Progress at Work

I'm finally getting more comfortable in my position at work.  It's taken a long time, but I really feel like I'm contributing significantly.  I have been incredibly busy the last week or two, which helps the day go by fast.  In late October, I got to a point that I hated going to work and I felt like maybe taking this job was a mistake.  I felt like I couldn't do anything right, and like I wasn't making any progress toward independence.  My direct supervisor is extremely critical.  She wants things to be done her way and EXACTLY right, and she isn't afraid to correct every little thing I do.  She watches me very closely no matter what I'm doing and jumps at every chance to criticize me.  She also completely micromanages.  If she sees me sitting at my desk, she looks for things to tell me to do.  It makes me feel on edge constantly.  She is very strict about not leaving early or taking a  long lunch, not going on facebook or answering personal emails, and has made it very clear that I am not to work on any wedding planning while at work.  She is also very "anti-fun" as my co-worker put it.  She doesn't discuss her personal life at work, and doesn't joke around or anything.  The other 3 of us in the lab like to chat while we work, but she rarely joins in.  She often blames this strictness on her boss (who is technically my boss as well), but more and more I think that is a mischaracterization.  When I interact personally with her boss, she seems very laid back and not at all concerned with me working constantly from 9 to 5.  She has never disciplined me for anything (even though I've been disciplined multiple times for stupid little things in person and via email by my direct supervisor).  All of this criticizing was driving me crazy, especially because I'm not the type of person to be lazy at work and try to get out of things.  I just felt like no matter what I couldn't do anything right.

All of this came to a head on a Friday (in which I asked to leave 30 minutes early because I had stayed 30 minutes late earlier in the week- and was told no- and then my boss left 3 hours early).  I went home and talked it through with Daniel.  His suggestion was to sit down and discuss expectations with both my direct supervisor, and her supervisor.  But I thought that would just make it look like I'm trying to get away with anything I can.  Instead, I decided to work really hard- come early and leave late, take a short lunch, offer to come in on weekends, and be constantly busy from the time I arrive until I leave.  And it seems to be working!  I have come in an hour early 2 or 3 times since then, once on a morning after we got 8 inches of snow, and my supervisor has offered multiple times for me to leave early since I came in so early.  She has also thanked me for working hard and recognized my effort.  The best thing that's happened is that she has actually asked me to help her with mouse work.  She has very little experience with mice and is quite uncomfortable doing anything with them.  She also recognizes that I have lots of experience, and so whenever we're working with mice she lets me take the lead.  It has given me a lot of confidence and I think proven to her that I have some value.  In the last week I have finally begun to gain independence.  Today my boss left at around 10am because she was sick, and left me a LONG list of work to do.  I felt completely overwhelmed, but then decided that this was a great chance to show her that she can trust me to take care of things if she can't be there.  So I got everything on her list done- even though half of the list contained things I have never done before.  I read the directions, asked for help from my co-workers when I needed to, but I got it done.  When my boss's boss saw the list she left me, she said that was ridiculous.  She told me that she would talk to my boss tomorrow and tell her that she can't leave this huge long list for other people to do.  It was very satisfying to hear her say that :-)

Outside of work, my life is still pretty consumed with the wedding.  We have gotten most of the RSVPs back and are now at 182 guests (10 of whom are children).  That's a lot of people!  We have enough money saved for our honeymoon+ 175 guests, so I guess we'll be a little over.  I can't believe how many distant family and friends from across the country are flying in to see us get married.  Many of our friends are flying from Denver as well.  It means a lot to me that they are willing to spend the time and money just to come to our wedding.  And last week the most amazing thing happened.  I went to bells rehearsal like I do every Thursday night.  Only this night, we ended practice 30 minutes early.  We cleaned everything up, and then the director led us down the hallway and when we turned the corner, there were chairs and tables set up with a cake and fruit and a big pile of presents!  I was so completely surprised!  They threw me a surprise wedding shower.  Actually, it was a combined surprise wedding shower for me and baby shower for another member who is due on December 24.  The cake had a bride and a baby on it, and there were presents for both of us.  When I think about the time that they spent to prepare this for us, I feel so lucky to have people like that in my life.  They spent weeks emailing each other to plan it.  Some bought gifts from our registry, one lady custom ordered a cake from a local bakery (and it was delicious), other people brought fruit and set up.  They asked questions about my wedding so that the bride on the cake was wearing a dress just like mine, and there were teal ribbons on the gifts.  They bought 10 drinking glasses, 10 wine glasses, a duvet cover, and the matching shams all from Crate and Barrel.  For them to buy all of that, plus all the baby gifts, and the cake... it's unbelievable.  And they must have come early to rehearsal to set up the chairs and tables and everything.  I still get emotional thinking about it.

As far as planning for the wedding, we have very little left to do.  I made the seating chart last week.  We discussed who is going to give toasts at the wedding and rehearsal which turned out to be another sore spot for Daniel's Dad.  He has been incredibly stubborn and demanding with regard to the wedding (as usual).  It all goes back to the groomsman issue and it seems that because Daniel didn't do what he wanted, he has decided to make every aspect of the wedding difficult for us.  I'm trying to be accommodating and I have to say that I'm very proud of myself for not reacting to him in anger.  I definitely want to put him in his place and remind him whose wedding this is, but that would just make it worse.  So he is going to get his way, and give a toast at the rehearsal and at the reception.  It's not worth arguing about.  I just remind myself in my own mind that I will always win.  Daniel's Dad may think that he can dictate everything Daniel does, but in reality Daniel and I make decisions together as a family.  And I will always come first now because we have chosen each other to be life partners.  Daniel and I have decided from now on that we are not going to ask anymore opinions about the wedding.  Our parents have lost the privilege of being involved in decision making.  Nicole is the only person that we agreed gets to be involved.  She has earned that right by being understanding and flexible, and respecting that this is our wedding and nobody else's.

We spent quite a bit of time in pre-marital counseling discussing both of our fathers.  The most productive thing that I've learned is that when speaking to Daniel, I need to speak from my heart instead of my head.  I tend to be very factual and analytical, but that doesn't work with Daniel.  Another important conversation we had is that something that's important to me about us being married is that Daniel is loyal to me above everyone else.  And a way that he can show that is by supporting me in front of his dad, and not letting his dad speak to me with disrespect.  So we both have things to work on, but I'm more confident than ever that we have a solid relationship and will have a long happy marriage together.  Although I probably already knew that.  I think if we can get through the immense changes that come in middle school, high school, and college, then we can get through anything.

In just 2 1/2 weeks I'm flying to Phoenix.  In less than 4 weeks, I will be Mrs. Rosen!

Work and Wedding

My life right now is completely consumed by work and wedding planning.


Work is going pretty well.  I'm feeling much more comfortable with everyone.  I'm a little disappointed that I don't have more independence yet.  I come to work each morning with only a vague idea of what I'm going to be doing.  Usually I have to wait for some more specific instructions before I can get any work done.  It's frustrating, but I'm sure it will get better as I get to know the lab and how things work here.  My network is expanding a lot.  This lab tends to collaborate a lot more with other labs.  I've met lots of other PIs and researchers in the pathology department and in cancer research in general.  We also attend a lot more lectures and seminars with exposes us to other peoples' ideas and research.  Tomorrow I'm going to a talk by a famous stem cell biologist.  I think stem cells are so interesting, so I'm excited to see what I learn there.  


Wedding planning is exhausting.  All the fun stuff is done, and what's left is just work.  We finally finished the ceremony and thank goodness Daniel and I are both very happy with it.  Last time we worked on it we ended up setting it aside because we couldn't agree on things, but for some reason this time we were on the same page and it was quick and easy.  We have asked Evan's girlfriend Kristy to recite a poem or scripture reading. I'm happy that we're including her in the wedding.  She is definitely a part of the family already.  There are only a few things left: seating once we get all the RSVPs back, designing and printing the programs, and a few other details.  It's less than 6 weeks away!

Last Sunday Daniel and I attended a new church.  It's a Methodist church, like the one I grew up attending in Phoenix.  It's actually right across the street from DU.  There was a time when Daniel and I were trying out new churches in the area, but we never went to this one.  Daniel went to a Sunday morning service when he visited campus during his senior year of high school and he didn't like it.  He felt that the young adult group was very separated from the rest of the congregation.  They met at a different time and had their own service.  This time we went not because we're looking for a church, but because one of Daniel's music students was performing in the service.  He wanted to be there to support his student.  It happened to be the "Children's Sabbath" which means that the kids do everything in the service that the adults normally do.  My first impression was that the church was stunning.  It's in an old red brick building with stained glass all around.  It's a very old-fashioned feeling church.  It probably is very old, since DU was founded in 1864.  My second impression was how friendly and welcoming the people are.  Many people approached us and asked about us.  They recognized us as visitors.  The director of Christian Education came up and introduced himself and told us that we were in for a very special treat because it's Children's Sabbath.  Daniel explained that we were there to see Matthew play and he knew exactly who we were talking about.  When the service started, I started to notice familiar faces.  A few of the people in the choir are DU students in the music school.  The choir director and organist is the accompanist for the choirs at DU.  I was in Women's Choir and I substituted for her when she was sick a few times.  After the service, Daniel and I went up to the front to congratulate his student on playing well.  Daniel introduced me to his Mom (a professor in the music school at DU).  Then right away the choir director approached me and said that she recognized me.  I reminded her of my name and that I was in the Women's Choir 3 years ago.  I couldn't believe she remembered me!  Right then she invited me to join their church choir.  That was very bold of her, and I surprised myself by being really excited about that idea.  I told her that I was interested, but that I'm busy on Wednesday evenings through the end of the year, for our pre-marital counseling.  She encouraged me to reconsider in January.    

Daniel and I spent the rest of the day discussing the church and comparing it to the church I've been attending and playing handbells with.  It's a very large Presbyterian church with FOUR ordained pastors (2 that preach, 1 for congregational care, and 1 for youth), 3 of them with PhD degrees as well.  Their choir director has a PhD in music, as does their organist.  And you can tell because their choir is incredible.  They could substitute for any professional symphony choir in a second.  It took my breath away when they had a brass quintet come and play with them.  It was some of the most beautiful sacred music I've ever heard.  So it's a very successful and wealthy church.  It's also very progressive and community-involved.  They just put solar panels on the roof, and regularly host homeless people right in the church.  The sermons are very intellectually stimulating, which is important to me.  I like to be challenged in my beliefs and not just told the same old bible stories.  Unfortunately, this church is not very welcoming.  We have been there many times and not once has anyone approached us.  I walk around the church in my bell choir uniform, and nobody says one word to me.  I have never spoken with the pastors or any other church staff.  The only people I know are in the bell choir.  And it seems that they don't know a lot of people in the church either.

This new church has Daniel very interested.  And that is HUGE.  Daniel has never been interested in attending church, except when I ask him to.  He has agreed to attend church with our family, but only as a family activity- not for his own enjoyment or benefit.  He sees it as a social club, a way to meet other families in the community.  So the Methodist church fits that for him.  And I feel that if this is a church that he actually wants to go to, then I should jump on it fast. But their choir had maybe 20 people at best, and it was pretty pitiful sounding. Compare that to the professional quality choir at the Presbyterian church.  I would much rather sing with a really good choir, but if everyone said that then bad choirs would never get better.  Plus the Methodist church doesn't have a handbell choir at all.  That could change, since they just got a set of hand chimes.  And I've heard rumors that DU has a set of handbells.  I'm completely torn about this.  Daniel and I will have to talk about it and see where it goes.

Thoughts on the new job

It's been a week and a half in my new job, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable.  I don't have a ton of work to do because I'm still learning how this lab works and where everything is.  But I'm managing to stay relatively busy.  I've read a ton of journal articles about breast cancer and cancer stem cells and I find it way more interesting than the research I was doing before.  It's more relevant in my opinion, and much more applicable.  The project I'm working on actually involves screening hundreds of compounds as potential drugs to treat breast cancer.  I am working with mice much more, but these are very nice mice.  They don't bite at all!  They have huge tumors in their mammary fat pads that glow green when you hold them up to a UV light.  I'm also doing much more cell culture.  My technique has gotten a lot better, but I find that it takes a lot of concentration to do well.  With cell culture you have to do everything perfectly or you could contaminate your cells and ruin the whole experiment.  And these cells take weeks to grow, so you'd have to start all over again. It was a little scary at first, but I'm getting much better.  And I think everyone here is confident in my abilities.  I have the most mouse experience out of everyone, and I have enough cell culture experience that it's been easy to pick up the few things I didn't know.  This lab is much smaller, about 1/8 the size of my old lab.  There's just 4 people besides me.  Everyone here is much more focused on their work, and much less chatty about their personal lives.  This has made it somewhat difficult to get to know them, but I'm sure that will come with time.  Everyone gets along much better in this lab, so that's a nice change.  

The weather is finally getting cooler.  I have mixed feelings about that.  Snow is fun, but cold is not.  And I don't like it when the sky is still dark and I have to get out of bed and get to work.  It's hard to wake up when it's so dark.  I also don't like the gray skies when it's snowy.  But it will be fun to experience a real Christmas this year, since I'm pretty sure we won't be able to go back to Phoenix.

We had a lovely weekend.  On Saturday night friends came over for chili.  It was only in the high 30s and rainy all day, so it was a perfect day for some hot homemade chili.  When I got up that morning, I turned on the heat, put on a wool sweater, and pulled out our heated blanket.  Then I made myself some hot tea and read my kindle for an hour.  I never do that on Saturday mornings.  I usually clean the house and do the grocery shopping.  Now we have a dirty house, but it was worth it for my peaceful morning.  On Sunday we went to Crate and Barrel for a Registry Party.  It was so much fun!  The store was closed to everyone but about 10 registered couples.  They had these delicious tiny cupcakes, bagels and cream cheese and other breakfast foods.  And they had champagne flutes filled with some sort of juice cocktail that was delicious.  So we wandered around the store with champagne flutes and cupcakes and registered for items.  They had lots of store clerks there to answer questions and were demonstrating many of the kitchen appliances.  Daniel had waffles and espresso from two of their demonstrations.

I hope this weekend is just as relaxing, but a little warmer :-)

Fighting Down Panic

This morning I met my new lab for the first time.  They invited me to come to their Friday morning meeting so I could meet everyone and see the lab.  I was really excited yesterday.  Then this morning I started to get nervous.  While I was in the meeting, I was fighting down full-blown panic.  Well, that may be a bit dramatic.  I'm just not sure I'm prepared for this.

Okay, I was in the middle of writing that paragraph and white foam started shooting up out of the sink about a foot high. It filled up the entire sink in less than a minute and now is threatening to overflow onto the floor.  I put a bunch of blue pads down, so hopefully that'll take care of it.  Random.

Anyways, as I sat in the meeting and listened to everyone talk about things that I knew nothing about, I started to think about how much they know and I don't know.  I really hate being the new one.  I don't like having to ask people where things are and try to figure out the way they do things.  I'm afraid that I'm going to say something dumb or not know something they thought was really obvious.  Right now I'm thinking "why in the world did I leave my comfortable job that I love with all the people that I get along with to go to a new lab where I know nobody and know nothing about the work?!"  But I'm going to use Daniel's mom's favorite technique: cognitive behavioral therapy.  Instead of thinking that I'm crazy for changing jobs, I'm going to think about every good thing about starting my new job.

1) I will meet new people, and make new friends.  Making new friends is always a good thing, especially for someone like me who has a hard time with it.

2)  I will learn a lot.  I will learn new lab techniques, better cell culture practices, and all about breast cancer and cancer physiology.

3) I will make A LOT more money.

4) I will potentially get 2 or 3 more publications.

5) I won't have to work with the very few people in this lab that I don't enjoy working with.

6) I will have a higher position and will no longer feel like I was cheated out of what I fully deserve (a full professional research assistant position- NOT an obscure "technician" position that is just an excuse to pay me less).

7) I will practice going outside of my comfort zone, and pushing myself to be better.

I will repeat this list over and over in the next few days until I feel less panicked and more excited.  I will take a deep breath, and believe that everything is going to be fine.  Great.  Fantastic!

RIP Schnoodle Rosen

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Schnoodle Rosen.  He lived a very long life, almost 15 years.  He was a grumpy old dog, even when he wasn't that old, but we loved him anyways :-)  Daniel's family adopted him on one of their weekly "Sunday Fun Day" trips and he has been a member of the family ever since.  As he got older he lost his hearing and most of his teeth, his black hair turned to gray, and his eyesight was fading fast.  Anytime he barked at Jackson grumpily, we liked to tease that he might "gum Jackson to death" because he had no teeth.  When we went to Phoenix a few weeks ago he was leaning against walls and seemed disoriented most of the time.  It's very sad to say goodbye, but it was time for Schnoodle to go.  Last night Daniel's parents, Evan, and his girlfriend Kristy buried Schnoodle in the backyard under their orange tree.  They called us so that we could participate in the burial over the phone.  It was one of the saddest things I have ever experienced.  Kristy told us over the phone that it looked like Schnoodle was just sleeping in the box.  Daniel's dad dug a hole while we all shared our favorite memories of Schnoodle.  Everyone was crying by the end of it.  As they lowered Schnoodle into the ground, Daniel's mom said that it didn't really look like he was sleeping anymore.  It was so sad. I'm glad I wasn't there to see him put in the ground and buried.  I think that must have been very hard. Losing a pet is so difficult, but it's absolutely worth the many years of joy we had with him as part of the Rosen family.  New life always comes to take the place of those who have passed, and this was no exception.  In fact, Evan and Kristy had just adopted a new dachshund puppy last week and named him "Doodle."  So after Schnoodle was buried, the family spent the evening playing with the new puppy.  It was perfect.

On Tuesday, Daniel and I had our first pre-marital counseling appointment.  Chris set us up with one of his classmates at Iliff School of Theology.  This worked out really well because Daniel had class until 6pm and then we just walked one building over to Iliff and met with our counselor.  She is extraordinarily qualified, with 2 Master's degrees, 11 years as a licensed preacher, and an almost complete Ph.D.  She had a whole curriculum and schedule prepared for us which really impressed me.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I certainly didn't think she would have spent so much time preparing.  We introduced ourselves and got to know her a little better, and talked about our expectations, goals, and what specific things we want to talk about.  Based on that information she is adjusting our schedule a little bit.  We're going to meet at least 5 times over the next 8 weeks.  I am hoping that this will give me absolute confidence that we have done everything we can to ensure a successful marriage.  Though I think our past 9 years together is a good indicator that we know how to resolve conflict and stay committed, I also think that our relative inexperience in difficult life situations means we haven't had a lot of things to test our relationship.  We've also never had any sort of formal counseling.  If nothing else, it will be some quality time we can spend together improving our relationship.  :-)  And lucky for us, Chris has taken care of the cost too!  Daniel and I knew that we couldn't really afford to pay for counseling ourselves, so Chris set it up for us.  Knowing that our counselor is a friend of Chris' and a student at Iliff gives me complete confidence that she can really help set us up for a long successful life together.

Tomorrow is my last day in the Schwartz/Yang lab.  I can't believe it's been almost 2 years.  The last few days I've been nervous about my new job.  What if I don't have the skills they expect me to?  What if I don't like anyone in the new lab?  What if I don't like the job itself?  I know I've been so lucky that I've never had a job I didn't like, and I feel like at some point my luck is going to run out.  Am I dumb to leave a job that I love with people that I enjoy working with to try something new?  I hope not.  I try to reassure myself that I have lots of experience, and they have hired me based on my resume and interview- and in both I was completely honest.  There is no reason I will not be completely prepared for this job.  And if I need to learn new skills, which I almost certainly will, then I know how to do that too.  I'm a quick learner, and I have the intelligence to figure things out if I have to.  And getting along with everyone shouldn't be a problem.  In general, I get along with pretty much everyone.  I'm trying to convince myself that this is a good decision- can you tell?  Tomorrow after work we're all going out for happy hour to wish me good luck in my future career.  It was so nice of everyone here to do that for me.  I'm going to miss everyone a lot.  This was the first job I had that I felt really successful.  Everyone here has taught me something.  But now I have to do what's best for me and our family- and a big raise is definitely going to help.  So I'm jumping in, hoping everything turns out for the best!

I'm going to be published!

I found out last week that I am finally going to be published!  As a scientist, publishing articles in a scientific journal is how most people measure their success.  The more they publish, and the better the journal they publish in, the more prestige (and therefore grant money/salary) they get.  I have been working in this lab for almost 2 years and I have worked extensively on 3 or 4 projects, and one of them is finally being sent off to the journal at the end of this week!  I had to sign a bunch of paperwork disclosing any conflict of interest and giving all copyright rights to the journal.  Ironically, this first paper is one that I have only been working on for the last few weeks.  I completed the last bit of work that needed to be done before we could submit the manuscript.  It's a fascinating paper.  Once it's published, I can write all about it.  Until then, I can only say that it involved human subjects with different forms of interstitial idiopathic pneumonia and aimed to find genetic markers in their lung tissue that could predict what subtype they have, their prognosis, and how they will respond to different treatments.  I am pretty sure that in the next year or so, I will continue to be published in this lab for the work I have already completed.  And my new lab has promised me at least 2 publications, hopefully more.  I just wish that one of them would have been finished in time for me to put it on my graduate school application.  That would give me a great advantage over many of my co-applicants.

Speaking of grad school, I still haven't heard anything :-(  I fully expected to hear something from them by now.  The early deadline was September 1, and I submitted mine in mid-July.  The final deadline is October 1, so maybe they're waiting until then to contact anyone.  I applied to 3 schools and I will be extremely surprised if I don't get an interview at one of them.  I'm starting to get discouraged.  It's hard to stay positive, but still brace myself for disappointment at the same time.  It helps that if I don't get into graduate school, I'm still very excited about our alternate plan.  Which involves me continuing to work in the job that I love, and start having babies.  Not a bad Plan B, right?

But first, I have a wedding to attend.  We got our first 2 RSVPs in the mail on Saturday.  About once a day I have a moment of extreme excitement and then I come back down to earth and remember that I have a lot of things to do between now and then.  As it gets closer, I am also getting more excited about those 10 days after the wedding that we will be spending in Hawaii!  Right now the ocean, beaches, volcano, and snorkeling sound very nice.  And I imagine that 6 weeks from now, when it's 30 degrees and snowing outside, it will sound even better.  (side note, it's 80 degrees outside right now, I can't believe in 6 weeks it will be full on winter!)  One of my co-workers, an MD in our lab, told me that her parents own a snorkeling charter company out of Kona, the capital of the Big Island and she offered to set me up a trip with them.  Last week she emailed me a confirmation for our trip and a link to the website.  It looks amazing!  The trip is 4.5 hours and includes breakfast and lunch.  We go out snorkeling to a site where they see dolphins almost every day, and once out of every week and a half the dolphins stay to swim with the snorkelers!  It's also whale season in Hawaii, so we could see humpback whales.  The boat also has a diving platform and water slide.  Oh, and did I mention a fully stocked cash bar?  I think I'll be bringing some cash along for some post-snorkeling drinks.  And it's completely free to us too!  We will be sending a nice thank you note to my co-worker for that.  I looked up the company in our guidebook and it got fantastic reviews.  Daniel also decided that he wants to take golf lessons.  So now the plan is for us to spend a day at a resort on the Kohala coast.  Daniel can learn to play golf, and I will be happy to spend the day at the spa.  Daniel isn't really into massages, and I'm certainly not into golf, so I think spending a few hours away from each other on our honeymoon is okay.

I should stop wasting time and get back to my science.  Last week in my old lab :-(

Saving Money

It's very frustrating that the new job hasn't moved forward much in the last week.  It got stuck in HR- where everything seems to get stuck around here.  But it seems that everything is still on track for me to start on October 1.  I'll put in my 2 weeks' notice next Monday.  Word has started to spread slowly around the lab.  I doubt I'll get any sort of recognition.  I think if I had stayed until graduate school, I probably would have gotten some kind of celebratory "good luck in grad school" party.  But since I'm leaving for another lab, it's a little different.  But I am very VERY excited for the raise!  This is going to increase our income by almost $600 a month.  That is huge for us.  We still need to save $2500 more to reach our goal for our wedding and honeymoon, so in 2 months just that increase will get us halfway there.  We have been consistently saving about $600 a month on my current salary, so if we continue with that trend it looks like we'll just make it.  What a relief!  I think it is very encouraging that we can live on my $25k salary and still have over $500 left to put in savings.  That means that when Daniel starts working full-time, we will be able to save a lot more.  And for a while, every extra penny will go towards student loans.  After our honeymoon, of course :-)

Last week I started auditing a course here on campus on basic immunology.  The only immunology I have learned has been picked up little by little as I do research in the lab.  After 2 classes, so many holes have been filled that help me understand the research so much better.  I hope I will be able to continue taking the class after I move to the new lab.  The professor is absolutely incredible.  It's obvious he's a very visual person because he explains everything through drawings or acting things out in class.  It's very amusing when he uses people in the class as props.  I love this because I'm a visual person too.  Giving human personalities, emotions, and motivations to things like antibodies and T-cells makes everything so much easier to understand and remember.  One of my favorite things in the world is learning something new, and having a fantastic professor to teach me makes it even better.  Every day I am reaffirmed in my fascination with the human body.  I am a born scientist.  Third generation, in fact!

Work has been inordinately frustrating lately.  I have been running a million qPCRs and every third time the instrument fails in some way and I have to repeat the experiment.  It takes about half a day to do each plate, so when one fails that's half a day completely wasted.  And the reagents and materials to run one plate cost a couple thousand dollars.  That's not much in science terms, but it's still waste.  The most frustrating part is that I always feel like it's my fault.  Even when the instrument fails I feel like it's my fault.

Yesterday was my first day of not going to school.  To me it still feels like summer break.  I wonder when it will hit me that everyone else is in school and I'm not.  Maybe when it starts to get cold.  I am loving what I'm doing right now.  Compared to school, working feels so completely productive.  I actually get paid for working 40 hours a week, instead of paying thousands of dollars to work 60 hours a week.  I have more free time than I ever did in school and less stress too.  Although, I can't imagine having kids and working full-time.  I think it would feel like I never see them.  But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.