firnafth

Actually Getting Busy Now

2009-11-13T17:54:19Z

It has been a long time coming, but I am now at the point where I really don't have time to goof off. The preparation of 3 papers ~5-10 pages in length, along with homework associated with my research, have been keeping me actually busy. So now, I get up in the morning and I feel like I didn't get quite enough sleep, but once I am up and about I am OK. I think I am just quite busy.

Monday's meeting with Dr. Cameron resulted in a tenuous plan for research involving fairly intense trapping and GUDs in areas with and without honeysuckle. GUDs, or Giving-Up-Densities, are an interesting way to study foraging in animals. You take seeds (or another food source) and mix them in with sand and put the mixture on trays, which you set out in the habitat of the animal. Because an animal has to work harder and harder to find seeds in the sand as the seeds all get consumed, eventually it will decide it's not worth it to keep looking for the seeds. That seed density when the animal "gives up" feeding at the tray is called the Giving-Up-Density (GUD). GUDs are low when there is little other food available in the habitat, or when the animals feel safe. GUDs are higher when there is lots of food available and when the animal feels a greater risk of being eaten (such as when the moon is bright).

We decided spool-and-line would have too many difficulties, specifically associated with deciding how to translate a line dragged all over the place into actual usable data points when it's high up in a tree. I still would very much like to do some sort of three-dimensional space use thing, but I'm not sure how I'd go about it. Dr. Cameron thinks I may be able to use radiotelemetry, but he is not sure how we would calculate the range. I am fairly positive that not only is it possible to calculate a volume for the three-dimensional home range, but that I could write some program to do this myself. I could do it on Excel; I could also theoretically learn a programming language and write a program. As my readers probably know, I would love an excuse to learn computer programming. I hope I can find one.

Everyone asks me how my research progress is going, but my status is always changing and I am always going back-and-forth. Perhaps it would be better for you if you just waited until I am doing the research. Then you don't have to join me as I run around in circles trying to come up with an idea, reject it, go to another, reject it, etc. Although I tolerate this well now, I am sure this process will be quite trying by March.

In any case, Dr. Cameron told me to write a short literature review on white-footed mice and come up with some methods to boot. Fortunately, because I have been reading the literature for the past 2 months, I know it fairly well and have been getting this done quite quickly. I have 70 articles concerning white-footed mice indexed, although I will not need to discuss all of them for my "quick proposal."

Photo of Table

2009-11-09T13:34:58Z

The fourth chair is barely visible on the left, with a red blanket on it; I didn't want to just pin it uselessly against the wall.

I Bought a Table (with 4 chairs)

2009-11-07T21:21:44Z

This morning, I bought a table and chairs. This had been my intent. I had found the locations of the two nearest Goodwill stores and set off as soon as I knew they would be open. I was intending to shop for winter clothing and a table; my budget limit was set at around $100. When I got to the first Goodwill the parking lot was actually quite full. (Maybe this is a common Saturday morning activity. I just went then because the streets weren't crowded). Inside there was the kind of table I was looking for. I had been thinking about getting a square one, and this one was round, but it was otherwise just right, and it was a nice table.

I bought it, although it cost all $100. Perhaps I should have looked around more stores and waited for a square, cheaper (and junkier) table, but I admit I wasn't sure what my odds were for getting what I wanted and I disliked the thought of going shopping every Saturday until I got lucky. So I bought the table. I am satisfied, but this means that winter clothing will have to wait until December. I will be OK. It is not that cold right now. By December it will only be as cold as it could get in Greenville. As long as I get gloves and a better coat before January I should be fine.

The table fit into the van, although I should have brought a blanked to pad it with - one of the legs got a scrape on it. I had to take the legs off to fit the thing into the door of my apartment. The table is fairly heavy, so it was quite difficult for me to carry the tabletop to the door, and also to tip the table back onto its legs once I reattached them. But I did it. No more eating on the floor. No more studying on a cardboard box. And if I get any friends, I can now invite them over and feed them.

I will take a picture of the table and post it to this journal.

Next week there is a little excitement going on. We are starting a new series of labs in Freshman Biology, so I will need to actually do some teaching for once (the last two lab sessions were so easy, I felt like I wasn't learning anything about teaching). We are doing a plant lab, and the readings were dense and the pre-lab was a little unclear. I got a little snippy at the TA meeting because it was being suggested that I shouldn't worry about understanding the topic very well. Another TA later told me, "Just act like you know what you're talking about and they won't know the difference." But all the times I accidentally told the students something wrong this term, and later found out, haunt me. And isn't pretending I know dishonest? And no, I can't say I'll look it up. I don't have my act together enough to do that, I've already failed to get back to my students on a question more than once. And finally, if I was having trouble figuring it out, how can I expect my (somewhat lazy) students to do so?

One good thing was that Dr. Beyette found a more clear reading on the topic. I hope this helps me and the students understand about the plants. In any case, I will be giving a lecture on plant anatomy and hormones at the beginning of lab so that I know my students understand.

I have an Animal Behavior exam on Friday, but since there is lots of time to study for it, I am not worried.

I have picked all of my paper topics for all three classes. As I'm sure I posted before, I am doing my Evolution paper on a theory in community ecology. For my Sexual Selection paper, I am going to talk about condition-dependent traits. There are a lot of questions about why females prefer males with various characteristics, and this theory suggests that some characteristics show how healthy a male is. For my Animal Behavior paper, I am going to talk about sex-biased dispersal, which is when one sex disperses further from the place of birth than the other. Dispersal is one of my interests in ecology, so I will enjoy this paper. (Fortunately for me, there is a lot of overlap between ecology and behavior, especially ecology at the organismal or population level).

I Rather Slacked off This Weekend

2009-11-03T21:22:23Z

I hardly got anything school-related done, with the exception of doing my take-home test. I finished it in one session on Sunday and haven't messed with it since. It is due tomorrow, and I will be glad to have it off my hands (although I have managed to forget it entirely today).

On Friday night and Saturday all day I had spent the vast majority of time working on my Halloween costume. I used papier-mache to make the bat ears, having formed a cardboard form on Friday and then, in three stages, covering the cardboard with strips of paper dipped in a flour/water mixture. I had to put the oven on low heat to dry the ears each time, because otherwise they would take 12 hours or so to dry completely. While the ears dried in the oven I threw together some bat wings, by taking a strip of about 3 yards of fabric (1 yard wide) and sewing it temporarily onto one of my shirts. I also sewed wires in the fabric to make a tail and a single wing-finger on each side to spread the wings out.

Between the ears and the wings, I spent most of Saturday working on the costume. I then went to the party in the evening. I stayed for under 2 hours, arriving at 8:30 and leaving at 10:20. I left when things were just getting off the ground, but I was tired and was beginning to find the timbre of the party too racouous, with the music and all the people. I had stayed so late only because people that I knew, and at least wanted to say hi to, did not show up until later.

Why would I even go to a party? Why do I do these things? I like talking to these people, and they are all I have to befriend, but I don't know how much I have in common with them. I am afraid they will corrupt me. They do not fear crudeness and like to drink. I make no comment, and make little judgment, but worry. For years I scorned this lifestyle and its attendant trappings; I was an outsider and I knew it and I didn't care. Now I am afraid of being branded as arrogant, and isolating myself from an already limited pool of peers. So I make an appearance and act friendly. Now I fear I am in danger of losing the icy sobriety I have cultivated for a long time.

In class we talk about costs and benefits. Benefits of going to classic gatherings and parties: a social life. Costs of going: 1) loss of hitherto-defining reticence; 2) possibility of being negatively impacted by peers; 3) identity crisis.

No longer, it seems, am I allowed to be myself. The price for me being myself is to isolate myself from the community I am supposed to belong to. Some people have an excuse because they have families. I have no excuse.

I met with Dr. Cameron on Monday. He wants me to come up with specific questions which I want my research to answer: one general question and a number of sub-questions. With a number of sub-questions, I can be sure that if one method fails, I can work on another. Or, if I have enough time, I could do multiple methods and get multi-layered results. Knowing this was good, but I felt dreadful after the meeting because I had forgotten to read several articles Dr. Cameron had suggested to me, and because I felt like I'd made no progress in doing what I'm actually supposed to do. Now I just want to demonstrate that I can make progress. I must come up with an idea and plan by next Monday. Then Dr. Cameron and I can assess the merits of this idea and its attendant methodologies.

Now I am ready to work hard. Either because I relaxed from school on the weekend, or because of guilt at getting so little done, or both, I feel very motivated.

Halloween Approaches...

2009-10-28T21:07:31Z

And I lack a costume for the party one of the grad students is hosting this Saturday. I am toying with two options. 1) Fashion some outfit out of my current available wardrobe that is a "costume." 2) Use some of the extra cardboard I have stacked in the closets and on the walls of my apartment to make some suitable props/costume pieces. I am going for option 2. The question is, what should I do? It has to involve an animal or a monster.

This week is not very stressful. Lab is easy: after talking to students for a few minutes about how they could write better, and going over lab procedures and safety for some new tests they can do, all I have to do is go around, answer questions, and ensure the appropriate people are wearing goggles. The students, having designed their own testing protocols, are supposed to enact them during this week's lab, and I am supposed to step back and let them do whatever they have planned. Despite this, I have told them when their designs are nonsensical. I don't want my students to fail, even if it is a learning experience to do so.

I have a test in Evolution on Friday, but it is actually take-home until Wednesday. Should I even bother studying for it, I wonder. I don't want to seem lazy, but the question is whether I will spend less time total on the test if I study for it beforehand and can take it in less time, or if I just take longer to go through it while looking things up.

I'd rather have an in-class test, really. It seems lacking in rigor to give students 5 days to take a test. Maybe it is a dreadfully difficult test, but I've not heard anything to that effect from students who have taken the class.

I presented in Sexual Selection on Tuesday. Being at the end of class, my slides were antiquated by the time we got to them, or they were uninteresting. Only one of them did we discuss at all. The next time I present I should go first. That way my slides can be a tipping-off point for discussion, rather than being an exposition of various things I learned wrong before class that I now know correctly (after we discussed them).

I'm actually not that bothered by it.

Today's Cameron lab meeting was fun: we talked about invasive earthworms. However, Dr. Cameron can't make the meeting time the next two weeks, so we are canceling meeting until three weeks from today. This is sad. I enjoy lab meetings a lot. Last week's involved a brainstorm session in which my focus in three-dimensional home range changed from radio-tracking to spool-and-line tracking. Now I am learning about this method, in which one attaches a ball of string in a case to the back of an animal. One end of the string is tied down so that, as the animal runs off, the string tracks exactly where it goes. After the string has all run out, the casing is torn off. The animal loses some fur but is otherwise unaffected. This method is quite exact and cheap as well. I think it is a good idea.

Now I want to decide a driving force behind this study. What can three-dimensional home range tell me about white-footed mice? Are there other experiments or dimensions which I can add to this study to give me more information? Will I have time to do other experiments? My lab-mates assure me I will be busy, but I am honestly a little worried about, say, finishing tracking at the end of summer. Then I have an entire school year to analyze data and write a thesis. I feel like I don't need that much time to do those things, especially if I am doing little else besides teaching.

Of course, maybe my concerns are silly. But I need to have them settled. I must meet with Dr. Cameron to discuss things.

In the meantime, I am trying to choose paper topics for my term papers. I am trying to somehow find ones that are relevant to my ecological interests in mammals, density, and geography. We will see how well this goes.

Recently, I have been increasingly aware of the escalating volume of articles, both print and electronic, which I have stashed on my desk and in my computer (I estimate I have 250 articles in PDF or paper form). In order to control them, I need some kind of cataloging method. Dr. Cameron referred me to EndNote, which stores citations along with any other kinds of information I would like to include about papers. Now all I need to do is figure out a catalog number system. Dr. Cameron's is simply a cumulative number list: the first article he ever cataloged is #1 and by now he is in the late 7000s. This seems rather clumsy, but sorting papers by subject would be difficult because topics would overlap. I can't, for the time being, think of any quicker and easier way catalog articles than Dr. Cameron's (and in order for me to be motivated to keep my catalog up to date, it must be quick and easy). I must think about it.

What I Have Learned in Grad School So Far

2009-10-23T13:31:57Z

I remember feeling despair about my attempts to study mathematical modeling near the beginning of the term. It is still hard and I know very little, but in retrospect I don't think I realized how much progress I'd made. I was vaguely aware that often, when learning something new, I am slow to get it at first. I remember having a dreadful time learning how to draw from life in freshman Art classes at Furman. I am not as good at math as I am at art, but I do realize that I have made progress: While when I showed up in Cincinnati I would have shied away from a single simple equation in any text I might be reading, now I am willing - and often capable - of taking the time to understand equations that are as long as a page is wide.

Now I just need to learn how to do it quickly.

But I see that my attempts to teach myself were successful at least in part. I am reminded that what little I know about statistics I have taught myself, too. This is good, but not entirely adequate. Fortunately, I will be taking a class in statistics in the spring, although it is more of a practical applications class than a theory-based class, which is a shame.

It is exciting when I realize how many things I have learned, or am learning, since I started here. I have learned a lot about the white-footed mouse and about patch size/animal density relationships (many of the papers I have read). I have been learning about Animal Behavior from the class in it. I have been learning about the initiation and maintenance of male competition and female choice in Sexual Selection class. I have been learning about population genetics in Evolution class.

I managed to pick a theoretical-ecology based topic for my term paper in Evolution class (this was, I admit, a little sneaky on my part). What is better than getting class credit for studying up on a topic I think is utterly fascinating?

Most of the time I am so busy worrying about tests, or teaching, or my disputes with this or that person, to be grateful, but grateful I should be! I should not forget what Dr. Thibault told me, that many people don't appreciate grad school until it is too late. I should not forget that, aside from teaching, my job here more or less consists of studying and researching whatever I find interesting. Lucky I am!

Speaking of teaching, I suppose I have been learning to teach, too. Unfortunately I have less zest for this than I have for anything else. Yesterday I figured out that I was failing to tell my students properly what would be on their quizzes. I told them that the quiz would include the reading but since I didn't mention the reading topics in class, they didn't think they were worth studying. Thus, they did poorly on the quizzes. I feel bad, but I am also confused because I told them the quiz would include the reading. Doesn't that mean they should study the reading?

Part of me wants to blame the lab manual, but really it is my fault. I should have been more clear about what I wanted the students to learn. Even so, I dislike that lab manual ever more. It is poorly organized, excessively nice-perky and loud in tone, and not very well written; and furthermore the readings don't concur with the labs very well.

Oh, one more gripe: I don't care if what my students learn has no obvious application outside of biology (e.g. in business). 1) They are taking a biology class; what do they expect to learn? 2) They are in college; taking classes in different disciplines is one of the points of a college education. If they really didn't want to do this, they should have picked a different job track and gone to trade school. 3) Why do you take classes in different disciplines? To be well-educated. You can think as critically as you want, but it won't help you understand if someone starts discussing a topic you know nothing about. To know what people are talking about is what it means to be well-educated.

Now it is true you can't apply knowledge unless you can think, but neither can you apply knowledge you don't have. Both thinking and knowledge are important, but knowledge is the root.

Of course, you could say that being well-educated is worthless. I'll have to come up with a good refutation for that later.

Next Week - First Test (Animal Behavior)

2009-10-17T20:47:00Z

It wouldn't be a very big deal if I didn't have all of this teaching to worry about; if I didn't have an outline to a paper due the week after that, for which I must read many articles; If I weren't going out to do fieldwork for 6 hours every weekend; and if I wasn't also supposed to be doing literature searches in association with my research project.

I'm not that worried about it, but I do need to study. And my time seems at a premium, except that I don't feel overwhelmingly busy. Grading quizzes is taking a long time because the students got so much wrong and because I needed to remind myself about the size of many of the microorganisms we looked at in lab. For the quiz, I put a question which, to answer correctly, the students would have to had taken good notes on their microorganisms which they looked at last week, including figuring out their sizes. I think it was a good question, and it got around the fact that there were no assignments due from that week. However, I realized I hadn't measured all of the microorganisms myself, so I had to go back and do that. Now I am ready to grade again. AS far as I can tell, the students did utterly dreadfully on their quizzes, with the average score for the ones I've graded being 12/20 or so. However, in our TA session I was encouraged to keep giving hard quizzes, as this class is a "weed-out" class.

Next week there is no real "lab" for lab: there will be lots of class discussion; and the students will come up with a pre-proposal for a methodology to test whether a sample contains living, or once living, things. I am slightly nervous about this, as in the past I have not bothered to try to lead the class in fruitful "large group" discussion, and it may be difficult to get the students to speak out now. This is, I suppose, my punishment for resisting the touted method of teaching until now. Many TAs are excited about this project, as it purports to teach "higher thinking," which is supposed to be more useful than knowledge of biology and is also supposedly more exciting for the students. I am mostly concerned that my students learn how to write well and scientifically.

TAs were forwarded an article about the importance of teaching higher thinking (in contrast to what, lower knowledge??). It occurs to me that this philosophy tails a movement in art education which is away from teaching technical skill and towards allowing rampant innovation. Furman's Art department was highly traditional in that it maintained a focus on good drawing skills; some art departments don't teach these skills and instead focus on multimedia, concept-based art design (how miserable I would have been at one of these places!). Just so, the biology lab turns away from a knowledge-based approach to one that is based on "higher thinking" and which is supposed to be useful across disciplines.

Today I went into the field again. It will probably be the last day of plant sampling: we finished through 6 relatively easy honeysuckle plots. Soon it is predicted to freeze at night, and then all the herbs will die off; so we won't be able to (easily) sample them any more. I will miss going out into the field, although it has been getting chilly: My fingers hurt with cold for much of today.

Sexual Selection class rather fried me this week. We read an expansive theoretical review article which did not define all of its terms (it assumed the reader had some knowledge), and I was entirely lost in it. I read it carefully and made many notes, thinking maybe I had half figured it out, but when class came around it was apparent that I didn't understand it at all. This was very dispiriting: I felt rather stupid. I talked with Dr. Polak after the class. He told me that it was OK if I am confused, as long as class discussions help to elucidate things for me. Therefore, I will strive on; but I truly dislike feeling stupid.

Although this week I felt miserable about the clash in education strategies, and was very lonely having nobody to understand me here, now I feel better. In any case, I must go: dinnertime is soon and I must make my food. I will be baking half of a Cornish Hen with spices rubbed on and under the skin. Delectable.

Fieldwork Photos

2009-10-13T20:17:40Z

Dr. Cameron took some photos during fieldwork on Saturdays.

The largest group that came at one time (less the photographer). From left: Dr. Miller (geologist), Dr. Culley (plant biologist), Sarah (geology student), me, and Dr. Lentz (plant biologist).

Sampling herbs in a honeysuckle plot. In the foreground is a bush honeysuckle. Behind me are some pawpaws. From left: Dr. Miller, me, Dr. Culley, Dr. Lentz.

Sampling herbs in a non-honeysuckle plot. Can you see the difference? From left - me, Marjie (plant biologist), Dr. Culley.

Grading, Grading, and Fieldwork

2009-10-12T13:07:24Z

These things took up a good chunk of my weekend. I have been grading the 47 lab reports from my students and taking my time to make comments. Unfortunately, making comments also means that it has been taking forever for me to finish grading. Next time I will only make a few comments; otherwise I will be spending far more hours teaching than I am supposed to.

I actually do not mind grading in and of itself. It depresses me, however, when the students do a bad job. I would say over half of my students to not know how to talk about statistics (and thus, how to write about them), and most are poor writers to boot. For their current assignment, I have tried not to take much off for bad writing, but I am going to warn them that for future assignments I will judge writing. If they are going to learn how to write like scientists, they will have to learn to write well too.

I wonder if my writing was that bad when I was a Freshman in college. One way to see would be to read some early LJ entries: I started this journal at the end of January 2006.

... [Reading first entry]

Well, I will say my writing style has changed and (hopefully) improved since then: I still often worry that my journal is poorly written, ever since my little brother Brand complained that it was hard to read. Needless to say, my first journal entry is not as painful to read as some lab reports I graded over the weekend. That is good to know. Should I credit Mom, as she made me write in my homeschool journal day after day although I hated it at the time? Or a strong background in reading?

Fieldwork on Saturday was fun, as always. Going out vegetation sampling has become something I look forward to every week. This last Saturday we finished the last of the 16 plots at that location, Miami Whitewater. There are 16 more plots in another location, called Mount Airy, which have not been sampled yet. However, there is concern that all of the herbs will die off at Mt. Airy before we could finish there. Dr. Cameron and Dr. Culley are going to come to a decision about whether to try to finish those plots before it is too late.

Speaking of herbs dying off and the inexorable approach of winter, the leaves on the trees here are starting to turn yellow and red. Soon they will all be very beautiful. Dr. Cameron says that the red and yellow leaves will stay on the trees until the first frost; then they will fall off, leaving the bare trees behind.

I need to get back to work. I have to proofread my proposal for the term paper for Evolution class. It does not actually have to be about evolution, and so I am writing it on a theory of community ecology. I find community ecology theories endlessly fascinating and intriguing. This is going to be a very fun paper to write.

Finally, I Get Busy

2009-10-07T13:28:22Z

This week, I have finally become busy. I am very glad about this. There are a few reasons why I am busy: 1) I have the presentation in Sexual Selection tomorrow; 2) I have grading to do; 3) I have tried hard to do a good job preparing for the labs this week.

I am glad about all of these things. After putting in a few (3 maybe) hours preparing for lab, yesterday's went quite well. It was a microscope lab in which the students get to learn how to handle microscopes and then to make their own slides of microorganisms. The students thought a lot of the things they saw were pretty neat, although their response to the planarian (small flatworm that we had in addition to the microorgansims to look at) was of half-fascinated revulsion.

They were bad at making slides. They tend to put too much liquid on, and then the coverslip slid all over the place and the water (with microorganisms) spilled on the table. They fingered the coverslips and made them dirty. They tried to put a planarian on a regular slide instead of a depression slide (which has a divit to hold thick organisms); it started trying to slink off the slide. However, I think most of them found the things they were supposed to find. Nobody could find the E. coli, which were very small, so I made my own slide and found them as a demonstration.

It was a fairly fun lab despite all that, and it went quite smoothly.

Yesterday I met with Dr. Cameron. We narrowed down ideas for my research; as of now I will be doing something with vertical habitat (that is, tree) use by Peromyscus leucopus, although what I will do exactly remains to be seen. Three-dimensional home range is still an option; if that is not plausible, I could do just the proportion of time spent in trees; I could figure out what the mice have been eating and see if it indicates that they eat most of their food in the trees or on the ground; and there are other things I could do. The upshot is that although we know the mice climb trees, we don't know why, how much, etc. There are a lot of things I could do to investigate this.

Now I have some reading and a lot of thinking to do: reading on Peromyscus leucopus food habits, and also papers on why animals are semi-arboreal; and thinking about various experimental methods.

I must get to reading the discussion paper for our lab meeting today: ethics in science writing. I will post a photo, though, which somebody else took at the grad student picnic (it was the week school started). It was raining, but we did actually get the grills to light and cook our hamburgers and hot dogs. I held an umbrella over the starting coals for 40 minutes, until we thought they could fend for themselves.

Teaching Labs

2009-10-02T21:42:13Z

I had intended to post about my first teaching experience soon after it (that was on Tuesday), but I felt so dreadful about how I had managed it that I didn't want to write about it, and I was uncomfortably tense and embarrassed until lab on Thursday, which went better and so I felt better.

I was rather disorganized and cowardly on Tuesday. I was not timid or scared, but I made somewhat of a mess of some things, was a bit meaner than necessary, and got confused because I was wrong about some questions we were going over. I was distressed and stupid enough to try to skip a question when, as the students had different answers than me, I realized that I had gotten it wrong. One asked me directly to go back to it, and I suspect this may have killed any confidence the students may have had in me at that point.

At the beginning of class, everyone was supposed to have their pre-lab exercises checked to make sure they had done them. I wandered all over the classroom before people had sat down and tried to check of pre-labs at the same time as tell them which groups they were in. But I forgot people's names, so eventually I just checked off the pre-labs and then miserably awkwardly parsed people out into their assigned groups. (There were no assigned groups on Thursday. It wasn't worth the trouble).

The students checked over their answers in groups, and then we went over them as a class. I didn't know all of the right answers, as I said above, and that was bad. Then I was overly fierce while reading the syllabus, and skipped over some things I probably should have mentioned. That wasn't too big of a deal, though.

The rest of the lab was OK. The students enjoyed the part of the lab where they took measurements of body lengths - arm length, head circumference, etc - to compare to height. I didn't make them stay in their groups to work on their data, which was a bad idea in retrospect because, having left lab before analyzing their data, they now have deluged me with emails asking how to do things in Excel. If I had made them stay I could have helped them in person. But, that's not the major problem. The major problem was that I was disorganized and cowardly. I felt terrible all Tuesday afternoon, and all of Wednesday too. I felt like I'd made a dreadful mistake I couldn't fix. I read fantasy books to hide from the pain.
I don't think my students from that class like me. I saw one while walking to my apartment and greeted her pleasantly, but she didn't even try to smile. Maybe she was in a bad mood.

Thursday morning before my second lab I was a ball of miserable dread, but that lab went much better (I have not had problems being nervous in lab. My psychology understands that being nervous will be the death of me). I ran things more smoothly, remembered more things and the students seemed, in general, warmer towards me. Apparently I still got some things wrong. The students were supposed to be really systematic about measuring each other, but I never bothered trying to make them be really careful. I thought that the project was mostly about learning to work with a group, as well as basic data manipulation. I guess I was wrong. It's OK though. I'll just have to ensure more order the next time around.

Next week's lab is microscopes and single-celled organisms. We have cultures of some active eukaryotes, like Amoeba and Paramecium, which are really fun to observe on a slide. I am excited to share this with the students. Maybe some of them will enjoy looking at slides as much as I do. If I am excited, that will help.

The week after next, we are giving an open-book quiz. The people who run the labs are death on memorization, and since closed-book = memorization, we will not be giving closed book quizzes.
"You can ask harder questions," they said.
"Or," I groused, "I could have them memorize and answer hard questions."
"That would be too much," they said.
I don't think so. But then again, I have been unusual in the past in wishing (and saying on student evaluations) that I wished classes were harder. Maybe I should be more sympathetic to other students.

It makes my blood boil about every time Dr. Kinkle says something, because the thing he says the most often is that memorization is completely worthless. I do want to be tolerant of his teaching methods, but it is really hard when he constantly insults a discipline which has always been very dear to me. I rather want to tell him so, but I'm afraid that if he weren't sympathetic it would make it worse.

Next week I am giving a presentation in Sexual Selection (the class is student-presentation and discussion based). I am looking forward to this, because I think I give fairly good presentations. It is a little scary, though. Last class period Dr. Polak, the teacher, grilled the presenters.

Now I am going to eat dinner. This has been a rough week but I think things will get better. Furthermore, I am going vegetation sampling again tomorrow, and I always enjoy that.

Yes, I Will Be Busy

2009-09-26T19:23:29Z

Having had all of my classes, I am assured I will be quite busy. Sexual Selection requires reading although it meets only once a week, and I will need to make 2 30-minute presentations during the course of the class on papers everyone has read. These presentations cannot be bad - Dr. Polak, the teacher, made sure we understood that we must speak precisely and scientifically during them. Each of us will also write a term paper. Fortunately, the material is quite interesting. Our current papers discuss how, as a general law for animals, the sex which puts the lesser amount of effort into reproducing (this may include everything from maintaining a breeding territory to raising the young) will will be the one which competes more with other members of its sex for the opportunity to reproduce. This is because it has an excess of energy or time which it can spend in actively trying to secure its own interests.

So I am excited about learning more about this. Things actually aren't busy yet, but I suspect they will be by the end of next week. Once I have 6 hours a week consumed by teaching lab, and more time prepping for them, I will be busier. I am looking forward to teaching. Yesterday we had a confused lab meeting, with everyone trying to come to a consensus on how the lab was to be done - or even how it is supposed to be done. The first lab in the lab book is not very well written, tending to be wordy, unclear, and rather loud (excessive use of all caps and bold lettering). I think after this the labs at least get clearer. During the meeting, we also had to move the weekly lab meeting later in the day. Since it is on Friday afternoon, there was some resistance. I do not understand this. People think it is their right to leave work early on Fridays. But it is a workday like all the others. Maybe I just don't understand. I was too unkind at the meeting.

Since I have been sleeping much better, my mood is also improved right now. Sleep deprivation is my enemy. I must be careful to fight it whenever it rears its ugly head.

I read an interesting paper today. The authors modeled a mongoose population with a simple, spatially explicit (that is, it modeled the actual landscape) model which included the effects of rainfall on various types of vegetation along with approximations of birth, death, emigration, and family territories for the mongooses. The model was designed to assess the effects of various levels of shrub cover on mongoose populations (generally, more shrub cover was worse, because the mongooses hunt in grassy areas). I thought this was really neat, the kind of thing I'd like to do. Unfortunately, I don't know how well such a project would fit into a master's degree, especially since I'd have to be able to program the model into the computer and I don't know any computer programming. (Although I was hoping one of the positive externalities of studying modeling would be that I'd have to learn some computer programming). I may discuss this with Dr. Cameron, or with Dr. Matter, the professor here who's interested in ecological modelling, whom I am meeting with next Wednesday.

I've got to return to my room to get ready to bake the sourdough bread I have rising on the counter. I'll let my readers know if it actually tastes like sourdough (the dough tastes good and a little different, but I don't know how it will turn out when I bake it).

First Day of Classes

2009-09-23T20:07:37Z

Usually I am excited about classes starting. But this week, it seemed I was so distracted by everything else I had trouble thinking about them. It didn't really register in my mind that classes were starting until late yesterday evening, when I realized I'd better get my act together so that I could find my classes today.

I have been sleeping poorly, and repeated loss of an hour or so of good sleep a night has been affecting my mental health ever more. I have tried going to sleep earlier, but I still don't get enough sleep. The night before last some girl and her boyfriend(?) got into an argument in my building and they woke me up. I couldn't get to sleep for over an hour. Last night I just woke up two or three times and went back to sleep, but today I feel fairly dreadful. I made myself go to the gym this morning, and jog around, because I didn't want to have a miserable time at class. Classes were good. Now, after a slight outbreak of anxiety earlier this afternoon, I am tense but not anxious, and ever sleepy.

Not having enough sleep makes me unable to read articles like I am supposed to in the afternoon. Usually mornings are OK (or eventful, like today's), but the afternoons are slow and empty. So I try to read papers. It fails - either I can't absorb anything I read, or I fall asleep. This makes me feel useless and unproductive. I told this to other grad students when we met outside a bar to socialize (I don't drink, and leave when the conversation begins to slacken) and one said, "but I always try to be less productive." This makes me feel lonely. I need to find the other people who are either excessively serious, or work too much.

Meanwhile, if I don't read, how am I going to figure out my project? I am worried because it's really important to me to do a good job figuring it out. Unfortunately, this is a very difficult task. Especially when I can't do my homework because I'm sleepy.

My readers have caught me in a bad mood. I'll feel better once I get back to my apartment and make dinner. Dinner always improves my level of wakefulness, and afterwards I often feel more optimistic and am able to do some reading. Dinner has 2 or 3 components. Every other week I buy meat (1 component), which is cooked in a skillet. Always I have a grain (2) and a vegetable (3). This week's vegetables are corn, carrot, and green beans - I eat a serving of one type, boiled or raw, each day. The grain is either pasta or rice. I put cheese on the pasta, and on the rice I put a variety of spices and vegetable oil and fry it. My dinners may sound boring to you, but they are quick and taste very good. I enjoy eating dinner.

Classes. This morning I went to Freshman Biology, so that I know what my lab students are learning in "lecture." The teacher is doing a method where the students study before class and then talk about the topics during class in small groups. Just about no lecturing, but at the end of the class period there is a quiz on the topics. I am still suspicious of this whole thing. I will try to understand it, however, because Dr. Cameron (who is the head of the department) is driving this change and I respect him. I still think for me that lecture is the most effective and fun way to learn. This is another reason I feel lonely.

After that class I had Evolution. We are starting on population genetics, and to understand the history of this field we are reaching back into pre-Mendel days to understand what people thought about heredity back then. It sounds like the class starts out with full-lecture and moves, toward the end, to more primary literature/discussion based. I am hoping it will be fun.

Finally, I had Animal Behavior. This is an undergraduate class that graduate students can, nonetheless, take for credit. Dr. Uetz, the professor here who studies spider behavior, is teaching the class. He is personable, funny and just a tad caustic. People say this is a good class, and I am very excited about it.

This afternoon we had a lab meeting. Dr. Cameron and us four grad students got together. First Dr. Cameron assigned some readings which we will discuss in future lab meetings, and then all four of us reported on how our projects were going. It was very informal, with lots of humor. I enjoyed it, but got anxious when I talked about what I've been up to.

Finishing Things Before School Starts

2009-09-20T18:07:43Z

I have been killing a lot of time lately.

At least half of it has been necessary, though. I decided that since finances weren't going to be a problem for October, I'd better get my driver's license/car registration in order when I have lots of time, before school starts. On Thursday I got an Ohio driver's license; fortunately, the process itself only took about 25 minutes. Driving there and back, and finding the place, took another whole hour. On Friday I got license plates for the car. Driving didn't take so long for that (I had to go downtown, only about 12 minutes off) but parking was a little irritating and while I was waiting in line at the office the computers failed for about 30 minutes. Other than computer failure, things went quite smoothly and fairly quickly.

I went to a TA meeting for discussing general teaching strategies on Friday afternoon. We hashed over the general aims of the course and went through the rules and regulations for the lab. I feel gradually more encouraged about teaching as I attend these discussions, so I like going to them. They had cake for us but it tasted like coffee. Nasty.

On Saturday I joined Dr. Cameron and Dr. Culley (a plant professor) to go survey the herbs (non-woody plants) and shrubs in a nearby county(?) park. To survey the shrubs, we laid out 3 30-m long transects of measuring tape and counted the number of stems, and the width of the thickest stem, for each shrub which touched or reached under or over the tape. To survey herbs, we put a meter-square PVC frame with string dividing it into 100 small squares over a patch of ground. The professors identified each herb and counted the number of string intersections each species overlapped. I took data for the entire time, but tried to learn some of the plants by observing.

This set of transects (and quadrats for herbs; we threw the PVC frame randomly in 3 places near each transect) was in a honeysuckle-bush dominated area. As such, all of the bushes were honeysuckle and there were few herbs on the ground. However, the bushes were dense and it was very difficult to move through the transects - we had to crawl through and under the bushes. Because it took so long, although there had been hope of finishing transects and quadrats in two adjacent areas, we only finished the one. Our time was limited because Dr. Culley has a very young baby and couldn't stay away from home for two long. After we finished surveying, though, we did have time to eat lunch out on a nearby meadow and chat, which was quite pleasant. It was a good morning.

I spent too much time yesterday and today trying to take/create a picture of myself decent enough that I wouldn't mind having it on the Biology Department's website directory. I finally got one I liked, except that it was dark and making it lighter made it grainy. Too bad. You can look me up in the directory at the following link.
<http://www.artsci.uc.edu/collegedepts/biology/fac_staff/bydeptmembers.aspx#grad>

I feel a little silly for my photo's backdrop, but I couldn't stand sterile white walls. I can use this page to post an abstract of my research (once I figure it out) on the website - if you look around the directory you can see what my fellow students are doing, and the faculty as well.

Now I must read some papers. I feel like I haven't been very productive lately, since I've been unsure about what to do next to figure out my project, and also because I have been running around town getting things done. School starts on Wednesday, though, and then things will get busy!

Orientation and Financial Concerns Alleviated

2009-09-17T13:11:16Z

An unusually lovely Cincinnati sunrise, viewed from my front door.

Yesterday I had grad student orientation. (The day before that I had no internet, so that's why it's been a few days since I last posted here). Orientation was good, and I learned some things. Among the most satisfying that I learned were that I first get paid on the 29th and that I can get help paying my way to conferences. Knowing that I will get $600 this month makes me feel much better, since now I know I will not be dreadfully poor for the first half of October. Knowing that the department will help me get to conferences is also important because I feel it's extremely important for me to make it to the American Society of Mammalogists annual meeting next year. It sounds like I could get financial help to make that happen.

In the beginning of the day we had a basic introduction and small discussion about being a graduate student as compared to being an undergrad. We talked a bit about a document of advice to graduate students which I had actually read early this summer, having pulled it off of the Ecological Society of America's website. We new students (there are 13 of us, I think) also had an opportunity to ask some of the grad students who've been here for a while questions. That was helpful. I am interested, though: even the ones who are nearly finished with a PhD still come off as being students/young adults, if somewhat more mature ones at that. I wonder what people have to be like, or have experienced, to appear as true adults to me. Apparently going through a PhD program doesn't do it, and I am a little surprised by that. (Having kids doesn't always, either.) Perhaps it is just age.

In the afternoon we had a teaching workshop. The lab curriculum has been changed this year, apparently, to make students more "engaged." Lectures are out, class investigation is in. I have noticed those trains of thought which contribute to current trends in higher education. Memorization is uncool to the point of being stupid, it is seen as completely worthless. Since being lectured is all about memorizing, it makes sense that lectures are similarly ill-viewed.

I disagree. Am I alone in this? I find collaboration and investigation in class somewhat stressful - differences between lab partners in character, motivation, knowledge and intelligence make things rough as often as they go smoothly. I'd much rather work on my own. I love being lectured to and I love to memorize things, any things. Even esoteric, "boring" lists of terminology (taxonomy or anatomy, for instance) can bring shivers of joy down my innards. I've been known throughout my life to memorize things in my own free time. And now people are saying it is worthless. It is not worthless! Is it worthless that when I open a scientific journal and there is an article on the Little Red Kaluta, I know what they are talking about? (It's a marsupial in the same family as the Tasmanian devil). Is it worthless when I can picture the painting someone is talking about in my mind? Is it worthless when I know the proper plurals to many English nouns because I studied Latin and Greek? I learned all these things through raw memorization, and I tell you, it is not worthless! This is part of what it means to be educated.

But maybe to other students it is worthless. Perhaps few of them enjoy to be lectured. Maybe they prefer to work with each other than to swallow information, and perhaps they really do need practice in active investigation. It is said, "treat others as you want to be treated," but one cannot take this very literally. What is great fun for me (lectures) may be truly boring to someone else. Sometimes I wonder how lonely I am, with all my love for academia.

Anyway, on to other topics. On Tuesday I got three packages. One was the graduation gift from my dad, a 24x20" fancy print on canvas of one of my favorite paintings. It is not so much that I am excited by the blood and gore as that here is an artist who obviously enjoys dynamic animal form as much as I do. Such a rarity. Unfortunately, the reproduction does not photograph well, but here it is, and check out the leopard flying through the air on the lower left:

I also got two bookshelves from my Dad. I have tried so hard to have a good temper about my lack of furniture, but people still think I am pathetic: first I was given the bed, dresser and lamp and now the bookshelves. In any case, they are wonderful. Thanks for both them and the art reproduction, Dad. Almost all of my books now have a home on the shelf.

Finally, I've been having a lot of bread-making activity lately. See D) bread stored for future consumption; C) bread ready for today's lunch; B) and A) attempts at making sourdough starter. Actually, it is going well so far. Wish me luck.

Some Fieldwork and Being Tired

2009-09-12T15:57:32Z

This Thursday I got an opportunity to go out with Sara and help her set traps for mice in the field. She traps mice so that she can bring them in to the lab; she tests them for their preferences in running across various-sized dowels suspended in the air. These mice, Peromyscus leucopus, spend some time in trees unlike most mice, and she wants to understand how they move about up there. Anyway, we went out to a patch of forest with the intent of setting 36 live-traps in three rows. The forest had moderately tall trees and a significant layer of close-to-ground cover - spiny roses and various tall and short herbaceous plants. It was a little difficult to navigate. We laid out one row of 12 traps and then decided to lay the next two rows out by zigzagging back and forth towards the car. After putting 18 traps out in this fashion, we were on the bank of a small ravine which was somewhat familiar to Sara. We decided to head back to the car, laying out more traps as we traveled.

It became obvious that we didn't know what direction the car was in. Above each trap we put down we had tied a white ribbon, and above the end-point of the trap lines two ribbons, but we couldn't see any white ribbons at all and neither did we recognize the area of the forest we were in. Getting confused, we turned back and hit ribbons again. We wandered along, seeing the ribbons here and there but not knowing which way to go. Sara became somewhat agitated. I was sure we'd find our way back, but I was concerned about her, and a little concerned because it was getting darker and harder to see. Finally we hit the back row of ribbons. By lining them up, we knew which direction the car was in, and we made our way back quickly and before it began to get truly dark.

That was an adventure to say the least. We drove back to Cincinnati (40 minutes away). The next morning we headed out again to pick up the traps. Both Sara and I were a little concerned about finding them all. We followed the path we'd taken to lay them out the day before to the place where we'd placed the last trap, and then picked up the traps and ribbons as we went back. Counting carefully, each of us picking up a trap line, we managed to get them all. We discovered that while laying those last two lines, we'd veered off to the side away from the first one. We had been way off course by the time we had finished. The good news was that we caught 11 mice, more than enough for this portion of Sara's project. Sara was really excited since this is her last bout of labwork: then she will be finished researching and all she'll have to do is write her thesis.

I hadn't slept well that night, so when on Friday I sat down to read in the lab it worked poorly. I slumped into a nap twice and gave up around 3:30, going back to my room, making dinner, and working on a puzzle. I was frustrated, since I've been having trouble with sleepiness all week. Sometimes I get woken up by people in the middle of the night (last week, someone slid a car into a nearby telephone pole at 3 AM. No ambulance came as far as I know, but the next day they were trying to fix the electrical lines: the pole had been broken in two places). Sometimes I just wake up myself in the middle of the night and get scared, which is silly. In any case, not being able to do work is very irritating for me. I feel, when my mind isn't working and I don't understand what I'm reading, that I should be working harder.

Speaking of car accidents, there was a crash in the same intersection this morning at about 7 AM (I was already up and about). I saw two cars in the intersection and someone was walking around them. One of the cars drove off but the other had to be towed. This made me want to drive even less in this city. I will end up in an accident because I am bad at city driving.

Dr. Cameron has come up with some ideas for my research. I had told him I was interested in small mammals, Geographic Information Systems, and that I'd like to do some ecological modeling if possible. I actually think I may get to do all three - he has come up with some good ideas. This is more than I had hoped for. I think Dr. Cameron understands the basic things that I am interested in, and can draw on his experience and knowledge in a way I cannot to formulate a project that will be good for me. Yesterday he handed to me a book on occupancy modeling. I am trying to understand the statistics, which will take me a while. I hope I can get the hang of it. Truly being able to understand and handle this stuff would make me very satisfied.

Oh, and some photos of my apartment now that it is organized and has some furniture.

View of the living area from the front of the apartment.

View of the living area from the back of the apartment. In the back right hand corner is an unfinished puzzle. Books line just about two entire walls: when Sara saw them she said, "You weren't kidding when you said you had books."

View of the "bedroom" leg of the apartment, taken from the bathroom.

My Apartment Is Organized

2009-09-08T19:55:16Z

I spent many hours this weekend organizing my apartment. First I filed all of the papers I had accumulated over the summer and revamped my filing system while I was at it. Then I unpacked all of my non-book stuff, turned my boxes into shelving, and sorted everything and put it away. Lastly, I sorted my books - nonfiction by subject matter and fiction by author - and laid them out along two of my walls.

I have been lucky. One of Dr. Cameron's other students, Sara, is a Cincinnati native and her grandmother has a bunch of unused furniture in her basement. Upon hearing that I had no furniture at all, the grandmother said I could have a bed and a dresser if I'd just come pick it up. I was glad about that! Then Sara and her brother actually ended up bringing the furniture over to me yesterday. So now I have a bed, an old-fashioned dresser, and a nice lamp (they offered it, I took it). My apartment is much improved in tone. Now, as Sara points out, all I need is a bookcase...

I still have a couple of things to put away, but then I will take a picture or two to show you how nice everything looks now in my apartment now.

On Saturday I got to see my Grandma Ann and Uncle Alex. Grandma was visiting Uncle Alex in Columbus and they drove over for dinner. I enjoyed seeing them and chatting with them a lot. Uncle Alex gave me a book on biology. So far the author is talking about how important it is that naturalists be willing to use math to describe what they know (I agree). I am lucky that I got to see some family as I am making this transition; this helps my mental health. Which, all in all, has been quite good. Yesterday I got tense in the evening, but then I made tapioca pudding and my mood improved almost instantly. I had remembered that cooking/baking will make me feel better when everything else seems to be failing.

Since I got all of my fantasy books back, I have been reading them over again during breakfast and dinner. I have been comparing and contrasting two series which, I admit, are quite different: the Harry Potter series and Christopher Paolini's Inheritance cycle. I am comparing them because I realized the other day that Paolini has given a lot more though into how the magic in his world works than J. K. Rowling ever did for hers. In fact, in general Paolini spends much more time thinking about heavy topics: philosophy, ethics, politics, culture, etc. than Rowling did. The major revelatory moments in Rowling's books are always family-historical and that's it. It is a shame, I think, that Paolini is not a better writer than he is, because I think his handling of a fantasy world is remarkably thorough. And he has a more developed sense of morality than Rowling does.

Anyway, maybe it's just me; I've been keeping track of the Inheritance cycle since soon after the first book was published, and I do suspect its appeal may be somewhat age- and character- specific. I hope none of the lot of you judge me for liking it so much. In the meantime I consider writing an essay comparing several fantasy worlds and the approach taken to them. Would that be silly? I think it would be really fun.

Settling in: Cincinnati

2009-09-04T13:39:43Z

This is my fourth day in Cincinnati. Things have been highly eventful, and I can now say that, once again, my days have become longer again. This is a good thing. I was tired of them seeming short.

On Tuesday I drove up from Greenville. It wasn't a bad drive - only 7 hours or so - although I had slept poorly for anxiety the night before. On the drive I passed through the Smokey Mountains (which were indeed quite cloudy) and observed a smaller leaf size as I headed north. Cincinnati made quite an impression on me as I rounded the bottom of the hill on the crowded freeway, to suddenly see a downtown about twice as large as the one in Fort Worth awaiting me on the other side of a steel-lattice bridge.

It was difficult for me to find the property management company to pick up my key: rush hour had just started and not only were there too many people on the narrow roads, but they were also irritable. I have never heard people honk so much at each other as the drivers in Cincinnati. After parking and picking up my key, I had to loop around once to find the entrance to the parking lot by my apartment building. Then, I couldn't find my apartment and had to call and ask about where it was. While all of the other apartments in the building open off stairwells inside the building, my apartment's front door opens onto a small porch on the side of the building:

Then I couldn't get my door open. I had the wrong key. I had to drive back over and get another one. On the way back, my car acted funny and I thought it had a flat tire. It took me 30 agitated minutes to figure out how to open the door with the new key I had. Then I relaxed significantly. It was about 5:00 PM.

It was easy to move in my things since I was able to back my van up to the edge of the parking lot and ferry my things across the 15 feet between it and my front door. Then I was so tired I couldn't unpack much. I made a bedspread for myself on the floor. I had and still do not have a single piece of furniture.

The next day I went and met Dr. Cameron and my lab-mates. Dr. Cameron is an old, but still quite sharp, guy who interacts regularly and warmly with his students. I like him a lot. The other students are Sara and Jessi, who are finishing up their Master's degrees; and Greg, who is working on a PhD. Sara is 26 and the other two are both at least 30, making my by far the youngest in this group. I don't mind, however, and find all of them personable.

I got varied briefings from Dr. Cameron and my lab-mates on everything from research timelines to the nearest grocery stores. Everyone has been very helpful. I have been spending my time settling in and reading papers which Dr. Cameron suggested. I hope to make a lot of progress on deciding on my research project, since I have the time now to devote a lot of energy to thinking about it. Dr. Cameron has some ideas, but I think he also wants me to be able to formulate a plan of action on my own. This is an important skill if I will ever be doing research on my own.

I have a desk in an office I share with Sara and Jessi (Greg has a space in the main part of Dr. Cameron's lab). It is here I have been spending my mornings and late afternoons reading papers. In the early afternoons I run errands because the traffic probably isn't as bad then, and because I often start falling asleep at that time. Today I may walk to the grocery store.

Here are some photos of my apartment. Its messiness has slightly decreased now: but having no furniture makes it difficult to put anything away. I am trying to turn my boxes into shelving with moderate success. In any case, I am happy with my apartment. It is not very grungy, has a nice kitchen, has a good size and layout, is separated from everyone else, and is in a decent neighborhood. It suits me perfectly.

View from the front door: kitchen. Living room is through the doorway on the left.

Living room. There is actually a few feet behind where I'm standing, so it's not quite as small as it looks. The kitchen is to the right; a closet door can be seen on the far left, and behind it is the bathroom; the door in the middle leads to the communal laundry room; and my bed is hidden behind the wall where the room hooks to the right.

Bathroom. It is just the right size.

I hope these pictures more or less satisfy everyone.

Trying to Relax

2009-08-31T22:57:04Z

For the past couple of days I have been trying to relax, not always with good results. I have anxiety, occasionally quite strong, about having to drive all day again, and even more associated with settling into an apartment I have never seen in a city I have never visited. This has been weighing on my mind. Needless to say, I have enjoyed myself here. Katie and I have done a number of things - cook food, watch movies, roam around downtown Greenville - and I also visited my former roommates (Jasmine, Kelly, Caitlin, and Matt) yesterday for a few hours. We ate breakfast burritos for lunch, chatted, and played some Guitar Hero.

On Sunday I had some anxiety about emailing Dr. Cameron about an appointment to discuss research, etc. this week. I whined to Katie. "I feel like we're back at Furman, in the Art Department lofts again," she said, "I'm lazing around and you are stressing about sending emails." I got a quick response from Dr. Cameron though: he told me he'd be in his lab, and that I could show up anytime. Now I am excited about that. I hope I get lots to to so that I am not bored before school starts.

On Saturday Katie and I picked up my stuff from the storage place. We managed to pack it all into the van, even leaving a foot of space so that I have an admittedly reduced view out the back window. I was worried that the van would sag excessively since so much of my stuff is heavy (books, dishes), but it does not look strange: just the suspension does not have a whole lot of give left in it.

I was finally sent a little bit of information from the University of Cincinnati. I got a schedule of orientation (Sept. 16) and filled out a form for my graduate assistantship online. I also got a "hello!" email from the head of the Graduate Student Association. It was directed to the incoming new students; it was sent to 11 people. Are there really only 10 other new graduate students in Biology there? It is not so much the class size as that I remember the letter of acceptance from UC told me that there had been about 125 applicants (I think). Inside, I cringe as I realize that if both numbers are correct, I bettered dreadful odds and a lot of competition to get in. I guess I should be glad, but I feel more unsettled than anything.

Tomorrow I am leaving to head up to Cincinnati. "Here it goes!" I think to myself. After I drive up, I will pick up my key and pay my rent and then move into my apartment. The next day I will probably have to run a number of errands and continue unpacking, but maybe if I am lucky I can go talk to Dr. Cameron. We will see how this goes. I feel subdued strains of both excitement and anxiousness.

I am not sure about my future internet access. I cannot currently afford to buy it for my apartment, but if I am lucky I can get it in Dr. Cameron's lab. Hopefully I will be able to post about how things are going as I settle in.

Back in Greenville

2009-08-29T12:48:45Z

I successfully made my way to Greenville in the past two days. The first day I actually left later than I had expected. The night before the family went over to my grandmother's for a late birthday party for me. Afterwards the Suburban broke down, and the result was that I didn't get to bed until 11:00 (after it was towed). In addition, since the main car was broken down, Mom and Papa asked if they could borrow my van to take the kids to school the next morning.

So I left after Papa returned from driving the kids to school, and it was 9:30 AM by then. It was a long and somewhat hard day of driving. I actually had only got about 6 hours of sleep because I had travel anxiety; so I got sleepy while driving. I tried to nap at a rest stop but it was too hot. Fortunately, after lunchtime I perked up and drove more alertly, although I continued to take frequent breaks.

At 8:00 PM, after dark, I pulled into Meridian, Mississippi. This was past the half-way point of my journey, and here I stopped at a Motel 6 for the night. I slept fairly well except for being woken up by a loud motorcycle at around 4:00 AM (I went back to sleep). I left the hotel at around 8:00 the next morning. This day was easier because it was shorter and because I was well-rested: I stopped infrequently and didn't get tired until I was within 2 hours of Greenville. By then I was excited at finishing up the journey so I was able to maintain my stamina. I got into Greenville at about 5:00 local time, and soon met up with Katie.

Now I am resting at Katie's condo. Here I can relax and enjoy the somewhat eccentric ambiance of Katie's apartment, surrounded by old-fashioned appliances and Beatles and Tim Burton movie memorabilia. In the meantime we will watch movies (last night it was Beetlejuice) and do stuff around Greenville. I leave for Cincinnati on Tuesday.

Preparing to Leave Again

2009-08-26T21:46:03Z

As I have been doing intermittently for the time I have been in Fort Worth, I have been preparing to leave for Cincinnati (via Greenville) and to take all of my things with me. This is a fairly important occasion for me. As I leave Fort Worth with all of my belongings, I hope to signify that I will become self-sufficient (financially at least). Whether this is going to work out, we will see. I myself am fairly optimistic, and most people I have talked to seem to agree.

I have found some things here that I forgot about while I was in college. One was the folding-up, but full-size easel I have. Another is the taxidermied Chukar (gamebird) I got for my birthday a few years ago, which is one of the few (and therefore valuable to me) "nice-looking" house objects I have. That, too will come along with me. "Now our house is much less Texan since we don't have a dead animal over the mantle," joked Papa. I reminded him that there are still two stuffed squirrels there, which I gave to the family after I taxidermied them myself.

I am apprehensive about my (in)ability to buy furniture as soon as I arrive in Cincinnati. I hope that some predicted, but unsure, costs may be low or nonexistent so that I can feel like I can afford it. Needless to say, I am sure my furniture will be less than exciting; and as I mentioned above, anything "nice" I currently have such as a good stereo, a taxidermied animal, or fine art prints will go a long way towards making my apartment a good place to be. At least I think so.

Anyway, I am leaving tomorrow morning. I will leave at 7:00 AM, and no later. Although I may hit some traffic in Dallas, I don't think I will be well-rested if I leave earlier and I know I will get tense and edgy if I leave later.

Tonight my Grandma Ann is hosting a late birthday party for me at her house. There will be cake, and the whole family is going over. I am excited to go spend some more time with my grandmother; I only have seen her once since I came here, and then only for lunch.

Finally, for photo edification, I include a picture of BT. It is a too dark since I should have used the flash, but it is better than nothing. BT is an older (~10 year old) male with a calm disposition, if his tolerance of obnoxious children and younger dogs is rather low. The family calls him a "biological guilt machine" because he pleads for walks by looking at you in a subtly pleading and expectant manner.

The House Basenjis

2009-08-22T20:17:09Z

I have taken some photos of the dogs in Fort Worth; I show two here. We have three dogs but the third, BT, has not been easy to photograph. Hopefully I will be able to get a good picture of him to post on this journal. In the meantime, here are the two young dogs we have here, "the pups:"

Briseis, the larger. Her body is long and her head small. She is always looking for food, tending to get into the garbage and when fed to wolf down her dinner. Quiet and ingratiating, she prefers to get attention by walking up and fixing you with her long-nosed stare. Her name comes from the Iliad: Briseis was Achilles' slave-girl.

Kalypso, the smaller. Somewhat of a runt but more even-proportioned then Briseis, Kalypso is vocal and outgoing. She screams when left alone and prefers to get attention by jumping on your leg or biting your hand or licking your face. Her name comes from the Odyssey: Kalypso was an island-dwelling lover of Odysseus, whom he spent 7 years with.

The two "pups" usually remain close to each other, scrapping or exploring together. Neither appears to be entirely dominant. I have seen Kalypso end up with the beef bone, but the next day see Briseis, hackles up, hold her paws on top of Kalypso's head to keep her in her place. In any case, I don't think BT is at the top of the totem pole. He is too old and doesn't have enough energy to compete with the girls.

Fort Worth Goings-On

2009-08-20T18:17:35Z

I'm back in Fort Worth. Things have not been uneventful. First of all, to get here I had to drive with Tonia and her friend Becca halfway across the country in two days. I drove about half the way, and Becca and Tonia shared the other half (I wanted to drive as much as I could stand, which was less than it should have been because I had been sleeping poorly). We traveled for 12 hours the first day with over 10 of that being driving, and 10 hours the next day with around 9 of that being driving. We stayed the night in Albuquerque, having found a relatively cheap hotel there.

I enjoyed the trip a lot. California was hilly, dry, and scrubby; while Arizona was mostly short trees, rocky, and with some pines through Flagstaff; New Mexico was thoroughly rainy, with mesas and crevices and roadwork; and Texas was partly cloudy, flat, and much croplands where we passed through. I enjoy driving across the country, even when driving myself. If you haven't seen it, Tonia made a photo-movie of the trip and set it to music:

http://www.fwrenaissance.com/pia-returns-from-california-driving-across-arizona-and-new-mexico-in-the-process/

We arrived in Fort Worth on the 15th at around 6:30. After enjoying some rest, I began to consolidate my stuff, which I had promised I would remove from the house. Although I had really moved out when I went to college, now, I decided, I was Really moving out, taking away all of the things I hadn't managed to carry off to college. This is actually not that much stuff: a few boxes of books, some Breyer horses, and my stereo. I have packed most of the stuff and moved it into the van. Tonia wanted me to get it out of her room, and I am excited about having a personal residence that I live in for more than a few months. I am tired of living in other people's places all summer, not really moved in.

On Monday I dislocated my shoulder. I ran into my brother Vincent, got my arm caught, and because he was moving too and very strong I got my shoulder dislocated. We ended up looking on the internet to find out how to put it back, and we did so. My arm returned to having a full range of motion. The next day, however, it was not any less sore and possibly more so. The day afterwards we went to the Urgent Care clinic nearby to have them look at it. After the doctor felt it, asked about pain, and I had X-rays taken, it was confirmed that the shoulder was OK. It just needed to heal more. It feels better today, and I can even lift some stuff with it.

White Lab Logo

2009-08-12T00:29:13Z

Here's the logo I made for Dr. White's lab. Katie, don't bash it too much if there's something you don't like about it. I'm afraid of you.

Goings-on at Dad's

2009-08-11T04:17:57Z

Many and more or less interesting things have happened lately. The one that has taken up the most time is creating a logo for a colleague of Dr. Thibault's, Dr. Ethan White. He is making a website for his lab (which combines mathematics and field biology) and asked me to make a logo for him (I am getting paid for it). The logo has an equation and a kangaroo rat in it, and is pretty much finished. I am taking a break on it tonight and will look at it once more in the morning before I send it off to him. I have spent a lot of time making the logo, more than I quoted him for, but it has been fun. I had to download a free vector graphics program (with these, you make images that do not lose resolution whatever size you make them) and learn how to use it. I enjoy learning new computer programs.

Dad and I have done a variety of things together. Tonia, Angela, Ross, Robby, and a group of Angela's family members are RV camping and fishing at Bishop, but Dad and I are home alone. On Saturday, Dad and I went shopping and we found 4 collared/polo shirts for me which Dad bought as a birthday present for me. My favorite is actually a dark red golf shirt. Unfortunately, we went to the sports store last so my "gift budget" was already mostly exhausted, but in the future when I need nicer shirts I will go there. They are much more to my style than most others I found. Dad also got me a few things (oil, fix-a-flat canister, tire pressure gauge) to keep in the van.

Oh, Tonia and I washed 4 cars on Thursday: Robb's car, Dad/Angela's car, Dad's work truck (but not the trailer) and my van. Since the van was nice and clean, I took a picture of it. I posted it on Facebook, but in case you haven't seen it there here it is:

Dad and I have been experimenting all weekend with bending wood. We have soaked the wood in the pool and then let it dry in a curved shape. So far the wood has bent, but springs back somewhat when we take it out of the brace when it is dry. We are trying soaking the wood longer now, as well as a couple of different kinds of wood. Dad wants to build an indoor, ceiling-high railroad track in his house by running a pair of wooden strips under the tracks (held up by supports from the wall). To use these on the tracks' turns, however, he needs to have bent wood. Thus the experiments.

Yesterday Dad and I hung around the house, although I spent a lot of time learning the vector image program and working on the logo. Today Dad and I went to Big Bear. While there we visited a couple of small places (Discovery Center, Backyard Bird-feeding Shop) as well as the zoo. They had a lot of great mammals, most notably a little hyper badger. I was so excited to see a badger run around! Then I was a little silly. A young girl walked up to the cage and asked what it was. "A badger," I said. "What's that?" she asked. "A digging animal with long front claws and sharp teeth," I replied. Leave it to me to describe an animal in terms of its dangerous appendages. I did take lots of pictures at the zoo, of course, although most are not great because of the chicken wire.

Eye of the Fallow Deer

The fence is terrible. But see the badger rolling on its back behind it. Check out those foreclaws!

I enjoyed going up to Big Bear a lot, except for the drive up on which I got so car-sick I had to get Dad to pull over so that I could recover for a moment. On the way down I napped, which solved that problem nicely.

Tomorrow the family is coming back from Bishop. I will be glad to see them again. On Friday, Tonia and Becca and I are starting our long, 2-day drive to Texas. We will drive to Albuquerque the first day, and then finish the trek on the second. I am excited about seeing all of my family in Fort Worth. Since I will be there for just about 2 weeks, I should be able to spend good time with all of them.