It's been a very long week. I think I already posted about the symposium on aging I had to attend on Monday, so I won't discuss that further. I have a tendency to write a lot in my posts, so for those with short attention spans, I apologize but nothing's going to change overall. But tonight, as every minute of typing is one minute of precious sleep I won't be able to get, I'll restrict myself to 15 minutes as of right now. So if it takes me 15 minutes to type this, it'll certainly take you less than 15 minutes to read this.
Two things of note this week. On Wednesday night, after my pathophysiology exam, I went with CM-M to our friend JR-M's premiere of his movie. I've seen it before but I went anyway to support him. It's really really impressive. With a budget of practically nothing, he made a 30-minute film look practically professional. And I never watched it on a big film screen, so that was really cool. I saw both of his older brothers, the oldest whom I haven't seen in almost a decade (wow . . .). I also talked with JR-M's mom for a while. When I first saw her before the movie started, I went to shake hands (you know, as any proper formal-ish greeting). Instead she just went around for a hug and said, "What's this? It's good to finally have a doctor in the family." That was really touching. After the movie we talked some more, along with CM-M. She's a career counselor, so I think she was kind of silently figuring out whether or not becoming a physician was "right" for me. Since she didn't say anything to the contrary, I'll assume that she approves.
After all was done and said, I went with JR-M and some of his friends at his university to a local bar. It was pretty nice. They had a lot more fun than I did, but that was probably because they all knew each other and I only knew like half of the people who went. I must say though, JR-M found himself a really nice and really hot girlfriend. I'm kind of jealous. I still haven't told JR-M about me being bi, but that night wasn't the right place and time. I wouldn't dare take away his attention and thunder that day. It was all very well-deserved. In any case, I left a little depressed. Most of my close friends moved away since we graduated and I just felt really lonely again.
The other major event was today (Friday). I started working in my new lab today! I had to wake up really early to get to lab meeting, but because I missed the earlier bus, I was 10 minutes late. But they hadn't really started yet, so it was alright. All I have to say is, holy crap I know nothing!! It was a struggle to keep up with all the info.
After the lab meeting, the post-doc I was helping out basically showed me around and taught (but really, re-taught) me some of the things I'll be doing. He's really nice but also really particular, which right now is annoying as I'm still under his supervision. It's okay because I'm particular in the lab too, so once I get his protocols and routines down I'll be okay. By the end of the day I was bombarded with papers and protocols to read!
Oh! The hot MPH/PhD guy (I've mentioned him a couple posts prior) walked into the lab for a while to use a machine down the bench from me. It took some effort not to turn my head and stare. He has one of the hottest smiles I've seen in person - again, he's all tall, lean, and rugged. If he shows up again on this blog I'll have to code him, haha. Also the Spanish PhD visiting scholar, EC-F, is pretty hot herself. Her accent only adds to it all. Our lab went to a bar afterwards (yeah, it seems I've been going to bars a lot recently) and she was really nice to talk to as she asked all about the US and comparing it to Spain. It was good to hang out with the lab outside of work, as you get to know that these are "real people" who aren't just dorky robotic lab things.
I think I'm pretty much done here. I FINALLY got around to reading and catching up to this all-mighty blog: steevo in cali. If you haven't gone over to read, well, do so!
---TANGENT---
So my time's probably up now. But I'd just like to say two quick things. My lab is a cancer genetic epidemiology lab, so we basically study cancer in the population and how genetics plays a role in all that. I'll elucidate later on exactly what I'm doing, as that's pretty involved.
Now, two, I'm actually quite annoyed with epidemiology. Epidemiology doesn't actually "know" anything, it merely utilizes study designs and statistics to determine associations between two things. It doesn't have a way of determining how things work on a mechanistic level, which annoys me greatly.
I also feel epidemiology is poorly translated into news, as it's really easy to misinterpret the results and disregard the "limitations" section of each paper. And in many papers, the limitations section is the majority of the paper! One topic in particular (I won't go into it here and now, ask me about it in an email if you're that curious) involves one of the most common surgerical procedures in the US and a particularly unique disease. -_-
---END TANGENT---
Two things of note this week. On Wednesday night, after my pathophysiology exam, I went with CM-M to our friend JR-M's premiere of his movie. I've seen it before but I went anyway to support him. It's really really impressive. With a budget of practically nothing, he made a 30-minute film look practically professional. And I never watched it on a big film screen, so that was really cool. I saw both of his older brothers, the oldest whom I haven't seen in almost a decade (wow . . .). I also talked with JR-M's mom for a while. When I first saw her before the movie started, I went to shake hands (you know, as any proper formal-ish greeting). Instead she just went around for a hug and said, "What's this? It's good to finally have a doctor in the family." That was really touching. After the movie we talked some more, along with CM-M. She's a career counselor, so I think she was kind of silently figuring out whether or not becoming a physician was "right" for me. Since she didn't say anything to the contrary, I'll assume that she approves.
After all was done and said, I went with JR-M and some of his friends at his university to a local bar. It was pretty nice. They had a lot more fun than I did, but that was probably because they all knew each other and I only knew like half of the people who went. I must say though, JR-M found himself a really nice and really hot girlfriend. I'm kind of jealous. I still haven't told JR-M about me being bi, but that night wasn't the right place and time. I wouldn't dare take away his attention and thunder that day. It was all very well-deserved. In any case, I left a little depressed. Most of my close friends moved away since we graduated and I just felt really lonely again.
The other major event was today (Friday). I started working in my new lab today! I had to wake up really early to get to lab meeting, but because I missed the earlier bus, I was 10 minutes late. But they hadn't really started yet, so it was alright. All I have to say is, holy crap I know nothing!! It was a struggle to keep up with all the info.
After the lab meeting, the post-doc I was helping out basically showed me around and taught (but really, re-taught) me some of the things I'll be doing. He's really nice but also really particular, which right now is annoying as I'm still under his supervision. It's okay because I'm particular in the lab too, so once I get his protocols and routines down I'll be okay. By the end of the day I was bombarded with papers and protocols to read!
Oh! The hot MPH/PhD guy (I've mentioned him a couple posts prior) walked into the lab for a while to use a machine down the bench from me. It took some effort not to turn my head and stare. He has one of the hottest smiles I've seen in person - again, he's all tall, lean, and rugged. If he shows up again on this blog I'll have to code him, haha. Also the Spanish PhD visiting scholar, EC-F, is pretty hot herself. Her accent only adds to it all. Our lab went to a bar afterwards (yeah, it seems I've been going to bars a lot recently) and she was really nice to talk to as she asked all about the US and comparing it to Spain. It was good to hang out with the lab outside of work, as you get to know that these are "real people" who aren't just dorky robotic lab things.
I think I'm pretty much done here. I FINALLY got around to reading and catching up to this all-mighty blog: steevo in cali. If you haven't gone over to read, well, do so!
---TANGENT---
So my time's probably up now. But I'd just like to say two quick things. My lab is a cancer genetic epidemiology lab, so we basically study cancer in the population and how genetics plays a role in all that. I'll elucidate later on exactly what I'm doing, as that's pretty involved.
Now, two, I'm actually quite annoyed with epidemiology. Epidemiology doesn't actually "know" anything, it merely utilizes study designs and statistics to determine associations between two things. It doesn't have a way of determining how things work on a mechanistic level, which annoys me greatly.
I also feel epidemiology is poorly translated into news, as it's really easy to misinterpret the results and disregard the "limitations" section of each paper. And in many papers, the limitations section is the majority of the paper! One topic in particular (I won't go into it here and now, ask me about it in an email if you're that curious) involves one of the most common surgerical procedures in the US and a particularly unique disease. -_-
---END TANGENT---
1 comment:
Be nice to the post-doc, all us scholars are very particular like that. But, it's really out of necessity, not because we want to be strict to our assistants. The post-do just needs to be very sure that you're treating data as well as he would.
*hug* for your feeling depressed. :)
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