pre-gre post

so t -13 hours until i go take the damn GRE. i really can't wait until i'm done with it; at the same time i wish i'd taken preparation a bit more seriously... though i don't think i'm at risk of really sucking. whatever; it'll all be over soon, and like hell i'm going to pay another $150 to take the test again, no matter how poorly i do.

it'll be one more hoop down, i guess... and how many yet to jump through? i made a list today of the ETS codes for schools i'm thinking of applying to; i haven't really done much thinking or paring down of lists, or even writing emails to professors or anything. once the gre is done, i have to get started on that.

i've whittled it down to a list of 6 7 schools and 89 programs...
UW (2 programs?)
U of Oregon
UCSF
UCSD
Stanford (?)
Berkeley (??)
Harvard
Columbia

i've also been weighing relative merits of different schools and their respective environments. the west coast has the benefit of being close to home, as well as a much more moderate climate. the east coast has the benefit of being in the center of everything, but has disadvantages in being so far away and having so much weather.

in terms of ranking, or probability of me deciding to go there, assuming i get in everywhere on my list, right now the list stands at: UW, Oregon/UCSD (tie), UCSF/Stanford/Berkeley(tie), Harvard/Columbia. and since i'm not likely to get into harvard and noplace else... i'm not so sure why i'm applying to so damn many programs.

sigh.

i'm done.

well, i'm not done done, I have a paper due on Friday, but it's for a 500 level class and thus doesn't count; i'm done with my undergrad. FINALLY.

though the paper is definitely proving to be a pain in the ass. i've got everything i need conceptually, i think, but the words just aren't coming together. it's annoying.

so close, and yet so far.

whew

biochem final: exactly like the practice finals. good thing i spent last night poring over the practice finals and their solutions. I think I ended up doing ok (by my standards, which = very well by anyone else's standards)

thinking about buying this bike. it was recommended to me by a friend... never heard of the brand, but he knows his bikes, so i trust him. or maybe this one. according to another friend, "you can't go wrong with bianchi." but the jamis comes in a female-specific frame, which is an advantage. plus it looks like it's got the horizontal brakes, which i kind of like... i think after graduation i'll go into a dealer and get fit. see what they have to say.

tuesday

biochem final this morning... boy will it feel good to be done with it. i fear that i blew off classes this quarter due to senioritis and lab work. so hopefully the biochem final won't kick my ass *too* much.

t minus 4 days... huh?

i think i might go to the apple store and buy myself an imac this afternoon. it'd certainly make writing my paper more fun/easier. i'm going to get the 20" one.

another weekend come and gone...

t minus 6 days until i'm a college graduate, a bachelor of science. weird.

i signed up to take the GRE in august. i need to get my ass in gear and start studying for that. bleh standardized tests.

two finals and one paper, and then i am officially done. paper's due on friday, but with a little luck i'll have it done before that. (not that i've gotten *anything* done this weekend, i've been kind of a waste. i blame the heat and the senioritis. i'm ready to be done.

go me.

i just rode up to lake forest park and back. if my math isn't horribly wrong, that's like... 20 miles. now i am enjoying a delicious slab of mahi mahi. and b33r. always need the b33r. mmm.

it's crunch time, it seems. less than 2 weeks until the symposium, i have to give lab meeting tomorrow, a practice talk at some point soon, and my real talk next friday. that's a lot of presentations. oh and i presented a figure from a paper today in calcium class. hi my name is sir presents-a-lot.

time to get to work. or maybe shower. (or bower. mmm, bower.)

so totally wrong

on the biochem midterm today, there was a question in which it is insinuated that the exam taker's father not only takes viagra, but has admitted this to said exam-taker. sorry, dad, TOO MUCH FUCKING INFORMATION NEXT QUESTION.

it was also a flawed question because it said that the dentist was going to administer nitric oxide (NO) as an anaesthetic. dad, you need a new dentist. a dentist should know the difference between NO and NO2. one will make you goofy and dissociated, the other will GIVE YOU AN ERECTION. (actually, it wouldn't, because NO only makes it a short distance before it's oxidized to nitrites and nitrates, and would never make it from your lungs into your groin.) but it certainly won't do anything to make you feel less pain. bad dentist, back to basic chemistry.

can i forget this stuff yet? oh yeah, i have to take the biochem GRE.

quickie

miles today: 8ish. total this week: >40. go me.

also this weekend: got both programming assignments for genome informatics working. one of the programs took over an hour to run on the sample file they gave us - damn file had somewhere around 500 entries, each more than 100 amino acids long. couple this with an algorithm of O(n^2) efficiency, and you keep a G4 busy for awhile.

kind of did my taxes. i made a mistake on one sheet and so i need to print out another copy, but they're virtually done. nothing paid, nothing owed, no refund... this is what happens when one makes less than $800 in a year and is claimed as a dependent. this is certainly the last year that'll be true, and next year i'll probably have real income, so it'll be a different story.

next: study biochem. i have a damn midterm on wednesday... how is it time for midterms already? on another, scary note: 55 days until graduation. less than 2 months left in my undergrad career. i really should start studying for the GREs. i figure, i'll take the biochemistry/cell/molecular biology one right after graduation, or even slightly before. then i'll cram for the generals and take it in july or august.

ok, time to study. g proteins and tyrosine kinases and signaling cascades, oh my!

science diet!

so i had a pretty science-riffic day. this morning was lab meeting for the larger of the 2 labs i belong to, which was a presentation from (i think) the most senior grad student in the lab, who's been doing a ton of work on membrane biophysics in the nucleus magnacellularis (part of the cochlear nucleus) in chick. so evidently, neurons in this part of the brainstem fire with a stereotypical pattern that is different from many other types of neurons, and he's trying to figure out why. the short answer is that it has different potassium channels expressed, but the long answer sure was a lot more interesting than i'm going to be able to explain here. the data were pretty much a bunch of voltage traces, and associated graphs. interesting to me, not so interesting to other people... but very educational, and he presented it very clearly and succinctly.

after lab meeting, i had a meeting with the boss of that lab (the more senior of my two PIs) to "discuss my future." which was pretty cool... what i got from him was: 1 - yes, we'll pay you to stick around for a year before grad school, you're too valuable for us to let you go; 2 - a bunch of advice regarding which graduate schools to apply to and where he can get me in. so now i'm supposed to spend a day or so researching not just programs but also particular labs i'd be interested in doing my thesis work, which at this point i think will have something to do with determining the genetic mechanisms behind neuronal differentiation, development, circuit-formation, something like that. so his main point was that there are a lot of good neuroscience programs out there, but not a whole lot of people doing the kind of work that i'm interested in, so i should start narrowing it down. also, he said, fish for lab names not from nature, science, nature neuroscience, but go through issues of neuron, j neurosci, things like that, and try to find some names. so i'm supposed to meet with him again in a month to further discuss. hooray! someone on my side. oh, he also said he could get me into the sanger program "no sweat." so that's certainly something to think about! (sigh. just remembered that i have to take the GREs.)

so then after that, i went to a lecture by Gail Mandel, who did her doctoral and postdoc work on sodium channel expression, and in the process discovered a sort of "master switch" for neural cell fate. It's a transcription factor called REST - Repressor Element-binding Silencing Transcription Factor - and it's basically expressed everywhere but the nervous system. She had a ton of data and a really interesting model of how this particular switch is turned on and off and how that precisely determines whether a cell becomes neural or non-neural. Evidently there are binding sites for this protein beside nearly every gene involved in neural development - ion channels, synaptic proteins, and even other transcription factors known to direct neural cell fate, like NeuroD and neurogenin 1 (which a grad student in my (other, smaller) lab studies!)

After that seminar, I did some other stuff like work on homework, go to class, set up fish for next week, etc. And then at 5:30, when I was debating going home, I decided to go to the Neurology Grand Rounds (a seminar series I've never been to before) - Jeff Barker gave a talk summarizing 15+ years of work on neural stem cells. His group has pretty much amassed an ass-ton of gene expression data in different cell types, from flow cytometry/cell sorting to in situs with some really pretty fluorescent imaging data. I guess they have a 5-color confocal microscope up at the NIH (when you're government you get all the cool toys) - he had images showing expression of 5 different genes, all labeled with different colors, in different parts of the developing rat cortex. it was pretty amazing data, and i learned that what most people call "neural stem cells" are more accurately lineage-restricted progenitor cells which may or may not be multipotent. repeat after me: just because they're proliferating doesn't make them stem cells. There was also a lot of stuff about FGFs and FGF receptors... but I don't really have time to go into it all right now. (FGF stands for fibroblast growth factor, and it's pretty much one of many, many secreted peptides and molecules that guide development.)

so yeah, i'm completely geeked out right now. i felt super-special because Dr. Barker mentioned Elizabeth Grove in his talk, and I just heard her speak last month at the NW developmental biology meeting! they both work on FGFs. i had to flip through my talk notebook when he mentioned her name and try to remember her presentation... the key thing I remember is that she had showed that you can shift different brain structures forwards or backwards by increasing or decreasing FGF activity.

so anyway, now i have to write a program to mimic the way a BLAST search works, and then one to do a protein sequence alignment. why did i register for this genome informatics class again?

not your average online university

This ad: "Sanger PhD programme Fully funded 4 year studentships in genomics" has come up on my gmail with eery regularity... so one day i just randomly clicked on it. and again today, it came up and i followed it... and now i'm contemplating a Ph.D. abroad. i also spent some time perusing the page for cold spring harbor's phd program, at the Watson School. could i go to a school that carried jim watson's name, given his reputation as a sexist pig and my diehard, unshakable belief that women are people too? (is it wise to choose a program based on hearsay about the namesake's personality, regardless of his accomplishments?) Would I really be happy in such a small and secluded program, or would somewhere larger suit my lifestyle a bit better? it seems like there's a lot to be said about a 4 year phd program, as opposed to the usual 5 or 6 years... getting my degree faster would put me that much closer to tenure. and then there's a lot to be said about having a doctorate from cambridge, which i would if i did the sanger program. i mean, shit, people have been studying there for 800 years now. (cambridge. not the sanger institute. they instituted their phd program in like 1999.)

of course, there's a good chance that i'll just end up here at UW for my Ph.D.... I bet I could finish in 4 years, if i could keep working on something similar to my undergrad research...

theobromide saturation

last night i wrote a nice lengthy, thoughtful post, and just as i went to publish it safari crashed. i'm only using safari because firefox 2 doesn't work on my machine - it just randomly hangs and refuses to force quit, and crashes the finder, so i have to hard reset - not cool. what's the deal, is my g4 architecture really that outdated? i know i could just roll back to firefox 1.5.8 or whatever, but i'm lazy, and safari works okay... but it's just little things. sigh. hopefully firefox 2.0.0.4 will work.....

so it's easter, which means i'm stuffed full of food and family and chocolate. halfway through my last cadbury creme egg... but not even halfway through the chocolate. hell, even the bunny has everything but the ears. i am really going to have to get into the habit of running. and i am seriously thinking of buying a bike, and have actually tried a couple of times on craigslist, but craigslist users are flakes. i'll probably pop in to recycled cycles next time it's sunny, if i don't hear back about the 54cm vintage sekai in "good condition" in the u-district in the next day or two.

my productive streak has slowed this weekend... i've gotten nearly nothing done. i found a paper that i perceived to be scooping my research, from 2000, online on saturday and have been trying to absorb the results and conclusions they draw. upon further reflection, it's not what my data is showing, so my story is still new, but it's got some solid precedence in the literature. which is good... i guess.

i'm starting to get a small sense of dread for graduation. it's dawned on me that after i graduate, both the university and my parents are going to stop giving me free money. so i need to find someone else to give me money... ideally to do my own research (under someone's mentorship, of course)...

work hard don't stop

so it's officially spring break, and i'm back from the Northwest Developmental Biology conference at Friday Harbor (hence the pictures earlier). It was fun, but I left right after my last final, and spent 3 days thinking about science. And now I'm home and ready for a day off before I get to work on my research over the break. I need to go buy food, but I'm running low on cash since I went out to dinner a few times this weekend, and I'm kind of stuck on the couch blowing my nose every 5 minutes. The cold is almost over, but it's left me with a lovely sinus infection. i don't want to have to get antibiotics, but I'm not sure what else can be done against a sinus infection. (And yes, I know it's an infection... I could share details here about the fluorescent color of my snot, but I don't think you want to hear about that...) Ugh! I feel fine except for the fact that my head is full of green gooey goodness.

So spring break means new quarter, and new quarter means new classes and new textbooks. I'm only taking 2 real classes, but they're not going to be easy, and I'm also trying to crank out some data for my project, mapping and characterization of my zebrafish mutant. That means that I'm going to need to get at least one pair of consistently breeding heterozygote pairs of fish, something I have had trouble with the last few months. Grragrh, the fish better start giving. My 2 real classes are 3rd quarter biochem and a genome informatics class, neither of which is going to be a walk in the park. Biochem is a ton of reading and memorization, plus 9 freaking quizzes this quarter (as opposed to only exams last quarter), and genome informatics is a programming assignment a week. Hopefully they won't be too difficult and I won't be too far behind in the programming aspect, since I haven't written even a snippet of code in probably 4 years. I think it's mostly Perl though, and from what I hear Perl is pretty easy to learn.

I think I'm going to give myself the afternoon to watch some Firefly and blow my nose some more. Cause I haven't done enough of that today.

so it's sunday before finals week, which means it's apartment-cleaning weekend. (isn't it funny how it always works that way?) it's also laundry weekend... though at this point it's just all rounded up into the hamper and waiting by the door with the detergent; i'm considering putting it off until tomorrow in favor of... uh... studying.

the fun part of laundry day is always what you get away with wearing. i spent most of the morning in yoga pants (after doing hardly any yoga at all this morning), and when it was finally time to get myself to the grocery store, i rounded up the nearest pair of semi-clean jeans - ones i haven't worn in months. it wasn't until i had them on that i remembered just how flared these pants are. i've pretty much sworn off boot-cut/flare jeans, seeing as that's the word from On High, and in the last 8 months i've acquired about 4 new pairs of pants, all in the straight/skinny leg tradition. so it was weird to me to see my tennis shoes swallowed by gaping 14" maws when i'm finally getting used to seeing the skinny cuff all scrunched around the tops.

it must be finals week; i'm waxing prosaic on my wardrobe. god save me.

one more thing: go tell Starbucks that you don't like their decision to put Discovery Institute crap on their cups. for details, see pharyngula - he's got a good rundown of the situation.

saturday

listening: imogen heap, speak for yourself. the voice behind frou frou is equally strong on her own. i just love her voice, and her songs are perfect background music for studying time.

just finished watching: the season 7 - aka series - finale of buffy. it's a bit of a letdown to finish an epic, but since i know now that it's not really the end, just the end of the tv show, it's not as hard as it might have been if i'd been watching it on network tv in 2003. today also marks the 10th anniversary of the buffy tv show - it was picked up by the WB midseason in march of 1997. buffy was more than just another tuesday night drama - it was such a powerful story that has impact far beyond the realm of tv. joss whedon has said that he intended for buffy to live on in her fans, to become a part of every woman on the planet, and i think he succeeded at least a little bit. there were so few positive female role models on tv, especially tv geared at teenagers, before buffy came along. and it was a show that wasn't afraid to take chances. case in point: "once more with feeling" - the musical episode. "hush" - the episode where no one is able to speak. "the body" - the episode that chronicles the 24 hours after buffy discovers her mother dead on the couch. if ever there was a more influential tv show, i have yet to see it. so here's my advice for anyone who likes butt-kicking, funny quips, or hot girls, or for anyone who enjoys battlestar galactica, or serenity, or anyone who likes reading comic books or watching action-packed anime. start at the beginning - "welcome to the hellmouth" - and stick with it. those who are able to make it through the first season will surely not be able to quit after that - all 7 seasons come together as a fully fulfilling story, an epic tale of a postmodern hero, a female fighter we can all embrace.

and with that over, i am empowered and inspired to geek out on my textbooks for the next 4 and a half days. wednesday morning, it's all over. wednesday afternoon, i'll be in friday harbor, up in the san juans, surrounded by the beauty of puget sound and all the pacific northwest has to offer. and when i get back on sunday, i'll have an entire week off from school. woohoo!!!

home again, home again

trying to get back into the swing of things after a week off of classes is hard. trying to get back into the swing of things after a week in the most picturesque location in the world, with some of the most amazing people you've ever met surrounding you 24 hours a day, and coming back to the last week before finals, one or two lectures behind, and with a dose of apathy a million miles wide, is harder.

apathy's not the right word, either. it's not like i don't care about classes, it's just that i'm nearly completely caught up, and i'm sitting in a good place, if i just put in the work. i think i can 4.0 the quarter, but i'm having trouble focusing and buckling down due to other forces afoot.

focus. not on real ultimate britney, or plotting random acts of folly. especially don't focus on buffy. focus on biochemistry. your final is a week from today. focus for one more week, then for one more quarter.

w00t!

after biochem lecture today, i found myself walking at the same pace and direction as the professor for the first half of my biochem class. we'd learned in class that the exam was graded, the mean was 52 and the median was 53. (out of 100.)

me: "hey dr. parson, i was wondering if you knew what the high score on the exam was."
dr. p: "oh, i think it was a 92 or a 93. very impressive."

fast-forward five minutes of walking toward health sciences, the brown spot on my nose growing by the second. i admit it, i was schmoozing. anyway, fast-forward to me, walking out of the biochem office and out of sight of my classmates picking up their graded exam. i unfold my exam and look at my score...

92.

that's right, bitches. hate me. :D

proenza schouler? must be thursday.

it's those pants again! (style.com.) must get me a pair like this! i could wait and hope they put something like that in their FW07 line for Target (if they're doing a FW line for Target) or i could buy vintage. must go thrifting this weekend! i hit jackpot at the buffalo exchange last weekend and found a pair of shiny black trousers AND a pair of faded black jeans, both in straight/skinny leg, for a grand whopping total of $27. i was proud.

so, am i officially a geek yet, or am i going to have to pre-order this? that's right, joss whedon is writing a new comic book series that takes place after season 7 left off. the slayer epic continues! issue #1 hits the shelves on march 7, and he says he's shooting for a 25 to 30 issue series, with monthly issues. sweet! and then, there's this: a compendium, a veritable series of tomes of the buffyverse comics. That doesn't come out until july... actually, just 3 days before Deathly Hallows*. Plus, it starts out with a *faithful* comic-book adaptation of joss's original screenplay, the one that was produced as the B horror movie starring kristy swanson. i'm anxious to find out what joss really intended the story to be like. eeee! it's going to be an awesome summer.

hoom de hoom, don't be hasty. i'm trying to savor Season 7 of Buffy, since i know it's all the great live-action Buffy we'll have, at least for a good long while. but it's so hard, when the show is just so awesome. and what with my midterms over for the moment and me thoroughly ahead of the curve in all my classes, i have time for a little s&s (staking and slayage).

*I've been reconsidering my position on the does-Harry-die issue. I saw a quote by JK Rowling the other day that said something to the effect of, "I knew Harry's story would come to an end after 7 books." hmmmmmmmmmmm. maybe he does die. but probably not really DIE-die... or does he? *squeal* can't wait!

128 days.

128 days until i get to put on a goofy outfit, sit through 4 hours of speechifying, and walk across a stage and shake someone's hand, then get a piece of paper congratulating me for working my ass off for the past few years. it's hard to believe i'm getting so close, after having been in and out of college for the last 6 years. i'm hoping i can finish my Ph.D. in less time than it took me to finish my damn undergrad.

not likely, but i can hope, right?

osashiburi ne.

insert standard been-a-long-time apology, swear to blog more from now on, blah blah. i know, i know, heard it all before. what can i say? i have more important things to do, it seems, than blog. and i've been keeping a paper journal for the majority of the last year, one that's actually consumed one notebook and is doing serious damage to another. i find it cathartic; the fact that none of you out there on the Internets can read it means that i can write whatever the fuck i want without judgement. which is nice. but it doesn't do you, Dear Reader, any good, if you've just thought, "gee, i wonder how kat is doing" and surf over to my blog and i haven't written anything in months.

it's been a wacky year, that's for sure. 2007 has some great stuff in store, though, i am sure. one thing that's weird: i have a crush on someone. like, a giddy, goofy, secret crush that no one knows about but i've had for months. (okay, a few people know, but it's a closely guarded secret.) and i dare not say more than this, but... man! it feels good to actually *feel* something for someone..... even if it's someone i see less than once a week.

graduation: it's finally within my grasp. only 135 days left... until i will no longer be a damn undergrad. fuck! i need to figure out what i'm going to do after that. i have ideas, plans; as of yet, nothing concrete. need to start kissing professor ass.

been reading: lots of biochem. yesterday in lecture, i was the only one who knew the answer to a question the professor asked; i don't think he could see who it was who answered, but i nailed it and no one else was speaking up. that's my M.O. - i know the answer immediately, but i always wait at least a moment or two before i speak up, to let anyone else who knows have a chance. but today, the prof asked the question (what cofactor do amino acid decarboxylases use) and no one answered, he went on to the next slide, then asked if anyone had come up with an answer. so i said fuck it, and in a confident voice, "pyridoxal phosphate." ding! score one for me. yes i am a super lame dorkface, and everyone in all my classes secretly wants me dead.

been listening: the arcade fire. both funeral and the ep. how had i not really heard this band before, despite having heard them tons of times? also, the new shins album. just got it off of itunes, and am on my third or fourth listen... and it's good. it's really good. i really like the track "sea legs" - it's got a killer breakbeat (what?) and makes me wanna dance. and the rest of the album is great as well. obviously the shins are a band we can trust. i need to get my hands on a copy of oh, inverted world... it's the only one i don't have.

been watching: buffy. hardcore. (when i'm not studying.) (god, i'm a doublenerd!) i'm on season 6, and buffy is not so thrilled about being alive. but this is the season where buffy and spike get together, and let's face it: spike is the best damn character on the show. also just started angel - i've watched the first 3 episodes so far. it's pretty good, but my tolerance for david boreanaz angel is low. (i have nothing against the actor per se, just the broody character grates on me after too long.) but i am digging the comic-book-action-hero vibe... it's a different world than buffy's world, and angel has some sweet tricks up his sleeve (literally). and, spike. i love spike.

at risk of sounding even geekier (is that humanly possible?), and while i'm on the subject of television shows, if you're reading this and (BSG SPOILER ALERT) you are NOT on the edge of your seat wondering if a certain* fighter jock is actually one of the final five cylon models, (END SPOILER) you should be watching Battlestar Galactica. i've said it over and over again, but BSG is THE best show on TV right now. start with the miniseries from 2003, then watch the first season and you'll be hooked. it is smart, sexy, action-packed, full of intrigue, and just an all-around awesome show. give in, geeky is sexy anyway.

right-o. back to... microbiology prelab. (lab classes are pain-in-the-ass-y, but they're a necessary component of my education... or something.) leave me comments; it makes me more inclined to blog.

*extremely sexy