NEAS 2012

I woke up this morning at 6:00, which is really early for me.

But of course I hit the snooze multiple times. But it is now 6:47, I am dressed, and I am looking gooood.

I'm here at the 51st annual NEAS conference. Well, it's the Northeast Algal Symposium, so I guess it's a symposium and not a conference if symposium is in the acronym.

I'm presenting on 11:15-11:30, or 9th in line. That gives someone ample time to screw up before I do. (I'm kidding. I think.)

Today's weather will not compare to anything we had yesterday; it is overcast and it wants to be drizzly. Hopefully it will stay relatively dry until we start our main activities for the day in the main building.

We're staying in the "old" dormitories of what used to be housing for the Navy cadets here on site.

I'm going to go over my presentation a little bit before going to the commons to get breakfast. So... I'll.. be back later. For science!

An untitled post about my advisory meeting and a busy semester

Recently, several different groups of people have been asking for permission to use my photos which always is very flattering. Currently, the Clark homepage is using my picture of the Jonas Clark building. Just below that picture on the front page is a video I made, which is a part of a series asking Clarkies what their favorite things are from area restaurants to classes. The Graduate School at Clark has also asked me for my permission to use my photos, but they haven't picked them out yet. Additionally, I've been asked to share my pictures and videos from our October snow storm to be used as part of a new class at Clark that is chronicling the changing landscape of the campus on a historical timescale.

Preparing for my advisory meeting.

At the end of last week (just over a week now), I had my first thesis committee meeting for my master's project. My committee is comprised of my adviser Dr. Robertson, the genetics professor Dr. Thackeray and my undergraduate adviser Dr. Hibbett. The role of my committee is to make sure my project is on the right track, give me advice, and determine whether my work is worthy of a master's degree. This meeting was the first time I've presented my work outside of my lab, so it was a real test of my knowledge and presentation skills. This is something I will be practicing a lot this semester however, since I may be presenting at least thrice more (more about that below). My advisory meeting, save for a few slip ups, went surprisingly well. However, I do have my work cut out for me and it's pretty daunting.

I have the opportunity to present my work at 51st Annual Northeast Algal Society meeting in April, either in a poster or oral format. Additionally, I may also present my work here on campus alongside a collection of research projects representing the Clark Graduate School. These presentations are of course in addition to my thesis defense, which I hope will happen in May.

From my thesis committee meeting and my potentially busy presentation schedule, I have a long list of things I need to accomplish:

• First I need to fix my quantitative PCR reactions, so I can collect data for my project. More on this topic later...
• Second, after I fix my quantitative PCR reactions, I need to complete a lot of bench work that includes growing discrete lines of diatoms, processing them through experimental assays, extracting their RNA, and preparing the RNA for quantification through QPCR.
• This brings me to collecting all of the data I can to support my thesis through many rounds of quantitative PCR.
• In and around here there are multiple experiments and procedures I need to complete to double check on certain things, like sequence my plasmid DNA used to transform the diatoms and check for the number of construct copies each of my diatom lines received in the genetic transformation.
• I also will need to prepare for each presentation and make sure everything is pulled together.

With so many things going on in my research project, I don't think I'll have much time to do anything else. This is of course without considering the work I need to get done in the class I'm helping out with--Physiological Ecology of Marine Algae. It's very likely I will be leading a group research project with 2-4 undergraduate students. This work will be crammed into about 6 short weeks. While I know this will be a great learning experience for me, I know those weeks are going to be very stressful.