A Few Days Later

So as all but one person knows, I ended up going home Tuesday night for my uncle's funeral. I have only know him for 7 years but it was quite drastic to receive the call from my parents that he had passed away of cancer and its hideous complications. The funeral was on yesterday. I thought that I would not shed a tear because I didnt know him all that well but I found myself caught up in the moment when they finally began to wheel the body out of the church and as the funeral home played the final card "The Last Look" I like to call it, I found myself only able to glance at his soulless body one more time before I had to rush outside and take a few minutes to possibly relive and remember every moment I had with him or at least remember him. Ultimately this makes perhaps the 4th funeral of someone family related that I have had to attend in my oh so short lifetime (1st was my Great Grandfather, 2nd was my Mother, 3rd was an extremely close extended family member, 4th, was Uncle). It leaves me wondering that I should really spend more time with people for we never know when they could go away.

t

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Back In Action

Well the Summer has started and research has had to be done. Simply put on Monday (after taking part as Parade Official at Portsmouth's 124th Memorial Day parade for the Youth Advisory Commission) I packed and came to VCU quickly.

Tuesday began with the introduction of other people and the taking part in a luncheon to meet others and get acquainted with the other participants in the Honors Undergraduate Summer Research Program. It was quite interesting to find out about the many Art program participants. It was an interesting event. Immediately after it finished I quickly ran off to the Welcome Center to turn in my employment papers to be a Student Ambassadors (we get paid like 8 dollars for the tours over the summer :) ). I had to go to the Harris Hall to see the new Office of Undergraduate Admissions. After that finished I went off with one of my friends, Haris, to eat lunch at Qdoba then we met with Adeeb, and then went to their apartment.

Wednesday began with the arrival at my lab at around 1:30PM. In the morning, I spent time unpacking my room and watching the price is right. It was quite interesting seeing the show with Drew Carrey and remembering all of the sound effects from the show, I cant believe that I remembered them all. I also met with all of my roommates people. I feel a bit bad because I can not remember their names for I can not remember their names at all. During the research session I was able to get caught up on lab happenings. There are several projects going on in the lab such as a proposal for research and malaria, there is also another malaria project, another cell transporter exploration, and furthermore even more other research on schizophrenia. The only other extensive part that was covered was a bit if reading research proposals, seeing several different biology professors, and reading a proposal for a masters degree program. All in all it was an interesting day that allowed me to see the various things that can be done in a lab apart from on hands research.

Thursday involved more of the lab research. However, it started off with me plunging through a detailed paper on vesicular monoamine transporter 1 in humans that could be linked towards causing schizophrenia. The paper was only six pages but it took me about 2 hours to read through and interpret. In the meantime several professors kept coming buy to put the finishing touches on the proposal and get it sent and submitted. Needless to say, Dr. Stewart came in immediately and we went through and played around with the BLAST (NCBI) and other Geneview programs on the site in an effort to discover just where these point mutations that the paper sited occurred. It was an interesting process for we were able to collaborate with other professors in the school and get a few issues worked out on. The final thing that we now need to do is to discover the knockout regions for replicating and recombinating the piece of DNA that we believe is related to a certain part of the original gene.

Lab research has been quite interesting, I am still getting used to all of the techniques and such.



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Near the End: Round-Up 2

Do not fear for I have not forgotten. Alright so just about everything with last semester has finally come and gone. I believe that this one was going to be about grades. As we know we had a period this year in which we were going to put our feet in the water in an effort to be quite closed about things close to home and with grades. Needless to say, I found this quite pointless and worthless. Although grades are not meant to be competitive (too bad programs are quite competitive and will uphold stiff GPA requirements for applicants), in the normal and personal life, I do not see why we need to maintain an element of concealment. Not to attack those that do, but I just find it a waste of the limited amount of life energy that we have been given, you know? Probably not.

At the end of last semester I was at an 3.83 GPA. At the end of this semester I am now at a 3.759. It is shocked to know that even though people make above average grades that the GPA still lowers as punishment. It is a difficult thing to explain when you tell people that you have a 3 point something on the 4 point oh grading scale for anything below a 4.0 is looked upon as bad. Just think about it, an A is a 4.0 but a B is a 3.0. Once one gets their first B there is no way to get back to 4.0. Sure you can get a 3.9 but that is with extreme diligence and effort.

But in my case, with 11 credits, I earned an A in Chinese, an A in Introductory Chemistry Laboratory 2, a B in Bioinformatics, and a B in Organic Chemistry 1. Next semester I aim to get an A in all of my five classes, but most likely that will not be the case. For next semester I am taking Organic Chemistry 2, Introduction to Computer Programming (Java), Applications of Statistics, Math Structures, and Physics. This comes to a total of 18 credits, which is quite a bunch to take. I hope to be able to manage all of these classes and score A's. With all but one worth 3 credits, a B will really hurt.

That is just about it for grades, the next one will probably deal with people and activities, and the last one will deal with the future plans, or as we called it in Bioinformatics, "Coming Attractions."



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Near the End: Round-Up 1

Since my last post there have been quite a few and remarkable changes to happen. These have ranged from poor to exciting. All in all, the end of the semester proved to be quite a challenge and it was attacked head on.

School ended in a fashion that made it seem quite interesting. In Organic Chemistry it seemed like the professor hiked the difficulty up to an unreachable level. Thanks to his altered grading scale though, I must admit that it did make it a bit more bearable. I just do not know anymore. I think that me and chemistry just do not get along. I can do the laboratory assignments and mixing chemicals well; its funny really, I can even ignore the exact instructions and just guesstimate in my pouring of chemicals and still get, if not more, the same results. Who knows, I am not majoring in Chemistry so it really does not matter. I wanted to get a Chemistry Minor but this is becoming a bit more difficult then my own Bioinformatics degree.

Bioinformatics is another class that seemed to throw all its knives at me in one swipe. The work became quite intense with the Final Test 3 and a project, both of which seemed to overlap. Immediately once the test was completed, the project was due. I somehow managed to find a way to study for the Organic Chemistry tests and to do the test and project at the same time. By the time I was done with it, I was nearly about to faint. Needless to say I survived well.

This semester seemed to be more of a challenge of staying determined, keeping a high level of self-esteem, an attack against self-doubt, and the value of hard work and perseverance. Needless to say, I do believe that it will all work out for the better.

There will probably be two more of these created to highlight several things that have happened in the preceding days, which in this case would be the time period of the end of April.

Later days and talk soon.



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A Week: Ups and Downs

I have discovered this semester that within a weeks time that one's mood can start on an high go through a valley to the lowest depths then rise triumphantly in the end. Unfortunately, this triumphant ending is sadly a misconception for the fear of going through another tumultuous week is always present. It seems to make little to no difference that this can very well happen though when one is in that happy moment.

I wont go into much details but this week has been quite critical. I started out with high hopes for the future on Monday, however by the end of the day I realized that success isn't guaranteed no matter how prepared one can be. Although they can make every effort to study it seems that it all boils down to in the end whether you were correct or incorrect. Regardless, with the help of many people around me throughout the week and a surprising A on my Chinese test, I soon recovered from that critical blow in Organic Chemistry and realized that there is new hope for tomorrow.

Ultimately, coming up in the near future is another attempt to reach the mark and attempt to regain the "phosphorescence of learning" (Emily Dickenson said that in a short story of sorts). I hope that something does turn up in this matter.

Sunday Confession: Sunday April 6 (14 of 52)

People continue to change and the times continue to change. The silly games that people play are getting old. Everything is becoming taxing, people are getting older but they are not changing for the better. People are in college now and still thrive in the high school mentality. Apparently we are still in an age in which we have hierarchical setups of friends and try to please friends by comparing them to others based on how much they take one out and pay for their food.

It is my claim that this needs to stop and people need to be reexamined. I think the time has passed beyond that which we can continue to keep poshing each other up and examining everyone under the looking glass in an attempt to compare them to each other. This is wrong and downright dirty. Everyone is not the same, in fact, everyone is different. What someone does for you does not need to be done to you by another person. In fact, be glad that there are people willing to talk and at least care and treat you to things just because you are their friend and partner in crime.

It is disgusting to see that people only go to others to seek advice. Even more is it that when they give advice or answer your question, you program the answer as wrong and they have to spend all their precious time to find evidence to support their answer that you shot down in the beginning. It does not make me proud to have to find evidence to support an answer and prove your never accepting the initial as answer as truth self wrong. In fact, it disenchants me that I have to waste my time to do it. If that was the case then next time find the answer yourself.

Ultimately, the times have changed and it is time to move on. People can not remain in their high school and immature mindset moving into their young adult hood years and time in which they will begin to seek to establish themselves with a successful career and possibly a family. Gone are the times when the jokes are cast and everything is laughed at. Gone are the times when you seek friends based on aesthetic things and not on that which they will help you the most with.



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The Beginning of the End (1)

Well today was the final day of lecture for Introduction to Chemistry Lab 102. Because of a bit of fated purpose of trying to get all 100's on every class period and attaining at least a 95 in each lab, I can say that I did not attend today's class. And currently, I doubt that I am also going to go to the final Lab Class on this upcoming Monday. It seems that it would be a bit futile knowing that what we do in lab wont really be on the test in that capacity. Sure there will be questions about it, but all of that can be gleamed from just reading the lab instructions and attempting to recognize what is happening before we take the test.

This reminds me that we have only about a few more mere weeks left in class for this semester. This will mark the end of my second year at Virginia Commonwealth University. The beginning of the end of the college career is starting to come to a close. On the four year plan aspect, this marks the crossing of the halfway point and the sprint downwards to the bottom.

I have had a great time in my first part of college and I can say that this will hopefully continue as I go further along.


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St. Andrews

Usually I don't get too descriptive of my various endeavors in the realm of extracurricular activities. But lately, I have been having exciting thoughts and massive fun with one such event. The events that I take part in at St. Andrews school is quite fun.

At St. Andrews, which is located about two blocks away from the main VCU Monroe Park campus, we (usually about three other students either in Bioinformatics or an education major) guide the fifth graders (and usually a mix of other grades) through various science labs. The last lab we conducted involved the making of tree vests, so that the students can show their love of trees.

I think it is a quite fun endeavor mainly because the students have this infinite reservoir of energy that seems to emanate and sap my energy. Sometimes, I can come there with the highest amount of energy and I will leave feeling as tired as ever. I do have a bit of fun with them, they are so funny and sometimes say the weirdest things. Other times you would think they were in high school with the knowledge that they posses. I cant wait to go again and help out.



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Summer Plans: (1)

It seems that I may have been offered accepted into the HSURP (Honors Summer Undergraduate Research Program) for Summer 2008. The program says that it will last from May 27th (looks like the same time HHMI starts) until July 22 (a week before HHMI ends).

It is going to be amazing to see the contrasts between HHMI and HSURP. Ironically I am going to be research with the same professor I had for HHMI and a project that looks and sounds most spectacular. Although the amount of stipend is considerable less (50%, HHMI we got $3000, HSURP only $1500, zomg this is literally a step downwards, BBSI gets the most with $3500, it seems and this other CSBSI program gets $4000!!!).

Obviously, they seem to value the research interests in the program so it will be interesting to see what will be done. I have been desiring a way to continue to launch into my undergraduate research and this seems to be yet another program to launch me into that career of pursuing my future goal in life: To perform research.


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High School: In Memory (1)

After browsing and realizing that there were new people from High School (I.C. Norcom), I was just thinking of how long ago it was when I was in High School. It has been over 2 years now since the last time I had class at Norcom. Somedays, it feels like High School was only yesterday, but other times it feels as if High School was so very long ago.

I wonder now, if we and everyone I knew and the people they knew, were to get back together would the same relationships and social structure that existed still be prevalent. There are so many people that I have not been able to contact. Some people seem to have vanished off the face of the Earth, and others seem to be going in ways at rates upwards of Mach 3 speeds. Apart from seeing maybe about eight people, I have not seen anyone else from Norcom since graduation. I wonder if people have forgotten me. I wonder if people even think about everyone else. Am I the only one who has these memories of times back then?



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Saturday Tales: 11 of 52

Long time no see guys, right? Clearly, I know. I can not believe that I vanished for such a short amount of time. It was quite interesting that between now and the beginning of February that so many things have happened. I instantly became more involved in classes, I had to completely alter my study pattern, and the future has become less defined. Nevertheless, I am still plowing on with a new focus.

Spring Break has arrived and with it a time back home and more time for recollection. It seems that whenever I come home, I have so much time that I end up rethinking redefining the trajectory that I want to follow for my life.

This break has seem to produce and speak of several aspects that perhaps will make relations with people and myself better. One of the most exaggerated topics was perhaps being careful to think before one speaks. Because words can usually not be taken back after they are spoken, it seems viable that one must think. I am trying to make my next best goal that of being careful to not say anything too harshly to people, to follow through with what I say or promise, and to generally continue to be kind and respectful of others. Most of the bases have been covered bu t there can always be improvement.

Ultimately, one must treat others the way that they would want to be treated. Not in an effort of treating others by what they deserve but by treating them the same if not better than how you would want to be treated.

Sunday Confession 5 and 6 (Feb 11,2008)

Alrighty Im back and right back in action. The past two weeks proceeded fast and without delay. The deliberate lying has finally been able to desist. However the silly games that I play are still running rampant in life. It seems to be a new belief in the word on the street that I take pride in having valuable information and withholding it from others. This is perhaps true in a sort that if it is not a life or death situation then I probably will not reveal what it is that you want to know unless I am heavily provoked. I take pride in withholding information. Information is what keeps the world moving.

The new goal is to of course take pride in the information that people share and to withhold it at all costs.

Sunday Confessions: Sunday 4 of 52 (2008)

Good news. Thanks to a decreased chance to go and meet people as well as centering time and focusing it on schoolwork, I seem to have been able to succeed in my goal of being able to decrease the amount of times that I tell people tall tales. This is exciting indeed in that it revealed to me that it is possible. I now must begin to focus on another part of life and attempt to make sure I do not slip away in that endeavor.

My new goal is to also decrease my spending to only about ten dollars a week. There are so many things that I would love to purchase however, there really is not a way that I could bring much money back in. I can only hang and hold on to that which I have and save it and keep for good use. It will be challenging thanks to the people that I talk to, but I am quite sure that I can manage it.

The Classes

This semester has turned out to be quite difficult thus far. After signing up for only eleven credits some days I do wonder if I could have handled even more. However, after dedicated just about every hour this past weekend on Introduction to Bioinformatics, I must say that choosing eleven credits in the classes that I have chosen seems to have been an excellent decision. This semester I have signed up to take Introduction to Bioinformatics, Introduction to Chinese 102, Chemistry Lab 102, and Organic Chemistry I. Ultimately three of these classes can individually ruin a semester being that they all require so much time commitment.

Four classes at 11 credits are extremely unfair to me for it has caused me to receive less in terms of funds. I must take 12 credits a semester to receive all my funds but because taking more than what I am in now can ruin my GPA, I might as well not take the risk.

I am most excited for Bioinformatics, as it is what my major is. I am hoping that this class will teach me all that I need to know about Bioinformatics and see if that is what I really want to do as my career in the future. I love the computer programming part of the class. I am thankful that I have plenty of time for being able to learn all that I can with the programming. In the future semester, I will be taking the eventual computer programming classes and hopefully experience the artificial intelligence class that seems so exciting. I hope that I can before I graduate.

The only thing that worries me with this semester is that I do not know how we are going to end up paying for college for next year and for this semester. It will also be a bit more challenging to find where I am going to live for next semester.

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Sunday Confessions: Sunday 3 of 52 (2008)

This week, we further carried out the previous plan of decreasing the rampant and illustrious tales that I have been telling. Unfortunately, I was able to stop with the creating of these tales but I had to live out the rest of these to completion. It seems that it is easy to continue to create these tales but living them out until the end is quite difficult. It is mainly for the fact that I have to avoid seeing these people. Regardless, I think that I will have to stop with the charades. The difficulty of living a normal life and avoiding people continues to contrast when you have to continue to go through a central area can be quite difficult. Regardless, that is the new aim for the week; to prevent the creation of new tales.

Issue: Online Work

I probably would not have chose to even write this had the event not happened to me. In my Bioinformatics class all of our work is done via computer . Without the use of the computer there is no way to analyze and gather information from the genomes. As I am the type of person that loves to take advantage of many situations, I chose this weekend to hopefully gain speed in this class and perform well. Unfortunately for me, the site seems to be having quite a few problems. The main issue is that "The server is taking too long to respond." This is unfortunate for me because I am unable to even load it to do the work and review.

Perhaps the only thing wrong in this new age of technology is that when there are technology issues there are only a few people in the right places who can resolve the issue. If there truly is a problem, the only person who can resolve it is my professor in my class. I can not even begin to think of it was a serious issue in which even he could not fix. Unfortunately, I doubt this will happen, but this has caused quite a hassle for me. I would really love to do my work right now.


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Sunday: A Day of Confession (2nd)

Once again another confession to make. After realizing that I do have a problem with telling these extravagant tales and mistruths, I must admit that this week I have continued to dawdle in this situation. Nothing serious ensued, but it just showed how difficult it is to break a habit. I will not go into details, but I must say that it has helped though I hate resolving situations in this manner.

I will continue to plow on ahead and attempt to continue to resolve this issue.

Stuff

Nothing all that phenomenal has been happening at work lately. Most days have been slow or have seen their usual peak periods but other than that there is nothing of note to tell you about. About yesterday, I just realized that I have two more days left to work there. Friday is my last day and I am going to miss it all. Actually, I won’t miss the weird and rude customers, but rather the same night shift workers that I have come to be friends with. I have so much fun working there. It is interesting.

I also realized why companies probably cannot pay fast food people much higher. We all eat way too much of the product (Food COST!!!!). This really doesn’t matter when you realize that fries must be trashed every seven minutes, nuggets get trashed every hour, and other product gets trashed on the hour. I have had my share of fries; daily I get multiple kids packs of fries and then tons of crackers. Oh I have to mention the salads. Each night salads that were not sold have to be trashed again. So once again more food is trashed. I wonder just how much money Wendy's International is losing when it has these extremely strange rules with throwing food away.

In other news, I am still dwelling in the land of indecision. I am debating on whether or not staying in my Math Class. With the addition of two other classes that I must take that are more difficult, I am afraid of failure. Who knows? I have until the end of next week to decide.

I am still on track to get a Playstation 3 in the coming weeks, if not days. Probably right after the release of Super Smash Bros Brawl on February 10th, I will go out and buy the PS3 along with a game of choice (I am leaning towards Enchanted Arms or I might consider Heavenly Sword, though bought seem quite difficult). I do not know which exactly.

The future is a bit scary as well. Right now I do not know where I am going to be staying for the 2008-2009 school year. I have to enter the VCU Lottery again or have to go and get an apartment (which I do not really desire). I hope get somewhere on VCU this year.

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Good Life

One of the reasons why we do a confession in these notes/posts is that it allows us to start a week a fresh. Starting the week fresh is of utmost importance in order to live one's life to the fullest. Why be bogged down about last week's mistakes and misfortunes when the future week can be one of bliss and fun?

Regardless, I went to work on Sunday night and earned the key hours (actual one more hour than I needed). Today we get to start the final week at Wendy's, in which we will attempt to get about 30 hours by Friday. I hope that this will be the case. If it is, then we will be able to afford ourselves a Playstation 3 in March (at the release of Hot Shots Golf 5 and seize Folklore at the same time). Ultimately, this is the plan and I will try to stick to it.

Other than that, more work tonight.

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Sunday: A Day of Confession

Sunday always reveals to me what it is that I need to improve in my life. After attending church service today, I just realized that of all the things in the world, I have perhaps not been in line with one of the original commandments. I will not go into much detail but it is clearly which one of them, and it is quite easy and common, it is. I have fallen short of being a person who only tells the truth.

I have known for quite some time that I suffer from a condition in which I create these amazing myriad webs of half truths, half lies, mistruths, tall tales, fables, and stories. It is the main aspect in life that has kept me running full speed ahead. I did not realize how much work it took to maintain this web until recently when events finally began to calm down and I had a chance to reflect over the semester.

Whenever someone desires for me to do something that requires some sacrifice, such as time, or will require some detail or small convenience, such as walking or attending an event, I sit and think up whatever story comes into mind. The excuse usually always works because it dwells on the fact that to deny me my right of doing this, would make that person look like they were the bad guy. For example, one of the most common ones used this semester is that Sunday is not a good day for me to do anything because Sunday is when I do all of my homework and go to several study groups. The truth is, is that Sunday is the day that I like to rest and relax and I feel lazy and so because of my laziness I decide not to go. Oftentimes, the excuse that deals with studying always works, because the people at college believe that you are there for an education and not organizations as the focus of college attendance.

I am going to spend perhaps the rest of my life on working with this. If I was to tell the flat out truth that I did not feel like doing whatever, then it makes me look kind of bad or either not willing to stay dedicated to the task of visiting people's houses and what not. If I can work on this, then I do believe that my personal integrity will reach new heights and people can begin to trust me again; I am truly diligent and do whatever it is when the need arises, I just suffer from making time for it in my busy schedule of watching cartoons and TV shows.

To sum this up, I will work on trying to avoid the usage of tall tales and half-truths in an effort to build trust back up and diligence. I will also work on avoiding the use of these stories to conceal information, confuse, misguide, and manipulate others. If I find that this will become too difficult, I will ultimately cut all lines of communication with the person.

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Nothing New: Really!

Work has gone well, once again I collected less than last Monday's totals, which was quite amazing, considering that I only colelcted 230$ on the drawer, with last Monday being at a whopping $377 which is less than Friday's $537, ultimately this pales in comparison to what the day shift collects. lol.

My plan that has been shared is starting to be carried out. The only problem currently is that I have to figure out someway to kindly get a few people out of my life or at least hold them at bay. I think that I will continue to engage in this myriad of tales that I have them in, well at least for the time being. It should work out quite well in the end. Definitely, as long as I can avoid talking on the phone and engaging in person-person meet-ups. My philosophy of keeping people at bay should work without a hitch, I hope.

Only a week remains until I can leave the dismal abyss of Wendy's and return to the swamps of VCU. I can not wait to see certain individuals. It should be fun.

Anyway, I have my Wii to keep me company at home. I saw National Treasure today, I need to see the Book of Secrets.

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Forgive!

I feel so terrible! Yesterday at work was probably the worst day that I have ever worked, ever. If it was not for the horrible headache that has plagued me for the past two weeks then I would probably have felt exponentially better, but of course, in the life that we live in there is never hardly ever anything to make a situation exponentially better.

I was terrible to the customers, I went as slow as ever, and to top the cake, I was the root cause of several customers enjoying terrible dinners. If it were not for my dissenting attitude towards several of the workers and the disgust towards a few of the customers’ rampant disorganized manners of ordering food, then I would have probably not been on the verge of nervous collapse. At one point, I was about ready to just faint and fall out. I almost even told a customer to "Eat Death", but I managed to at least hold my tongue. Luckily, after the 6:30 rush period, everything seemed to calm down.

Mainly, I spent the rest of the night avoiding any major communication with the workers until my headache went away. Surprisingly, once it did, I did feel exponentially better.

Regardless, as I look back on this event, I must say that I do feel bad for my horrible actions yesterday, and wish to seek forgiveness for my tragic and unfortunate event.