Time for another post....

I'm so happy! Jeffrey, not only sent me cookies like he said, but also REAL CHIPS AND REAL SALSA!!! mmmmmmm.... maybe when mom comes up for Meliora weekend, I'll have to get her to bring me some of that Central Market salsa stuff. yum!

Max: throughout the lecture today
Max: your like, top
Max: looked really cool
Max: xD
Jen: hahaha
Max: except partway though
18:04
Jen: I kept falling asleep
Max: i thought it started looking like you were covered in moss or something
Max: XD
Max: and then i was like, omg photosynthesis!
Jen: /almost falling asleep
Max: and then i was like
Jen: HAHAHAHA
Max: photosystem 1!
Max: oh nooo
Jen: hahahahahahhahaha
Max: and then i kept thinking how the lights were hitting your shirt
Max: and you were using PMF
Max: to photosynthesize stuff
Max: but all the acid was coming out
Max: and then burning your skin
Max: and then i woke up
Max: :/
Jen: OMG max I'm never sitting in front of you again
Max: hahaha
Max: :D
Max: ^___^
18:05
Max: it was a cool shirt though
Max: :)
Jen: haha thanks
Jen: next time you sit in fornt of me
18:06
Max: D:
Max: noooooo
Max: then you'll fantasize about flesh-eating bacteria eating me or something

Almost out of here and my impossible quest to get into grad school

Wow, so I've gotten really bad at updating this blog; I used to be sooo good at it when I had xanga... I guess it's good that I'm not always doing random stuff online like that anymore?

Project's winding down, I'm in my last experiment which will be done next Wednesday. I have an abstract and am starting on my poster which will be absolutely preeeeety! Other than that, Galveston is the most boring place ever! Yeah, we have the beach, but we can only go to the beach so many times. A few weeks ago when Charlie was here, we went three times, once randomly, second to watch the sunrise, and third to fly a kite and to look at stars. Those were good beach trips because they only lasted for like 30 minutes and we went in odd times (ie not during the day) so noone was there. Anyways, I can't wait to get out of here.

What else am I doing? I've been cramming my head full of vocab words for the GRE which I'm taking in exactly a month (crap). Funny how my verbal scores on practice tests range from like 500 to 700 depending if I know the words or not. Sigh. At least I won't have to deal with it when school starts up again. I'm also starting to form my list to apply to... and convincing Amanda and Janelle and everyone to go down south for grad school :P So far on my list I have UGA, UVa, WashU, UC Davis, Univ. of Maryland at Baltimore, and Emory. I think I might add two or three more, maybe UT Southwestern.

I am also looking forward to the several trips and stuff coming up. The parents are coming up for my Meliora weekend and Tiffany's family weekend again. They're also coming up for Thanksgiving, and we're visiting Becky in Pennsylvania during that break, and then CHILE!!!! around New Years with orchestra. I'm excited for all these things, even if it means not being home much, and therefore, not being able to spend as much time with Charlie... I'm hoping things will get better in terms of that when we go to grad school and are hopefully closer together.

Galveston

So I just finished the first week here. I'm really liking my lab, but its really different from Rochester. I mean, here it's just the PI and his lab tech (no students!) and at Rochester, it's like a nursery. :P Here, they're not doing experiments 24/7 and so right now, I'm having a lot of downtime and too much reading. I guess it's slower because they do a lot of mice work so you'd have to wait longer than with bacteria.

I really enjoy talking to the PI about my project because the stuff is really interesting and I can't really explain. For one thing, he talks a lot slower than Michelle, lol so it helps me when I think slowly because I'm slow a lot of the time. I have my project now, and yesterday, we ordered the stuff I needed that we didn't have. I knew science was really expensive but not THIS expensive. Get this: this one thing I had to get, 0.5mL (or was it 1mL) of it was $600! I'm really eager to get started because it would mean not so much reading and actually doing things. I'm going to be doing ELISPOT assays to determine the role of CRF-R1 and CRF-R2 on antibody production. CRF is corticotropin releasing factor that's involved in inflammation and the immune system and I'm blocking their receptors at different times and concentrations after exposure to the antigen and looking to see if that effects antibody production. Okay, enough science talk.

I think I'm going to the field house soon because I'm bored out of my mind and annoyed.

conversations with Annabelle

So Annabelle and I have the best conversations ever. Here are some examples:

Yesterday:

(23:29:47) Jen: I'm listening to a Mahler symphony on ruckus
(23:29:54) Jen: and I like how it says its expliit
(23:30:28) Annabelle: HAHAHAHAHAHA
(23:35:00) Annabelle: that makes no sense
(23:36:06) Annabelle: you should write to them
(23:37:08) Jen: dear ruckus, why is mahler explicit? what do you have against mahler? don't lie to people, love, jen
(23:39:04) Jen: maybe its the choral parts
(23:39:10) Jen: I don't know what they're saying
(23:39:39) Jen: they could be saying fuck you in another language! saying that in the most prettiest, calm melodic lines ever
(23:39:40) Jen: :P
(23:40:58) Annabelle: HAAHAHA
(23:41:06) Annabelle: so badass
(23:41:11) Annabelle: i want to do that
(23:42:26) Annabelle: write ruckus anyway
(23:42:54) Jen: find me the adress
(23:48:01) Annabelle: 104 Mahlersucks Street, Beethoven City, OH 38647
(23:48:01) Annabelle: WHAT THAT EXPLAINS IT
(23:48:01) Annabelle: MAHLER HATERS
(23:48:18) Jen: hahaha, but I like both?
(23:48:26) Annabelle: oops i menat Bach City

Today:

(00:27:47) Jen: when guys get haircuts, they look like dinosaurs right?
(00:27:52) Jen: well not all of them, but a lot of them
(00:28:47) Annabelle: HAHAHAHAHA
(00:29:01) Jen: please tell me I'm not the only person that thinks that
(00:29:13) Annabelle: ummm
(00:29:20) Annabelle: well nwo that you say kt
(00:31:00) Jen: especially because when girls get haircuts its "oh your hair is nice" but when guys get them its "you got a haircut"
(00:32:02) Annabelle: HAHAHAH
(00:32:07) Annabelle: omg this is great
(00:32:16) Jen: right?
(00:32:19) Jen: or am I just weird
(00:32:40) Annabelle: no it hink youre right

home

I'm home now... and it's just nothing special anymore. The plan was to suprise my parents by coming home a few days early (because some of my classes didn't have finals but non-cumulative exams during the last week of school). Woke up at 430AM for my 630 flight. Boring sleepy flights, until I thought, ahhhh! I'm going to see Charlie in half an hour. And of course that thought is just too crazy, like since when do I see him ever? He picked me up, (because of course my parents couldn't since it's their suprise) and then we had a pleasant afternoon at Zilker. I learned that I should be a percussionist and play xylophone. I wasn't sure when I should get home, because I didn't know mom's work schedule or which days she goes to the gym. I didn't want to be home incase it would freak her out and have her think that I'm not me but was someone else robbing the house. So we waited until about 4 to go home, and we were so awesome with our secret spy sense, that we got there about 5 minutes after she got home. And my neighbor kids (can't remember how old they are, 8ish?) were playing basketball or whatever outside, and they ran up and gave me hugs. Cute! (especially because I'm way taller than they and I'm never taller than anyone) So I ring the doorbell, and after a few times, I think, oh shoot, where is she?! And then she starts walking to the door, and was totally suprised. And then she did the whole Asian mom thing of offering her whole pantry to Charlie and me.

But being home isn't that great, parents aren't that great together. I'm already looking forward to go to Galveston. I could avoid them by nonstop studying for GREs when I'm here, I guess. At least tomorrow I'm making bagels :)

personal revelation

Well the first part isn't about my "personal revelation" essay... I just got back juries, and I'm glad it went well despite my reed's deadness and how my jaw wouldn't stay still. If only I had a second time to play it, so I could make it better.

So for those of you who haven't taken PSY 161, we had to write an essay where we apply material we learned in class to our lives. And here's part of mine. I wrote about cognitive dissonance This below, is part of my essay, which I hope Dr Elliot finds funny. :P

In addition to cognitive dissonance after decision-making, cognitive dissonance also manifests in procrastination. I am trying to work on this “personal revelations” essay, but I am distracted by a game from www.addictinggames.com. I know I should be working on this essay, but the games are just too tempting. I feel a sense of inconsistency in my mind; my desire to get my essay finished does not match with my behavior as playing games will not get me closer to my goal. To reduce this dissonance, I tell myself that getting distracted now will allow me to focus more later on in the day. By adding cognitions, I reduce the dissonance because I have a reason to play games now instead of writing this. For this particular assignment, I may also alter the importance of the discrepancy. Usually, I try to perfect my work, but since this essay is graded on a pass/fail basis, I may start viewing this essay as less important. I think that playing the game is more important so I can relax, take my mind away from things, and not stress out about school, rather than staring at this word document stressing out about how I am to fill up two pages. Changing the importance of this assignment reduces the stress I may have on getting this done. (Believe me, I do work very hard in PSY 161 though, contrary to what this essay may illustrate.) Occasionally, I change my behavior in midst of my distraction and actually start writing. Changing my behavior also reduces the dissonance I was experiencing before, as my behavior now will get me towards my goal. Through these years of college, it seems that these methods for reducing cognitive dissonance has worked. Thank goodness that I have not changed my attitude yet.

sun!

The sun is FINALLY out, after going into hibernation for half a year! It makes me happy! I spent at least two hours outside behind Hoyt reading BCS yesterday (lets say, I only read about 15 pages being so distracted by awesome outsideness). It's scary how people are EVERYWHERE sitting on the Academic Quad, so I had to go somewhere with less people. And today I walked from orchestra to CVS and back to GLC and it was soooooooo nice. The high today is 87! Yay!

summer

So I'm officially going to the UTMB SURP program this summer for researching something really cool (they haven't told me yet). So from June 2 - August 8 I'll be on an island really close to the beach! That sounds cool, but the last time I've been to Galveston was prolly over 10 years ago, so I can't remember how cool or not cool it is (so someone tell me?).

The day after I said "yes" to them, I got accepted into the Univ. of Florida REU, which I had really wanted. I was thinking right before I said yes to UTMB, that I should just wait until the next day to see if something else comes up (their deadline for a reply back was April 1, and I sent them an email on the 31st of March). Oh well, because the mind is great, and wants to reduce dissonance and tension, it went through this process of decision justification and now I'm over it. Or something like that (maybe I should get better at applying psychology stuff to my life so I can write a good personal application essay for 161)

dream

So I had this really weird dream last night, I won't be able to explain it coherently because I can't even follow it myself. It all started out here at school where we find out we're fourth in the housing lottery. Then I had to go somewhere to do something and I had to walk back to campus. Except as I was walking back, I went the wrong way and got to this really sketchy part, and eventually it ended up with a bunch of people dressed up like Halloween. And there was some dude, that I knew or something, and started talking to. Eventually found his house, and then there was a tornado warning! Then I thought, dude I have to go home! So bam! Magically, I appeared back at home in Austin, where my mom wanted us to all shower before we had to go hide from the tornado. wtf right? So after my sister finishes showering, and after I see that the tornado was around Dallas (which is 3 hours away, so that's one crazy tornado) I decided I had to shower really really fast. And you know in dreams, when you're pressed for time, you end up doing things really slowly. So as I was showering, I kept thinking, shoot the roof is going to get blown off the house (my bathroom's on the second floor) and I kept showering really slowly, and thinking goodness, why am I showering?! But whatever, I finally finish, and wooooooooooosh zooom! We were in some place that's really colorful (in my dream, I think I said it was Cornell, but it was nothing like Cornell). And so there was a seperate room in the bigger room, and so everyone was in the smaller room and getting ready to watch some movie. And then my alarm woke me up (typical of how all these dream stories end) and I thought shoot, 262 exam today.

:P

Why so hungry?

So it's back to the normal school routine again. Oh joy. No more spring break :(

Vanessa got me to focus for a bit tonight which was pretty funny. She's like "work on your paper for an hour, and then take a 10 minute break." Of course, that's pretty much impossible for me, so I told her "how about 10 minutes of focusing, then break?" I guess I'm working my way up, and soon I'll be able to focus like bam bam bam!

Also I'm in the midst of deciding what summer program I want to do... and still waiting to hear back from the others. So far I'm 2 in 2 which is exciting I guess. So right now, if I don't get a better offer before April 1, it looks like I'll be at UTMB in Galveston for the summer. :)

Annabelle on how I should turn down Stony Brook:
Annabelle: your institution is ballin
Jen: haha
Annabelle: but not ballin enough fo me

Snowman

Today I made my very first real snowman! And the cartoons were right, you acutally do roll the snow balls! I didn't realize that snowmans would be so fat and heavy so we couldn't roll the snow balls as big as they are in the cartoons (relative to the cartoon characters).

We're like one happy family!



We couldn't find people around GLC to take a picture for us, so we had to make some sort of snow thing to put the camera on.

In need of Friday

So it was a bit of a crazy weekend. Did the BCS project with Lisa on Saturday, and played with play dough with a way creative 6 year old girl. Good times. Then I had tea with Alison, Lisa, and Katrina. I was bad at drinking tea, because I could smell it, but when I drink it, it just tastes like warm water! Then I was waiting for the bus back to GLC, but it never appeared so I ended up walking back in the dark with snow flying everywhere and all over the ground.

Yesterday was.... all over the place. I get an email from mom saying that she was thinking about coming up and visitng for part of my and my sister's spring break. I've learned (especially this year) that I'm not good at hearing stuff like this, and so last minute so I pretty much went crazy in the afternoon and then had to pull myself together so I could waste 4 hours of my day to go to Eastman to play 5 minutes of junk in a concert (that ended up pretty good). It annoyed me how I had all this stuff planned, that I'm going to have to change things around, and have to entertain my mom (because I'm sure she wouldn't like doing kid things like playing Guitar hero all night). And it gave me the sense when I first got her email that she didn't trust me with Charlie or something, even though I thought we've demonstrated enough that we're good kids. Anyhow, then I got back and decided that I should call home to get everything figured out and at least know details. So mom is coming here on Wednesday, and she's taking Charlie and I to Ithaca on Thursday to see my sister (who hasn't really existed all semester). I'm really excited about seeing Cornell again because the last time was a little depressing with everyone being gone and everything being closed and other stuff. And then Charlie and I are coming coming back to Rochester Friday night and going to Niagara Falls with Max and Janelle and whoever else on Saturday. :) I'm glad things worked out in the end, I just need to learn not to freak when I get news like this and have to change my plans. I really hope things aren't going to be awkward.

In need of spring break

Got this ridiculous music history exam tomorrow. He wants us to memorize all the listening examples (which means like 30 songs), AND their composers and year written. Of course, since this is all crazy ancient music, the titles are very unimaginative and are just like the first two words of the lyrics... which would sound like an easy task to do, but I can't understand what they're singing! So much for "declamation" that they did (making the rhythms and stuff such that it resembles the normal talking pace so that the words are more understandable). ARGH!

The lab I work in moved to MRBX, which you would think it's nice since it's all new and stuff. I'm not sure I like it though, because we don't have our own room anymore, and everything's everywhere. But since all the microbio labs are in one area now, I'm apparently working near where Arthur is working. Maybe I can fight him for the autoclave sometime? Wohoo for being lab slaves. Hmmmm...

Anyhow, spring break is in 8 days! Which means Charlie's coming up to visit and freeze with me and we're going to Ithaca to visit Tiffany for a weekend (well Thursday/Friday). Yay for that!

In need of chocolate

So because everyone that's abroad now have these cute little blog things, I decided to revive one. Since xanga got way too ugly to use, I've created one here, that maybe, I'll update more often than I did xanga. :)