Of irksome cats and grads
Our cat, Monkey, was sick this weekend. And then yesterday I caught a cold. Coincidence...? Yeah, probably not. Our symptoms were different. And it's pretty rare for an illness to jump from a cat to a human. But I'll still say I survived a rare case of Feline Flu.
An update on the back-order child, for those of you who don't read stinky_monky's LJ: We retrieved a bunch of eggs a week ago. Some of them successfully fertilized. We transferred a couple of those successful embryos back on Saturday and had hoped to freeze the leftovers but they did not develop properly. So now the success of this whole enterprise is resting on two microscopic bundles of genetic material that we've nicknamed Cletus and Beaker. No pressure, guys. I've managed to compartmentalize most of this process, but today's news that the extra embryos were "discarded" instead of frozen hit me kinda hard. It was the first time it really sunk in that after everything we've done in this process (injections, ultrasounds, etc.), it might all come to nothing. But it also might not. We'll find out in a few weeks, I guess.
I am taking a writing seminar this quarter (and next), where the final result will be a ~40 page paper. During the last few weeks of this quarter, we are reading our colleagues' prospectuses for those papers. And some of the prospectuses are numbering around 20 pages. You know, when your prospectus is 20 pages, you might as well write the actual paper and skip the preliminary step. God, grad students drive me nuts sometimes...
An update on the back-order child, for those of you who don't read stinky_monky's LJ: We retrieved a bunch of eggs a week ago. Some of them successfully fertilized. We transferred a couple of those successful embryos back on Saturday and had hoped to freeze the leftovers but they did not develop properly. So now the success of this whole enterprise is resting on two microscopic bundles of genetic material that we've nicknamed Cletus and Beaker. No pressure, guys. I've managed to compartmentalize most of this process, but today's news that the extra embryos were "discarded" instead of frozen hit me kinda hard. It was the first time it really sunk in that after everything we've done in this process (injections, ultrasounds, etc.), it might all come to nothing. But it also might not. We'll find out in a few weeks, I guess.
I am taking a writing seminar this quarter (and next), where the final result will be a ~40 page paper. During the last few weeks of this quarter, we are reading our colleagues' prospectuses for those papers. And some of the prospectuses are numbering around 20 pages. You know, when your prospectus is 20 pages, you might as well write the actual paper and skip the preliminary step. God, grad students drive me nuts sometimes...