Let the games begin

Posted on June 1, 2011 by corrie wong

This week is a great week of low tides, great for field sampling. In addition to the sulfide seep, I decided to sample a “clean” site further along Ruston Way. At this site, to sample the rocks at tidal height I had to muck around in the water. That’s when I realized something important– my left boot leaks. Boy, was that water cold. Luckily the right one wasn’t leaking too. Like a trooper, I trudged on.

The pouch on this crab's (Lophopahopeus bellus) body holds barnacle nauplii.

Back in the lab, I seem to be playing a game with the crabs that I collect. I call it No Pinch. The crabs call it Pinch. As hard as I try to not get pinched, the crabs try to pinch me. I thought I was winning. I was wrong. I had the first crab in my palm and I was measuring it’s carapace. When I looked away to write down the measurement, it pinched me! The score is Crabs-2, Me-0. Interestingly enough, the crab that managed to pinch me has been parasitized by barnacles. Maybe that’s why she pinched me.

I’ve noticed that this species of crab, Lophopanopeus bellus, is feistier than oregonensis. That is why, when I encountered this guy, I was more cautious when picking him up. He has a pretty strong grip. Thank goodness he wasn’t able to latch onto my finger!

I haven’t started on the lab experiments yet; I have to get some tanks and stuff built. Here’s the concept though: one is a habitat choice tank that will provide high sulfide water and low sulfide water where crabs can choose which they prefer. The other is essentially racing a crab down a lane after being exposed to(or not exposed to) sulfide water to measure activity. Sounds like fun, eh?

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Science and stick shifts.

Posted on May 25, 2011 by mkrauszer

Found me an alien at Deadman's Bay. Ok, it's an octopus.

Tonight is the culmination of weeks of intense planning, continuous revision, and slaving research. I’m procrastinating on a final paper!

So, instead of working on it, I think I’ll tell you about it.

After birth and before adulthood comes the volatile stage known as “the juvenile”. Actually, in congruence with the parts of speech elsewhere in that list it should be “adolescence”, but I want to talk about the individual noun, not the collective one. So, “juvenile”. For me, the word ‘juvenile’ conjures up images of angry preteens wearing bright orange jump suits and screaming obscenities into a darting camera, presumably directed at their mothers for sending them to a national talk show “boot camp” to attenuate their prepubescent temper tantrums. Fortunately, these are not my research subjects.

Instead I am working with juvenile clams, clad in shiny 1-3 mm shells and darting in and out of focus under my dissecting microscope.

My research question is pretty basic: where are the baby clams (I will henceforth use baby and juvenile interchanegably for the sake of syntactical and lexical variation)? Thus, with a spoon and some urine sample cups, I set off to do science!

This is an average clam in my study. And that is my finger for size comparison.

I collected sediment samples from 7 sites around San Juan Island, generally in adjacent pairs for comparison based on sediment composition, wave exposure, and beach grade. I sampled different tidal heights, or distances up the beach, which required some fancy dancy surveying equipment, including a laser level and telescoping jumbo-ruler with BEEPING signal receiver. I caused quite a ruckus in the intertidal.

After filling my countless cups of mud, like any good scientist, I ‘returned to the lab for analysis’. Namely, sieving sediment for minuscule molluscs on a 1-mm wire mesh. I know you humanities majors don’t have much of a concept of what a millimeter looks like, so just imagine the smallest Nerd you can find in a box of the Wonka candy, and you’re about there. And that was about the size clam I was looking for. I spent many hours with my face in the sieve staring down every piece of sand and granule in those samples until a few revealed their true identity as clams. Needless to say, I was not very good at human interaction after mornings with the sieve, but I found a junk-ton of clams and got a pretty good tan on (one arm and half) my face during those few sunny weeks of fieldwork.

Our time for completing this project was relatively brief and many of our schedules were ruled by the tide. As a result, coordinating transportation for 14 students to about 14 fieldsites meant that my profs had to get creative. Thus, came those five frightening words:

Tiniest snail you've ever seen.

“Can you drive stick shift?”

“Uhh, sure?” [I think I can drive stick shift…]

“It would really help if I could just lend you my car for the low tide, and I trust you to take it.” [Yeah, I can totally drive stick shift!]

It’s amazing how one’s beliefs can evolve over the course of a single conversation with a superior whose approval you sincerely seek.

Don’t worry, the car and I made it safely to and from our destination with only some minor embarrassment at mid-town stop signs.

All in all, my project was a success and I am working on establishing some guidelines for predicting where one might find baby clams (which is of interest to the REU student taking my place on this project for the summer) and further investigating the role of the juvenile stage in determining adult distribution and abundance.

In related news, I saw some whales. During a lovely visit from fellow Loggers, Grace Ferrara, Laura Strong, Andrea Leiken, and Prof Joel Elliott, I took the new-comers for a little sight-seeing at Lime Kiln lighthouse to watch the sunset, and along came a few transient orcas. To add to the show, a harbor seal played peak-a-boo with us from the water below our rock-shelf seats. Overcome by the harmony of the natural world in this menagerie of beauty, I, of course, got out my cell phone to take a picture. I sent a heart-felt 1.2 mb of sunset to a friend on the other side of the country, and then my phone said, “Thanks for sending a message from CANADA! You will be harshly financially punished for this display of frivolous international travel.” And I’m like, “wha? 1. I don’t remember leaving the country. 2. That was a weird message.”

Gah! He's looking right at you!

Well, it probably wasn’t worded exactly like that, but it was a bluff anyway. Many places in the San Juans are often subject to Canadian airwaves, including radio stations in French, and fraudulent international cell phone charges. Often enough that most carriers just ignore you while you’re up here.

To explain the many black-background-ed photos presented here, I should tell you I went nightlighting, yet again. Our most exciting find this time was the strip of refractive something pictured in the last five photos. When I first saw it I, naturally, assumed it was a tiny living glow-stick. Turns out it is actually probably just a single cten,  or row of cilia, from a ctenophore. On a whole animal, the ctens ripple in rainbow-flashes of coordination that propel the ctenophore forward. Ocean magic.

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Summer doldrums

Posted on May 24, 2011 by marcus luther

I’m already well into my second week of summer, and I’m already beginning to fear the annual threat of the summer doldrums. This is no way a reference to the weather—I could think of nothing better at the moment than still, warm weather, the sun unimpeded by a cloudless sky. After the initial flirtation by the Tacoma weather last week—which was absolutely gorgeous, for those of you who fled immediately after your Finals were finished—we have eased back into the mediocre overcast that typically plagues the Northwest until well into June.

Anyways, before I digress too deeply into complaints about the weather, let me make it more clear what I mean by “summer doldrums.” I feel as if each student begins to paint their ideal summer as soon as the second semester begins, with ambitious plans and unrealistic images filling their three-and-a-half months off of school. Read countless novels, take many trips with friends, workout every day, fill-in-the-blank-with-something-you’ve-been-longing-to-do-but-haven’t-had-time-for-during-the-year, etc.

Then summer arrives, and our well-honed schedule-juggling abilities soften without the pressure of tests, papers and work assignments. We sleep in. We go home and get pampered. We get jobs. And before we know it, we’re buying books and packing our bags for another year of school. The summer doldrums are sneaky, too—we normally don’t realize them until after they’ve wreaked havoc on our ambitions.

Some would argue that the summer doldrums are therapeutic for us, that they help us recover from the daily grind that Puget Sound so generously offers us. Some would claim that we need to embrace their presence and accept them as an integral part of the college experience. Some would even go so far as to expand them, to make them as much as part of our summer as we can (that last “some” are probably the ones watching cartoons on their parents’ couches all day long eating food they surely didn’t cook for themselves).

I, however, am going to try and fend them off as much as possible. Though I’ll probably fail, I want to schedule my weeks beforehand, generate to-do lists that I use during the school year, and actually make some valuable use of my free time. Of course, I still have to work and take care of the usual responsibilities of ASUPS. And I still will sleep an hour or two longer than I was able to during the school year. And I won’t hesitate to lay out in the sun if it happens to escape the clouds for more than a few minutes.

But when I’m stretched out in the sun, you can be sure that I’ll be trying to finish a novel. Emphasize “trying.”

Bring on the doldrums.

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Junior Year (this one’s a downer)

Posted on May 18, 2011 by mkrauszer

Junior year, the time I went to school from August to June with one two-week break.

Or.

Junior year, the six-week tropical spring break and the four-month personal-growth sabbatical.

Cattle Point, San Juan Island.

Truth is, my “junior year” isn’t even over. I am in school until June, doing independent research. But my final exams happened this week, coincidentally at the same time that my fellow Loggers were overdosing on caffeine and challenging the human record for consecutive all-nighters back at Puget Sound. It’s been strange living this second life apart from them, but staying in contact, visiting on weekends, and making plans to return. Since last December I’ve longed to be back there. At my lowest moments on the boat I would think ‘why did I leave’? And I guess I still do. But Puget Sound is packing and leaving, they are finishing another year, some of them finishing forever. And I’m on the outside, looking in on that closure.

I do wonder how things would have been different if I hadn’t gone “abroad”, if I hadn’t left just when I was starting to feel comfortable in my department, just when I was living on my own and making my own stability, just when I finally felt at home at UPS. I dunno, I guess I would be different.

Just another day of class.

Since I’ve been gone, I’ve imagined Puget Sound as some static and preserved relic of my past life to which I can simply return and resume. In part, that’s what kept me going through the tears and the storms and the seasickness, and the identity crisis. If I just made it back to Puget Sound, to 1409 N. Alder, to my bedroom, everything would be fine again. I would be happy again.

But I don’t even live in that house anymore. When I go back on weekends, sometimes I stop by to get stuff out of the basement storage, and there is someone else’s stuff in my room, someone else’s food on my shelf.

What my life was, what I was last fall isn’t there anymore.

I suppose this feeling of erroneous nostalgia is telling; I haven’t felt this way since leaving Alaska for college, secretely hoping to just be magically plopped back into my high school life, where things were familiar and secure and understood. (don’t worry, that feeling ended after about second semester)

The nostalgia proves that my time at UPS was an era in and of itself, something to be missed and longed for. But it also highlights that I was getting secure, sloppy, suffering from content-with-high-school existence.

Thus, I am honestly glad I went and cried in a shower in the middle of the North Atlantic gyre. I’m glad I was scolded at 3 am in the middle of a storm for not wanting to wear the tutu. I’m glad I blew hot dog chunks out my nose onto a Portuguese man of war in the water below.

I’m not sure quite yet what they were, but good things came of all of these “bad” ones.

I look forward to returning to Puget Sound, but it won’t be the same, and I won’t be the same. Enter cheesy cheesiness about changing for the better. But really, though I understand that this blog entry is particularly depressing and personal (since I recently found out that at least two Puget Sound professors read it), I guess my point is that being “abroad” has been good, in the summary sense.

And lest you be left with the notion that I am currently a moping bundle of pathetic (yeah, I like to use adjectives as nouns), I’m actually quite content with life right now. It’s spring in the San Juans and I spend my days chillin’ with professional scientists. This is a time in my life I will look back on and long for, but I can only hope the challenges continue.

Eagle Cove, San Juan Island. Said field-trip to the intertidal.

On a different note: one of the questions on our exam today was ‘who would most likely volunteer to eat gooseneck barnacles for lunch on a class field-trip to the intertidal’? I believe I won myself a new superlative.

Don’t worry, most of the questions weren’t that easy.

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What are these hideous creatures? Crabs of course.

Posted on May 18, 2011 by corrie wong

Aloha!

Well, that sounds cheesy. Let’s start over.

Hi! I’m Corrie Wong. This summer, I’m fortunate enough to be working with Professor Joel Elliott studying intertidal crabs found at marine anthropogenic sulfide seeps along Ruston Way in Tacoma. If you aren’t familiar with the area, allow me to give you a brief background.

The sawdust makes it bouncy.

This strip of shoreline was once home to many lumber mills in the late 1800s to early 1900s. When those closed up and were destroyed, the leftover sawdust was dumped into the Puget  Sound. The decomposition of the sawdust by bacteria releases a chemical called hydrogen sulfide which is extremely toxic to most organisms. Yet, animals can be found living in these toxic environments. Most common are green shore crabs, Hemigrapsus oregonensis, which will be referred to as oregonensis.

This is Priscilla, a female green shore crab carrying her eggs under her body.

So what am I looking for exactly? I’m measuring the abundance, size, etc. of the crabs found in these seeps to crabs found outside the seeps. I’m also measuring the sulfide concentration of the water where the crabs are found.There are also other species of crabs that are sometimes found in the seeps such as Hemigrapsus nudus (which I’ll refer to as nudus), Cancer crabs (i.e. red rock crabs), and a black-clawed crab whose name escapes me at the moment. I do know, however, that those last two species will pinch you. Hard.

This stream of water is the sulfide seep.

This week is a good low tide week, so most of the intertidal area is exposed during low tide. Fortunately for us, low tide is during the middle of the day rather than the middle of the night like it is in November. Unfortunately for intertidal life, they’re exposed at the hottest part of the day. As a group (Joel’s lab consists of 5 students this summer) we went to the sulfide seep and lucky for us IT WASN’T RAINING. I can even wear shorts! Anyway, when we first got there I was definitely surprised. It was as if there was an invisible semi-permeable barrier surrounding the actual seep where the water was flowing. In the barrier, the rotten egg smell is really strong. Take two steps back though, and I couldn’t smell it at all.

This little guy is Henry. He's a male green shore crab from the sulfide seep.

Being a marine life lover, I love spending time near the ocean. I could spend hours poking around tide pools. There is nothing better than the smell of salt water in the air and the sound of waves lapping at the shore. It reminds me so much of where I grew up (if you didn’t guess from my cheesy greeting, I’m from Hawaii). This research project allows me to do what I love and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity.

If you’re wondering if I’ll be measuring crabs the whole summer, I won’t be. I also plan to do some experiments in the lab that involve the crabs’ toleration to sulfide and habitat preferences. More on that later as the summer progresses. For now, enjoy the adorableness of Priscilla and Henry. Did I mention that I name some of the crabs I collect?

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Just Some Words on Commencement

Posted on May 18, 2011 by marcus luther

I promise I would have had pictures to accompany this blog post had the weather been conducive to photography at Commencement. Instead, we were subjected to the rain and wind beneath clear ponchos while sitting on chairs that came with their own puddle in the place of a seat pad, no extra charge! Three hours later, with numb toes and soggy backsides, and hands numb from clapping, we left and trudged back to Todd Field to give a few congratulatory hugs, snap a few family photos, and begin our last year of college.

As a newly-anointed senior, Commencement harkened a mix bag of emotions. I was not alone as a junior (we aren’t officially seniors until all the diplomas are handed out) who knew more than a few seniors, so that on its own made the experience a bit sobering. Knowing that many of your friends are parting ways and embarking on new paths is exciting, but it is never easy to say goodbye.

Along with the goodbyes, Commencement marked the beginning of our own “Final Countdown.” With each Ron-Thom handshake and quiet cheering from a random section in the crowd, I was closer to entering into my final year at Puget Sound. The real world is not simply beckoning; it’s beginning to bellow. And it’s hard to ignore.

The Commencement speakers offered an assortment of advice, but none of their words impacted me more than the realization that I am now very close (symbolically and physically) to leaving a school that has been a mostly-blissful home for me the past three years. It is an emotion that is difficult to express in words; alas, as a blogger, there is little else to utilize in terms of communication methods.

Congratulations, Class of 2011. Class of 2012, let the countdown commence.

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So Many Lasts

Posted on May 12, 2011 by aschoblaske

I took my last final on Monday, and turned in my last paper on Tuesday… so, I was finished with my Puget Sound academics after that. Sunday is graduation (keep all of your appendages crossed in hopes that the forecast for rain changes). My family gets here Saturday. Everyone else is finishing finals. And I got my cap and gown on Tuesday. It’s all really starting to sink that that I’m GRADUATING. I’m having to fight back periodic bouts of tears to really soak in every last moment and be sure to put a positive spin on the last days in Tacoma.

A lot has happened since my last blog post (which is why I haven’t had much time to write), but here’s a quick play-by-play:

1. Relay For Life was GREAT! The weather was beautiful, and the attendance was outstanding. We are even within a few thousand dollars of our fundraising goal… which is a feat I thought we would never accomplish a month ago. Here are all of the Loggers circling the track during our first Survivor Lap:

2. The Chemistry department spoiled its seniors rotten (after we played a bit of a prank on them). We got to go to the Chemistry awards BBQ on the last day of classes, then to our professors’ house for dinner during Reading Period, and finally, the TAs got treated to breakfast at Shakabrah by the – you guessed it – Chemistry department.

Here are all of the seniors at our Chemistry department picnic. This is right after we finished giving all of the professors gifts (some funny, and some serious).

3. Today was one of the best ways that I could imagine to really go out with a bang. As you may remember from earlier in the semester, I was part of the Youth Against Violence Initiative as part of The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Be The Spark movement. That event was all part of the build-up to Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s public appearance tomorrow (Friday). Well, he’s here! And today, he conducted a semi-private interview for a variety of students from around Tacoma. I GOT TO BE ONE OF THE STUDENTS! Basically, I was one of about 25 students in the room with Archbishop Tutu. We got to ask him questions, and the whole interview was taped by KING 5 News to be aired on TV. Archbishop Tutu had so many amazing things to say that I cannot even begin to reflect on them here, but I think that one of his biggest messages was the value of every unique individual. You cannot be great at everything, but you can be compassionate to others and let them help you as you help them. You can bring your personal power to whatever situation you are in, and improve that interaction in whatever ways you can. I was able to record some snippets of the interview, which you can see here.

I am SO incredibly excited for the Be The Spark event tomorrow, where he will speak again, and there will also be student performers, etc. It’s going to be amazing!

Archbishop Tutu is front and center, and I'm in the very back. You can see the very corner of my bright blue scarf!

As I mentioned, my family arrives on Saturday, and that’s when graduation festivities really begin. A reception here, a convocation there, a brunch here, and – oh yeah – the actual graduation ceremony there (at 2pm on Sunday; it WILL NOT be raining, as I said). I’m really excited for everything to come, and even more excited for what lies after graduation. I’m still applying for Admissions Counselor jobs, and getting more excited by the day to dive head first into that endeavor!

I’ll probably blog once more after graduation to reflect on my time on campus and how it all ended. And, of course, for everyone who has officially confirmed as a member of the Puget Sound Class of 2015… Congratulations! You have made a wonderful, exciting, and more-fulfilling-than-you-can-possibly-imagine decision.

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Sex, sex, sex!

Posted on May 8, 2011 by mkrauszer

This is just a pretty picture. Leathesia marina, the brain algae.

Tis that time of year. A sperm layer on your windshield or tickling your nose. Eggs spewed haphazardly, and by the thousands. Pheromones flying free and making monsters of worms. Mass migrations and great congregations. As the days get longer, the nights get kinkier. It’s spring, of course. The universal season of sex.

“Hey look at that orgy behind you,” my professor says to a student, pointing to a pile of snails at her feet. There must be nearly 100 dog whelks stacked layers deep. It doesn’t look like much more than a collection of shells, but you know deep down there is some serious gastropod sex going down.

And since I have probably beaten that horse well to death, I will just show you some of the cool pictures of gonads, copulation, and offspring we’ve seen lately.

These snails aren't just hanging out. Nucella gather in large piles to exchange gametes and lay thousands of eggs in yellow, finger-like capsules.

The bright blue brood of this giant copepod will soon join the plankton bloom of San Juan surface waters.

We caught this sea lemon in the act of laying a pale yellow trumpeting egg mass.

Nudibranch egg masses come in many shapes and sizes, but maximizing surface area is a common theme.

The orange glow of a brood of eggs peaks out from under this isopod's segmented carapace.

Part of the spring plankton bloom, a hydromedusa pulses food over its oral tentacles.

This crab was gracious enough to allow a peak inside at her brilliant red gonads.

Copepod with blue brood.

Beyond that, I survived botany! We had two finals last week and I managed to make it through them without strangling myself with a Nereocystis stipe or overdosing on Dermasterias.

The sperm layer from the intro is pollen, by the way. Not some sick vandalism.

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The Road to Graduate School, Part V

Posted on May 3, 2011 by kdillmcfarland

Be warned; this is going to be a long one.  

My actual interviews  

After writing that last blog, I realized it would be a lot more helpful for me to just tell you about my interview/visit experiences directly. So I visited 4 places (remember I applied to 8).   

1. Berkeley   

One word: Terrified. I turned in my applications in early to mid-December and Berkeley’s first visit weekend was January 27-30th. o_O Not a lot of time to figure life out… Also for Puget Sound, this means I left during the second week of school (first week of academic labs) which was especially hard because I’m in a lab myself as well as am TA for two others. So yeah, I was terrified but that’s not really the point of this blog. For the record, Berkeley did not accept me in the end and here’s what I think went wrong. I didn’t know what I was doing!!!

For science, a HUGE part of the program is research. You’re taking classes part-time for 2 years, doing research that whole time and then doing research full time for 3+ more years. So it’s no wonder programs place a lot of weight on your research experience and ability to discuss it. I didn’t discuss it well. I forgot who I was talking to. I’m used to discussing my research with my research advisor or my friends (who even if they aren’t science majors, have heard me so much that they’ve at least got some background). So I forgot background. -face palm- Here’s my “Berkeley-learned” advice: It’s okay to point-blank ask “What do you know about *insert your research topic here*?”. So I should have opened with “What do you know about Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus?” when they said “Tell me about your research”. That way I wouldn’t have gotten so many of them so confused.     

Wine tour group

Another problem I think occurred was that I applied to the wrong program. I didn’t figure this out until discussing it with another applicant at another interview (a UPS graduate actually, Rachel Hood, who is going to Berkeley next year!!). I applied to Plant/Micro and she applied to MCB (molecular and cellular biology). My problems with the program (socially) didn’t seem to be present in the group she interviewed with. So don’t get locked into “I’m going into micro. I can only apply to programs with micro in the name.” That’s dumb and I think I paid a price for it… So no Berkeley for me… But muchos congratulations to Rachel! And I did get to go on an all-expenses paid wine tour while I was there. Not surprisingly, there were more current students than interviewees at this event (the university was paying after all…)   

 

 

2. UC Davis  

I’m going to be honest. I thought of Davis as a backup school. There is some amazing science going on there but location and reputation weren’t as high on my list as other schools. I wish I had not accepted an interview there not because it’s a bad program, but because I didn’t want to go there. When I applied, I did consider Davis as a serious choice. But after the Berkeley interview and knowing I also had an interview at my number one school choice, I realized that if Davis was the only place I got in, I wanted to take a year/two off and reapply. I unfortunately realized this too late.   By a stroke of bad computer skills, I booked my flights to Davis wrong and paid about $200 to change them so I could get back to Tacoma in time for an event I already had tickets to. Also, Davis only paid $200 of my original $250 flight. So yes, part of my regret is that I lost close to $300 visiting a place I didn’t want to go. So to reiterate from the application blog, ONLY apply to and visit places YOU want to go!!!     

On another note, I didn’t go to the “regular” interview weekend. So here’s an idea of the schedule you have when you don’t go on their big, all planned weekends.   

Thursday: Fly in. Dinner with 3 current graduate students.   

Friday: Morning interviews with professors (3 -4 total), lunch with graduate students, afternoon interviews (2 total). Fly home that night.   

So you miss out on a lot of the fun social parts of a visit. Also you miss out on meeting the people you’d actually be going to classes with the following year. Try to go to the main weekend!! It’s so much better…   

3. U. Illinois at Urbana  

Here’s a main weekend schedule:  

Friday: Fly in. Cocktail hour with other interviewees, informative speech about the area, dinner with interviewees/professors/current grad students, attend a poster session of current research being done in the program.   

Saturday: Breakfast with interviewees, information session on program, interviews (4), lunch with current students, walking tour of campus, social event (we got to choose from 1 for 4 options), dinner with faculty, event at a bar with current students and interviewees.    

Sunday: Fly home (preferably not hung over…)   

Sounds like a lot more fun than just dinner and interviews, eh? Well it was. I went to Illinois knowing I loved the research going on there and that I wouldn’t mind the location. I left seriously torn between it and my previously certain number one choice. That’s right; an interview changed my opinion of a program/place. That’s why it’s so important that you go on these things and really try to see if you’d be happy there. Something interesting is that I didn’t feel too strongly about the current graduate students I met there. I loved the other interviewees though! We got along famously so even though I did not decide to go to Urbana, I think I could have been very happy there.   

On another note, I had the flu that weekend… so sorry to anyone I got sick from the weekend/planes <_<   >_> My bad! It was an interesting experience actually. I started to get really sick on Friday but was NOT going to let a little thing like the flu ruin an interview weekend. So I popped cough drops like candy, took Sudafed non-stop, and chugged Delsum. I powered through it… only to get back to Tacoma and miss 4 days of class while holed up in my room miserable. Random advice: It might be a good idea to get a flu shot the year you do interviews… Better safe than sorry!   

4. U. Wisconsin-Madison   

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice this. I had 4 interviews. 1 rejected me, 1 I knew before the interview I didn’t want, 1 I admitted to turning down…. By process of elimination…. that’s right. You guessed it! I’m going to Madison!   

My way of telling the Facebook world of my decision

In the end for me, it came down to a decision between Urbana and Madison. Now for the 5+ year question: Why did I pick Madison?   

1. The program requires a “professional development” course, one of which gives me the opportunity to get a teaching certificate and do a teaching internship (I want to become a professor).     

2. The people are so nice, it’s almost scary. No, no. I’m serious. I got more emails and phone numbers than I thought possible. Everyone was willing to answer questions and many offered to look at potential houses for me before I move there (this was before I had even accepted!!).  

3. I would be happy rotating (like a trial work period to see if you want them for your thesis lab) with almost everyone I met, and I didn’t even meet half of the department!     

4. They are an umbrella program which is what I was looking for.     

5. It’s friggin’ BEAUTIFUL!  

6. And what really put them above Urbana was not something either school could have helped. It just felt right. I made the decision, slept on it, freaked out a little (it is 5+ years of my life after all), then slept again and just knew. It’s about that fit. I fit them and they fit me. And I am SUPER EXCITED for this fall!!!!!!  

Madison Micro building

And so, that is the end of my choice.  

 

Oh, and this is something I should have mentioned earlier. My professors were awesome about my interviews. I missed several Thursdays and Fridays and a Monday/Tuesday as well. And you know how my professors reacted? Excited!! Some I have known for years and am close to, so I wasn’t surprised at their inquires into the process. They’ve been asking about my future plans for awhile now. Others, however (and one in particular), I had just met this semester. In fact, it was a class outside my major with a professor I had never seen before this year. You want to know what he said when I told him I’d be missing half a week of class? I believe the words went something like, “Congratulations! I wish you the best of luck and if you need any help catching up, let me know and we’ll make time next week.” So yeah, awesome.

Posted in Kim Dill-McFarland '11 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Road to Graduate School, Part V

Too Little Time

Posted on May 1, 2011 by ifox
Hello internet world! Sorry for taking so long to get back to you guys about my “life”, or whatever. I never know what to write about until I realize that a ton has happened. Which takes a while, apparently…
This month has been crazzzyyyyy. Between homework, work and admitted student days, it will go down as the second busiest (only to December).
Admitted students days were pretty good. Overall, my roommate, Brian, and I had seven or eight prospective students on those days alone. We were able to take one group to a lecture in Kilworth Chapel by Christian Lander, who wrote the popular blog “Stuff White People Like.” It was surprisingly great. He spoke for about half an hour about the story of the blog and his road to fame and stardom, as well as well as talking about some racial issues, such as race and class (and how they are basically synonymous).
Back on topic, though, the year is wrapping up, unfortunately. This last week has been weird, realizing that my senior friends are leaving. It particularly hit home when we had elections for the Hillil/Jewish Student Organization. My friend, Jay, was no longer President after that moment. His last event was Passover. So bizarre to think about…
Passover! Last week was passover! For the first night, we had a sedar in the Rotunda and something like 140 people showed up. Incredible food, great company. Pretty fun time. The second night there was a slave-free-chocolate sedar led by the Associate Chaplain and head of Jewish Life. Every night during passover we had dinner in the Student Diversity Center, eating matzah pizza, chocolate, matzah brei and charoset.

Next up was Relay for Life. Relay for Life is an event to raise money to fight cancer where you (in teams) walk for 18 hours straight. Fun fact: Relay for Life (which 1 of every 100 Americans take part in) started on the Puget Sound track. That’s right! The very track where the event was held this year. Crazy. I was on a team with my floor (Harrington 3!) and walked for around 4 hours, trading off with other people. The Puget Sound Relay for Life has raised $31,000 for cancer research this year, with more to come!

This next week includes reading period and finals, but I hope to get one more post in before the end of the year. If I’m back here next year, I’ll be better about updating more consistently.

Be well and study hard for finals! Also, come visit the Media Center during finals and say hi. I’ll be waiting!

Posted in Ian Fox '14 | Comments Off on Too Little Time