April 24, 2010

• I've been working really hard in the lab, trying desperately to validate my existence as a graduate student.  It hasn't been going well.  Biological processes are all series processes.  Each step depends on the previous one.  Every failure means that I have to start all the way back at the beginning of the process...which can sometimes mean I just did several days of work for nothing.  The second most recent attempt at the biological laboratory training protocol seemed so promising.  I actually completed the process!  However, my excitement was short lived when I came to find my petri dishes clean when they should have been coated in little bacterial colonies the following morning.  I sighed and tossed them aside.  But what went wrong?  Why hadn't it worked?  I went back through the steps and realized that everything had been confirmed successful except the last two steps, and after a discussion with my professor I realized I could easily figure out which of them was the failure.  This week I redid the protocol carefully, doing everything exactly the same way I had, except for one particular step.  And to my surprise, this morning my petri dishes were dotted uniformly with little living things.  I was elated...until I realized that every step was working...except for a key step, which I never successfully completed and which was basically the foundation for my real project.  So...I guess I'm happy I figured out what was wrong, but I'm rather frustrated because of the step that it ended up being.  I just feel so inadequate as a biological researcher.  It's so much more complicated than inorganic chemistry where nothing is alive.  I've never been a good gardener and I've killed several rodents as childhood pets, so what made me think I could succeed in a field where part of the task is to keep things alive?  *sigh*  All I can do is keep trying, desperately, frustrated, and eventually I'll succeed...but it may lead to a 7 year PhD.

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  I intended to rant more about Twilight, but as time passed my anger has faded to a dull ache in the back of my mind.  The writing sucked, but I guess I can see where lonely 14-year-old girls and sexually frustrated women in their 40's could enjoy it.  However, I just couldn't.  The glaringly bad writing (and I'm not claiming to be any great writer, but I don't have a series of published books either) overshadowed any value the frail plot had to offer.  And I'll leave it at that.  I guess I don't have to feel guilty about making fun of it because now I've read it from beginning to end and I know it's bad, so there.

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  I finished our ACen costumes, and I honestly don't know if could have done without the ability to use a sewing machine.  Rather than explain them, I'll just post a couple pictures:

   

  Additionally, I'm bleaching my hair!  After coming to the conclusion that getting it done at a salon was going to be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too expensive, I started searching for cheaper alternatives.  Someone in my lab group suggested hydrogen peroxide, so I looked it up online and called my mom who also uses it to bleach her hair.  The process sounded easy so I tried it out.  My only complaint is that each application only lightens my hair in a very minor way.  I mean, it's golden instead of brown now, but that's after four separate applications.  But, for less than $5 how can I complain?  I'll post more pictures when I get my hair the way I want it.

  On the downside, while I was working on the costumes I guess I bumped or kicked my gallon jug of distilled water for the iron and it sprung a tiny pinhole leak.  Needless to say, when I noticed, it had completely drained out all over the storage room floor and underneath the boxes of stuff.  And I noticed at 3 AM...so I spent the wee hours of Monday morning cleaning up the spill.  Thankfully the water didn't get to any of the boxes with paper things stored in them, but it was very annoying nonetheless.  It was very gratifying as I cleaned to find that there were no dead bugs under things and other than the water there really wasn't anything to clean up.  I was very sleepy in lab that day though...  Teaches me a lesson on distilled water storage I guess.

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  I passed my oral qualifying exam.  Now I'm officially a PhD candidate.  I won't say too much more than that because it didn't go all that well, and even though I passed I'm not looking forward to the review sheet once it's in the hands of my professor...  I'll talk more about it when I know more.

  • 6:57 pm
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