So, I thought I would start blogging again now that I've decided to go back to school. If you're new to me and my random musings, I first started blogging when I was an undergrad majoring in Biology/Math Education. Then I briefly blogged about being an actual science teacher, but life got hectic so I took a break from blogging. Now I'm back as a graduate student in microbiology, at the same university from which I got my undergrad. And for those of you who are wrinkling your noses in snobbish scorn for my lack of variety in institutions, you should know that Getting What You Came For by Dr. Robert Peters, highly recommends that if you are comfortable with an institution and have positive connections with the faculty, you should totally consider going to the same university as your undergrad. So there. :P Seriously though, I picked my undergrad institution because I WAS extremely comfortable with the faculty and the department. I had very good relationships with the majority of my bio professors, I also have several connections in other departments--math, physics, chemistry, even history (though I don't know what good the last one will do me for my major, but still)--and furthermore, I knew I could get accepted here. There were enough people here who were willing to go to bat for me--a high school science teacher whose biology degree focused on broad, over-arching general biology and didn't specialize in any one subject in particular, especially not biochem or microbiology, which is probably where everyone else in my lab specialized. I am probably somewhat of a gamble for the university because I am a former education major, but so far everything seems to be going good. I got accepted into the program, I passed my qualifying exam, my major professor and I have good rapport and I have good grades in all of my classes. The initial hurdles have been passed. Now for the serious stuff: writing a thesis proposal when I haven't collected any data yet (or any data of my own, I have loads of data from other people, but since I'm not doing exactly what they've done, it isn't much help as far as writing an actual proposal goes); picking a committee; presenting my thesis proposal at a seminar; doing the research; oral examinations; deciding whether I want to get a PhD or stay with a masters... etc, etc, etc and so forth. Good news: I'm ALMOST ready to go out and collect samples (I'm working with soil and bacteria, for those in the audience who are interested) and hopefully I can get some good samples in October. Collecting the samples will be relatively easy; finding sites TO sample from has been the hard part and I'm just getting those places together after working on it all summer and the first half of this semester. No lie. And even then I'll admit that I'm halfway flying by the seat of my pants here and hoping I did the site-picking right. More good news: I've picked my committee! A committee is important because they will follow you through your grad school career, read your thesis (and probably any articles you might get published besides the thesis), counsel you, grill you, etc. They will be the ones who test you on your oral exams. They are simultaneously your strongest allies and most intimidating foes, at least, that's how it seems. So it's important that you pick a good committee--people who know a bit about your research (you wouldn't want a plant ecologist on your committee if say, you worked only with evolutionary relationships between invertebrates) and also, you want to pick people you are comfortable with. So, this morning I sat down with my major professor, or "Doc" as I will now refer to him, and we discussed who should be on my committee. Obviously, he's on it, since he's my major professor, and there is one other microbiologist in the department that we wanted to get on our committee, Dr. H. Those two were a given, I assumed Doc would recommend Dr. H because a) they're buddies and b) they're the only guys in the department who have the slightest idea what I'm doing. The third and final choice was up to me, so I picked a professor with whom I have a long and comfortable acquaintance, also, I did undergrad research with her--Dr. W. I asked Doc if he was okay with her being on my committee, he had no problems with it, so I went and asked her. Actually, I had to find her--she was buried deep in her lab in a side room that I wouldn't have known existed if I had not worked with her (see, going to my undergrad for grad school is already paying off). When I asked her she was frank in stating that she knew nothing about micro, but she said she would be happy to be on my committee because she knew me. I reminded her that she is a great cell biologist and knows a lot about PCR and other DNA analyzing techniques, and that I thought she'd be a great adviser for me in general. Most importantly, I trust her, I trust Doc, and I trust Dr. H. So, I am feeling good this morning because I feel like I hit the committee jackpot and I'm really happy that Dr. W is on it because I kinda wanted her from day one. :) Alright! So that's what's new with me for now, and now I have class. Oh yeah, forgot to mention--I'm a TA, so I haven't completely stopped teaching. :) ~H