Alrighty, it’s probably finally time for that recap post
I’ve been not writing for the past couple of weeks. Of course, it’s been a long time since I
began my hiatus, so I’m likely to forget a few things. If I forget to mention something
fun/impactful that I did with you, I apologize- this post would probably be as
long as my final papers if I were to try to include everything.
With that said, I think the best way to go about this is
just to go month by month and point out a couple of highlights from each (where
applicable... some months were kind of boring).
So, here’s your recap post!
December
Finals were, as usual, horrible. I managed not to completely stuff my face
with cheesecake at the biannual dessert study break (although I did eat a
decent amount of sugar, so the abstention from dessert was certainly not a
complete one). I only had one final, and
it was in a class that I felt okay about, so taking the exam itself was not
that bad. The horrible part was the lead
up to that bit- the part where I have to force myself to sit in one place and
study. As someone who is easily
distracted and gets bored with studying fairly quickly, this is never an easy
task. It happened though, and the
semester ended up being my best at MIT so far, so it worked out well.
Then I came home for Christmas break, which was as wonderful
as it always is. Seeing my family is
always a great change of pace from being at MIT. Plus, Christmas break means Christmas Eve,
which means dinner at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, which is definitely one of
the highlights of my year. We’ve started
a tradition of Christmas crackers (the ones with the toys and paper crowns, not
the kind that are baked without yeast), and it’s always fun to see people
wearing the paper crowns and telling the dorky jokes that are inside the
crackers.
Christmas break also marked the start of my entry into the
modern era, as I got a smartphone from my parents. Having the phone has already saved my butt on
multiple occasions, and I’m very pleased with it. It was especially convenient at the end of
Christmas break, since my computer decided that it didn’t like working anymore,
and went on strike.
January
January didn’t start off particularly well, since my
computer wasn’t working at all, and I had no idea what was wrong with it. I brought it in to the Apple store and they
were able to diagnose the issue, but I spent three weeks without my
computer. Luckily the lab has an old one
for lab use that I was able to do my work on during the day, and MIT has a great
technology infrastructure that I was able to use after going home from
lab. Plus, smart phones are ridiculous
and can do pretty much everything computers can at this point, so really I was
just missing out on the convenience of a full keyboard.
Overall, being without a computer wasn’t too bad, with the
exception that I was supposed to be working on a presentation that I was giving
at the end of January. In a colossal
stroke of luck though, it came back to me a week and a half before the
presentation, so I was able to get everything done on time.
Every year, the Biology department hosts the Undergraduate
Biology Research Symposium, and undergrads who have done something interesting
or exciting with their research are invited to speak. I spent most of January preparing for the
presentation, either by doing experiments to have results to present, or by
prepping the presentation. By the time
the symposium actually happened, I had probably given my presentation at least
5 times to my grad student, which he somehow managed not to complain
about. I know I was bored with the
slides by the time I actually gave the presentation, so I’m not sure how he
wasn’t. :P
The presentation itself went fairly smoothly- I was only
freaking out a little bit, and I only messed up a few times. All of the information came across eventually
though, and people were able to ask questions beyond basic “could you explain
this again” type things, so apparently I was somewhat understandable. My lab showed up to listen to me speak, as
did my friends. And Bob Weinberg, who’s
a major figure in cancer biology research heard me speak, which is only
slightly terrifying. Luckily I didn’t
realize he was there until after my presentation, or I might have gone
completely to pieces.
February
February brought the start of the new semester- my last at
MIT. It also brought my first grad
school interview, which was pretty much completely terrifying. I was invited to interview at University of
South Florida, at the Moffitt Cancer Center.
On the way down, I was excited and nervous and also really nervous.
:P Getting off of the plane was amazing
though- it was the first time in several months that I had been able to stand
outside comfortably without a jacket, which was a very welcome change from the
negative temperatures Boston had been seeing.
The interviews themselves went well, I thought. Until I was sitting on the plane on my way
back to Boston and began second-guessing everything that I had said. That was a fun couple of hours. Interviews for grad school were completely
different from any interview I had done before- to begin with, there were seven
of them on one day, which was a blast.
It was definitely one of the longest days I had experienced in recent
memory. The interviews also seemed a lot
less structured- they tended to be more conversations about my work and how it
intersected with the professors’ work than “Tell me about a time you failed”
type questions.
Overall though, the interviews went well, and I was offered
a spot at the Moffitt Cancer Center, which I managed to only freak out a little
bit about when I found out. (By which I
mean that I freaked out a lot, internally, and managed to only vibrate a little
bit/be incapable of speaking English externally for about two hours). An hour after I was offered a spot at
Moffitt, Vanderbilt invited me to go there for an interview as well, so I
scheduled that interview for March.
March
March was still extremely snowy in Boston, and I had some
serious cabin fever. Luckily, heading
down to Nashville to visit Vanderbilt provided a change of scenery, if not much
change of temperature (the South was having a cold spell, complete with snow
and ice storms. It wasn’t a very good
winter for the East Coast). Again, I
felt like my interviews went well, even though I was fairly exhausted from
getting in to Nashville at 3 am after several delayed flights.
I also ended up getting offered a spot at Vanderbilt, which
meant that I got a chance to make a decision, which everyone who knows me well
knows is my favorite thing. After much
deliberation including several conversations with various professors, and many
pro and con lists, and talking to my grad student several times, I finally
decided to accept the offer from the Moffitt Cancer Center at USF, so I’ll be
spending the next several years in sunny Tampa.
It’ll be my first real experience spending any considerable amount of
time in the heat, so we’ll see how that bit goes. I’m excited about the research portion
though, so if all else fails I’ll just hang out in the air-conditioned labs all
the time. :P
The rest of March was not that exciting- it mostly consisted
of trying to play catch up from the classes that I had missed for interviews,
and trying not to drown under mountains of work. And, of course, the traditional week of
procrastination on work that is Spring Break.
I spent a good deal of it in lab, which was as enjoyable as always. I spent approximately none of it doing the
homework that I was supposed to start during my week without classes. It was possibly a poor life choice, but
probably one that I needed, since I was feeling a tiny bit burnt out before
spring break.
April
April marked the start of senioritis... I’ve got that one
pretty bad. The realization that
everything was almost done and that there were only about two months left to
finish everything in lab and in my classes was terrifying, but in such a way
that I pretty much just wanted to curl up and sleep until it was over. The amount of work that I had to do was (and
still is) daunting, and sleep is pretty much the best thing ever (with the
possible exception of eating and then taking a nap... or napping and then
having a snack. Or reading and napping
and eating... okay, you get my drift.
Basically anything besides working is the best thing ever).
Looking at my calendar has gotten terrifying to the point
that I’ve had to break up my stuff into categories so that I can look at pieces
of it at a time- both because I have to take a minute to calm down if I try to consider
it all at once, and because I honestly can’t see everything if I don’t hide
some of it most of the time. To be fair,
it’s still pretty cramped-looking if I hide everything except my calendar of
exams and assignment due dates, so it’s possibly just a thing that for the next
three weeks I’m going to be stupidly busy, and I’ll probably consume a lot more
coffee than I would on average.
April has, more than anything, consisted of due dates, many
of which I have struggled a bit to meet, largely due to the aforementioned lack
of motivation that comes with senioritis.
None of my final projects have had due dates yet though, so I’ll give
you a sneak peek at what’s coming up in the next two weeks in order to close out
this post (This is doubling as my To-do list for the next two weeks, so you can
feel free to skip it if you want- I’ll probably complain about at least one of
these things in the coming weeks.)
Final Projects
10-12 page paper for WGS.115 (Gender and Technology), on a
topic of my choice. I’ve chosen to look
at gender biases in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
research and higher education fields, with a focus on any hiring biases that
may exist. I’m going to try to look at
why there tend to be fewer women in STEM fields as a whole.
10-12 page paper for 7.27 (Principles of Human Disease) on a
disease of my choice, proposing a research project (either experiment-based or
clinical trial based). This is the paper
I wrote about in my last post, where I had something of a realization about
science and myself. I’m writing about Xeroderma Pigmentosum, which is
conveniently something I need to do research for lab about as well. Yes, I planned that, in a somewhat misguided
effort to make my life easier. Misguided
because I think that I need two very different depths of knowledge for the
class versus for lab, not because I think my efforts will go to waste. :P
25-30 minute presentation for 7.33 (Evolutionary Biology) on
two scientific papers about a topic in evolution. Somehow I managed to not plan this one very
well, and I’ll be giving a presentation on two papers about the evolution of E. coli.
It’s not exactly the most interesting topic I could have chosen. And I need to know these papers backwards and
forwards, since the 25-30 minute presentation will be stretched out into a 90
minute discussion with the class professors about these two papers. Keeping in mind that evolutionary biology is
probably my least favorite class this semester, you can understand why I’m not
looking forward to this particular project at all.
Final Exams
Take-home exam for 3.985 (Intro to Archeological
Sciences). This one shouldn’t be too
difficult, it’s just time consuming and not very interesting. Pretending to be interested in things that I’m
not is certainly not one of my strong points.
However, I did decently on my last take-home exam (particularly
considering that I wrote my answers in a grand total of about 3 hours) so I’m
not too concerned with this one.
Actual final exam for 18.05 (Intro to Probability and
Statistics). This one is going to take
some serious reviewing. Luckily, I’ll be
done with everything other than lab by the time that I need to start studying
for this, so at least I’ll have some time on my hands to review the material. Unluckily, this will probably involve me
sitting in a classroom doing a large number of practice problems over and over
until I understand the material, so we’re probably going to run into my problem
with focusing and staying interested in what I’m doing again. So basically the same thing that’s happened
in every final exam so far at MIT. At
least I’m consistent. :P
Other stuff
On top of my final assignments/exams, I’ve still got a few
minor assignments to turn in, and I’m still doing lab stuff. One of the lab things I’m still working on is
a poster for a poster session that my department holds every year. Poster sessions are weird things, and since
this post is already a couple of thousand words long, I’m going to refrain from
describing them here. Suffice it to say
that I have to make a poster describing my research, and it’s yet another thing
that I get bored/frustrated with doing, and find ways to procrastinate on (like writing this blog post... or doing pretty much anything besides making the poster). I really am an expert procrastinator. :P
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