Beauuutiful day
Yeah, so I was in lab at 7 am today. As my instant messenger away message read all day, I feel like I'm trending in the wrong direction. Hopefully it will all be worth it tomorrow when Dave and I read scan our microarrays. The good news is while waiting for different steps in the procedure to incubate, I had time to finish my poster for the research symposium tomorrow. Twelve Powerpoint slides, not too shabby.
Today was also lab cleanup day in preparation for the annual safety inspection. It's amazing how much junk can accumulate on a six-person benchtop over the course of a year. The good thing about lab cleanup is that the lab manager brings in snacks to encourage us along the way. And better yet, now I can actually find things on my shelves and no longer have five bottles of the same buffer solution. Ah, the good life.
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Memorial Church and the Old Quad. |
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| Hoover Tower | |
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Per the title of my entry for today, it was 85 degrees and sunny. I had to run an errand on the other side of campus this afternoon and so I decided to go for a walk. Being the smart person I am, I didn't think to bring my camera with me so I apologize I can't share Stanford's campus on a warm Spring day. If you're not from the Bay Area, I highly recommend you come check it out for yourself. Here are some pictures I've taken previously to give you an idea of what I'm talking about.
The Oval
My destination was the Stanford men's basketball office. During this past season I was selected to participate in one of those silly contests they do during time-outs. My friend Pat (the soccer goalie) and I were bungee corded together and had to shoot baskets at opposite ends of the court while getting pulled toward half court. For the record, I didn't just win, I smoked him. The prize was a pizza party.
Normally, they deal with undergrads and so the food was intended to feed a small dorm and so they were a little scared about feeding a whole department. In the end, I just did the grad students and it worked out pretty well. I had to front the money, though, and so my visit to the basketball office was to get my reimbursement. I think I valued the walk through the main quad almost as much as the $120 I picked up.
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| Drew presenting journal club | |
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I returned to the med school just in time for my last required journal club as a grad student. Every Friday at noon, my department has a seminar. Half of the time the speaker is a grad student or post-doc from the department and the other half we bring in a speaker from another university. On weeks where we have an outside speaker, the day before the first- and second-year grad students get together to discuss a paper from the speaker's lab.
This week's speaker is Alan Sher from the National Institutes of Health. His lab studies the immune system's response to parasites. Drew Hotson from my class did a presented a paper about how Toxoplasma gondii, which primarily affects expectant mothers, newborns and the immunocompromised, is initially recognized when it enters the body.
It was kind of sad (in a small way since it will be nice to have my Thursday evenings free) that this was the last journal club. Besides learning a lot about all aspects of infectious disease, these discussions have also been a nice opportunity to get together with the other grad students and catch up on how everyone is doing.
And then there's the food... as grad students we are required to pursue free food wherever it can be found. Between journal clubs, seminars, and happy hours, it is probably feasible to eat just about every lunch and dinner for free if one tries hard enough. Tonight was Thai food, one of the better selections we get.
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| Let the dinner line begin |
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Mary Jeanne, our department administrator discussing qualifying exam committees with us. Doesn't Emily look excited :) |
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After journal club was over, several of us hung around and talked about everything from up coming qualifying exams to what we're doing this weekend. The fun part first: There's a free concert being put on by a local radio station up at Pier 30 in San Francisco on Saturday with fireworks afterwards. Sounds like a winner to me.
Now for quals talk... The qualifying exam is the last hurdle to getting a PhD before the actual dissertation. The exam consists of a written research proposal on a topic other than what we work on in our own labs and an oral defense of what we write.
Today before journal club we found out which professors were on each of our committees. Of course, the requisite comparisons between the second-year students ensued. After everyone had put in their two cents, we all departed for the evening to rest up for Friday (and the weekend :) ).
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| After journal club fun |
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Posted at 08:10 PM
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