Dori's Journal

Defining moments of grad school (Part 7)

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:51:27 GMT

June 20, 2008: I plan to get a good chunk of writing in the next day (which yes, is a Saturday), but also need to figure out when I will go into lab and inject some mice to set up an experiment for the following week. I contemplate going in and doing it in the morning to get it out of the way, or perhaps saving it for later in the day, as a break from writing. I considered injecting mice as a study break.

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:18:48 GMT

Writing a manuscript for which all of the data hasn't quite been gathered but of which your advisor still really wants to see a draft is hard.

That is all.

Oooh, sparkly.

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:48:54 GMT

A lot of you already saw this on my Facebook page, but it merits a post here as well: I'm engaged! Whee!

Friday and most of Saturday, I was in Oxford, Ohio for our MD/PhD program's annual retreat. Little did I know that on Saturday, while I was gone, the Boy had driven up to Columbus to have lunch with and talk to my parents. I got home around 10pm and called the Boy to tell him that I had gotten home and was going to unpack, etc. He asked, "are you hungry?" I said, "yeah, a little--I haven't had dinner yet." So he said, "Well, do you want to go to Graeter's?" I replied, "Sure, I'll have ice cream for dinner." So we headed to the neighborhood ice cream parlor, and we each got ice cream (if you want to know, I had strawberry and he had black raspberry chip), and we sat down at a table. Just as I was about to start eating my ice cream, he grinned and said, "I have something for you." Then he reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the ring box, opened it, and slid it across the table towards me. And then he asked me to marry him!

I was so surprised--I knew that he had the ring last week, and I knew we were going to be engaged before he left for his internship in Washington, DC this summer, but I had no idea he was going to get around to speaking to my parents so quickly. And I had no idea that it was going to happen right there, at Graeter's, in public. But after I said yes and cried (just like I didn't think that I would), I looked around, and it didn't seem like anyone had noticed (thankfully). It's hard to explain, but it's special to have such a meaningful and private moment amidst everyone, right by the line of people staring up at the menu trying to figure out what flavor they wanted. It's sort of a fun secret, in a way.

Anyway, that's how it happened, nice and simple and happy and fun and so on.

Whine

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:49:07 GMT

The last thing I want to do tonight and the rest of this weekend is go out and be a Merry Sunshine for the MD/PhD recruits.

Sigh.

Repeat to self: "I'm getting free food, I'm getting free food..."

Can you handle the cute?

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:54:30 GMT

My nephew is an octopus.

Okay, I admit it

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:21:06 GMT

One: I have spent almost the entire day either reading about the 2007 World Series or watching NESN post-game interviews.

Two: Wake and Timlin make me cry.
(I wanted to get a link directly to the footage from NESN, but I can't get it.)

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:45:34 GMT

Well, shit. That was fun. Once the collector's pins come out, I will have to buy one. My world series pin from 2004 needs a friend. =)

Ah, to be in Boston last night/today/this week. Someone please go to the parade for me.

Congratulations to the 2007 Red Sox and the fans. World Series Champions. Again!

The Red Sox want me to be buckle down

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 13:58:45 GMT

Evidently, the Red Sox will only win games this postseason if I am reading scientific papers at the same time. This has held true for the latter part of the ALCS, as well as these first two games of this World Series. Knitting, apparently, is not an acceptable way to still be productive during games, as evidenced by ALCS games 2 and 3. No. These 2007 Red Sox would like me to graduate sometime next year and are making sure that I remain up-to-date on scientific literature regarding chemokine production in and immune cell recruitment to the CNS. I hope they will be okay if I decide to switch over to IL-1 receptor signaling later in the Series.

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 14:27:57 GMT

Well, here we go again.

Thanks for a great ALCS, Cleveland. It would have been fun to see you go to the World Series, too. After all, you are my second-favorite AL team. I'm sorry that things didn't go your way this time. But thanks for playing some kick-ass baseball.

Perhaps Basegirl says it best on her blog:

"And the Indians - oh the Indians - my heart really does break for them and their fans. I've said it before and I'll say it again, and I would have said it had they come away the victors last night: they are an excellent baseball team. They are well-managed and they play a great game. I would be happy to call them my team and I would be proud to have any member of their team playing for me. In fact, at several points during the season I lamented the fact that we couldn't somehow morph the two teams into one and call ourselves the Indisox, or the Soxians and take on the Rockies together. But that is not the way of things. Indians fans are proud people, and I'm sure they don't want my sympathies. So instead I offer a metaphorical handshake over a series well-played and well-fought. It's certainly the most evenly matched competition I've seen in recent history, but someone had to win...

It's not like it was in 2004 when we spoke of faith rewarded and of all of this meaning more than what it meant. No one is talking about exorcising demons this time or validating the careers of those veterans who have played seemingly forever without a chance at a World Series. This time, it seems, most of us are talking about the young guys. About what a blessed way this is to begin a career. About the high standards they're setting for themselves. We are not talking about getting Tim Wakefield a ring a year after he walked off the mound a Game 7 loser in Yankee Stadium. We're not talking about Pedro having his shot at greatness validated. We're talking about Jacoby Ellsbury introducing himself to the world on the largest possible baseball stage. We're talking about Dustin Pedroia teaching the big guys something about hitting and being on your game. And yes, we're talking about Matsuzaka. Whereas 2004 felt like vindication, like the brilliant end of an era that might've evaporated if not commemorated, 2007 feels like a coronation. It's different, but it's no less sweet."

Okay, so that second paragraph is a little cheesy, but it's true that, at least for me, that this is not a do-or-die year like 2004 was. The playoffs this year, so far, have been fun. Don't get me wrong--I still get cranky and pissy when the Sox are hitting into double plays and not fielding the ball cleanly or not giving Tim Wakefield run support, but if they lose the World Series, I am not going to head to work the next day wearing black like I did after ALCS 2003. In fact, I will be very excited for the Rockies, even if they do wear purple.

Here's to hoping for another week of good baseball.

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:04:28 GMT

But... But I'm so left-brained! How is it that she can only go clockwise for me?

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 03:50:54 GMT

Well, regardless of the final outcome of this ALCS, I must say: Well done, Josh Beckett!

Now if they lose the series, at least it will be at home. If they do lose, I hope they go down playing good baseball. And stop grounding into double plays, please.

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:08:43 GMT

This whole surfing the internet thing for 1+ hours when I come in has got to stop. I am angry at myself.

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:08:35 GMT

The wheels are coming off the bus.

Sat, 15 Sep 2007 04:35:50 GMT

So, I took on the challenge of listing 10 of my favorite songs that began with a certain letter. I was assigned the letter F by kenzilla. So here goes.

February (Dar Williams)--...And then the snow came; we were always out shoveling, and we'd drop to sleep exhausted, and we'd wake up, and it's snowing...
Fever (Peggy Lee)--What a lovely way to burn...
Fly Me to the Moon (Frank Sinatra)--Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars, let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars; in other words, hold my hand
Fools in Love (Inara George)--Fools in love, is there any other kind of pain?
For Good (Wicked)--You'll be with me, like a hand print on my heart
For the Longest Time (Billy Joel)--And the greatest miracle of all is how I need you and how you needed me too
Four Left Feet (The Ditty Bops)--Me and you, that makes two, with four left feet
Fred Jones, Part 2 (Ben Folds)--He's forgotten, but not yet gone
Friendship (Anything Goes)--If they ever put a bullet through your brain, I'll complain

Wow... There's not a whole lot that begins with F in my iTunes library.

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 22:45:40 GMT

Why yes, it will have been 11.5 hours in lab on a holiday by the time I leave. Thanks for asking. What's that? Did I plan to stay here that long? Oh, no, of course not. But you know, when somehow the T cell purification decides not to work and you have to go back upstairs, sac another mouse and purify more T cells, that adds some time to the day.

Yay, I'm 27!

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 12:57:38 GMT

Hey, 27 has to be exciting somehow.

Thanks for all of the birthday wishes, everyone! It was a very nice day.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:40:41 GMT

Got up at 5 AM to watch the lunar eclipse this morning after having gone to bed around midnight. Probably not the best idea, considering that I went straight to a full day's work.

Ah, well. It was pretty, and ELISAs are just a bunch of repetitive pipetting anyway.

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 20:59:49 GMT

I finished HP7 last night. And it was effing awesome. That is all.

Defining moments of grad school (Part 6)

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:00:20 GMT

July 23, 2007: My advisor and I meet this morning to go over draft 2 of my manuscript. Most revisions are minor, but some major work needs to be done to part of the Introduction and the Discussion. Amid the stress of tomorrow's committee meeting and trying to write a good paper and me being too hard on myself, I start to get watery, but manage to not actually cry in front of my advisor. (Note: He was in no way being mean.) The meeting ends, I wring my hands for a while and disappear to the mouse room. Later, I'm analyzing data for the meeting tomorrow and he comes in and says, "There you are. I've been looking for you. I wanted to check on your emotional status." I'm sure he was partially kidding, but still. My advisor came to check on my emotional status.

Oh. And he just dropped a paper for me to read on this keyboard. Fun.

Defining moments of grad school (Part 5)

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:18:48 GMT

July 16th, 2007: I realize that my committee meeting is next Tuesday, and that I have a shitload of grad school-related work to do before and after it (giant experiments, getting out a paper), which means that I will not get to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows the second I receive it, and perhaps not until a week later.

You all know what that means. As with the release of book 6, if you put spoilers in your entries, I will hunt you down and have your hide.

I suck at life

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:33:47 GMT

I have been in lab since 8:30. Since arriving, I have:

1. Checked e-mail.
2. Created a Facebook page (don't expect great things from it; I created an account mainly to keep my existence wtih people from Linworth).
3. Checked e-mail.
4. Tried to order things.
5. Checked e-mail.
6. Began to analyze data.
7. Checked e-mail.

Things I will try to do today:

1. Finish analyzing data.
2. Deliver mice to GRI for collaboration.
3. Read about NKT cells or catch up on notebook.

I didn't sleep much last night, can you tell? My brain is in a complete fog and I can't make myself focus. Argh. I can already tell that today is going to be a waste, and it's not even half over.

Defining moments of grad school (Part 4)

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:01:21 GMT

April 26, 2007: Back in 2002, a collaborator of ours showed some data with some IL-1R knockout mice. In 2004, I enter grad school, pick up a project in which half of the hypothesis hinges on that data. In 2005, I want to reproduce that data. I order mice from Jackson, spend time breeding them, and spend time breeding them to some other knockouts that I have in order to generate some double knockouts for other experiments, etc. In 2007, I repeat the original experiment. I can't reproduce their data. I repeatedly can't reproduce the data. I despair, thinking that the project is ruined. I decide to take the project in a different direction. Today, I find that our collaborator used mice on a different background, which means that I have spent two years of my life breeding up and using mice and trying to generate data WITH THE WRONG MICE. I want to go home and drink beer. Now.

For those of you who may care, the mice they used were on a mixed BL/6 x 129 background, but they used BL/6 mice for their controls. JAX sells two strains of IL-1R-/- mice, one on a mixed background and one on a BL/6 background. I suppose that if I had really really wanted to do their experiment exactly, I should have looked at their Materials and Methods more carefully and ordered the same exact mice. However, the better science is to do the experiment with the mice fully backcrossed to BL/6, because we do all of our experiments with BL/6 mice, their controls were BL/6 mice, and I was going to generate double knockouts with IL-1R and another knockout strain that was fully backcrossed to BL/6. So I ordered the knockouts on the BL/6 background and proceeded to breed them and make double knockouts. Why I didn't repeat the original experiment for another two years, only the black hole of graduate school knows the answer to that. Again, with the beer.

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:20:09 GMT

Well, well. It's been a while, hasn't it? Suffice it to say that since my last post, not a whole lot of significant stuff has happened in my life, except that I became an aunt on February 28th. Some of you know that already, but for those of you who don't, pictures of an exceptionally cute baby to be found here. (I'm serious. How many half-Asian babies do you know of that aren't cute?)

Really, that's more or less it. Boy and I are doing well, house and roommates and dog are all fine (my lawnmower and garage door are being sort of stupid, but you don't need to be bored with all of those details). Research is...okay. I finished an experiment over the last month that nullified half of the hypothesis for my thesis project, but the other half may still be good, once I have enough mice to do the experiment... All is not lost, but I have three experiments that need to be done before I know where to go next, except that I can't do them right away because I'm waiting for my mice to have sex and then for the babies to get old enough for use. Argh!

So, um, yeah. Baby pictures. That's all I got for ya.

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 02:18:04 GMT

Freezing rain. All day long. Half the city is without power (fortunately, I am not in that half--yet), and my back yard is littered with small branches that have broken off trees due to the weight of the ice.

Unfortunately, I last week I decided that it would be a great time to start an experiment that requires me to come in every day and weigh mice. Mice are the only reason I went in today. Mice are the only reason I have to go in tomorrow. Not class, not lab meeting, no. Weighing 25 mice. Actually, tomorrow I have to weigh and inject them, so tomorrow is slightly more important.

It's a good thing that I'm within a half-hour's walk of lab. Shoveling snow, walking in snow... Winter weather is providing a pretty decent workout regimen for me.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 03:36:39 GMT

It's truly amazing how content I am after cleaning my house. I get an immense feeling of satisfaction from looking at my room and my living room and not seeing dust, hair, or pawprints.

Ahhhh.