Ramblings of an Overworked Grad Student

The header is inspired by an idea I've got gestating at the moment. I'll probably post more about it when I've had the chance to think coherently. Basically, it boils down to the fact that our education system is failing our youth, I have a very scientific mind, and I'm ridiculously lucky to have the opportunity to work where I do (The Robarts Research Institute).

( Insert blurb about why any of this came up to begin with )

I kind of want to see Bob McDonald do a TED talk.

In other news, I've signed up to run the half marathon in Orlando in February, and I'm committed to raising $4,500 CAN for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada. I'll post my fundraising website shortly (my high school physics teacher donated 100$, because he's awesome), but I really need some help come up with fundraising ideas.

So far, I plan on selling the rubber bracelets (like the yellow livestrong ones, only purple and for Team in Training and blood cancer research), and I'm thinking of doing a few bake sales/waffle breakfasts.

Any other ideas?

Finally ( a meme )

I think I deserve a reward >.>

I was so very pleased with myself on Wednesday when I'd gotten myself to the 15000 word mark for the Big Bang, and I thought meeting the deadline would be easy.

Except that when I mentioned a while ago that my supervisor had a grant up for review, I may have not put the correct emphasis on the urgency of her grants.

Turns out that it's EPIC GRANT WRITING SEASON OF DOOM!!!!1! for all of the primary investigators in my research group, and it comes around every five years. On Wednesday, J sat us all down to discuss the first grant up for review, and put the fear of god into half of the lab. E, the Polish lab tech is swamped because she has to make stable cell lines for one of our protein constructs, she's the only one with access to the mice we use, and she's the resident expert on confocal microscopy in our lab. D, the Chinese lab tech is busy doing activity assays and protein work, and K, the Canadian lab tech is on vacation. Then there's S, the mother of twins who just finished her PhD, who believes she is solely responsible for competing all of the needed experiments o.O

V and I kind of laugh, because V is finished next week, and she's taking a month off to look for housing and a vehicle in Washington (DC), while I'm of the mentality that I'll do the work I have to do, and if it coincides with some fo the stuff J wants, I'll do that too. I'm not going to kill myself trying to get things done, because I've learned from experience that you end up making mistakes and falling behind.

I've got three experiments planned for before my holidays, and I can use them to look at additional proteins, so I'm not going to worry much about it.

On the Big Bang front, I submitted my draft at 11:59 pm (which is funny, even though we had until uh... today at 1pm to get it in). Word count is sitting at ~21,000, plus headers and the outline of the scenes I still need to write.

This weekend I'm going to go back to my parents place, abuse their laundry machines, go shopping at stores I actually like, then go party it up with fleshlycherry, themega5, and ghostj with a night of drinks, dancing, and general good times.

Then I'm going to go back into the lab on Sunday to get ready for a week of manic lab mates and experiments.

On the plus side, B12 supplements and getting back to boot camp seem to be helping. I'm feeling much more awake and functional. I had four productive, if long days in the lab this week. :)

This is a super long post about real life (and somewhat fandom, so I'll break it down).

( Because, unlike my dear friend fleshlycherry, my brain crosses everything over: )

( Funny side story: )

( In awesome lab news that means I have no weekend: )

Hoping to get everything done before I go away for a superlong weekend next week to visit my awesome British friend P to do wine tastings and see a bazzilion plays.

*sighs contently*

Life is pretty good right now.

(ETA: I keep having to edit this because I'm finding typos and format issues. I think it's because I nearly split my skull open last night when I banged my head against a cabinet door. Bled and everything >.>)

I was late to my own presentation this afternoon because I was developing a western blot that came out as a smear. On the plus side, it was only 10 minutes late, and my lab mates were entertained by cake.

The presentation (which should have only been 20 minutes long) went an hour, because my supervisor and two lab mates were speculating on my project and asking lots of questions about specificity, etc...

I didn't know the answers, until it came to E3-ligases, and the RAN binding protein family. I mentioned RANBP2 is an E3 ligase, and then one of the girls said, "Oh yeah, I remember RANBP2 coming up in one of my assays with your protein of interest."

So, suddenly, I have an E3-ligase that I know binds to my enzyme, and it's in the nucleus, and it's expressed in neurons. It also relates to the cell cycle things my lab mate is working on.

Suddenly I feel much better about my blot not turning out.

:)