The Beauty Within

I got a wonderful e-mail today that gave me the warm fuzzies.  It was a beautiful e-card from Kat saying Hi and good luck!  Thanks girl for helping me smile!!

Yes, school and CCDC has been uber hectic lately, and it’s not going to slow down.  Luckily I have Patty to force me to go to class every single day!  Since we’re carpooling, I have no choice but to attend class, and it’s been super helpful.

Classes so far aren’t too awful.  102 is definitely difficult especially with a somewhat shitty professor, but with lots of reviewing, it’s doable.  It’s not as bad at Chem 153A where you had to review your notes everyday or else you’re doomed.  102L is fun and so far easy.  I definitely feel that lab experience really helps with this class because a lot of things come as second nature now.  MCDB 150 is actually FUN!  Sure it’s hard and composes of a lot of different things, but it’s like taking a different look on concepts previously learned and applying it in a different light.  Dr. Hirsch is a great lecturer and I’m happy I chose to take her class.  Research is quite hectic but I’m falling into a good groove, or so I think.  I’m close to perfecting techniques, and my supervisor seems to be satisfied with my work.  However, there was this one thing I just somehow can’t do right, and it’s frustrating to both me and my supervisor.  If I had been able to do it right, it would have saved us a lot of time and allow us to gather more data (in the future).  Basically it’s making this certain type of media that’s extremely complicated.  It requires first making 4 different solutions, and 3 of them are extremely difficult to make.  Some of them are multi-step in itself, and others require a ton of different ingredients.  But my supervisor wants to get the ball rolling, so he decided to go with a simpler media, but that media requires more work.  Basically instead of incubating the bacteria for just one day, I have to incubate it for 3 days.  Each day it’s in incubation, I have to add fresh media.  But it works and that’s what matters!

That probably didn’t make too much sense to non-science nerds, but yeaaa… on the plus side, I made a damn good standard for my bradford assay the other day!  .994 baby!  huzzah!  I’m proud of myself, and my supervisor did tell me that making a good standard is no trivial skill.  I wish in future job interviews I can be like, “dude, you gotta hire me.. I make good standards, and according to my supervisor, it’s no trivial skill”.. MUAHAHHAHAHAHA

Time to read some paper and sleep!