Retreat

Posted 10:44 PM, October 11, 2006, by ntilmans

The biochemistry department holds a retreat once per year that all members of the department are required to attend. This year it's one day shorter than last year with the same amount of break time, so we have it a lot easier than last year but it's still a lot of science in very few days.

Every lab in the department has roughly an hour in which to present the work they have done over the past year. The PI speaks then typically one to three postdocs or graduate students give 15 minute talks on their research. In addition, poster sessions are held from 9 to 12AM for the two nights we stay there. Every member of the department who has been there for more than four months is required to present in some form or another at the retreat.

The retreat itself is held in a really beautiful place. Stanford owns a "hotel" near South Lake Tahoe towards the southern end of Fallen Leaf Lake. (It's at the end of fallen leaf lake road if you want to look at it through google maps.) Stanford Sierra Camp is basically a set of lodges with housing suites nestled around the edge of this lake. From here any number of outdoor sports are offered including tennis, basketball, sailing (a number of boats ranging from ~5 person boats to others more suited for individual sailing), waterski (in the summer) and of course hiking. But this is the Biochemistry Department retreat, so we only had a few precious hours on Thursday to explore these possibilities. The rest of the time was all science all the time except when eating and sleeping.

Not that this is a bad thing, I learned a tremendous amount in just three days. Further, I now have a good idea of what projects are going on in each lab. Most of the talks were very interesting, but some actually didn't really overwhelm me with interest. In these cases I often couldn't really see how what was being discovered was really important or particularly novel. Again though, the vast majority of the talks were fascinating and even though I'm not specifically interested in every last one of the projects being explored in the department, I would be very happy to find myself as close to the bleeding edge as these labs. Luckily, I'll have that chance.

On Thursday I decided to take a boat out sailing despite the drizzle. The scenery was still quite impressive and more importantly there was enough wind for me to go very fast. There's nothing quite like gliding along the water with no noise other than the rushing turbulence along the hull. In the morning I got up very early to see the sunrise and take a brief jump in the lake. Very brief. I'm not sure what the water temperature is except that it's very cold, but hey, it definitely wakes you up.

This past Sunday was the first football game for the Biochemistry intramural football team. Unfortunately we lost to the team from the graduate school of business. On the plus side, it's likely they're the best flag football team in the league with several championships under their belt. This upcoming Sunday will be the real test of our abilities. Also this Monday I learned that the finger injury I sustained two weeks ago at football practice is in fact a small fracture and a distended tendon in my middle finger. I'll be going 4 more weeks in buddy splints, basically velcro straps that act like tape connecting the middle and index fingers. Whatever, play hard, get injured. It would be nicer if we won though. Luckily, Sunday we'll do that.

On the non-retreat work side, we ended up missing two lectures of macromolecules, meaning when we returned on Monday we had a lot of catching up to do. Tuesday night, I did manage to finish watching both video taped lectures and the first half of the problem set. Rotation-wise today I ordered primers for my experiments so come Friday I'll be able to start doing some PCR-mutagenesis and getting the project moving. Meantime, I've got to figure out where I want mutations for the 30 amino acids following my DNA binding domain.

I'll conclude with some pictures from the retreat and football: