One hurdle down
Feb. 27th, 2008 09:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tarigwaemirHaste Street on the Feast of St. Leander
Hurrah, my genetics problem set/take-home exam is done! I handed it in at noon today. On the syllabus, it's called a problem set, but everyone has been referring to it as an exam, including the professor. I refuse to think of it as an exam though because it makes me feel less anxious about my answers. I didn't write very thorough descriptions of experimental design because I procrastinated (as usual) until the last minute and ended up figuring out the answer to the last question about two hours before I finished writing. My motivation for classwork is at an all-time low, possibly because I have none to spare after labwork.
Our class has been holding study sessions almost every other day for the past week in order to work on this problem set. I stopped going after a while because I was busy in lab and hadn't really made much progress thinking about the questions. However, once I started writing up my answers, I realized that all of us could have saved a lot of trouble if we looked at WormBook and our lecture notes. I received two late-night emails about the properties of certain mutant strains that added further complications to the screen that the class collectively agreed upon, and I realized that both those points were written out explicitly and underlined in my notes.
Anyway, we are now beginning the unit on Drosophila genetics, taught by Prof. Cline. His first lecture yesterday could basically be described as a love song to the fruit fly. Iris believes that no one becomes faculty without losing one's sanity; I have now realized that Prof. Cline's particular brand of madness is his passion for his model organism. Not even Prof. Levine talks so lovingly about Drosophila. Prof. Cline spoke about how the fly was commensal and its migration patterns followed that of humans all the way from Africa, how rare it was to have an insect be both attractive and yet easy to kill, and how appealing were the dark-red eyes of Drosophila melanogaster when most other flies had merely ordinary brown eyes. You know, I shouldn't talk since I've written an ode to the fruit fly as a kind of pastiche, but I think Prof. Cline was being perfectly serious.
Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post; I was surprised and touched to get so much sympathy from all of you. Also, the suggestions were really useful, and I finally got my mother to come up with a compromise where I text home instead. Well, actually, my mother came up with a new objection to text-messaging yesterday, but we've decided to switch to email, which works well for me because I like communicating by email more than phone anyway. Also, this way, I can actually talk about the parts of my day that I do want to share with my mother before she interrupts me with her usual interrogation.
I just saw this Youtube video of melting Cadbury rabbits via Aurgasm and found it tragic and horrifying. I'm not sure why--they're just chocolate rabbits after all--but the slow deformation seems like something close to torture. -_- Maybe it's the music.
Discussion period going strong at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bibliophages for your dose of school stories (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaebi_lit's review of The Year of the Griffin isn't linked yet). I reviewed Maurice, The Invention of Love and Gaudy Night, all of which are set (or partially set) in British universities.
I assignedtryogeru the same recommendation list because I knew she would like it; of course I know tryogeru's reading preferences like the back of my hand. It's easy to decide on good matches for people on my friends list because I have a fairly good sense for their taste in books, but it's a little harder for people I'm less familiar with. I wish I had a more systematic way of assigning recommendation lists, but it's hard to translate the reading profiles into a set of clear parameters. -_-
sub_divided, the next theme is going to be "religion", right? (I think I could come up with three separate lists for this theme, but the question is, who will want to read any of them?)
That reminds me, I need to update my reading blog. Current backlog equals eighteen books. Need to post before the number increases to nineteen.
Yours &c.
Hurrah, my genetics problem set/take-home exam is done! I handed it in at noon today. On the syllabus, it's called a problem set, but everyone has been referring to it as an exam, including the professor. I refuse to think of it as an exam though because it makes me feel less anxious about my answers. I didn't write very thorough descriptions of experimental design because I procrastinated (as usual) until the last minute and ended up figuring out the answer to the last question about two hours before I finished writing. My motivation for classwork is at an all-time low, possibly because I have none to spare after labwork.
Our class has been holding study sessions almost every other day for the past week in order to work on this problem set. I stopped going after a while because I was busy in lab and hadn't really made much progress thinking about the questions. However, once I started writing up my answers, I realized that all of us could have saved a lot of trouble if we looked at WormBook and our lecture notes. I received two late-night emails about the properties of certain mutant strains that added further complications to the screen that the class collectively agreed upon, and I realized that both those points were written out explicitly and underlined in my notes.
Anyway, we are now beginning the unit on Drosophila genetics, taught by Prof. Cline. His first lecture yesterday could basically be described as a love song to the fruit fly. Iris believes that no one becomes faculty without losing one's sanity; I have now realized that Prof. Cline's particular brand of madness is his passion for his model organism. Not even Prof. Levine talks so lovingly about Drosophila. Prof. Cline spoke about how the fly was commensal and its migration patterns followed that of humans all the way from Africa, how rare it was to have an insect be both attractive and yet easy to kill, and how appealing were the dark-red eyes of Drosophila melanogaster when most other flies had merely ordinary brown eyes. You know, I shouldn't talk since I've written an ode to the fruit fly as a kind of pastiche, but I think Prof. Cline was being perfectly serious.
Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post; I was surprised and touched to get so much sympathy from all of you. Also, the suggestions were really useful, and I finally got my mother to come up with a compromise where I text home instead. Well, actually, my mother came up with a new objection to text-messaging yesterday, but we've decided to switch to email, which works well for me because I like communicating by email more than phone anyway. Also, this way, I can actually talk about the parts of my day that I do want to share with my mother before she interrupts me with her usual interrogation.
I just saw this Youtube video of melting Cadbury rabbits via Aurgasm and found it tragic and horrifying. I'm not sure why--they're just chocolate rabbits after all--but the slow deformation seems like something close to torture. -_- Maybe it's the music.
Discussion period going strong at
bibliophages for your dose of school stories (jaebi_lit's review of The Year of the Griffin isn't linked yet). I reviewed Maurice, The Invention of Love and Gaudy Night, all of which are set (or partially set) in British universities.I assigned
tryogeru the same recommendation list because I knew she would like it; of course I know tryogeru's reading preferences like the back of my hand. It's easy to decide on good matches for people on my friends list because I have a fairly good sense for their taste in books, but it's a little harder for people I'm less familiar with. I wish I had a more systematic way of assigning recommendation lists, but it's hard to translate the reading profiles into a set of clear parameters. -_-sub_divided, the next theme is going to be "religion", right? (I think I could come up with three separate lists for this theme, but the question is, who will want to read any of them?)That reminds me, I need to update my reading blog. Current backlog equals eighteen books. Need to post before the number increases to nineteen.
Yours &c.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 02:04 pm (UTC)And oh dear. The fruit fly anecdote made me laugh so very very hard.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 03:14 pm (UTC)Um, that youtube clip was very creepy. It somehow reminds me of a Nuclear Holocaust T__T.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-28 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-29 08:23 am (UTC)Uhhhh, in happier news, yay for resolving things with your mother!