Earthworm dissection! (artwork of the day)
I forgot to post a little bit of art from our most recent dissection on Saturday. So here it is, a few days late. We dissected squid, earthworms and crawfish. The worm was a challenge, which I passed with flying colors. I can't help but feel sort of Hanibel Lechter, from all of this By the time I cut it open, the five hearts were all
still beating! *beams proudly*Take a look at the Flickr group, for your daily anatomy lesson. And I promise, it will only get better!
Visual Neuroscience amazes me!
Tonight, I had one of those lectures, where I was
so fascinated by the material, that I had to tell my professor as I left the classroom! We've been studying about the neural pathway from the retina, through the thalamus, to the striate cortex (occiputal lobe) of the brain and most of it is okay, but when you actually get to the striate cortex.... omigawd! It seriously blows my mind. Scientists Hubel and Wiesel conducted experiments to determine whether cells have a preference for the direction of light that stimulates each particular cell. As it turns out, many of them do! One cell likes light at a 45 degree angle, another likes it at 60 degrees. The cells that have the same preferential orientation, stack on top of one another through the whole cortex thickness.
(this will probably start getting boring for most normal people) Some cells are excited by darkness and others by light. Then there are cells that have a perference to a particular eye, meaning the cell is binocular, but it is driven by one eye stronger than the other. If you inject a marker amino acid into the left eye and then inspect the striate cortex, you will see a zebra/fingerprint pattern all over, indicating which eye is driven onto what sections of the cortex. Again, you get these stripes that run through the whole cortex, like from the the ceiling of a wall down to the carpet.... all driven by the same eye! But still binocular (except at Layer 4C) meaning the cell gets signal from both eyes! The experiments conducted to give evidence to these theories are really cool, too. Dr. McLean showed a video of the scientists testing for action potentials as they dragged a stripe of light across the screen, to determine someone's receptive field and what type of response triggered it. When they map it all out and color code the areas that prefer a certain orientation, driven by a given eye, etc. you end up with a little cube of the cortex devoted to convey all that information. And it is all swirled together. Each functional module follows its own system and pattern, but when you line up the various functions (orientation, color, position, motion, ect.) it is mind blowingly complicated. It is art. Seriously! That's the only way to sum it up.
wow!
Boo hoo... Bonnie's kittys are gone!
It hasn't even been a whole day, that Bonnie's kittys are gone and I'm sad! They were so precious and pure joy to have around. I miss them. I've always loved cats, but I had no idea it would hit me like this.
Bonnie, if you ever decide that cats just aren't your thing... you know there's someone who will love them and take very, very good care of them... and that's ME!!
Ahoy... more midterms
Yet another spectacular day spent at Van Pelt, with Stef! This week has been a challenging one, met with recurring thoughts about what it is that I really want in life. Daniel texted me from Lake Tahoe. Dana invited me to go scuba diving with her in Samoa. Stephanie just got back from Brazil. Brett's rock climbing in France. Bobby's still in Thailand, living it up, while nickel and diming it. Todd called and said it was sunny in SF. Daniel is now on a cruise in the Caribean. What punks! So, what is it I really want out of life? Meaning. Finding pleasure in what I do. And I have that! I am happy. I look back on all the great things I've done and realize there's so much to come. I sometimes wish I were out playing with my friends. Though I'm thankful to have the opportunity right now, to grow. Right now, I gotta get this brainy stuff out of the way!
Tonight's biochem exam was fun. I had to explain the enzymatic activity of a particular hypothetical experiment gone awry. My reasoning involved a Bunsen Burner, that the experimenter used for cooking his Ramen noodles, as the culprit for raising the temp in the experiment, thus denaturing the enzyme and decreasing the reaction rate. I'm glad Dr. Loudon has a good sense of humor. It's worth it to try and entertain him a bit. He's a funny guy. He started throwing cough drops at students, during the exam. Not the most serious professor I've ever had... but of course, as most people probably know...
I am very okay with that! Let's learn and get stuff done, but at the same time, not get too completely caught up in taking ourselves so seriously.
FKO, right?! It is all about the art of
not taking life too seriously,
very seriously!
My Chinese professors are so cute and funny!
Two of my funniest, most memorable teacher moments:
Dr. Lin was my first chemistry professor who taught us about anions and cations and how they attract one another...
"Boy Meets Girl! No, you don't take cation with cation... IT MAKE MONSTER!"And now there's Dr. Wittmer, my biology professor who taught us, yesterday, what happens when two frogs fall in love!
I am "Missin' the 'Dew"!
My old chem study partner, John sent this picture of Tommy, to me. Stef wants to see what Tommy, her male counterpart from my gen chem days, looks like. No, Stefanie is not growing a mohawk, to my knowledge! The two of them are both incredibly smart. Sometimes the sentences that come out of their mouths, you just have to laugh at, for being so brainy, factual and swiftly spoken, without any thought to the words. They just seem to fly out! Who talks that way?! Tommy and Stefanie!
We had a really, great study group, in SF. Morning Dew cafe is a place where we spent soooo many hours upon hours, studying chemisty together, doing problem sets and drinking coffee. Tommy and John kept me entertained with their jokes about Dr. Fong, our professor (whom we all adored, btw). Sometimes the people you grow closest to, are the ones who you go through tough times with. And at times, all three of us felt as though Dr. Fong enjoyed crushing our young, agile minds! As much as these guys annoyed me before exams (Tommy and I used to get at each others throats... the Aries, Scorpio combination) I'm glad we were in it together. It's too bad Tommy didn't stick around for O-Chem. He had to go off to Berkeley, and then on to MIT. And John is at Berkeley, himself. So far away! But always in touch and ready to laugh at a joke or two about Zumdahl or Fong.
Midterm status
With the first round of exams in every class out of the way, I've finally settled into a comfortable study pace. No longer am I restlessly, twitching, trying to find ways to get out of studying. Sure, I often sit staring at my books, sifting through endless thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with what I am studying, but at least I can get myself to study. It's hard starting a new semester! But, I got an A on my first exam, in Biochemistry. Yay, me! And my Visual Neuroscience exam was just plain...
FUN! Yes, fun.
Changes, I've noticed... it's harder to get out of bed in the morning! I still make it to the gym most mornings, but my work-outs are getting shorter and more intense. It's imperitive I get the extra energy spilt out of me, because otherwise I feel like I might implode. Staying active is such a great balancing mechanism. I love it. I love the convenience of having the gym right there, near the library.
Tomorrow, in biology we start disecting sponges, flatworms, anemoneas and observing hydras and rotifera under the microscope. I must admit that I'm looking forward to it. If for nothing else, I know it will be entertaining with our lab bunch. There will be much laughter, I am sure. I haven't decided whether to bring my digi camera in, like a few other students are. In fact, Stef specifically bought her new Nikon Coolpix, today, for lab. (Yes, she is undoubtedly a proud nerd and we love her dearly) As the biomedical photographer in the crowd, there's some sort of role I feel I'm trying to vear away from. Weird! But on the other hand, the blogger, flickr-girl in me is thinking I have to share the fun, online. If you're dieing to see more, here's the link:
Bio 201
Today, I expanded my lunch horizons by trying Taner's vegetarian-truckstand-place. It was so good! U of Penn has all of these mobile foodstands scattered around campus. From crepes, to chinese, to fruit, to steaks, to veggie... there's a few places to get food-to-go. The woman who served as our lunch was mom'ing it up, taking care of us. She claimed that she's been working her little veggie cart for over 20 years! Taner claims that from a business perspective these mobile foodspots make a killing. I don't doubt it. There's a lot of appreciation for our foodcart city.
Olympics in Torino
Here I am, watching the Olympics with my Biology textbook open to the chapter on vertebrates, my browser on NBColympics.com for quick look-ups and the TV set tuned onto to NBC for watching the Games. It's interesting to actually follow the Olympics for once! Since the Salt Lake City games, the scoring for figure skating was completely re-done. No longer are they using the 6.0 scoring system, but instead they use a cumulative point system, where skaters accumulate points for each individual element according to difficulty and execution. This change is to remedy the subjective judging that was scandalized during the Salt Lake City games in '02. It's great that they've finally done this, because it helps skaters earn credit where it's due, rather than having the more popular skaters end up with medals for seemingly unexplainable reasons.
The NBC website is pretty well organized for checking things out and learning about stuff you were always curious about. If you've ever wondered what the difference is between a toe loop, lutz, flip, loop, or salchow, they've got mini clips that demonstrate what each jump looks like. For each event there is a glossary of terms and I swear that snowboarding terms are as complicated and random as my biology vocab for school. From "tranny", "stiffy air", "stalefish air", "slob air", "rolling down the windows", "pop tart", "McTwist", "mashed potatos", "lip", "Japan air", "Indy grab", "crippler air", "crail air", "cab", "bone", and "bevel" ...to name just a few!
Winter blues? No, way!
Regardless of all the biochemistry, visual neuroscience and biology mid-term exams, I have been having a lot of fun.
Stephanie is my new found study friend and an hour rarely passes where we don't laugh hysterically about something. It helps! Her latest obsession with the protist Rotifera (one of the organisms we're studying) has been quite amuzing. Reproducing through a pathenogenesis, famales give birth to females from unfertablized eggs. There are few males and though they can fertilize eggs, they are "degenerate and can't even feed themselves"... so claims our textbook. Steph finds this ridiculously funny, and I must say that it's been worth a few laughs, late at night in the library as we try to memorize what the little buggers do (or can't do).
Last night, I had friends over for lasagna dinner. It was fun to break out every pot and pan in the kitchen, using 3 burners at a time and having people come over to enjoy a meal. It started snowing heavily last night, which made it all the more fun, too.
The best part of school recently has been (besides learning and all that great stuff) welcoming more friends into my circle. Both of my friends Amanda and Stephanie are awesome girls. Amanda has an incredible sense of humor and made the ultimate dessert last night... shortbread, pecan, caramel bars, dipped in chocolate. This morning she and I had brunch, after our leisurly walk through the snow in our neighborhood. Now, I am off to Steph's house where we'll make dinner, chill out and possibly even read a few chapters of biology... yeahh... probably not that last part.
But needless to say, even with the high productivity levels going on (gym and library everyday), there has been much fun at the same time. Oh... and my friend with leukemia is doing spectacularly well. I am thrilled! :)
Friend diagnosed with leukemia
Suddenly, it is very difficult to concentrate! My friend Jenifer called to tell me news about another close friend of mine, who was hospitalized yesterday. It turns out he has leukemia. I am blown away. He and I just spoke on Friday, when everything seemed fine. About 10 minutes ago, I called him and briefly spoke with him to find out firsthand what's going on. It can't possibly be real! Everything hung in mid-air while I waited for him to pick-up and I felt the relief at hearing his voice. But it is very much real and they are awaiting test results to determine the type of cancer.
Please send some healing hugs to him in San Francisco! He's a super-duper guy and I am sure he will be very strong, things will work out, and all of our SF group of friends will be drawn closer yet again, through caring and the appreciation for our wonderfully supportive crew. Projecting love, from Philadelphia... love to you all, audra
