(no subject)
So.... my first week of classes is over.
This entry is going to be v. "dick and jane" plain english syntax with lots of "I" statements.
I have a larger course load than the last three semesters, with my first 6 hr lab (protein lab). Additionally I have started working 12 hrs/wk for credit in a lab. Due to the significant time involvement there, most of my thoughts these days are related to my lab work or to the lab group. The lab professor is Dr. Diehl who recently joined Rice and who also is teaching his first course, which I am taking (cellular engineering). I like him a lot: he is very nice and he gives me a lot of attention. He is also a formerly gigging guitarist who played at CBGB's and who likes Rush and King's X. It is likely that I will be working for him for my remaining 2 yrs. He is interested in placing me at a good grad school such as MIT. His interests are heavily biased towards the biochemical physics rather than the biomedical engineering side, which at first deterred me but is beginning to grow on me. Everyone, myself included, thinks that he is great and that it is good that I am working in his lab at its inception. The lab group is very small and I know all of its members pretty well already.
My project is to engineer protein microarrays although as of yet my involvement in that effort is of extremely limited scope. For the time being, my job is to design a routine for coating glass slides with epoxy and to select all of the materials and equipment needed - which is kind of like shopping! (because it is). The pace of learning for me in this lab will largely outdistance my other courses, placing it at a very fast level. For example, next week I will clone and express a protein for the first time, which is precisely what my protein lab will do over the course of two months. The scope of the lab on the whole is very overwhelming because it is so cross-disciplinary that I feel unable to keep up with everything. If anyone remembers those lengthy expository, didactic posts I put in my previous black_angels journal, than they may be familiarly reminded when I post a "what are protein microarrays" entry in the near future.
Being placed in a lab where everyone knows me and my opinions are important gives me lots of warm, fuzzy feelings because I am not treated like a "temp" (which I have been before almost exclusively). It is apparent to me, however, that I get emotionally involved in my work because I feel unhappy when Diehl doesn't have time to review my contributions or avoids having personal exchanges with me. I feel foolish when I am unable to determine if he is too busy to interrupt but my progress is contingent on his feedback. Conversely, when he goes out on a smoke break with me and we have a little chatty chat like we're good buddies it makes me feel special in a sort of clandestine, hanging-out-with-the-older-kids kind of way (we jammed out to King's X in his office today). As such, my emotions are playing unusually into my lab participation, which annoys me because I want to act and come across as professionally and maturely as possible. So far I've been acting fine though, and I posit that the reason for this is emotional lability is the sudden sleep deprivation I have experienced this week.
Lauren and I are still together, and I have to say that is going well considering the distance. It is long, though.
Grant and I are feeling well established in our new room, although it is very small. He broke up with his gf in austin and as such he is around to keep me company. I still like living on campus, although the hallway we are on is filled with very noisy freshmen. Some of them are just new to drinking, and others are trying to impress upon everyone within shouting distance that they are indeed partying very hard. They really don't have to scream twice, but somehow I don't think that stumbling up and down old section hallways bracing yourself on the walls and yelling incoherently is my ideal "party hard" scheme. I think my ideal "party hard" scheme would involve a lot more sass, and a lot more style. Maybe...
.. it would take place on the roof of a skyscraper in downtown LA outfitted with a giant, fully pressure sensitive, multicolored, interactive LED dancefloor
...I would be drinking courvoisier and puffing a cuban while
...crowd-surfing over a mosh pit in a red velvet armchair with
...Necrophagist playing on a stage suspended by chains from a helicopter flying overhead, with additional hellicpoters projecting strobes and video feed lighting on the dancefloor..
Maybe not. Whatever. In any case, they are really loud and really freshmen-y. I guess it is amusing sometimes and it gives me a lot of opportunities to try out my "what the crap?" facial expressions.
Nick Alexander and I got over 3500 meters in the elephant/bird stage in we <3 katamari and we rolled up the king of the cosmos, which was pretty much the largest thing you can to, besides picking up every single type of thing. So I'm good to shelf that game for a bit. (or we shall see...)
Somehow, this evening I lost the desire to do anything entirely. I didn't want to go out, I only wanted to lay in bed and relax. But I felt listless. I couldn't stop thinking about how cool the glassware and chemlab supply catalogs were - who knew you could buy such a crazy diverse world of stuff? I mean the precision engineering is mindblowing - and the price reflects it. I can't resist knowing more about things you can spend money on, and, having recently attempted to design an all-teflon apparatus for epoxidation, I went online to find out how much it would cost to coat my desk with teflon. Why you say? BECAUSE I CAN. Teflon is so cool. It has the lowest coefficient of friction of any non-lubricated solid substance. It would be like my desk would be a frying pan!!! How useless and awesome is that. It is chemically inert and absurdly stable, which means if I spilled extremely dangerous and caustic chemicals on my desk, it would be A-OK. So anyway - it would cost only $25 to buy a two by four film of teflon. Anyway, I spent my entire Friday evening perusing plastic polymer supply websites. I also somehow found a pocket sundial with a built in compass that's only $25. I though it would be pimpin' to bust out a sundial to find the time. And then I realized.... I AM THE BIGGEST NERD OF ALL TIME.
Anyway, I think I really needed the alone time to do stupid timewaster internet crap (like this).
Ta -da !
This entry is going to be v. "dick and jane" plain english syntax with lots of "I" statements.
I have a larger course load than the last three semesters, with my first 6 hr lab (protein lab). Additionally I have started working 12 hrs/wk for credit in a lab. Due to the significant time involvement there, most of my thoughts these days are related to my lab work or to the lab group. The lab professor is Dr. Diehl who recently joined Rice and who also is teaching his first course, which I am taking (cellular engineering). I like him a lot: he is very nice and he gives me a lot of attention. He is also a formerly gigging guitarist who played at CBGB's and who likes Rush and King's X. It is likely that I will be working for him for my remaining 2 yrs. He is interested in placing me at a good grad school such as MIT. His interests are heavily biased towards the biochemical physics rather than the biomedical engineering side, which at first deterred me but is beginning to grow on me. Everyone, myself included, thinks that he is great and that it is good that I am working in his lab at its inception. The lab group is very small and I know all of its members pretty well already.
My project is to engineer protein microarrays although as of yet my involvement in that effort is of extremely limited scope. For the time being, my job is to design a routine for coating glass slides with epoxy and to select all of the materials and equipment needed - which is kind of like shopping! (because it is). The pace of learning for me in this lab will largely outdistance my other courses, placing it at a very fast level. For example, next week I will clone and express a protein for the first time, which is precisely what my protein lab will do over the course of two months. The scope of the lab on the whole is very overwhelming because it is so cross-disciplinary that I feel unable to keep up with everything. If anyone remembers those lengthy expository, didactic posts I put in my previous black_angels journal, than they may be familiarly reminded when I post a "what are protein microarrays" entry in the near future.
Being placed in a lab where everyone knows me and my opinions are important gives me lots of warm, fuzzy feelings because I am not treated like a "temp" (which I have been before almost exclusively). It is apparent to me, however, that I get emotionally involved in my work because I feel unhappy when Diehl doesn't have time to review my contributions or avoids having personal exchanges with me. I feel foolish when I am unable to determine if he is too busy to interrupt but my progress is contingent on his feedback. Conversely, when he goes out on a smoke break with me and we have a little chatty chat like we're good buddies it makes me feel special in a sort of clandestine, hanging-out-with-the-older-kids kind of way (we jammed out to King's X in his office today). As such, my emotions are playing unusually into my lab participation, which annoys me because I want to act and come across as professionally and maturely as possible. So far I've been acting fine though, and I posit that the reason for this is emotional lability is the sudden sleep deprivation I have experienced this week.
Lauren and I are still together, and I have to say that is going well considering the distance. It is long, though.
Grant and I are feeling well established in our new room, although it is very small. He broke up with his gf in austin and as such he is around to keep me company. I still like living on campus, although the hallway we are on is filled with very noisy freshmen. Some of them are just new to drinking, and others are trying to impress upon everyone within shouting distance that they are indeed partying very hard. They really don't have to scream twice, but somehow I don't think that stumbling up and down old section hallways bracing yourself on the walls and yelling incoherently is my ideal "party hard" scheme. I think my ideal "party hard" scheme would involve a lot more sass, and a lot more style. Maybe...
.. it would take place on the roof of a skyscraper in downtown LA outfitted with a giant, fully pressure sensitive, multicolored, interactive LED dancefloor
...I would be drinking courvoisier and puffing a cuban while
...crowd-surfing over a mosh pit in a red velvet armchair with
...Necrophagist playing on a stage suspended by chains from a helicopter flying overhead, with additional hellicpoters projecting strobes and video feed lighting on the dancefloor..
Maybe not. Whatever. In any case, they are really loud and really freshmen-y. I guess it is amusing sometimes and it gives me a lot of opportunities to try out my "what the crap?" facial expressions.
Nick Alexander and I got over 3500 meters in the elephant/bird stage in we <3 katamari and we rolled up the king of the cosmos, which was pretty much the largest thing you can to, besides picking up every single type of thing. So I'm good to shelf that game for a bit. (or we shall see...)
Somehow, this evening I lost the desire to do anything entirely. I didn't want to go out, I only wanted to lay in bed and relax. But I felt listless. I couldn't stop thinking about how cool the glassware and chemlab supply catalogs were - who knew you could buy such a crazy diverse world of stuff? I mean the precision engineering is mindblowing - and the price reflects it. I can't resist knowing more about things you can spend money on, and, having recently attempted to design an all-teflon apparatus for epoxidation, I went online to find out how much it would cost to coat my desk with teflon. Why you say? BECAUSE I CAN. Teflon is so cool. It has the lowest coefficient of friction of any non-lubricated solid substance. It would be like my desk would be a frying pan!!! How useless and awesome is that. It is chemically inert and absurdly stable, which means if I spilled extremely dangerous and caustic chemicals on my desk, it would be A-OK. So anyway - it would cost only $25 to buy a two by four film of teflon. Anyway, I spent my entire Friday evening perusing plastic polymer supply websites. I also somehow found a pocket sundial with a built in compass that's only $25. I though it would be pimpin' to bust out a sundial to find the time. And then I realized.... I AM THE BIGGEST NERD OF ALL TIME.
Anyway, I think I really needed the alone time to do stupid timewaster internet crap (like this).
Ta -da !