First Week of Grad School and My Summer

 Hello everyone!

It’s been a while. I think the last time I wrote this I was moving out of the dorms and back home due to COVID-19. Well, surprise, I’m alive! To tell the truth, I didn’t feel like writing during the summer with everything going on, but I’m back at college and have just finished my first week so I figured it was about high time that I write this baby up again.

So, for a quick summary of the summer: I worked at Kelly’s again, just doing the pesky tidbits that no one else seemed to really want to do. I finished school and graduated with my bachelor’s. My family and I set up a system for the summer to not get on each other’s nerves, though we inevitably did when tensions rose too high to control. I had Maren over for part of the summer, which was a lot of fun, and she really liked everyone she met and thought the house was cool. Hmmm… I experienced both earthquakes in Utah and Boise (though the latter one was just a little bit of a rolling sensation—it still freaked me out a lot) which kind of made me an anxious mess concerning earthquakes. I’m hoping we don’t have another one any time soon. I got to see family and made a whole bunch of masks.

So yeah.

That was my summer for the most part.

I technically moved into my new college apartment a couple of weeks before school started because I had to quarantine as part of my grad school ‘faculty’ status. It wasn’t great, but I had a lot of time to play video games (Pokemon Shield and Breath of the Wild—both of which I enjoy a bunch and totally was obsessing over during summer as well). I got to meet up with some of my friends from last year. In our apartment “block” we have seven apartments. I’m in apartment 2 with Maren and her sister Emily, Tim and his roommate Logan (totally not confusing at all *note the sarcasm*) live in apartment 1 next door, with Bracken and Pablo (Allie’s very blonde and very white cousin which I think is hilarious considering his name) living in apartment 3 upstairs. Allie and Karin are in apartment 4 in the other apartment building. So yeah, I know ½ of my neighbors which is awesome.

Ummm… what else do I talk about before getting to the first week of school? I get along really well with my roommates. Emily is really chill. I was expecting her not to be because I’ve been to Maren’s house in the past and Emily never spoke to me and kind of glared at me all the time, but I guess she’s like me (if you catch my drift Mom XD). I’m back in therapy, which is a plus and I’ll be trying online therapy on our next visit, so that’s new. My room is really nice with it’s set up, thanks to Mom and Dad, which, quick shout out of thanks to them! I love you guys (and I’m not bored of you, I promise, despite what you guys seem to think. I love and miss you a lot). Oh! And I’ve also found a really good place to eat around here, it’s cajun food and delicious—I’ve had it twice now.

Alright, school time people!

So on Monday’s I generally have a busy-ish schedule, since I’m supposed to be TA-ing those days. However, I don’t have to teach until the third week of school (which is so nice, because I’m so nervous about teaching, even if I’m feeling a little more reassured thanks to training). But, I still have training in the morning, which is okay, but it’s at 8:30, so I’m still a little groggy when we go over details. I’ve already made a fool of myself in Lauren’s books but everyone thinks she’ll forgive me so it’s okay. On the plus side, though, Hannah’s in that class (one of Al’s Herp students) so it was nice to have a familiar face. Hopefully. After my GTA meetings, I basically only had one other class this Monday, but it’s asynchronous on Mondays so I worked at my own pace for a while until Maren dragged me to an FHE activity (socially distanced and with masks—I’m being safe here people). At the FHE thing, I met a few new people. I think the bishopric is pretty chill and cool, so I have high hopes that I might like the ward. I also met Ethan and Christina there. They were friendly, and Ethan reminds me a lot of Dad (even looks like him when he was in high school XD). He’s weird and quirky, but he was decent. I think he and Maren hit it off really well and they talked about different board games they liked for a really long time. After FHE, Karin, Allie, and Tim came over and we watched Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, because why not?

Oh! Before I forget, Karin and Tim are almost official and it makes me so freaking happy! OTP for the win.

Anyways, that was Monday. Tuesday was my first ‘legit’ day of classes (even if I don’t teach lab that day either until third week again). I have neuroendocrinology on Tuesdays, which is taught by my Graduate Studies Advisor, Sara. The class is really interesting, though we have to do a group paper and presentation, which is less fun. We mostly just introduced ourselves on Tuesday and went over the syllabus to nobody’s surprise. After that I had the Biology Seminar. Lexi was speaking (our lab’s post-doc) and she was actually talking about her own dissertation. It was amazing. She was studying immunology affects on social behavior and play in rats using the two-hit method that came out a few years ago. The findings weren’t what they thought, but it was really interesting to see how the abnormal behavior during parts of the study could imply different situations. A lot of the science figures and terminology went over my head, but I could follow a lot of it, and it’s right up my alley. Sara’s excited to have her as a part of our lab and says that Lexi’s going to be a huge resource for me because while I’m studying gastrointestinal related science in relation to neuroscience, Lexi was basically doing a similar project but with immunology and there are a lot of crossovers.

Enough about rat behavior and brains though, I doubt you guys want to hear the giant rant I gave Maren about it XD. Though I took notes if anyone is interested.

Wednesday is actually my most calm day outside of Fridays. I only have one class (my Evo Devo class), and that wasn’t until 2:30, so I spent a fair amount of that day drawing. I’ve been reviewing an old story and I wanted to redraw the characters. It was a lot of fun, and I really like how they turned out. I even talked to Maren about how I might not make it a novel, but a webcomic maybe if I ever have the time (since I already have a lot on my plate it’s probably not going to happen, but a girl can dream, right?). Anyways, Evo Devo was also really interesting. It’s a discussion based class, where each student has to facilitate a week’s discussion and talk about scientific papers as a group while we learn about evolutionary development. What was even more hilarious was that Daison (from CWI and my class up here with Podgroski), Erin (Herp student), and Megen (Herp Student and Animal Phys Lab instructor) were all in the class. Small world, right XD? Anywho, I have to lead the discussion in a couple of weeks, which is less fun, but Dr. Womack is really cool. She’s even tailoring our final papers/presentations towards the dissertations that the grad students have, so that’s going to be a lot of fun and very helpful in the long run, so I’ll admit I’m a little excited.

Thursday is at least better than Tuesdays are going to be, but they’re still really long and busy. I have Intro to Grad Studies at 8:00 am in the morning, which sucks, but the instructors seem really nice and chill. There’s basically no homework or assignments, but they let us know how everything is supposed to work going forward. Sara makes it sound like I’ll end up knowing more about how it works before she will with this class, which is pretty weird, but okay. And it’s taught by Maren’s favorite teacher, Dr. Sullivan (ornithology lady, but you probably guessed that). I sadly, kept on cutting out thanks to having some connection problems, but hopefully next week that will be fixed. In Neuroendo, we talked mostly about castration in relation to the founding of hormone studies. It was really funny to see some of the guys in the class fidget on their screen at the subject, and I will admit I chuckled a bit since I was off camera (video is optional and I wanted to not time out in this lesson since it was so interesting). Everything else was pretty clear cut in the class, and I think I have a decent basis on how hormones work thanks to Animal Phys and my Vertebrate class I took last fall, which is nice. I like being able to follow along without too much confusion. After that, I only had one more thing, and that was the Freeman Lab Meeting. There are a lot of undergrads involved, along with Sage. Lexi and I are the only two new people, and I’m definitely the most green in the bunch, which is a little daunting, but everyone seems really nice so here’s to hoping. I’m also the only one who probably won’t be working on coyote brains which makes me stick out a little—which is weird but hopefully okay? I think?

And holy cow, this post is long (I’ve had to catch up on a lot of information—sorry for the hiatus).  I haven’t even touched on Friday and Friday was a doozy. So on Friday, I had a meeting with Sara—trying to catch up on what I should be focusing on for the semester and generally just checking in. And boy did she have a lot to tell me about future plans. Thankfully, this semester is going to be very calm. I’m supposed to be focusing on just starting up grad school, taking my intro classes, and being trained up. I’ll have to read some literature and learn how to use the cryo-station at the lab and probably the slicer. I might not even need to train with it if it proves to be too much of a hassle. Everyone else in the lab is working with unfixed brains (frozen), while I’m working with fixed brains (formaldehyde). Fixed brains tend to curl (like ribbons with scissors) using the cryo-station, so we’ll have to see what we can do to mitigate this or we might have to wait to train me when we get the new equipment (which will happen after the move). Speaking of the move! We’re going to be moving into the BNR building after construction in November or December! It’s going to be a massive move (all hands on deck according to Sara) to move the research and specimen to the new lab, but we’ll be having a big lab with a ‘good view’ of campus. Sara’s really excited and it sounds like a big deal, so I’m excited for it too.

As for my own research, I have updates. Sara and her buddy, Steve(?) along with the lady in charge of the mice in Nebraska are all thinking of applying for a specific grant (worth a lot of money) for the project I would be in charge of that is specifically for multi-field collaborative research involving gut-microbiome stuff. I would be a mediator between the three separate sciences with my dissertation. If it all goes through, I won’t have to TA at all past the point of getting the grant and I would fully be devoting myself as a GRA (Graduate Research Assistant) which frankly sounds amazing. I don’t like the thought of TA-ing or teaching since I don’t feel suited for it and would rather be doing something else. It’s tolerable, but not my cup of tea. However, this all rests on the grant application, which would have to happen at a later date (funding right now with the pandemic is a little screwy and they’d have to write a proposal to begin with and have a starting point as well—which I would have to help with, but will take time). The soonest it might happen is next year, but that doesn’t seem likely. In any case, Lexi’s going to be helping me a lot thanks to the crossovers in our research and has even agreed to teach me how to do stuff if Sara gets too swamped.

I’m so freaking excited for this, and I can already tell that it’s going to be an adventure.

Anyways, back to the rest of my Friday now that that news is out of the way (and what amazing news it was! Gosh I’m so excited). After that, my roommates and I went shopping to prepare for a dinner we’d arranged with Alex (I’ve missed her so much this summer and we’ve all been busy up until today). I even made some gluten-free, sugar-free zucchini brownies. I am totally keeping the recipe because it was delicious and I impressed everyone, so I feel very proud of myself for that (I know it’s silly, but it feels like an accomplishment that I didn’t burn it and that my experimenting [Surprise! I didn’t follow the recipe completely and pulled a Mom] paid off unlike my attempt at stir fry earlier this week—which wasn’t great at all, but it was edible at least). Alright, focusing again. Alex told us all about her summer and how her sister (Lauren) is doing. She really enjoyed the dinner (and so did I, Maren made the zucchini and squash in a way that I actually enjoyed eating it which was awesome) and we even watched a couple episodes of BNA (good show, I totally suggest watching it). She sadly had to leave since she works weekends at Bear Lake still, but we’re hoping to make it a weekly thing. She’s super safe when it comes to COVID stuff because of her sister, so it’s not stressful to invite her over. After she left we watched some Hermitcraft videos and GMM episodes to have a nice laugh. And yeah, that was my Friday.

Now today. Saturday. It’s only the morning, but I know we have plans, so I can talk about that. We’re having Karin and Tim over today for a game day (boardgames and… smashbros I think. Not certain. Maren’s family brought up a Wii U or whatever it’s called and they have multiplayer games—one of which is smashbros). I’m also going to try and be doing prep-work for the labs I’m TA-ing as well as reading through the research paper I’m facilitating. Sadly I’m not used to reading Evo Devo papers so it’s going to be a little tough. Maybe I can ask Maren about terminology when I’m confused? Maybe. Hopefully. I also need to do laundry today. I’ve been putting it off (*sweatdrops*)

Anyways, I hope that acts as a good summary of my week. This I think has been my longest post, we’ll have to see if that continues.

Until next time, bye!