So it has been 2 class days since the start of school and I already have a sense that this semester, though fun, will be rather overwhelming. This week in it's self has been rather stressful already mainly due to, you guess it (if you've read my other journals), work. Yes it would seem since I'm the only undergraduate student worker in that lab and I don't have as much free time to hang around the entropy of the lab continues to increase. To start, since dishes are at the bottom of the list, they've pile up to the point that if a graduate student needs some kind of glassware, they're going to have to clean it themselves. Now granted I could be spending some of free time in the lab fixing this problem, but alas, as much as I like this lab, I can only take so much of it as far as the student worker duties go. The next thing is that the orders have been stacking up because I've had to do more important things such as making fly food (because with out that all genetics experiments come to a halt...and if left for too long are ruined) and making ampacillian plates for the growing of bacteria for plasmid DNA. So these orders have piled up to about 10 different items from about 4 companies (VWR and Fisher for most of them), and fortunately none of these have been very urgent orders as some are almost 2 weeks old. On top of all of this I have my cell culture stocks to maintain which were going so well but aren't now for seemingly unexplainable reasons, as well as the fact Dr. Panin wants me to take up two other research projects on top of all of this. Since I'm a student, I can only work in there a max of 20 hours a week, 15 tops is the max I'm really willing to spend in there during the semester if not less because of classes, and so you start to see why I need other student workers, preferably 2 more but I'll likely only get 1 more. I personally feel that Dr. Panin will have to hire a 2nd student worker because there will be only so much the newer person can do. But enough of this complaining about work, as much as I complain about it, I wouldn't want to work anywhere else as an undergraduate because the people are fun and there are so many opportunities in there.

Classes so far have been fun, my biochemistry class, which most likely will be my hardest one is also most likely going to be the most interesting one as that is what my major is. Population genetics look like a pretty easy A as does analytical chemistry. The university killed my art 150 class because the professor quit so I had to change into statistics which I have heard is pretty easy. And finally my Phage Genomics class looks very interesting and I got into the group I wanted to work with so I personally beleive it will be a fun class because of that.

So as this summer session comes closer to a close the fall semester classes become yet more exciting each day. I not only will I be taking three classes in my major, one of those classes, Phage Genomics, is a research class funded by the NSF. The other two classes (Biochemistry 1 for majors and Population Genetics), though not quiet as exciting as the prospect of getting to do more research have me chomping at the metaphorical bit. So three of my five classes will be in the building where I work, and four of the five classes are sciences. Looking back at those years toiled away in high school I remember that I never could have imagined having that much science packed into a schedule.
As for work, my research there progresses and soon will be in full swing. Unfortunately I am the only undergraduate working in the lab at the moment and though I am excited to be doing my own research project, at times it seems to be just yet another cumbersome task I need to do before I go home as this last Friday can attest to in which I spent 7 hours at work. Granted this means I get paid more and that makes me happy, but I know I won't be able to put fourth this much effort during the fall semester as I will have 15 hours of classes to take and study for as well as trying to have a life outside of academia and research though I never seem to have a problem doing that. Fortunately for work my classes that are in the same building as work coincide with one another such that I will not need to run back and fourth from class to work to class on campus. That does not discount the fact that I need the professor to hire another student worker, in fact two more student workers would be better as it would seem that one particular task in the lab is essentially a full time job.

The first summer session is over and I am glad it is. This professor was one of the worst for teaching I've had in my being here at A&M. I suppose this should be expected when you approach your upper level classes, but this was just ridiculous. The first day of class he seemed like a nice guy and worked himself up in such a great way by saying he gives copious amounts of partial credit, but by the first test it was apparent that this was not the case. In hindsight I suppose I should have helped myself more with studying more, but there's only so much that can be done when the professor chooses to derive how to do stuff on the board and never actually gives examples. At least thermodynamics is over, I hear the professor for quantum mechanics is much kinder overall.
Along with having taken my final today, I helped my girlfriend move out of her dorm as well since she only took the first summer session. This wouldn't be so bad except for this one small fact, they kicked her out of her dorm at 9:30 AM, she had a final at 10:30 AM and 1:00 PM and no one told her she had to move out till the Saturday before. Well she got very little sleep and I helped her till about 2:30 move important stuff into my room because she didn't want to leave it in her car since there have been a string of car burglaries recently. Since when did academia turn into a business. The housing department is merely responding to the University administration's approved calender. I could almost swear the administration has shit for brains around here sometimes.

So I've finally reached the point that I've been waiting for in life and that is the chance to do research. Yes, ever since I was five years of age I dreamed of exploring the unknowns in chemistry, and so I am. Although it is not the kind of research I thought I would end up doing, my passion for chemistry has remained remarkably strong, and though some may not consider biochemistry 'chemistry' in the classical context, to me it is one in the same merely taken ones step further to organic polymers.
For a while I wanted to do chemical engineering merely because I didn't think the job market had room for chemist and chemical engineering sounded like a vast, expanding field. Then (funnily enough) I learned that many chemical engineers are forced to use the illogical standard system of measurement and not the beautiful base ten metric system. That's when I began rethinking just what part of chemistry I wanted to do. My biology teacher in the 9th grade of high school put so much emphasis on biochemistry that over the course of a couple of years I began to fall in love with the seemingly infinite complexity of the inner workings of the cell and it was when I took AP biology my Jr. year of high school that I realized I wanted to major in biochemistry.
I've been very lucky, luckier than I really have a right to be it would seem. As soon as I was accepted to A&M the job hunt began at the urging of my parents. I applied to several help desk and computer tech positions because I've been raised around computers, (this is because my father worked for a company that did service calls for sun and now works as a system administrator for the school district I went to high school in) some of them got better qualified candidates and some never answered back. Approximately a week before getting dropped off at A&M I received several e-mails from the biochemistry list-server all of which were labs in the biochemistry department looking for student workers. I applied to all of the jobs that came in from those e-mails and finally I received a reply from one and an interview was set for the day after being dropped off. With little attention to the interview process I was practically hired on the spot, and unbeknownst this was an extremely fortunate sequence of events for me as there have been undergraduates who have spent their whole undergraduate career applying to lab positions and never obtaining one. But at the time it was just another job, in a different atmosphere full of new exciting things to learn. Now it seems however when I mention the nature of my work, fellow undergraduates envy the fact that I got a lab job, and so quickly.
So alas I come upon the reason for this musing. For my degree I must complete 4 credit hours of undergraduate research which can be difficult to achieve for most undergraduates since the first step is to find a lab that will accept one's volunteer hours. I though as I stated earlier just so happen to be luckier than I have any right to be and already have a spot in a lab from which I can conduct my research credit hours which have begun as of this summer 2007. The research in Dr. Vlad Panin's Drosophila lab is rather interesting once you actually understand the intricacies of what they are doing. The research revolves around muscular dystrophy in Droshphila and in particular an enzyme they call sialytransferase which is responsible for sialating other protiens. In layman's terms, this is an enzyme (which a lack of expression seems to be linked to muscular dystrophy) that glycosolates other proteins. For my undergraduate research I get to work with Drosophila neuronal cells in an effort guider my the graduate student mentor I work under to find the difference in activity of sialytransferase in different cell lines. Sounds exciting? Yes I know it doesn't really, but in reality it's the journey there that's the most exciting, just like the journey to this point in my life.