The Beginning of the End

Alrighty, now that it’s somewhere between the second and third week of classes (depending on how you count weeks that only have three days in them) I suppose I should expound on exactly what I’m doing this year.  Fair warning- it’s going to be full of numbers and biology and MIT-speak, because I’m too tired/busy at the moment to think about whether I’m translating things properly.  To be totally honest, it’s a minor miracle that this is coming out in English and not in Spanish (whenever I have Spanish class, my thoughts are sort of mixed Spanish and English for the rest of the day... it makes communicating a bit difficult).

Anywho, here’s the rundown of the scholarly things I’m up to this semester.

21F.712- Spanish Composition and Conversation

This is the class that leaves me thinking in Spanish for portions of the day after I have it.  The class is taught entirely in Spanish, as most upper level language classes are, so I have to switch to thinking in Spanish when I’m in class.  Since my English vocabulary is a far sight better than my Spanish vocabulary, this generally leaves me mildly frustrated when I can’t express myself quite as complexly as I normally would.  But it’s a thoroughly enjoyable class.  I’m pretty awful at Spanish right now, since I haven’t seriously spoken it in almost a year, but it’s coming back to me.  I’m mostly just waiting for the day that I walk into lab or into my next class and forget that I’m supposed to be speaking English... that would seriously confuse several people, I’m sure. :P

The basis of the class is that we watch short videos (cortometrajes) or read short stories (cuentas) and then discuss them in the next class.  It’s a fun class because there’s not really a set of questions that you have to answer, or a set of exercise you need to complete- it’s generally very freeform, with everyone giving their opinions on what we watched/read the previous day.  There is homework, of course, but it’s also pretty informal.  The point is that we experience what it’s actually like to converse in Spanish.  Like I said, my vocabulary/knowledge of grammar is not quite up to par at the moment, but hopefully by the end of the semester it’ll be decent again.

7.31- Topics in Mammalian Biology: Medical Implications

If any of my classes were to kill me this semester, it would probably be this one.  On the surface, it seems like a fairly innocuous class.  On Mondays, we have an hour-long lecture in which we are given the basic knowledge we need to read the week’s papers.  Then we read the papers for Wednesday and discuss them in class.  Not too bad, right?  Probably.  Except that I more or less live in fear of speaking in class, and about three-quarters of our grade is based on participation (with the last quarter or so coming from a final exam at the end of the semester).  And in addition to the fact that active participation is a must, each week two students are presenting that week’s papers.  And you don’t find out when you’re presenting until the Monday before you would be presenting.  It’s definitely a class where you have to be completely on the ball or risk looking ridiculous (as I did last week when I failed to explain the most basic elements of the paper we were supposed to have read.  I did read it, just not to the in depth level that was expected). 

Scientific papers are already pretty dense pieces of writing, so extracting information from them other than what they’re actually saying is a pretty advanced skill.  Since this is a senior-level elective, it makes sense that they want us to do this.  According to the professors, it’s more or less what a first year graduate level class would look like.  The class itself is really interesting- there’s just a pretty steep learning curve involved.  Which makes the fact that I’m presenting one of this week’s papers extra fun- look out for more on that next week (unless I decide not to write about it... I can’t imagine that it will be very interesting. :P)

7.18- Topics in Experimental Biology

This is the class that’s keeping me ridiculously busy.  It’s a 30 unit class, which translates to 10 units at schools other than MIT.  For reference, a normal class is 12 units here (or about 4 units elsewhere).  The number of units here is supposed to correlate with how many hours a week you spend on lectures, labs, and homework for the class, which seems to be pretty accurate in this case, at least so far.  We haven’t really gotten into the in depth work yet, since it’s only the second/third week of class, but it’s coming, I know.

7.18 is the UROP-connected version of the Biology department thesis class.  One of the graduation requirements for Biology undergrads is that we write a 15 page paper on research that we’ve performed.  In some cases, that’s research you do in a class-based lab setting.  In my case, it’s research that I’m doing in my UROP, with lectures about how to write papers and give presentations thrown in.  I’m still working in the lab that I’ve been in all summer and all of last year, and I’m working on the same project.  The only difference is that I have to go talk about the project with people who aren’t in my lab every week, and at the end of the semester I’ll have written a ridiculously long paper on what I’ve accomplished.  (Okay, 15 pages isn’t really that long. It just feels really long right now when I think about writing it.)

Like I said, this is the class that’s making my schedule the busiest. When you’re only considering my hours spent in lecture, my schedule looks like this:

This is my schedule without lab... it's pretty gorgeous.  

But when you add in the hours that I spend in lab for 7.18, my schedule looks significantly more frightening:

And... this is my schedule with lab.  Slightly less pretty.  Also this doesn't include all the time that I spend in lab... I frequently am still in lab during the empty hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as in the half hour between classes on Mondays and Wednesdays... and lab doesn't necessarily end at 6. So this is not necessarily the most accurate picture of my week, although it's fairly close.

Basically, 7.18 is going to be a rather overwhelming amount of work.  It should hopefully be good, enjoyable work, but it’s at least 20 hours a week in lab, on top of my classwork and lectures.  So that should be fun (where ‘fun’ in this case is equivalent to ‘mildly overwhelming if I don’t stay on top of it’).

Other things

In addition to classes and ridiculous amounts of lab, I am also working at desk (10 pm to 1 am shift on Friday nights for the win!) and sorting mail on Fridays as well.  I’m also still one of the two Floor Chairs for Burton 2 for the remainder of the year, so I’m dealing with a bunch of beginning-of-the-year stuff for the floor, and I’ll have several events that I’ll be helping to run in the next semester. 

And, in a totally terrifying way, this is sort of the beginning of the end.  In less than nine months I’ll no longer be an undergrad.  I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to be doing next year, and it’s freaking me out more than a little.  Career Fair is this Friday, so I’ll be going to speak with various employers about their companies to try to figure out a backup plan for if grad school doesn’t happen next year.  I’ll probably have several more ‘Oh my god I’m going to die’ moments that various people will have to help me deal with (my grad student is surprisingly good at talking me down from those), and I’m sure that at least once I’ll need to just totally not think about anything and eat a rather substantial amount of chocolate.  But for better or worse, it’ll get figured out at some point, and something will happen.  And the good news is, it’s not a permanent decision, so I don’t have to stick with it if I absolutely hate it.  And now that you’ve read my attempt to calm myself down from my latest ‘what on earth am I doing with my life?’ session, I’m going to sign off so I can go update my resume and then read a ridiculous amounts of scientific papers so that I can present one of them on Wednesday.  Not freaking out at all. I promise. :P