Bowties and science

While we've had a few nice days recently, it's been pretty rainy over the last few weeks.

Finals are almost over and the students are moving back home. It's kind of a bittersweet time of the semester. The weather and feel of campus brings back memories of just a year ago when I was finishing up my undergraduate career. After being at Clark for 5 year (9 semesters and 2 summers), I'm really going to miss it. I know I'm not looking forward to packing up and moving home myself, but I have plenty to do before then.

I'm defending my Master's thesis on May 22nd, and I hope to be completely done a few days before the end of the month. I have a first draft of my thesis completed, which will probably head over to my thesis committee once my adviser okays it. I've already made corrections from a working (almost complete) draft, which was nearly sufficient for submission anyway. I'm pretty excited about this. Once I submit the draft to the other two members of my committee, I'll focus on finishing my powerpoint presentation.

My powerpoint presentation for my defense will probably be about 45 minutes long. Just thinking about it right now is making me nervous. However, I hope to have a final draft of my presentation completed more than a week before I defend, giving me ample time to practice. This will be the third presentation I've given this semester, and by far the longest, most difficult, and most important. While I'm nervous now and I'll be nervous on my defense day, I just know I'll knock my presentation dead. The closed question period may prove to be much more difficult, but I know I've done more than enough work to complete my Master's.

Between now and the time I move out, I'm almost working on some diatom cultures. I hope to have a large array of diatoms lined up for my professor to work with this summer. Below I discuss part of this process:



And, as a bonus, I made this video in my spare time–how to tie a bowtie!

...and it's on to finals week!

While I don't have any finals myself this year, we've entered our penultimate full week of the semester and things are getting really hectic and will be even busier next week.

My schedule from now until the 21st or so will essentially be work at the bookstore and go into lab. The bookstore is going to start buying back books this week, so my hours will be increased dramatically to help deal with the influx of students. I'll also be helping out with our influx of books as they come in for next semester. Unfortunately, a lot of the professors haven't given us their book adoptions for the spring semester, so we may be super busy at the last minute putting all of the books out.

This week will be the first of many that involves unpacking heaps of books and finding their spot on the shelves for next semester.

I spent all afternoon and evening in lab on Sunday, trying to get caught up on some culture work that needed to be done. It's really frustrating when I put so much labor into something like a colony screen (to see whether a diatom culture has our GFP gene) and I get really unclear results with the PCR. I pretty much repeated this schedule last night (Monday) after all morning at the bookstore. It's starting to be crunch time!

And so it begins: lab all day on a Sunday.

I've come to the realization that I don't need to sprint to the finish line with my lab work this semester. I sometimes forget I have more time than I give myself to get something done. All I really need to do over the next two weeks is put together a powerpoint for my lab project and give a presentation next week. I hope to get some good writing done in and around that in addition to some solid lab work.

Ehhhh...

Off to start my Tuesday.

It was 57°F and sunny on Monday, and I missed almost all of it while I worked at the bookstore before going into lab.

The semester is still over, I assure you

Video all up in here, recounting the last few days of the semester. Be sure to see the previous post for postings of my final projects and such!

...and the semester is over.

Well, actually, my semester came to a close several days ago when I completed my Population Genetics exam (which went well, thanks... I worked on it for about 2.5 hours though, which is quite long).

The piece that I'm most excited about is my project proposal I wrote for my research (which you can download here).

What do the NY Jets and I have in common? We're two down.

While the NY Jets have lost their last two games (which makes me and a lot of other Clark students quite giddy), I have completed two of my four finals (hence the two down). With my French final already passed in last week, and my submission of my malaria project last night, I just have one more paper and one last exam between me and my winter break.

My malaria project for Ecology of Infectious Disease, entitled "The effect of global climate change, HIV and land use on malaria in sub-Saharan Africa", wrapped up quite nicely and I'm very happy with it. Here is the abstract (skip it if malaria, HIV, people dying, or Africa bores you!):

 

Malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people every year, infecting hundreds of millions. An overwhelmingly large majority of these cases—approximately 85%—occur in Africa, where disadvantaged socioeconomic standings have allowed it to persist, while it has been long eradicated in developed countries such as the United States. Projections predict global climate change may have a significant impact on the distribution and severity of malaria, pushing current ranges south east, toward the greatest prevalence of HIV in the world. We review current models addressing the effect of climate change on the future of malaria in Africa, and propose additional factors—changes in land use, and malaria co-infection with HIV—in addition to socioeconomical issues, that must be taken into account when modeling malaria distributions in order to create a more accurate picture. We then discuss measures that be should considered in future models and studies, in order to contain malaria and prevent it from spreading.

...and you can download my fancy paper here! Ooh! and below is the poster I made too. It's a bit of a wall of text, but for the topic matter, it's kind of hard to avoid it:

It feels so very nice to be done with this project. While at times my project partner Rachel and I were a bit frustrated, I'm glad it came together on time. But there's no time to stop now; those other two finals need to be tackled too! So until then... *tip of the cap/and some really cool bow or something*

It's The Final Countdown! (LOL not that song by Europe, but you know, final exams)

This is what my desktop has been looking like recently:

Completely covered in journal articles and maps of malaria and HIV prevalences, changes in land use, etc. It's now the last week of the semester, and we're officially within finals week. This year we've been graced with three reading days. Reading days are class/exam-free days just before several days of exams. They're commitment-free and allow everyone to catch up on their studying and write papers and presentations. Last fall (the most recent semester I was at Clark) we didn't have any reading days. It was a nightmare.

But this year we have reading days! Luckily for me, I only have one sit-down exam on Thursday the 16th. That means I have almost an entire week to wrap up a paper and a poster for Ecology of Infectious Diseases, write and complete a project proposal term paper for my directed research, and compose a bunch of cheat sheet notes for my open note/book test in Population Genetics.
The nice thing about open book tests is not having to study as hard for the exam. However, I find that in making all of my cheat sheets, I never have to use them anyway because I know the material so well after writing the notes out. It's a tricky way for professors to get the responsible students to study thoroughly and then be able to give out a trickier exam!

I'm almost done with my paper on malaria in Africa. I'm writing a paper on how the future projections for climate change to affect malaria are vastly under appreciated, due to complications presented by co-existing infections of HIV and changes in land use (i.e. forest removal) that are speeding up the process for mosquito vector expansion. The paper will certainly be 15-20 pages long at least ("pages" in college terms are similar to high school terms, meaning double-spaced and what not). I hope to have time to make the paper look all fancy and professional, as I take particular pride in my science work. Once I am done with all of my projects, I will post them here for you all to see what science work at the college level can look like!

I'm about as stoked for finals as a little kid is about having brussel sprouts for dinner

Oh boy.

Thanksgiving break is coming to a close and finals are knocking at the door.

Actually, that was the UPS guy with a package.

But finals really is... right around the corner. I am not particularly excited about this. I was pretty lazy this Thanksgiving break, which might be because I went home extremely early. Now I have to get my high tail into gear and crank out these finals.

First on my list is finishing a long paper, maybe 15-20 pages, on malaria in Africa for my Ecology of Infectious Diseases course. That's a group project, along with the group presentation that's being given during the last week of classes. On a side note, I really don't like having presentations and such due before the exam period, because this means I have several projects going at once with different due dates. By having everything due during exam time, it means things are less cluttered.

This coming week I have just a mini project to start and finish for Thursday. This mini project, for Population Genetics, is going to be worth more trouble than it's work for the grade. However, I'm hoping it'll serve as good practice for the final exam, so I'll crank it out.

But next week is when things start getting a little hairy. The week of December 6th-10th is the last week of classes, and I have to give a presentation and turn in a mock research proposal for Ecology of Infectious Diseases and Population Genetics respectively. That weekend starts a three day period of reading days, which are class/exam-free days in which everyone uses to study and prepare for exams or write papers/wrap up projects.

The following week is the last week of the semester, which in when things really start buckling down. Quite often, professors will have final group presentations given in the final week of classes to allow the exam days to be used for, well, exams.

Thankfully my French class will be ending in a take home exam. That'll be much easier than studying for an exam given during the dreaded exam days.

A little scatter-brained, but that's the best I have for right now. Well, what do you expect? It's finals!

Fall Fest, Finals & Beyond (It's like to infinity & beyond, but I'm not a plastic toy)

Ohhhhhkay! So here's this video I made:


It's an update from the past two weeks, so check it out! I'll be back here in the next few days with a written entry. Cheers!