In three months I'll trade my 40-hour weekly-repeat work week in to start the life of a graduate student. I'm pretty happy to know that I'm moving on, and I'm super, super excited to start something with some degree of permanency. I never thought I'd be excited about the prospect of being able to buy matching furniture, or dishes that aren't just ( Read more... )

Who would have known a lab job has so many risks ( Read more... )

Filing taxes is like playing a lottery game with the political gods, I think. It's a pain every year, but this year I am especially appreciating having to file in multiple states ( Read more... )

Oh man, I just figured out that I can make the font size bigger on the internet by holding Apple and +... I know it's something I shouldn't be learning just now, post-degree, but it probably improved my life by like... ten fold just now.

I'm driving to Idaho and driving to Idaho is absolutly terrible when you're sick. I am so sick, it's gross. I don't know which is worse though, feeling so awful, or having to interact with the few people I come in contact with, people who probably just assume I have swine flu. Driving isn't so bad, because at least it's not strenuous work, and I've ( Read more... )

Dear Sarah,

I am the Director of the Integrated Biological Sciences Summer Research Program (IBS-SRP) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and am writing to let you know that you have made it through the first round of our application review process...

I feel like I'm making progress with life!
Even if it's just the first round of a single program ( Read more... )

I volunteered to help tutor at the CCOC (Beloit's community outreach center). It was pretty cool. I'm tutoring this ten year old girl named Caira every week. I'm helping her with science and math. Today she was learning about stars and comets, and got to color in the comet names that she might get to see in her lifetime. It was really amusing to ( Read more... )

For Cell we have to have PowerPoint presentations on whichever microorganism we were looking at today in class. John didn't give us any real instructions on what we had to put on there, but after an evening's learning, I have grown strangely attached to my tiny green algae. No wonder people who study tiny little things for years and years (the same ( Read more... )

Tomorrow morning I'll be on my way to New Mexico! I'm pretty excited, except for that getting up really really early part of it. I'm sort of nervous about maneuvering O'Hare by myself, but I guess people have done it before. This time tomorrow I'll be hanging out with Stella, Shawn, and Laura though, and that's awesome! I was talking to Stella ( Read more... )

When I fly into El Paso I'll be pretty close on the corner between Texas-Mexico-New Mexico. Stella or Shawn or Laura, or maybe some combination of the three are going to rescue me, and we're going to drive through the desert to get to Carlsbad. I'm really excited about seeing mountains. Carlsbad is stuck between three small ountain ranges: Delaware ( Read more... )