Oh goodness
it’s been a long time since I wrote anything... It’s not for lack of desire to
do so, I promise. School and life have just been extremely crazy for the past
month. But it’s Thanksgiving break now, and I’m taking the day off to do all
the things I haven’t been able to do in the recent past. Like sleep in until 11
am. And do my laundry. And make actual food for dinner. (Don’t worry, I’ve been
eating. It’s just that most of the time I’ve been cooking things like
quesadillas and soup rather than food that requires actual skill. :P ) And I’m
writing this blog! Which is good. I’m actually going to try to post two things
today- an update post, since it’s been over a month since I last wrote
anything, and a Thanksgiving post detailing some of the things I’m grateful for
(since it’s Thanksgiving, after all. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!)
Okay. So
this is going to be the life update portion, and the next post will be the
Thanksgiving-y portion. This one’s going to be more of a list of things that
have happened, with some details about each, because otherwise, if I tried to
tell you everything that’s happened, it would take about a month, probably. So,
here goes. Apologies in advance if I miss anything! I’m going to attempt to put
this in chronological order, but we’ll see how that works out. :P
1.
My birthday
So this year I turned 21, which is
exciting in and of itself, since I’m a real adult now. Which is actually the
weirdest thing ever. But my birthday was pretty awesome. I ended up working on
campus until ridiculously late at night, trying to finish my psets before my
family got there (more on that to come). My friends, being the ridiculously
sweet people that they are, baked me a cake to eat at midnight. I wasn’t
actually back at midnight though, so they ended up staying up until I got back
to wish me a happy birthday. And they got me a scarf with part of Les Mis
written on it and some shot glasses shaped like beakers (since it was my 21st
birthday). Overall, it was a good reminder that I have some really amazing friends.
2.
The
Gardners come to Boston!
One of the really exciting things
about my birthday was that my family came to visit Boston. My dad’s been saying
for years that he was going to come to Boston and have a drink with me on my 21st.
We ended up only having a drink together the next day, but it was still fun. In
an event that sort of exemplifies who I am, I think, my first alcoholic
beverage wasn’t a normal drink like a beer or whatever, but hot chocolate with
Bailey’s. (It was totally delicious though, and I highly recommend it to anyone
(after you’re 21 of course)). The other good thing about my family coming to
Boston, besides the fact that we got to spend time together, was that my sister
got to look at Brandeis, and my brother got to spend some time with me looking
at MIT. I know they were both excited to see the respective campuses... but my
dear little brother spent more time sleeping than seeing what MIT was like. I
took him to two of my classes, and he learned some new things, but he was also
snoring in my computational biology class. Literally. :P
3.
Apple
Bake!
Apple Bake is a really big deal on my floor. And writing
that, I realize that I should explain what Apple Bake actually is. Every year
during the fall semester, Burton Conner holds a cooking competition where the
only real rule is that you have to incorporate apples somehow. My floor takes
it pretty seriously- we have sort of a rivalry with one of the other floor in
the building. Freshman year I made an apple snowman with a friend, and we won Fourth
Place in the ‘Apple Art’ category, but I hadn’t won anything since, so I was
pretty determined this year. I made Apple Cinnamon Roll Muffins, Apple Kuchen,
and Apple Cinnamon Pull Apart Bread. I was a little bit crazy, since my yeast
wasn’t fully proofing for some reason, so the dough took a lot longer than it
should have to rise. Everything ended up getting done in the nick of time (as
it always seems to during Apple Bake), and I got fifth place in the ‘Apple
Breakfast’ category for the cinnamon rolls. I’m now the proud owner of a 2013
Apple Bake mug (which is part of the prize- 1st through 3rd
places also get money prizes for the floor). I really like this year’s design,
not least because the person who designed it is one of the awesome freshmen who
lives in my suite. We got really lucky with our freshmen this year. :)
These pictures are backwards, but the writing on the mug says "Come bake and be happy" on one side, and "Burton Conner Apple Bake 2013"
4.
7.03
(Genetics) test
The Monday after this crazy weekend, I had a Genetics test.
It went much better than the last one (which is to say that it could still have
gone better, but that’s pretty much my track record with tests at MIT...
they’re insanely hard)
5.
Journal
Club Presentation
Part of learning to be a good scientist is learning how to
communicate your ideas in effective ways. To that end, in my Intro to Lab
Techniques class, we had to give presentations on a scientific paper that we’d
read. It’s kind of like a book report, only on a scientific paper that we’re
supposed to understand. Contrary to how it sounds, this was not a walk in the
park. I kind of hate presentations, and scientific papers are notoriously
difficult to understand. Also, presenting someone else’s work and being
expected to answer questions on it is kind of ridiculously difficult. The
presentation ended up going okay, but it was hard.
6.
First
ever scientific paper
This is certainly not a paper that
will get published anywhere ever, but it was my first scientific paper. And let
me tell you, they’re as difficult to write as they are to present. Writing this
one was something of a struggle that lasted long into the night... but it
eventually got done. Not well, mind you (I used various versions of the word
‘greater’ three different times in the same sentence... which is probably a
consequence of writing things at 5 a.m.) But it got done.
7.
20.320
(Computational Biology) test
After a weekend spent trying to write a scientific paper,
this test was also something of a struggle. But it too got done, and I did a
lot better than I had on the first test for this class, so that’s a plus.
8.
Choir
Concert
The day after my 20.320 test, we had our first concert for
choir, and it actually went decently well. I couldn’t actually hear very much,
since I was onstage singing behind a full orchestra, but my friends who were
there told me that we sounded good. And I’m pretty
sure they weren’t lying to me. :P
9.
Candlepin
Bowling
In the midst of all my academic work, I did
still have some fun- A bunch of people from my floor and another floor in
Burton Conner went candlepin bowling, and then we went out for ice cream
afterwards, despite it being about 35°F outside. Candlepin bowling has the same
basic idea as regular bowling- you’re tossing a ball down a waxed wooden lane,
trying to knock down 10 pins at the end of the lane. The difference is that the
pins are shaped like candles rather than curvy, and you get three tries to
knock them all down, rather than two. I’m proud to say that I had the best
score in my lane during both of the game we played (although apparently not
everyone grows up going to the bowling alley for fun at least once a year... so
I may have had something of an unfair advantage on this one).
10.
Burton
2 Thanksgiving
Another floor tradition that happens every
year is that we have a potluck Thanksgiving meal before the actual holiday
happens. It’s always very impressive- both in quantity and quality of food.
This year, I made cranberry sauce with one of my friends, and I baked two
batches of spritz cookies with the new cookie press that my mom sent me in a
care package. I will probably be eating cranberry sauce for a week or so, but
the cookies were eaten within a couple of days, so I’ll probably need to make
more of those before the holidays are over.
11.
Genetics
Lab Practical
Of the three assignments I had due on the
Wednesday before Thanksgiving break, this one was probably both the most fun
and the most frustrating. It involved using a computer program to model mating
fruit flies in order to determine things about their genetics. And it took
forever. Not literally, but definitely in the figurative sense. I spent 5+
hours on the last problem... and the work I needed to do to finish it took up
an entire 10-foot long whiteboard. I’m including pictures of that one, because
I was very proud of my work once it got done.
This one's backwards too, because I can't figure out how to work my camera. :P
12.
Scientific
Paper redux
This time it was just revisions of the first
draft of the paper, but it still took a long time. I’m much more proud of the
finished copy (I revised that awful sentence) but it took a decent amount of
work to finish up. At this point, I’m just glad that it’s done. I’ll maybe be
proud of the actual paper when I’ve recovered from the sleep deprivation that
it caused. :P
Writing it all down, this doesn’t seem like that much stuff...
but it’s a combination of doing all of these things and trying to also do
real-life things like laundry and UROP that has kept me from writing for so
long. Thank you to everyone who’s written to me or given me food or hugs over
the past month... hopefully the rest of the semester is slightly less busy. :P
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