Sam’s Blog

Today in quantitative analysis lab I learned a better way to transfer concentrated hydrochloric acid from a small beaker into a larger beaker containing water and unknown iron sample.  While holding a watch glass almost completely over the mouth of the larger beaker, pour the acid very VERY slowly for a couple of seconds, then gently swirl the larger beaker.  Make sure the watch glass is completely over the mouth of the larger beaker, and keep an eye on the little beaker full of acid in your other hand.  Foregoing the watchglass and stirring with a stirring rod instead of swirling results in the HCl vapor escaping and going up your nose (that burns) and condensing on your arms (that also burns).
I am not exactly sure which variety of acid tried to eat my shirt.  Fortunately I was not very fond of that shirt.

I really need to do laundry.

I found a lovely sunbeam in the Physical Science stairwell last week (remember this?).  It was there again this week, so I think that place will be my thinking spot while I wait for lab.  The hallway outside lab smells terrible because the organic chemistry labs are doing an experiment that involves boiling lots and lots of tea bags in very little water for hours.

I am somewhat baffled that my favorite class this semester is a statistics course.  I normally hate anything that has to do with numbers…
Today Dr. Mock introduced us to probability by teaching us to play poker.

Be cautious when working with silver nitrate solution.  It is colorless, odorless, and rather poisonous.  It can also make your hands look like they were attacked by a cranky leaking fine-tipped black sharpie.

This is why I have lots of little speckles on my fingers and right palm that I can’t wash away or scratch off with my pocket knife.

The speckles just started appearing a few hours ago, so the effect is pretty delayed; I had my quantitative analysis lab yesterday afternoon (which is where I encountered copious amounts of the silver nitrate).

The TA mentioned during lab that skin stains would “probably” go away in about a week or so.

This semester’s schedule

Quantitative analysis is much less scary if I just think of it as General Chemistry III (which it originally was until course numbers were switched around). We’ll see how the lab goes.

I rather like Quant Bio, partially because Dr. Mock is amusing. I also know that I’ll use the basic statistics I’m learning once I’m a zoologist and this makes me pay more attention than I would otherwise.

Spanish Composition is… Well, it’s Spanish. The prof is nice, so it’s better than it could be. I always start out hating Spanish classes for some reason. Luckily my anti-Spanish class attitude mellows out as the semester goes on. I am less motivated to finish my Spanish minor now that I’m going for a PhD instead of the previous pre-med plan, but I’ve already gone through several more semesters than is required. I might as well take the last 3 classes I need to finish up the minor.

Principles of Physiology lab is horribly painfully boring so far. Katie told me it would be, but I did not realize how horribly painfully boring it would be. Pleh is all I really have to say about it.

Honors research still = Love, even though I spilled a great deal of water on my stomach today while cleaning out fish tanks. At least it was hose water, and not the icky water I was removing. (Non-potable water is still moderately gross, but is better than non-potable water that a fish has been using as a toilet for a couple of weeks)
Tonight I shall battle the first half of my data into submission and shove it into the appropriate spreadsheets.

HES Study: Free access to a personal trainer 5 days a week and $200 at the end of the semester? I think yes. I had to drop yoga to participate in the study, but I am not too disappointed. The single yoga class I attended was fun, but not worth missing out on the study.

I enjoy tutoring in ZAP, and it’s good practice for future lecturing. The $500 a semester is also a good incentive to keep it up. This is the start of my 6th semester as a tutor.

So that’s this spring. I’ll be pleasantly busy, I think.

I feel vaguely guilty when I talk to my Spanish professor. She always gives me lots of praise for being well prepared, and doing a good job and whatnot. Today I gave a presentation over my favorite movie (The Incredibles!). My professor told me after class that she was very pleased with mine (I’d stayed to ask a question unrelated to my presentation). She said it was obvious that one other person and I had put a lot of preparation into our presentations, and she wasn’t so sure what was up with the others so far.

It took me 2.5 hours the night before to write the presentation, type handouts, make the PowerPoint, and memorize what I was going to say. (Yay Adam for switching me rounds so I could relax a bit earlier in the day [for the first time in a week]!) Does this qualify as a lot of preparation? Perhaps I’m just scarred by the last presentation that took me about 8 hours to put together… Of course I had to wade through several 15 page research articles over embryogenesis and apoptosis for that one… I know the skills I learned in speech and debate in high school* helped me enormously with delivery** and speech writing, but I really thought this was going to take longer.

I’ve liked two other presentations so far. They were well done and interesting (and the presenters speak pretty decent Spanish). The less said about the others the better. Bad Spanish (with occasional slips into English), bad movements, bad facial expressions… Bleh.

I’ve been wondering for the past several semesters of Spanish if I’m really good at Spanish or if the rest of the people in my classes just aren’t trying at all. I don’t think I’ve ever studied more than half an hour for any test or quiz in 5 semesters. I’m not bragging about my Spanish skills, I’m just complaining about the mind-shatteringly bad Spanish of most of my classmates. This is the 5th semester, for goodness sakes!

Opinions? Similar experiences? Expressions of deep hatred for me and my weird mutant abilities? I’d like to hear what you think about this. :)

*Project your voice without yelling, enunciate, stand up straight, make expansive gestures and hand movements or none at all (don’t wiggle your hands around your waist), don’t play with your clothes, USE YOUR FACE and be expressive, and memorize really long things*** in a very short amount of time
**I don’t puke at the first sight of public speaking anymore.
***High school: Wednesday: write 10 minute speech. Thursday: revise 10 minute speech. Friday: Memorize. Saturday: finish memorizing on the bus ride to the competition. Saturday Afternoon: Win competition and qualify for Regionals. Yay speech!

When you work in a fish lab, it is important to find some form of towel to wipe off your forearms after you’ve been fishing around (haha) in the tanks trying to accomplish something.* Your pants do not count, because if you use your pants as a towel then your pants smell like non-potable fishwater.  It’s not really a bad smell (skunk), but it’s not good (strawberries) either.

*something = catch the fish, get something off the bottom of the tank, put something in the tank, set up the filter system, clean the tank, play in the water (it’s for science!)…

Spanish movies are weird.  I suppose it’s a good thing they speak so quickly, since they used lots of words I probably should not learn.  Seriously, I am not going to discuss that in polite conversation (or any conversation, for that matter).
But other than that it was an amusing movie, and could’ve been a lot worse.

Volver

College professors sometimes swear during lecture. This morning my History of Science prof casually dropped the F-bomb (she was quoting what a student had left in an essay as a note to himself) and continued as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. My molecular biology professor would regularly censor himself; it was his first semester teaching, so he wasn’t used to it yet. “…so, what the…….. crap is this protein going to do?” or some other variation.
Not all of them do, of course. It just happens frequently enough that I shouldn’t be surprised every time.

In other news, I’m getting pretty excited about the research I’m going to start soon. As far as we can tell from doing journal database searches, this sort of technique has never been applied to the species we’re using. (Which means whatever we find out will be completely new information!) I’ve been bouncy all day today just thinking about it and wondering what sorts of things we’ll find out… And also wanting to do other experiments after I finish this one. I have this year and the next until I graduate. What can we find out if I keep working with this technique and species until I graduate? I might even get to go to Texas to work with the neurobiologist we’re collaborating with on this research, which would mean I’d get experience in all sorts of cool molecular biology and generic lab techniques that are normally reserved for other areas in biology, not animal behavior. It’s just so cool! I might even get my name on a paper in a real scientific journal, which would make me nearly implode with glee (level of implosion depends on how prestigious the journal is).

This excitement makes me wonder… I *really* enjoy tutoring zoology and I’m nearly giddy about research. I have yet to get medical experience because I never seem to be motivated enough to remember to call during business hours. Do I really want to be a doctor? It’s time to decide whether to take the MCAT or the GRE in the spring and what schools, medical or otherwise, I might want to attend. I need to figure this out. I need to get some medical experience so I’ll be able to tell if I like it more or less than research. But I’m just not excited about medical experience. I’ve had the contact list for local free health care offices that take volunteers for a couple of weeks now and I haven’t done anything with it. I just keep thinking about fish and squirrels and other zoology nerd things.

I wonder if my current premedical path is just the default for smart kids who like science… Because I wonder if I ever truly wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a vet when I was little until I realized when I was a teen that I was too allergic to furry animals to do that. I just switched to people doctor as the next closest thing, not because I was particularly passionate about it.

I’ve been thinking fairly seriously ever since last semester about applying to graduate school to become a Zoology professor and do research. I don’t really have a passion for medicine. I do, however, adore learning new and interesting things and then teaching other people what I’ve learned. I actually like reading scientific journal articles if they’re about a subject I find interesting. I like interacting with people and taking care of them, but that might be just a generic liking for people and an urge to mother anything that moves. Other than providing bandaids (which I always carry), I’m usually more interested in why the bruise is green and which bones broke (and how they’re healing) than just making the problem go away. I like to make people better, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not as happy thinking about seeing patients as I am about poking fish in a tank.

I want to know WHY. Once I find out why, I immediately want to tell other people how cool the why I just learned is so they can share in my happiness at knowing something.

I have to figure out something soon. I need to get that medical experience so I can have something to compare the research experience against. So we’ll see.

3 day weekends are nice, but I don’t get much done.  I work best with deadlines looming and established goals.  “I’ll do it sometime this weekend” doesn’t tend to work.  Thus I put off all of my work (except what was due yesterday) until today.  I have plenty of time to finish today, so I’ll even get to bed at a reasonable hour.  And all I have to do today is read two journal articles, write a summary of the method the author used, and write a one paragraph response to something for my history of science class.  I’m just amused that I had Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday to work and I chose today.

At least I got laundry done on Saturday.

A schedule!

Cell pathology is full of win and awesome. I just wish I could fall asleep before 2am so I’d stop dozing off in my favorite class. I believe a morning mocha is in order; perhaps then I’ll be able to keep my eyes focused. I’ll experiment with this strategy on Spanish in the morning. Spanish shouldn’t care that much… And I’ll just go back to sleep after class, anyway. Caffeine or not.

The more I learn about zoology the more obscure my jokes get. Nerds have so much more joke material available…And they’re clean! Weird, but clean and hilarious if you get it.

Next Morning:
All Spanish needed to make it more interesting was a mocha.
Caffeinated Sam + Spanish = hablomuyrápidaymirolasardillasymeencantaespañol *buzz*
And OU’s language lab site has movies in Spanish. I am currently watching Shrek.