So Many People, Gah!

 Hello everyone! Sorry for the one day delay, Saturday was pretty rough so I ended up not writing anything for you guys. But I’ve found the time and energy to do so now, so hopefully you won’t be too affronted.

Monday was almost the usual, if that makes sense. I had a super short TA meeting this week, as we didn’t have any new information to really talk about. After that, though, I chose not to get a treat—not feeling very hungry (more on this later), so instead, I studied for a little while and then took my test for Nutrient Gene Interactions. It went well—I got a 91% without much studying, which was nice, though most of it was on insulin, which is one of my jams. After that, I had office hours, which no on showed up to again, but I’m more than fine with that. The freeman meeting was the only other thing that I really recall that day, and that’s because I almost fell asleep during it. I was super tired that day—have been all week, which was rough but tolerable. Though it sadly makes it really hard for me to remember what happened clearly.

I was still tired on Tuesday, which means my memory is pretty foggy there too, sadly. Animal molecular biology class seemed to drag on, though it was mostly review about the latter end of mRNA processing, which wasn’t too complicated. Teaching went a lot better this week. I’m actually slightly enjoying myself when teaching anatomy, especially when the students seem to understand what I’m saying. I still don’t necessarily like it, but it isn’t dragging on as much as last semester, which is nice. I also knew a lot more about the appendicular skeleton (it’s not that different in other animals). The UAs probably help too, especially since they know what to expect and do. But yeah… that was Tuesday.

Wednesday was actually really awesome. It didn’t take me hours to do the pre-lab work for my animal molecular biology class. I had a good understanding of how the Northern Blot worked, and the quiz was a lot easier this week now that we had all the materials to reference while working on it. The only part that kind of sucked was the fact that the printer hates me, but when Dad gets up here, hopefully he can help me with it. The Lecture that day was also interesting, and still involved insulin, which was funny. Everything is related to insulin, feel insulin’s might! I also did a lot of writing that day, which sadly meant that I had a hard time falling asleep that night because my brain was so active and I had a lot of ideas. Overall, though, Wednesday was pretty awesome.

Thursday was interesting. Sara was actually on the radio for an interview about an article she wrote about working and living during the pandemic, and also talked a lot about her research (mostly voles and titi monkeys, though they did mention the coyotes). I tuned into it before starting in on some last minute homework. Animal molecular biology lab was long, though. While the set up was short, we had to wait around for 1.5 hours for the samples to run. I think it went alright though—the stain transferred very well, and hopefully the RNA did with it. Teaching was alright too, it went really smooth that night, though I was reminded that the cadavers are next time, which is scary. But that night was really fun. We ended up staying late playing modded Minecraft which was a lot of fun. It lets you choose to be a hybrid with drawbacks and pluses (like being part enderman, blaze, bird, shulker, etc.). It was a lot of fun.

Friday was when things started to get a little busy. After fixing some issues with my therapy appointment, I worked on my nutrient class again. We talked about lipids again (and will this coming Wednesday was well since it’s the current unit), more specifically that PPAR system, which is okay. Not really my thing, but decently interesting enough. I was able to do it right in time to eat before heading off to work. Friday was the last day I would be working on practice brains. This next week will be a literature review based week and going over procedures for staining, with immunohistochemistry and stuff for the next little while, which is very exciting. I also got to meet another grad student, Max, who said he’d be willing to help me since he’s currently doing an immunohistochemistry project himself. I got to look at his work station and it looks really cool so I really am excited about it. When I got back to work, I had a little bit of time to play Minecraft with Emily before Anna and Hannah showed up and things got crazier. Maren made us a soup to eat, which was really good (carrots, celery, cabbage, chicken, etc.) and one that she kind of just made up on the spot. For the rest of the night we just ended up watching Steven Universe with Karin and Tim until I crashed at around 11:00 and hid in my room—though I was awake for a while after and able to hear everyone stick around until well past midnight.

Now onto Saturday… Saturday was hard. I woke up really anxious and more or less nonverbal, so I grabbed some cereal and hid in my room again for a while before emerging to play Minecraft. We played that for a long time and had a lot of fun. Everyone is on a lan game that Ben is running from Idaho but it worked out super well—though Hannah’s computer just suffered for a while which was funny. Emily and I are on a mountain building a really big base, which is cool—she’s a phantom and I’m an avian hybrid. Maren, Hannah, Ben and Sam are on the other side, with Anna just off on her own (she found a stronghold within fifteen minutes on accident. Crazy right?). We did go shopping for supplies later on in the day, which was a struggle since I was very much socially drained, but when we came back I had food and we called it a relaxing night with, you guessed it, more Steven Universe. We’re done with season one now, so hopefully it won’t drag on for too much longer. We stayed up really late for that too though and Friday night repeated itself.

And now it’s Sunday. I’m still super drained from everything, but my anxiety is manageable for the moment. Maren and Emily baked a quiche (*wrinkles nose*) which I’m about to try so wish me good luck. It sounds like an awful texture at the moment, but I have cereal for back up. Anyways, talk to you all later.