Taking one for the team

Yesterday was a pretty hectic day.

It was Monday, trying to get into gear with things. Analyzed some data. Went to a thesis defense. Ate cake.

Then 5pm rolls by and I change into my softball attire. It was game four. The previous game we won by one point, and we had actually improved our game a lot.

Then we learn that this team we're playing is actually very good. We get there and they're measuring (with a tape measure, not just steps) the distance between the bases. They also have multiple bats, which up to now has meant that the team can play.

We have one bat.

I digress. So, we warm up for the game. I'm feeling particulary lazy and sleepy. Our best and most competitive player, Jody, is out of town. And there's no beer.

So we start playing, and they demolish us from the start.

First inning: They score 6, we score 0.

Second inning: They score 3, we score 0. I pitched, we were happy that their score went down.

Third inning: They score 4, we score 0. Becky pitching, ok but they still scored a bit.

Fourth inning: They score 5, we score 0. Me pitching isn't helping.

Fifth inning: We decide to let Steph pitch, I can back her up if things go badly. I take 2nd base for the first time. Tim is being really helpful and trying to get the balls. Then a girl comes to bat. Hits the ball straight at me. I think, I can do this, I will try to catch it. I'm trying to figure out where to place my glove and bam, it hits me in the face.

My first reaction, because my vision was a bit blurry, was that I broke my glasses. Uh, no, I'm wearing contacts. Then I notice the blood spewing out of my nose. Some guy takes off his shirt and gives it to me to try to stop the bleeding. Dr. Jon comes to the rescue (an MD/PhD on our team), tries to get the bleeding to stop. A yellow towel is swapped for the tshirt. After a while the bleeding is better, I guess. But now everyone is wondering whether my nose is broken, and whether to take me to urgent care at the health center or to the ER. Jon whispers that he thinks it's either broken or my cartilage is torn.

This is not good, I think.

I get Becky to call Ryan, as Amanda comes with her car. We're off to urgent care. It's hurting quite a bit, although it's not as swollen as I would have thought.

Once at urgent care it went pretty quickly. I filled out the "triage" form (reason for visit: took a softball to the nose.)

Then they give me some ice, take my blood pressure. And it's off to wait for the doc in a room with a cushy bed. Jon came by to make sure I was alive :P That was sweet of him. I freak out a little bit.

Anyway, the doc finally comes in, he's very nice. Kind of didn't know where to start since there most of been a lot of blood around the area. It hurt quite a bit when he was cleaning it. He didn't think it was broken, though. He gave me two stitches right then and there (the softball cut into my skin a little bit), and I was on my way.

This is me now:


Not too bad I guess. It's just a bit painful. Certain facial expressions are a no-no, which I learned the hard way. Apparently I use a lot of facial expressions when I talk.

So I stayed home today, preparing for my meeting with Sue tomorrow, reading some papers, organizing my week, etc.

Off to do some more of that now :)

Summer Cleaning

This is the official first weekend of summer!
Weekend recap (although it's not over yet!!)

FRIDAY: I felt like crap, so I went into lab late (did read a paper in the morning, yay me!) and then came home right as happy hour was starting. Which lead to marathon "Weeds" watching. My new addiction. We finished Season II with a terrible cliffhanger... and Netflix only has season III on DVD (not streaming live), so we'll have to wait until next week to find out what happens. This is just as well, since we are way too addicted to this.


Ryan made a yummy meat and cheese platter for dinner, salami rocks! Oh, and we tried this Chilean cheese... I'm not a huge fan.

Then we watched "Thank you for Smoking", which was okay, but not great.

SATURDAY: Sleeping in, yay! What else did we do? Not too sure. I know I read three papers (my goal was between 3 or 4, so I'm pretty happy). Then we both worked out with Wii fit. Then at 6pm we were finally ready to go shopping!

I'm not sure if I talked before about Clinton Crossing, but it's a great outlet mall about 25 min away. I had to return some shoes, Ashley needed to return some stuff too, and Jessie was on a mission to get some jeans. We were all pretty successful (although I found jeans and Jessie didn't). Then we went to the Log Cabin for dinner. We were starving, which was a good thing because the portions were huge! We all took a ton of leftovers (so much that Ryan and I had my leftovers for lunch, and we'll probably have his for dinner).

SUNDAY: This is where the title of this post comes in.

My goal for today: start writing my prospecuts proposal.

Reality? Well, we woke up pretty early (talked to my folks in Argentina), had some breakfast... and then I started going through my closets. Massive spring cleaning (but it's summer now, so I guess it's summer cleaning). I finally threw away/donated a ton of clothes that I haven't worn in ages. Same thing with shoes. Plus we reorganized our drawers and closets. Very productive. The apartment actually looks great this weekend, we've been good.
And now I've actually written two paragraphs and Ryan went to do some shopping... ok, off to help him unload stuff from the car.

Put down your novel and pick up a paper.

Wise words from my PI :)

This blogging more frequently may still be sporadic. Sorry.

I'm in my qualifying preparation time, or whatever. I had my preprospectus about 10 days ago, and will have my prospectus in less than two months. Hence the title of this post. I really need to crack down and get some reading/learning done.

What am I talking about?
So, as you know I'm getting my Ph.D. In our program, before the start of third year we have to pass our 'qualifying exam'. Basically a 2hr oral exam about topics related to my proposed thesis project.
What does this entail?
1. Summary of my research in one page: completed
2. Research in progress talk in front of whole department: completed
3. Meeting with committee to see if they like my project: completed, committee happy
4. Picking topics for my prospectus: completed
5. Coming up with lists of papers that I'm actually going to read: in progress
6. 10-page N1H style paper on my proposal: to do
7. Revamped presentation with more detail: to do
8. Actually reading 50+ papers:to do
9. 2hr qualifying exam: to do

So that's what I have been up to.

In better news, I got this prestigious fell0wship from the nati0n@l science found@ation!!! I'm very excited about this! Plus it increases my stipend!! Yay!!

In non-science news, I saw Smart People and was deeply disappointed!

Jag sameaj... Happy Passover!!

Hallow Obsession

So, yay or nay on the handwriting?

Not so 9 to 5 :)

Week 2, internship.

I started at 7:30am and ended at 5:30pm... it's been a long day... but I did take a lunch break (yay!!) and talked to Ryan during that time, as he was heading to LAX... on his way home! Double yay!
He was so cute, he left me tons of text messages after that, while I was working. :) I can't wait to have him back.. I'm a bit selfish, and it's ok!!

Oh, and I have been witholding some big news from my blog readers (barely plural, but hey)... I have a lab home!! I finally heard back from my first choice!! I've talked to him about projects somewhat, and I have some ideas brewing... so I need to solidify them by July 9th when I meet with him again. Yay!!!

More on the internship...
I really like the person I'm working with, she's so positive! I was trying to get these cells to come off a plate (lab lingo, sorry) and they just wouldn't do it! So I tried again, and not so much... So I tried counting the cells I got out, and they were really low... This took like 2hs or so, of me freaking out and trying different things. Finally I found my mentor and she was like, oh, seems like these are tough cells (they were new to her too, so she didn't know what the conditions would be), lets add a higher concentration of trypsin... plus she was saying how great I was doing, and that it was a problem with the cells, not with me...

Later on I did get the cells to come off, but I think I must have sucked them all out and lost them... She was a little disheartened, and told me we'll just try again tomorrow together... So, I was a bit sad that it ended up being all screwed up, but I still felt good about myself at the end of the day... so I stayed another hour to prepare for tomorrow and write what I did today in my notebook...

Now I'm home and oh so exhausted...

Ryan comes home in like 4hs though! Yay!!!

End of rotation

So, this is the last week of my third lab rotation. I presented my data (or lack thereof) last week. So I've been just tying some loose ends, compiling protocols, etc. Not terribly exciting, but necessary of course.

I still don't know which lab I'll join, which was freaking me out at first, but now I'm just trying to take it easy and see where things lead. I'm sure whatever happens is for the best, and I'll make the most of it for sure.

The whole high school thing lifted my spirits in this if-I-could-survive-that-I-can-survive-anything kind of way. Not that high school was horrible, but things didn't always go as great as I would have liked, but I still graduated and made the most of it. So, I will take this as my new philosophy, and see how long that lasts.

Ryan left again for cali this morning (way too early if you ask me.. the plane left at 6:30am, so we got up at 3am.. yawn!). I miss him, of course. But in a week or so he will be back :)

Ok, laters!

decisions, decisions

I haven't blogged in ages. Which is fine with me. I've been keeping busy. Have gone to Boston a total of three times, NYC three times, DC one time, and all around Connecticut for multiple occasions. I should post pictures, and maybe I will later, I have loads of them, from when Mel and Claudia came, but also when my parents came. I've also recently had a bday (am 24 now, yey). And the husband has been away for 5 weeks, but will be back on Thursday.

Classes are over. WHich is wonderful!!! Spring is here!!! Flowers everywhere!!! We had a bbq on Sat which was great!

But, now it's time to decide on a thesis lab. I'm on my third and final lab rotation, and our DGS (director of grad studies) would like our decision by Friday, although officially July 1 is when I have to give it. So, the nightmares have started.

Yup, I keep having these dreams that people are asking me which lab I'm joining, including the actual PI's. So, yeah, talk about pressure from within me, you know?

I have made a decision, but I haven't talked to the PI yet, so I won't say much. It's just going to be tough telling the other PI that I'm not planning on joining that lab. Unless the first PI says no, and then I'll have to rethink my decision...

Anyway, so I'm a bit troubled at the moment. Big decisions, you know?

And, I can't wait until Ryan comes back!! I've missed him so much!

Oh, and I'm doing a summer internship at a pharmaceutical company nearby (BMS), just for 6 to 8 weeks. That'll be interesting too.

Ok, now off to do real work.

Sunday still winter (they lied!)

Hi!

So they said it would be a max of 50 degrees outside today… but no, it isn't even 40. And it might flurry tomorrow. Where's the hint of spring? Nowhere to be found apparently.

Yesterday I ended up going as a catholic school girl, since Ryan went as a priest. It was fitting, a good couple costume. Albeit a little naughty and slightly, oh, what's the word… blasphemy. Except that I'm Jewish. And we were supposed to go as something we weren't or haven't ever been. And I've definitely never been a catholic school girl. I wore Ryan's cross. First time ever wearing one. We found it funny, though Ryan felt a little odd. It was cuter than my leprechaun idea, so oh well.

The party wasn't as bad as Ryan was dreading it would be like. We talked with this new postdoc who's really nice and young (ie: our age-ish). So to that extent it was good. We left as more people that I actually knew where arriving. I think it was a good compromise (since Ryan wasn't too happy about going), and we went to watch a movie at Ashley's. It was really funny, about two average Americans that get frozen in time and go to 2055 where they are the smartest people in the world/America. Good times.

Now I've been working on my hw. Wish me luck. (Oh, and I'm posting from word… we'll see how it translates)

Lunes por la madrugada...

Hoy decidi escribir en castellano por varias razones. Una, porque no mucha gente va a entender lo que escribo. Que, se que es medio mal porque la idea (ahora) de este blog es que la gente lea lo que escribo. Pero bueno, por lo menos se que tengo por lo menos dos lectoras que entienden rebien, y algunos q entienden maso o van a traducir lo que escribo. Mi esposo ya se queja porque no escribo en ingles. Tambien lo hago porque hace mil que no escribo en castellano, y poco a poco lo estoy perdiendo.

Bueno, hoy conoci a una chica que va a mi misma facultad pero hace unos anios que esta aca. Fue raro, como siempre es conocer a alguien nuevo. No creo que le haya caido bien, porque se fue medio abruptamente, pero que se yo. Lo raro es que creo que ultimamente no lo caigo tan bien a la gente, como que la primera impresion que doy (?) no es tan bueno como era antes. Bah,no se si la fue. Porque como que no se de que hablar, me gusta mas escuchar. O hablo mucho, no se, los dos extremos no son tan buenos.

Esto del mundo cientifico es raro, escucho que hay mucho discriminacion contra mujeres y pareciera que tener una familia y una vida normal y divertida es casi imposible, bah no imposible pero hay dos opciones. O se tiene una familia y se encuentra un laburo no tan increible, o se tiene familia pero la mayoria del tiempo se pasa trabajando. Hay gente que hace los dos bien, pero lleva esfuerzo y apoyo de la familia. Tengo el apoyo de mi esposo y mi familia, y creo que si encuentro un proyecto que me encante podria hacer los dos. El tema es que desde llegue a Y@le siento que mis prioridades han cambiado y lo que antes pensaba que era seguro lo que queria hacer, ahora cuestiono. Cosa que no es tan malo, pero es raro no saber que es lo que quiero.

But now I must go meet up with the classmates for some birthday dinner at a pho place. Yey!

Tomorrow is my big experiment day. I'll be there at 7:30am and hopefully be out by 6 or 7pm... Hope all will go smoothly.

Thursday

We have no lab meeting today, which was really nice (9am lab meetings are a drag), but I still woke up early. Too early actually... Ryan had me set the alarm for 6am (!) and then took 30 minutes (and 3 snoozes from me) to get out of bed after I finally threatened him (no, you will not wait for the 4th alarm to ring, you will get out of bed).

I'm glad he got up though, bc he's going to this microsoft event that's going to get him Vista for free. I got my version for free from Yale, so this would be a double score. Although I am not too happy with Vista and/or my computer lately. Ryan rebooted it... but it's not that much better, actually it seems a little worse, albeit a bit faster in starting up and stuff.

Anyway, so one more article to read for cancer and I'm done with the reading... and then I'll actually start studying and putting concepts together... fun...

Oh, and in other news, my parents are coming out in May, just in time for my birthday. Yey, I love that people are coming out to visit us... we get to show our pretty apartment to people that knew us before we got married, it's very exciting. Haha, I just love our apartment, and even though I've shown people pictures, I want to see their reaction... Wow, I sound silly! It'll be great to have some family over (aside from my awesome friends that are coming for spring break); it makes life a lot more happier and something to look forward to!

Hmm, I was about to say that the weather is nicer too, but it seems that its 24 degrees outside... But it'll probably get up to 40... 40 I can handle --without gloves! (Ugh, weather channel says it might rain... but it's so pretty outside!)

Anyway, I'm off to finish reading and get started on my day!

____________________
*Edit: It was actually a thing to get the office for free (!), which I actually love (I tried the beta version and it rocked), but Ryan signed up for the wrong event-- it was geared to gov't officials to which they cannot give free software... so he drove right back... poor thing woke up for nothing, whereas I got all my reading done! And he went to get the truck serviced yesterday, where they broke the heater, so he was driving in the 24 degrees with no heater... so now he's getting that fixed.

Oh, and excuse me as I update my blog settings, colors, etc. It might be done by this weekend, hopefully!

Back to blogging

I haven't blogged in a while, as always seems to be the case when I'm busy. But of course now I am procrastinating on studying for my friday cancer class...

But, I will try to update more frequently, since I feel a little guilty that I read a lot of blogs daily, yet don't update my own. I've been pleasantly surprised to find many female scientist blogs (some who are Jewish too), and it's comforting. Especially since I have a daily or weekly why-am-I-in-grad-school crisis, which my husband seems to be good at making better... but still. The gym did help last night though, got rid of some stresses.

Yeah, so the first year is stressful, although a little better this semester than the last one.

This weekend was recruitment weekend... which is weird that it's been a year since I went through that process. It was fun, but very odd to be telling them about the program and stuff. I had fun though, got free food and stuff... Plus we went to see La Boheme, which I actually liked. I'm liking Operas, especially when there are subtitles-ish... screens with translation into english, makes it way more understandable.

We also tailgated on Sunday to a hockey game... that was fun, our first tailgating event (hot cocoa with mint schnapps + marshmallows = yummy!). Yale lost, but that happens all the time. It was a close game, although I didn't get to see the last 30 minutes or so because I decided to go study (for my class on monday... I had a few papers to read and a question to respond to).

Ooooh, and I went snowboarding two weekends ago! Very fun! I hurt for like three days! But it was great to be part of a winter sport, and use muscles I never even knew I had. I like feeling active, it's so exhilarating. It's a little scary to be flying down a mountain (ok, a bunny slope...) and having control-- it's just the not freaking out about it part that would make it more controlable.

Hopefully if I do more of these sport/gym things I'll feel more confident in myself and I won't freak out about grad school... Wish me luck, I guess.

Hmm... oh, and two of my friends from college are coming out to visit me for Spring break! We're going to Boston, NY and D.C., maybe Providence too (and some of New Haven, of course). I'm very excited about that...

Ok, enough for now... back to cancer reading.

Good times with Pharma....

Hiii!

So, I took part in a Pharmaceutical Case Competition this week. We had a team of 5: an MD/MBA student, MBA student, and two other scientists. On Saturday they gave us the case study and we had to come up with a 10 minute presentation about it, both the financial and the science sides of things. So, we got together Sunday through Wednesday nights... it's been a long week, let me tell you. But it was so much fun, I learned so much this week!

So, today at 12:30pm we gave our 10 min presentation, and apparently we did pretty well. We got first place!!! I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But of course they didn't tell us this until after we had dinner. But it was great! The best compliment I got: that I seemed as a student from the school of management. Yey! That, to me, means that I talked very professionally. But, really, my team was amazing. We all worked so well together!

Anyway, I'm very very happy!! Yey!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not bad for a first year, huh?

Oh, and the prize; $1500 per team... So $300 each! Sweet, huh?!

Ok, I'm off now!! To spend some time with Ryan, since I had to sacrifice a lot of that this week for this.

Griselda

Grad Student :)

A student again

Hi!

SO I'm feeling like a student again... I have been one since after labor day, but my nasty cold left me with no energy to study or think. Now, I'm regaining the ability to think, yet I don't think it's up to par of my Yale classmates. Yes, my friends, I feel a bit stupid. Not completely, just a bit. I try to tell myself that there is a reason I'm here, that I'm probably not as stupid as I feel, or maybe I fooled them, and myself, well. Whatever it is, it's giving me the drive to study much harder, because I don't like feeling stupid.

Today I was in my pathology seminar class, and did make a comment on the paper we read (I am aspiring for High Honors, after all, aka: an A in the class), but I did NOT get the main fallacy with the paper. I was talking to Ashley before class and she was like, it really bugs me that they didn't do the experiment with this one knockout, when they did it for this other one. It turns out that maybe the problem I had with the paper would have been solved if that knockout was used, and I kind of saw that and thought that, but it didn't really really hit me... So I feel a bit foolish. I dunno, I need to think more critically-- which is tough.

I also feel very very stupid when sitting in on lab meetings. I follow things until one point, and then boom, I'm lost. And I have yet to go talk to my PI bc I feel very stupid, and do not wish to appear so... But I am determined to stop by tomorrow with my questions.

So, life at Yale is a challenge... exactly what I was looking for in grad school. Apparently I like to feel stupid, or something. Grad school is a much larger challenge than I ever thought it would be. A lot of it is becoming the person that I know I can be, with all the hurdles that I put on myself-- all mental hurdles, of course. It's very hard to see how I will accomplish all the things in store for me... but I guess I just have to take it one day at a time, and try to enjoy myself in doing so...

Hopefully all will go well... I am so afraid of failure, that I think that if I were less afraid of failing, I wouldn't be so scared... Oh well...

But so far so good. The people in my lab are very nice, and I enjoy myself there. I kind of feel silly that I go in every day, and spend most of the time reading journals, but I want to be available and inmerse myself in the lab, even if my project has yet to start. Also, there's tons of meetings to attend and stuff.

Anyway... I'm back at the apartment after a long day of class, lab meeting (it started at 1pm.. I left early at 2:45pm, and it was still going on... probably until 3:30pm or more), and then more class... And I will work on getting my desk cleared so I can actually do some work on it!