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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Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
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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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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Now playing: Shinji Hosoe - Monolith
via FoxyTunes
Saturday, May 10, 2008
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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Now playing: Will Smith - Just the Two of Us
via FoxyTunes
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.
----------------
Now playing: Will Smith - Just the Two of Us
via FoxyTunes
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