"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

All this excitement has been building up for weeks. It's pretty incredible, though anxiousness is an unfortunate side product.  In all the chaos, I haven't been updating.

1. I got the job.
I am now officially a paid writing consultant (in training) for the college I attend.  Even better than the feeling of finally having a job, of having such a great one, and of being done with the application process is the fact that I have a source of support in people around campus.  My professors have been great about helping me out, and a few in particular have been extremely encouraging.  It's one of the reasons I love this school so much.

2. I finished my art show entry.
A year in the making, my stop-motion, "living portrait" compilation looks better than I could have hoped.  The entry day and selection process is still a month away, so the anxiety will be there for a while.  When the deadline has passed, I will upload the entire set here.

3. Internship notifications are approaching.
I need, need, need to spend a summer in a lab.  I applied to about eight or so positions across the country (Nebraska to St. Louis).  It would be wonderful to be accepted to one of them.  For now, I'm nervous.

4. Classes are great.
I've discovered yet another passion in cancer biology and genetics, though I don't excel as naturally in it as I do in the humanities.  We'll stick with plant studies for now, but it will be interesting to see where this takes me.  Biostatistics, my only math-based class and therefore my least favorite, has been very useful so far.  It's growing on me.  Medical ethics is fantastic.  My bio seminar is not as enjoyable because of the amount of coursework required, but I like the plant peroxidase research we're conducting right now.

5. I am healthy.
I feel better, more awake all the time.  I haven't been as sick lately.  It's all good.

A Whole Darn Shame.

I scheduled a nap for today.  If you look on my Google calendar, it's there.  That's how much I was looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, a burning building had other plans.

The Whole Darn Thing, my absolute favorite sub shop downtown, burned to the ground early this morning.  It's kind of a big deal, so I went to cover it for my school newspaper.  I got a few shots.  More importantly, I narrowly avoided arrest for crossing the police tape (I didn't, but they thought I had).  I feel like a legitimate photojournalist now, I guess.

 

Snowy days, quiet nights.

I'm supposed to be typing a paper about the political theories of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes at the moment, but I think I'll work on improving my procrastination skills for the next few minutes. I've basically been doing everything but philosophy - bouncing from reading Doctor Zhivago on the internet to stacking saltine crackers and then to cleaning my lab goggles for whatever chance (less that zero, by the way) there is that I'll ever have to enter an Organic lab again in my life.

 It will be short, I promise. Also, nasty and brutish.

I can't wait for the next two weeks to hurry by. I'll be glad to have a break from the piles of work, and I'll be even happier not to have upstairs neighbors for a while. What happens when you're me and you jokingly wonder aloud if the person on the other side of the ceiling is some kind of fucking tap dancing wunderkind, and what-else-could-they-possibly-be-doing-to-make-so-much-noise? It turns out to be true, of course.  Who says Arrested Development ended? The plot just merged with my life.

 

"Ha, is it Gene Wilder up there or something?" BUTSERIOUSLY. 

I've got my schedule figured out for next semester. Prepare yourself in the coming months for ramblings, complaints, and compliments about the following subjects:

Medical Ethics

Genetics

Biostatistics

Biology Seminar

So, uh...hope you like science. Sadly, no really inventive course names to report. (I'm looking at you, "Biology Seminar".)

I have to head back to finish my paper, though it will take every effort not to relapse into stacking saltines again.  They don't demand that I figure out the state of nature, so I like them. Three pages should not be taking me this long. I won't miss you after this, Locke. And you know, I don't think Locke will much mind my extended absence over break either.

At least, I really hope he won't.

P.S. The song I promised.

Now Playing: History- Groove Armada

Groove Armada - History by musicismysunshine

Signaling pathways and scheduling woes.

Today was one of minor disappointment.

The nonfiction writing course that I really, really wanted closed before I got a turn to register.  I don't really have a backup for now, but we'll see.  On the bright side, I might be gearing towards some sort of independent study in the next few semesters. And holy shit, am I excited for it. Updates later, I'm sure.

The much-anticipated bio exam ended a few hours ago.  I studied a certain case study about vertebrate eye formation as recently as last night. I wrote it out dozens of times on the chalkboard. I didn't even know why I was concentrating so much on that slide in particular. But I blanked on it today, and wouldn't you guess that it was a major question in the exam?  It's alright though, because I know it now. I think it's funny the way that the questions you miss become the answers you never forget.

I have to go over some of the concepts that I evidently didn't know so well later. But for now, I have weeks of philosophy reading to catch up on. Ouch.

"Tenuousness at best."

I almost cannot contain my excitement at the moment.

I've been in a constant spiral of uncertainty for the past few weeks.  I found myself twirling my pencil in class, pretending for brief moments between lecture slides that it was my theoretical bachelor's in science.  Then, in flickering instants of terrorizing ambivalence, I transformed it into a degree in the humanities and sought any noticeable change in ease of hypothetical mind.  Each idea seemed equally plausible, yet neither seemed altogether preferable.    

I've always assumed that I'd find a lab somewhere and do what scientists presumably do.   

 Study and make bad puns?.

There are two immediate problems with this.
1. I don't know how much I'm meant for a lab.  I can't envision myself at this point creating experiments and dealing with potentially unexciting, unsatisfying results.
2. Goddammit, I just want to write.

Note: There is, however, no immediate problem with that pun.

Regardless, I'm an uncomfortable hybrid of literary and scientific tastes.  I saw a line scribbled on a wall last year that read, "I'm too creative for my science classes, and I'm too scientific for my art classes."  Vandals can be quite elegant, it seems.

I wrote a few days ago about my chemistry professor's suggestion that I consider technical writing. Not my thing.  But, what about science writing?  I offhandedly googled it today, and what I read left me in this current state of precarious excitement.

"By far the most important qualities needed by a prospective science writer are a fascination with science and a talent for writing clearly, accurately and with an interesting flair. Science writers must also possess a drive to continue learning throughout their professional lives, because unlike the case in many journalism specialties, each new science story can present new concepts and a new vocabulary to master. Also, like other journalists and PIOs, science writers will also increasingly have to learn to work in multimedia, using text, graphics, video and audio to communicate their stories."

I don't think that could possibly sound more like me.  A quick search for graduate programs turned up a hit at MIT, as well.  

The potential to be able to keep science near while simultaneously working to make it more accessible to the public is a very enticing thing for me.  I read so many articles with misleading information, and I think we could very much benefit from a stronger connection between scientists and the rest of the world.  All I need to do is look at the rest of my Genetics in the New Age class.  They find some of the articles to be very boring, and they don't get the full picture from some of them.  "They don't have to be boring!" is the thought bouncing around my mind.

I'm very serious about my writing, improving it and otherwise.  To me, failure to provide context is an unforgivable offense.  For instance, one of our class debates centered around unintended consequences of transgenic studies.  One paper cited a group of scientists (as if they were crazy) that grew functioning legs on Drosophila where antennae should have been.  The article somewhat implied that the researchers did this for funsies, and the class reacted negatively as such.  But the lack of context ignored the fact that this was probably more of an important study on homeotic gene expression than a case of scientists trying to play God.

 "Lolz! Alright, now let's do some real science."

Suggested solution? Become a writer.  At least I could work to decrease the rate of incidence  of misinformation at a microcosmic level. I would love to assist in responsibly spreading knowledge to others.  When so many people seem to stray from logic, I could work to bring it closer.  I may even be able to incorporate my love for philosophy (specifically, bioethics and epistemology).  This might just be the thing for me.  I'm heading over to my professor's office hours to discuss potential resources tomorrow, but we'll see what happens.



Also, here is the song that inspired the title of this post. This performance is beautiful, and I love Andrew Bird.

 

"Tenuosness at best was all he had to say when pressed about the rest of it, the world that is."

"You lose! Good day, sir!"

I have been awake for 18 hours of this day. Eight of those hours were spent blowing bubbles.

Today was the date of the aforementioned trip to the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh for National Chemistry Week. We did a presentation on super-strong bubble solutions that would bounce, a la Willy Wonka (because it was movie themed, sort of).

Just please don't steal the fizzy lifting drinks.

The kids totally loved it, and we were one of the more popular tables at the event. People got very excited that they could make the solution by just adding glycerin or corn syrup to soapy water. When using a glove, you can basically grasp the bubbles by hand. The glycerin forms hydrogen bonds around the surface of the bubble to delay evaporation. Because chemistry is awesome.

Also, it was Mole Day.

THE GOGGLES. 

We wandered around the building a bit as well. I spun the wheel of natural disaster, predicting my probability of succumbing to wild forces aside from Chem231. My inexplicably improbable life almost necessitated this outcome.

It was a close call between water spout, mud slide, dust storm and hail.

Overall, it was a pretty fun day and I'm glad that I got to participate. Off to bed to dream of bimolecular substitution and bubbles.

"You are soon going to change your present line of work."

I ordered Chinese the week before fall break, and a fortune cookie told me to seek a new line of work. I found this hilarious, because I happened to be on the brink of an academic breakdown. In case you haven't noticed, chemistry isn't my thing.

I was charged with the task of writing two essays and a lab report that week, and I had a bio exam in a few days. I had just declared my major/minor combination early a few weeks prior (biology and philosophy, if you were wondering). And here was this fucking fortune cookie.

As a memento of how absurd circumstances in my life tend to be, I pinned it to my desk.

I've since gotten my lab report back. After a vague speech by my professor about the general weaknesses of the class's reports, I was expecting the worst. But we did well. Very well. I was happy. Later in the day, he pulled me aside in the lab to tell me something.

I panicked at first, anticipating phrases like, "You are about to blow something up," and, "What would be the product of chemical X and Y?" Instead, it was something about how my lab partners had told him that I'd written the report and that he was impressed. He discussed the possibility of becoming a technical writer. Though I knew I'd grow bored writing procedures, I thanked him for bringing it up.

The truth is that after the multitude of issues I've faced in that course, I really needed to hear that I'd succeeded in at least one aspect of it. And it made me begin to think about how much I enjoy writing and how, apparently, it seems to be my one natural talent. So, who knows? While I don't think I could stand to be a technical writer, I might end up moving more towards the writing side of the sciences. They need people to explain, and I can do it. Because, sorry scientists...but you're not always the best at explaining things. The smarts that you have (and that maybe I lack in some ways), I can convey.

Touche, fortune cookie.

Silly writer, I am.

Also, those glasses are part of my Velma costume this Halloween. Have I really not been Velma before?

It was a bright cold day in October, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Organic chemistry, you're killing me.

This year is an uphill struggle unlike any I've ever encountered before. But I will do it. In the end, I just can't hate chemistry.

In two weeks, I'll be heading back to Pittsburgh to present a demonstration at the Carnegie Science Center with a few friends. I don't know exactly what we'll be doing yet (I'm pulling for an invisible ink theme), but I'm pretty excited. We need to get our act together in science. I'm all for getting kids excited about it early, because if there's anything I've realized recently, it's that we are in desperate need of logical, questioning individuals in our society (see: The Tea Party). But I digress.

I had an interesting fall break, in accordance with my recent, inexplicable life. I had a craving for pizza made on the grill, and it burst into flames shortly thereafter. The reactions were as follows:

Me: "The pizza!"
My mother: "My pizza stone!"
My father: "The house!"

The pizza was left unscathed and full of slightly smoky deliciousness.

My life has also become significantly more stress-free after quitting my editorship at the newspaper. Of course, this decision did not come without difficulties. Don't assume I mean the normal difficulties, either. Think more along the lines of an episode of Arrested Development, which is apparently what my life has degenerated (or upgraded?) into. This event went as followed:

SETTING:
Our protagonist enters the newspaper office, weeks of mental preparation for what she is about to do behind her. She is calm, tentatively rid of all sense of guilt. After all, she reasons, her colleague is here to take her place. This is all that stands between her and a chance at passing Organic.

OUR HERO: Hello all! I have something to tell you.

ALL: Okay! But can we tell you something first?

[Our hero assumes this will be an uneventful occurrence, and she agrees. After all, she's about to quit and nothing will get her down.]

ALL: Well, your colleague isn't coming tonight.

OUR HERO: Oh, still out of town, is he?

ALL: Actually, he cut his hand off.

OUR HERO: [double take] I'm sorry, what was that?

ALL: Oh, sorry! I meant to say, just his fingers.

OUR HERO: [relieved] Oh, okay. Wait...

ALL: But it's okay, because we still have our hero! She can make up for the fact that he can't take photos for a few months. We're so glad to have you on staff. Oh yes, what were you saying again?

OUR HERO: ...I quit!

ALL: [laughter]

OUR HERO: [laughs, or do we see a few tears?] ...because it's a joke, of course! Hahaha. But really. We still have that other photographer, right?

ALL: He was attacked by a dog. So he's out too.

OUR HERO CRIES INSIDE...AND OUTSIDE.

THE END.

Moral: Stay away from table saws.
More Important Moral: Don't ever let your sentence be interrupted. EVER.



Both hands, guys. Really?

"I've made a huge mistake."