Thesis/Defense

Earlier today I submitted my thesis to my committee. I'm so stressed and nervous–a lot more than I thought I would be.

I thought once I got into graduate school things would be so much more relaxing. Well, things have come up and ended up a lot differently that I had planned out in my head. In my defense, I did not have unrealistic expectations. I sort of feel like unrealistic things have come up. It's been the culmination of many ups and downs, but mostly downs. This problems and issues that have arisen have of course taught me a lot, but I need to move past all of this and put an end to this anxiety.

Now, I need to finish my powerpoint and prepare a defense presentation.

I hope once I have a finished powerpoint product, I can write out my talk and prepare enough to feel confident going into my defense. I'm frustrated though, because I know I've put more than enough work into my project to warrant a Master's, but I'm not as confident that my thesis and presentation will demonstrate that. I suppose these are things I need to stress in my powerpoint.

I have a rough draft of my powerpoint, but I need to improve some areas and make sure certain things are emphasized and other things are not glossed over too quickly.

Here's hoping I kick this defense's butt!

Building inducible expression plasmids (aka Science)

Below is a video I've been trying to publish for a long time coming this summer, but because my summer project only came to a close this week, I've been hesitant to post anything.



In this video, I give an update on my lab work and discuss my overall lab project, which is a great review for myself and my viewers. This is an exciting time for me at Clark University, because I’m beginning the real stages of becoming a graduate student in our accelerated Master’s program. After conducting undergraduate research, I’m using it to support a 5th year of schooling at Clark to finish up my Master’s.

My project concerns the 3’ UTR of the nitrogen-assimilating genes nitrate reductase and nitrite reductase in diatoms (if you haven't read up on my blog before), because we have evidence that along this region these genes are up- and down-regulated by environmental conditions. To test this hypothesis, I’ve created plasmids that drive expression of a reporter gene (GFP) with promoter and terminator regions derived from diatom genes. We’ll compare the activity of GFP with differing 3’ UTR elements to determine whether this region of the nitrogen-assimilating genes is crucial in their regulation.

For the gene nitrate reductase, this is old news. But it is news for my blog that I've completed the plasmids for nitrite reductase, which is really the story of my video.

I'm really excited to be where I am in my project. This week, I hope to genetically transform my diatoms with the plasmids I've created. Oh baby Darwin, this could be a HUGE week for me and my scientific career! I'll be back soon with transformation news.

Back to Science

While most of my semester was dominated by finishing up my undergraduate courses, I did get a little bit of work done on my "Monitoring in vivo transcription in the marine diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana using eGFP reporter plasmids" project. Most of my work can be summed up through my post on working on the culture side of the transformational protocol (another post here), setting up media for the transformation protocol, and working on my Academic Spree Day poster and a proposal for my summer work on my 5th year Master's project.

I've had really good success on multiple science projects by putting a lot of effort working on a poster or Powerpoint presentation and then writing my term paper for the project. Below is the final draft of my poster (which I hope to hang up outside of the lab later today), which I presented at Academic Spree Day (ASD).

I had a lot of fun at this year's ASD presenting and sharing my work with science (and non-science) professors and classmates. It was particularly satisfying sharing my poster with fellow science (but non-biology) students, and then going over their posters with them. Certainly a little bit of sharing and learning!

This poster then was the basis for updating my project proposal:

This week is my first week after graduating on Sunday. The name of the game for this week is to get back into the flow of things in lab, and hopefully establish a workable rhythm. At the moment, I'm continuing to work on creating inducible expression plasmids for nitrite reductase.

Graduation: the end of my childhood, and the beginning of being grown up

I graduated! With honors even!

I have to say, even though graduation was much longer than anticipated, it was a lot more fun than I was expecting. Our commencement speaker, Alan Khazei, is a very interesting person and gave an as interesting speech. Mr. Khazei received an honorary degree as did our former university president, our beloved John Bassett. Heaps of pictures from graduation have been posted to Clark's Flickr page, and I encourage you to check them out! I really like a lot of them, and I feel like they accurately display all of the positive energy and emotion of our graduation.

To begin, here are a few pictures of yours truly at graduation:

Just after I was awarded by degree, my friend (who received his accelerated Master's degree) waved at me frantically for a picture as I walked off stage. (His friend took the above picture, however.)

After the ceremony, the campus green was much more of a clusterbunch than I had anticipated, so it was really hard to get pictures with anyone! Here I'm with one of my best friends (Rich), acting all silly like.

I tried my best to recreate one of my first pictures ever on the Clark campus (from Week One)...

...the day I graduated. Props for effort though, right?

It's really hard to imagine that it's already been four great years at Clark! Looking back through my first year pictures on Facebook (while trying to find the above picture) made me realize how fast it's really been. I'm not even halfway done with my combined undergraduate/graduate studies though. From here, it's going to be so much different, but I honestly feel that Clark has prepared me for that. Additionally, by staying a fifth year to complete my Master's, I'll be all set for a Ph.D. program. Interestingly enough, finding a set of Ph.D. programs to suit me is very high on my list of things to do this summer.

Graduation made me realize how much I admire and appreciate Clark for being Clark. So much effort is placed into our mission as a university to educate, inspire, and help the surrounding community that I can honestly be extremely proud to be an alum. I often feel that Clark doesn't get half the recognition it should, but that's not the topic of today's post.