Travels never blogged: Part 5: Odense, Denmark

Part two of the course was in Odense. We did some science-y things at Syddansk Universitet (University of Southern Denmark). And then we had a day off. Up to this point, it has mostly been 10-14 hour days of MATLAB and microphones. So hooray for day off.

I wandered around town with my classmates.

There was a market

There was a lovely picnic in the park:

Wooden boats by the park

In case you can't tell, that horse is spraying water out of its nostrils

We went to the zoo. There were manatees eating. Adorable.

This was followed by an Adventure that I unfortunately have no photos of.

post-quals celebration ideas

1) An actual party (which will, in fact, occur. or so I am told)

2) Re-pierce nose

3) Dye hair pink

4) Re-watch the entirety of the West Wing

5) Re-read The Brothers Karamazov

6) Finish the complete works of Flannery O'Connor

Votes?

new semester

Gosh, not actually taking classes is awesome. I'm just sitting in on one as a refresher. So, 2x/week + 0 tests = good life choice. Except that one of the major reasons I'm doing this is because I take my qualifying exam this semester. In about a week and a half. 2 days + 4 exams + 4 hours for each = *whimper* That's more equations than usual for around here. And a few weeks after that is the oral follow-up (which does not involve a dentist, more scary profs). Also, coping with quals stress via the Avett Brothers was a good choice. It seems to be very effective

I start teaching lab again tomorrow. At last check, 17 of 20 available slots are filled. It seems that a lot of people dropped because the giant waiting list (for a senior-level lab, at least) is empty and more than my section has extra space. None of the exercises have changed from last year, so this should be pretty easy.

Tomorrow's lecture will consist of:

1) Quick run-down of anatomical structures that they have to look for on slides

2) Biophysics review

3) Please don't be afraid of the electronics

3b) Troubleshooting the electronics

4) Please don't break the electronics

4b) How to not break the electronics

It's going to be a good day. And I do not mean that sarcastically.

Peace.

ambivalence

Paper due (almost)
So I have two more days left
Procrastinate much?

I'm writing a paper on octopus intelligence (for animal intelligence seminar, of course). Really. So in that spirit, I give you OCTOPUS VIDEOS!!. They're actually neat little (or giant) organisms. And the invertebrate factor makes for an interesting discussion; one I may subject my dear readers to at some point.
Clearly, I haven't been a very good blogger lately. This semester has been more frenetic than I thought it would be. And I was betting on very. My computational neuro class, while fascinating, involves Matlab programming. Which makes me want to curl up in the fetal position. Cellular and molecular neuro is fantastic and makes me miss biochemistry.
So yes, that brings us to 3 classes. 10 credits. And almost 0 research. This makes me very irritable. I have some data to analyze, but most of it looks like trash. And I have some digital models to work on, but no time to do experiments.
Which brings us to our point: I have a lot of ambivalence about this interdisciplinary program thing. I chose this program, this university because I wanted the broad background in neuroscience. But right now, it is making me absolutely crazy. We're required to take a few more classes than the other biology programs, which doesn't seem like a big deal, but a few more grad classes is a lot. I know I'll be grateful for it in the long run (when I try to get a job), but I just want to be done with classes and get fully into my dissertation research. This is like how I felt about gen ed classes in college. Let's be honest here: US history post-Civil War was a royal pain in the ass when I was taking it. But I'm glad I did.
Has anyone else had this experience?
Anyway, I shall continue to trudge through the code and signal pathways and primary literature.



Peace

whew

finally finished
fellowship application
feel much better now

fin.

Yours truly has finished PhD year 1. I've been compulsively checking my grades since I found out this morning that 2 of my 3 classes are up. One more. And it's really annoying, in spite of not being worried about the grade.
Finally ran an experiment. After doing about 8 months of preparation, there were still unforeseen "complications." I'm going to call it a wet run. Better luck next time, now that everything's in place. I still may have gotten some usable or semi-usable results. I'll know some time next week
And I get to learn to use the shiny confocal microscope.


Peace.

Post-Spring Break Awesomeness

I've gotten pretty darn good at whatever syndicated crossword the UMD paper publishes. Aren't you proud? Now, I know exactly what/when I'm doing this summer. Hooray. Cape Cod in late June/early July and Denmark in August, here the rest of the time. Research stuff is going well. I'm reading about 100-150 papers/week between class and research. Tomorrow I have to give a brief (8 minute) presentation, so I am clearly avoiding putting finishing touches on the power point. The yoga class I'm taing started tonight. That was fun. It's the kind that you do in a hot room, so that's new.
That's about all I've got.


Peace.