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I went to UChicago last weekend for my first round of grad school interviews. It went great, and the grad school environment seems like a great fit for me. However, I’m going to spare details on the schools until I’ve finished all interviews and have started to hear back about whether or not I’ve been accepted to them.
I am now sitting in the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas. The UTSW interviews are tomorrow, and the room they’ve put me up in is SWANK. Probably one of the biggest rooms I’ve stayed in. Ever.
On that note, I want to officially declare the biology grad school interview process to be the most amazing experience that a college grad can go through. It contrasts so strongly to the application processes of other educational programs (law/med/business/etc school) that there is danger of being blinded. After a pretty painless paper application, those applicants who get past the first round are invited to interview at the schools, for which the school pays for airfare and all expenses while the applicant is there. And they throw booze and food at you at every turn.
The interviews themselves are great, since they are more of a conversation about science than anything else. And I love talking about science. The researchers I talked to at Uchicago are doing some really cool things that were fascinating to hear about, and I expect to hear of many more interesting projects before my interviews are done.
My interview schedule is UChicago (done last week), UTSW (done tomorrow), Duke (next weekend) and WashU (early March). While it’s great to spend this time visiting schools and talking to interesting people who share my nerdiness levels and love for biology, the 4-day work-weeks are problematic. I can’t really get any experiments started, though it’s nice to have some time to catch up on data analysis.
Homeopathy says essentially this: Something that causes disease can be made to cure that same ailment if the something is diluted into water so much that it is no longer present. For example, if you were to take one molecule of cyanide and dilute it into a swimming pool, then drink some pool water, you would be cured of cyanide poisoning! Sound too simple to be true? Well, that’s because you must first release the Energy of the cyanide. Personally, I do this via belly-flopping into the swimming pool, though any kind of concussion of the water will do. Punching the water is also a pretty good way to do it.
Another example: it is clear that humans are basically a disease of the earth. We’re polluting the crap out of it, killing all the wildlife, etc. Now, this should be easy to fix with homeopathy. Since people are causing these bad things on Earth, all we need to do is have someone go swim in the ocean, concuss the ocean, and then distribute ocean water all over the world. In the same way that you can dilute a cyanide molecule into a pool, you can dilute one person into the ocean. You still need to release the Energy of that person, though. I would suggest the concussion be from underground faults leading to earthquakes and tsunamis, though enough belly flops would likely also do the trick. I feel quite certain that there have been a few people in the various oceans when these kinds of concussive events have occurred, therefore it is clear that Sea Water can already fix global warming!
And while we’re thinking about it, just imagine how many things have been diluted into the oceans: people, animals, plants, drugs, chemicals, pesticides, fish nets, volcanoes, tsunamis, airplanes, boats, etc, etc, ETC! This means that sea water can stop volcanoes from erupting, release fish from nets, repair damaged boats and aircraft, fix broken bones caused by tsunamis and downed aircraft, release the hallucinogenic hold of LSD, cure various cancers, and so on. In fact, if you have a disease, all you have to do is jump into the ocean, and then you will be diluted to homeopathic levels, meaning your disease will be diluted to homeopathic levels.
Belly flop into the ocean. Then drink up. Any disease you have will be cured!
Yeah. I heard that on the radio when driving into Grinnell on Friday. As I was flipping through stations, I overheard a radio “personality” declaring that, in fact, dinosaurs are not animals. Two of her fellow radio people agreed, though one kept insisting that they were wrong. They asked some guy with whom they were talking on the phone and he authoritatively agreed that, nope, dinosaurs are not animals.
After a moment of dumbstruck silence, I burst out laughing. What in the hell did they think a dinosaur was?
At the top(ish) level of the classification hierarchy, the familiar Kingdoms (recall King Phillip and his penchant for Coming Over uninvited to eat your Great Spaghetti (or for Groping Softly ( etc ) ) ?) are:
- Euabacteria
- Archaebacteria
- Protista
- Fungi
- Plant
- ANIMAL
I expect that if this list of possibilities was presented to those radio people they would be more likely to realize that, in fact, dinosaurs are animals. They certainly aren’t plants, fungi, or single-celled organisms!
I would guess that the silliness leading to the radio hosts’ claim comes from (1) general scientific ignorance and, more interestingly, (2) the fact that people generally think of mammals and birds when picturing an “animal”. I admit that, every once in a while, I have to remind myself that nematode worms and weird arthropods are, in fact, animals. But even the most basic knowledge of taxonomy would lead anyone to the right place and, with Wikipedia around, what’s the hosts’ excuse?
I just got an email from the bio department asking me to come for a visit in January (all expenses paid!). That turnaround time was quite unexpected (apps were due just last Tuesday). I’m excited, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing the old alma mater again. I’ll have make time to meet with a bunch of people while I’m there as well, which may end up being a little tricky. But, time will have to be made.
I’ve got some ideas of things to start blogging about, though it’s mostly kitchen science (i.e. an empirical study on the superiority of stove-top vs. microwaved popcorn) that will take some time to put together. These experiments are not conducive to daily writing, but will be a lot of fun. So, I figure I should just try to find small things to write daily while working on bigger, more interesting, things in the background. Sound plan-like?
After a hiatus filled with grad apps, lab work, and Hulu (that awful time-sink), I have decided to get back to writing. Previously, the Brothers and I had been using a joint blog (coster3.com), but I found that this seemed to decrease my posting habits. I’m also pretty sure that the stuff that I like to think and write about is too esoteric and/or nerdy for most people (or all people) to actually read. So, I decided to split back to my original home and starting pounding keyboard.
It’s late, so I guess this will be more of a fizzle than a bang. I’ll just give a brief life update:
I am in St Louis, working as a lab tech in Justin Fay’s lab at Washington University in St Louis Medical School. I’ll describe my projects in other posts, since I’ll be using those to practice my explaining prowess (my new main purpose for this blog). I’ve procured a second feline, Nukat, to keep Ninja company, and so I have become a crazy cat person. I finished graduate school applications over the past several weeks, and am now waiting to hear back about interviews. If all goes well, I’ll be enrolled in a genetics PhD program by March!
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Life without Internet is like life without water. Yeah, you can live for a couple days but it SUCKS. And then you die.
So, of course, when I moved in to my apartment in St Louis this past weekend, the first thing I thought about was getting access to the series of Tubes. Sadly, all of my neighbors are smart enough to use protected wireless networks, so I was forced to go to a Panera (called St Louis Bread Co here) to use order service. I checked out Charter, which had a great deal for the lowest end service, but the cost tripled for an upgrade, which I thought to be too ridiculous. AT&T was a better deal for faster Interwebs, and they had a deal online where if I bought phone and DSL service I would get a free modem plus $60 credit for my first three months of service. I figured I just wouldn’t bother getting the phone, and then would cancel that part after 3 months. Turns out things wouldn’t be so simple.
I got officially moved into my apartment yesterday. I harnessed the kitten to the passenger door so he could roam a bit, then headed south from Grinnell. I picked up Sam and forced him to help me unload things, then dropped him back off at some raucous WashU event.
All of my stuff was in a pile on the floor, but I still needed some necessities like hand soap, so I ran to Target to get that stuff done. I took Ninja with me because he wouldn’t shut the hell up when I walked out the door, and I didn’t want to de-friend the neighbors before I met them. I am simply amazed at the cat’s behavior (aside from the meowing thing). He just sat patiently in the car as I ran in and out and drove around. He probably spent 7 hours in there yesterday.
And now I need to figure out how to get the Internet. I’m going through withdrawal. Plus, it’s my primary means of communication since I’m too cheap to get a non-VoIP way to call people.
So my life has taken and interesting (and welcome) turn lately. I’m applying to grad schools for PhD programs in bioinformatics/genomics/etc, and have found a few schools that have programs that seem perfect. One of those schools is WashU in St. Louis (where Sam is an undergrad).
My mother, grandparents, and I went to visit Sam last weekend, before which I had contacted a researcher at WashU whose work I am interested in, and asked if he had any work available. Turns out that he did. I interviewed with him last Monday, got the job, and found an apartment the next day.
I drove to St. Louis yesterday to visit my Little Brother at WashU and to meet with a researcher tomorrow for a potential job. It’s a long drive, and my mind was whirring all the way, so I thought I’d throw out a few random things I was contemplating (my apologies for the unpolished, poorly-written quality):
I became (relatively) enraged when my new GPS lost signal near Iowa City. It uses satellites. In space. What could possibly cause the stupid thing to not have signal? Then I had no emotional response to getting pulled over for speeding. I wasn’t speeding that much, but it was in a construction zone. Turns out the investment in cruise control might have been worth it.
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