linen skirt, a creamsicle-colored linen shirt, and a pair of jeans. Then I came home and went out again, to see TMNT with another friend. It was a really good movie, surprisingly, especially considering I barely remember watching the TV show when I was little. I think I was too young for it.
Yesterday evening there was a triple birthday gathering at Sullivan's, the Irish pub downtown that I adore, so Emily and I went to that and got wonderfully drunk. Then Kat and Nolan picked us up and took us to a lesbian bar in Hartford, so we could dance to decent music and meet some of their friends. Emily and I pretended to be together whenever anyone we didn't know looked at us, and danced, and drank, and had a wonderful time. For me, it was like being back inside spring quarter last year, dancing at the Dakota with the gay boys and loving life. It was a strange blend of past and present, and made me feel a little happier about Connecticut.

Actually, many things lately have made me a little happier about Connecticut. I noticed myself thinking, "I love New Haven" the other day, and while I don't think it's necessarily true (although, I could love just about ANYthing), I think it's a good sign that my hatred of New Haven is wearing off, and I'm not resisting the change as much anymore. I'm giving in! I'm adjusting! Yay!

It's raining terribly today, which is actually acceptable, because it's clearly a spring storm, and I'm inside all warm and happy. I bought a book yesterday, Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and have spent most of the afternoon reading it in bed, all huddled up and enjoying being in a fantasy world again. One thing I don't like about grad school is the relative lack of time in which I can read fiction without feeling guilty; so many of my reading hours are spent reading scientific articles and learning wonderful things about how cells work, which is wonderful, but into every life some imagination must fall. Today has been a good day. It's been a good weekend in general, and I feel six orders of magnitude better than I did 72 hours ago.

Also, I may have developed a new crush. I suppose I shouldn't say too much more, for fear of jinxing it, but if things continue the way they are going, perhaps soon I will be able to say that my crush has amounted to something real. In the meantime, I'm getting sort of girlishly giddy about the whole thing.

Also also, I'm going to be a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding in July!!! I have to say that this is the most excited I've been in a long time. I'm gonna be a bridesmaid! And wear a pretty dress and be in my favorite cousin's wedding! I'm ecstatic!
Also, I am going to knit her something red and lovely and wonderful for her wedding gift, although I have no idea yet what form that something will take.

And now, I'm off to Emily's to watch Firefly and knit, and then to another friend's house to watch Angel.

Wow, what a terrible week. I think everything just converged on me all at the same time--rotation talk, fake grant/term paper, womanly issues and the renewal of the debilitating pain, cold weather. I can't wait for tomorrow to be over, so I'll have this whole awful week behind me.

Yesterday I had to talk my lab into letting me take tomorrow off to work on my grant. I'm getting mixed signals from this lab. It's almost as bad as dating. Some of them are supportive and say that classes should be my top priority, and I should take it easy, and others are telling me that data is needed RIGHT NOW, and I feel guilty for having been late every single Friday for the last three weeks and then asking for this one off. I want this semester to be over. Semesters are stupid. They last way too long. I miss quarters. I'm taking way too many classes, and they should have ended a month ago.

Anyway. I've been working on the grant for a few hours now, and have banged out about six crappy pages. I actually feel a bit happier now that I've got something on paper and now that I've actually accomplished something tangible. It's not gonna be a fantastic grant, but I don't think my grade will suffer too badly. I did so well on the midterm, it hardly matters (thank you, thank you, thank you, parents, for giving me good test-taking genes). Anyway, I like the subject I chose, and there aren't many papers about it, so the background reading has been light and interesting. If only all of science was like this.

I spent most of this morning in pain. I got four hours of sleep last night because my body woke me up at 6 am screaming. I sat in the shower for 40 minutes (sorry, apartment-mates!) and then crawled back into bed and fell into an exhausted sleep. I still hurt when I woke up again at 8, but I went to lab meeting anyway. I stopped at Walgreens afterwards and picked up Percogesic and those muscle-relaxing heating pad things you stick on your skin, then came home and pretended to work on the grant, but really I watched the Disney version of Robin Hood. Then I took some Percogesic, applied a sticky heat thing, and went to biochem. I probably shouldn't have taken the Percogesic; it took the edge off the pain, but I had a really hard time paying attention in class. I came home and took a two-hour nap. After that, I was finally able to start writing, and I've been going strong until now. I think I'm just out of steam for the day. Also, I took some more Percogesic and I think it makes me tired. (Which is so weird, because medicine very very rarely makes me sleepy; sleeping pills have no effect.)
Last spring my doctor recommended acupuncture for the pain, and I never followed up. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I'm pretty open-minded, but not terribly crazy about lots of tiny needles.

Also, I feel like I've been really mean lately. Maybe it's just the grumpiness from being sleep-deprived and in pain, but still. I think I need to make an effort to be nicer to people. I just feel... icky.

Anyway. I can't wait to get my life back. I want to climb and knit and read and sleep and see my friends and watch TV and listen to NPR and go grocery shopping.
Just four more pages to write!
Okay, coffee is taking effect; back to work.

Grant/term paper/thing is due Friday at 5. Then I get my life back.

I almost have specific aims laid out. But one of my experiments requires putting two genes under inducable promoters at the same time, and having them on and off at different times. There must be an easier way to accomplish this.

I'm going to attempt to read thirty pages of papers for class tomorrow, and then take what I will call a "nap" before waking up early to go meet with my PI so she can explain to me, once again, exactly what my rotation project is.

G'night.

P.S. Tried to take a 1-hour nap at 7:30 pm last night. ...Woke up at 2 am, ate slice of cheesecake, went back to bed, and woke up at 8 this morning. I think my body is trying to say something....

P.P.S. I think it's time to see a doctor about the cramps again. And thus begins another round of "we have no idea what's wrong with you."

I went back through my Bio 115 (Advanced Eukaryotic Molecular Biology) notes looking for some info on double-stranded break repair for a classmate in my current Advanced Eukaryotic Molecular Biology class (ahhh, the glories of taking the same class twice at different universities... the second university thinks you're so smart...), and I found a review sheet with a bunch of hilarious quotes on it.

Here are some of them, from March of 2005 straight to you:

"If you use the yeast system for aging, you have to ask yourself, what does an old yeast look like anyway? Even though I sort of scoff at old yeast I think you have to take them seriously." --prof

"...where there's lots of cleavage, that's naked DNA. ...120 naked nucleotides flapping in the breeze..." --prof

"Are we more complex than a fly or a worm? Or are we just bigger? I think about that a lot. I think what really separates us, besides the fact that flies can't get tattoos, is our nervous system." --prof

"Mice are fucked up. We mutated the shit out of them." --classmate

"It's that part of the chromosome where microtubules are gonna reach out and touch it." --prof

"If you want to go from some boring little yeast into some clever little fruit fly..." --prof (gee, I wonder what his model organism was?)

"If you inject it into a bunny rabbit..." --prof

"Although, then it kills the cell, so that's not very nice at all." --prof

"homologous recombination machinery feels up the DNA and repairs it" --my personal notes, scrawled in a margin. And yes, this is how I remember everything. You should hear my analogy for nuclear export. It involves bouncers.

And my personal favorite:
"God arranged it this way so I could put it on your test." --prof


We are 46% retrovirus.

Oh, right, livejournal. Forgot about that.

Grad school kinda swallowed me up last week. I guess it's gonna be like this for another two weeksish, until I turn in the grant/term paper I haven't started writing yet. Frickin homework. Also, I'm giving a rotation talk a week from today, so I'm kinda panicking about that. I've barely had time to check my email lately, let alone update lj.

Anyway, the weekend was actually pretty good. I soaked up a lot of sun last week and felt much happier over the weekend. I also did a lot of social things. Funny thing is that I still find myself picking up my papers and reading in the main lab area, around other people, instead of in the office area where I can eat and drink coffee while I read. I guess I'm a little human-starved these days. I feel a constant need to be around people.

Anyway. It's super late and I'm exhausted, and I haven't gotten any work done since I left lab seven hours ago. Climbing sucked tonight, by the way. Although I did climb a 5.10a, which I think is the first 10 I've done since Santa Cruz. Maybe the second. But for tonight only being the second time back since I took those six weeks off for my toe, I guess I really shouldn't complain. Even though I have a giant rope burn inside my left elbow.

Right, as I was saying... going to bed now. Super knitting update later.

Oh man, what a week. I've been avoiding lab as much as possible. I finally decided that this lab stresses me out too much. I like the research and I like most of the other people in the lab, but for some reason the overall atmosphere and dynamic just really freaks me out. I'm terrified of lab. I don't hate it, I'm afraid of it. I just can't see myself being in that kind of an environment for the next five years, so I don't think it would be a good choice for me to join. But I do really like the PI, and I'm a little sad that it's not going to work out.

Classes have been awesome. Okay, well maybe not awesome. But I got my midterm back in Euks yesterday, and I did awesome. Awesomely. I don't remember what the average was (I wrote it down somewhere...), but it doesn't really matter. I got the second-highest grad student score (there are undergrads in our class, and apparently every year they do better than the grad students, which sort of freaks me out a bit), which was revealed to me in secret, and which secret I suppose I am violating by telling EVERYONE, but I'm super excited about it. I've been feeling stupid and slow and worthless lately, and I REALLY needed this.

Anyway, I then proceeded to be really stupid, and run around the conference room like an excited... (quick, give me an excitable creature. bird? chipmunk?) ...in my socks, which led to the inevitable. I slipped and fell (HARD) on my right hip, bruising it pretty badly. I mean, no big deal, I wouldn't have posted about it, even though I couldn't sleep on it last night--except for the fact that this morning, as I was walking to lab, I tried to cross the street and step up onto the sidewalk on the other side, and I caught my boot on the edge of the sidewalk, causing myself to hurtle onto the pavement at an astonishing speed, landing on the SAME SPOT on my right hip and putting a tiny, painful hole in my left palm. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I will be clumsy until the day I die.

So today was a little... uncheery. I was also forced to skip class by my uncooperative feminine organs, which I have decided should be removed as quickly as possible. This is ridiculous. I had surgery for this. I'm so mad at my body. How DARE it make me miss the RNA seminar (I only get one a week!)? How DARE it make me want to vomit with pain? How dare it influence my daily life in any way, shape, or form? I don't think I've ever been livid with my body before, but I really and truly just want to go in and yank things out myself.
I also just realized that I also missed the weekly MCDB seminar, which means I missed stealing the free cookies. Damnit. My feminine organs are so out of here.

In better news, think about my midterm score again! (Okay, maybe that only cheers up me.)
Also, I finished knitting my shawl (*cheering!*). I didn't have to buy any more yarn, and it's big and beautiful and I'm in love with it and the salmon color is actually really starting to grow on me. It goes with just a few things I have, so I'll really only be able to wear it a few places, but I think I might appropriate it as a "lab shawl." You know, the kind you have on your chair at your computer so when you sit down (and thus stop moving) and get cold, you have something to throw over your shoulders. I mean, a scarf isn't enough, and a coat is too much. So this shawl might be just the thing.
Also, I bought more yarn. I should be flogged.
Also also, I think this is one reason I've gotten so addicted to knitting. Knitters are hilarious.

I'm going to bed now.

Oh man. This has been a killer week. I'm soooo tired. Luckily it's Thursday. Unluckily, Thursday is my busiest day, and Friday is going to be a solid day of fixing the mistakes I made in lab Wednesday. So the weekend is kind of far away at this point.

Midterm today. *sigh* Oh well. I feel sort of ready. I should go over the material once more before I leave. I should make some sort of lunchthing before I leave....

I've decided that knitting is a bad thing. All I want to do is hide in my bedroom, listen to NPR, and knit things. I want to work on the shawl, but it takes me ten minutes to knit one row now, and I just don't have an hour to devote to knitting six rows. And the wire's fun to knit, but it really needs to be done in ten-minute chunks throughout a day so that my hands don't get too sore, and I really don't have all that many ten-minute chunks. I usually fill them with reading papers, anyway.

Okay. I'm done complaining for now. I'm gonna go drink some coffee and review splicing again.
Quick! Which two proteins compose the Commitment Complex, and where in the pre-mRNA transcript do they bind?
a) U1 and U3, binding the 5' ss and 3' ss
b) BBP and U2AF, binding the branch point
c) U2 and U4, binding the branch point and 3' ss
d) U and me, who love each other very much, binding the bottom of a marriage contract.

(I shouldn't update lj before I have coffee.)
(Also, I'm going to go upload some more coffee icons, because mine are insufficient.)

This week went by so fast. I had enough homework to keep me occupied for Every. Single. Waking. Moment. this week, so not only am I sleep-deprived, but I also feel as though I haven't relaxed in a year. So much for Vermont.

Oh well, the good news is that it was a GOOD week, even if it didn't let up and seemed to soar by. I really do enjoy my classes, even though I had to read eight papers in three days for them, and I really do love my new lab, even though all I'm doing is cloning and the postdoc in charge of me keeps telling me to do it different ways. I tried to do a DNA extraction this morning using phenol chloroform (super nasty stuff) instead of just using the QIAgen kit, and blah. I'd much rather use the kit. Turns out it really really does matter if you add .6 volumes of isopropanol versus .1 volume, because apparently I can't do math, and no amount of spinning was going to get that DNA to precipitate. I stopped, did a calculation, added the rest of the isopropanol, and was going to spin the damn thing again when I realized someone was using the centrifuge. So I spun it at 4*C, which was okay, 'cause it did precipitate, but I think it's probably better to do it at room temp. I threw the whole thing in the fridge when I was done (well, I washed and resuspended and stuff), and I think I'll just redo it on Monday. I was only in lab for about four hours today before I decided that I just wasn't going to get anything productive done. I left at about 2:00.

I stopped by the med campus (I know, SO not on my way home) to visit the Baserga lab and say hi to Erica. It's getting more and more tempting to join that lab. While I was hanging out today, I looked around and realized that I really miss it. THEY aren't psycho about their gels. (My new lab melts down their gels--yes, WITH the ethidium bromide in them--and pours them again and again and again, until the background gets too high to visualize bands anymore. Isn't that sick? And... really bad for your germ line. I mean, man, I bet that every single person in that lab is going to have mutant babies some day. If I join that lab, I'm gonna totally revamp the gel system.)

Anyway. It was a good visit, and I came home around 3:30 and smashed into bed. I slept for, um, four and a half hours. And I only woke up because of the marching band outside my building (WHY do I live next to the gym???), thinking to myself, "God DAMN it, why is there a marching band outside this frickin' early in the morning?!? It's not even light yet!" And then I realized that it wasn't morning, it was night, and that I had to get up and take a shower so I can go to a party at GPSCY tonight. It's the second recruitment weekend, and there's another GPSCY party, and I really really hope that this weekend doesn't end up as weird as the last one. A repeat of that Friday night would be okay, though.

I wish I had something more interesting to post about. I feel like my life is fairly low-stress right now, which seems to actually make for uninteresting entries. Weird how that works out. Not that I'm complaining about life being low-stress, but it WOULD be nice to have motivation to write interesting things. Maybe I should start writing fiction.