Done!!

I finished my take-home biochem final today... I've pretty much been working on it the last two days straight. Once again, a PhD comic pretty much sums things up...

That was totally me and Eva-Lynn over the last two days.

Anyhow, I'm actually done with a whole semester of grad school. Wow. Time to really enjoy Christmas break, now.

Speaking of which... Mark and Amy's wedding this weekend was spectacular!!! It was so great to see everyone again. I'll post some photos when I get my hands on some... I'm ashamed to say I only took a dozen photos over the weekend. This coming from the compulsive photography addict who usually takes hundreds of photos of any particular event. I was running around pretty frantically most of the time with best-man duties... but still. Shameful.

PhD... "Piled Higher and Deeper"

I came across this comic strip, "PhD," recently. It totally sums up life in grad school... it always leaves you (or me, at least) thinking, "That's SO true!!!!"

For example, I think many of us have been in this situation before (it happens to me about once a week):

One typical grad school event is the "group meeting"... each week your whole lab group gets together and someone gives an update on how their research is going. Then everyone tells them what they're doing wrong. It's often very painful. (As always, you can click on the image to make it bigger... sorry they're so small on here.)

I have definitely been the the first student on the left (twice now, all-nighters both times), and I am almost always the third student from the left (totally lost). I also often find myself thinking like the second and fourth students. I've never been the fifth student, because I always know exactly when and where there will be free food.

Finally, anyone who has lived with me will understand this one:

Instead of "going to bed," about a third of the time I fall asleep on the couch in my apartment, with the lights on, music playing, and papers spread around me. One time I slept all night with my laptop balanced on my chest.

Winter Wonderland Wanderings

I had to run an errand across campus yesterday. It was snowing, only the second time since I've been out here in Boulder, and everything was nicely frosted in crystalline awesomeness. Here at the 30,000-student University of Colorado, "across campus" is a lot farther than it was at Fox, especially if you don't know where you're going. The trip gave me plenty of snow-coated objects to admire, and my new cell phone has a pretty decent camera in it, so I started snapping photos.

The chemistry building. I pretty much live here.








Brrr.




I've been riding my bike to campus, but I wimp out when it's actually snowing. Other people are more dedicated. Our first-year Biochem Core course professor, for example. Occasionally he shows up at the last minute to teach our morning lecture -- wearing skin-tight, spandex bike pants. Sometimes he even grabs a button-up shirt and tucks it into the bike pants. I kid you not. Welcome to grad school... it's a whole new world in here.