Kan resistant, but
Plated bacteria on
Amp-filled agar. Fuck.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Gettin' my defense on
So the defense of my research proposal is over, and I fucking passed it. Awesome.
I was worried going in, because I was absolutely certain that one of my committee members hates me and another gets bored easily and lashes out with impossible questions. Dr. Impossible Questions did not disappoint - I spent the first twenty minutes of the defense explaining to him why my research is important. He just kept saying "Who cares?" Finally, another committee member came to my rescue, said word-for-word what I had said, and Dr. Impossible was satisfied.
Now my presentation differed in that I had data. I turned in my proposal three months before I defended it - and I wasn't just sitting on my arse the whole time. Halfway through my presentation of my first specific aim, they stopped me and said they didn't want to see any more data. In fact, they told me to forget about the presentation and just started firing away with questions. I tried not to look crushed that they were dismissing a presentation that took me two weeks of hard work to put together.
Now since I am a person who writes things like this little blog for fun, I try to make what I write sound good. One thing I do not like is repeatedly using the same word over and over (and over!). As a result, my committee spent ten minutes making fun of me for using "I believe" instead of "I hypothesize." I totally get why they harped on me for it, but the ten minutes were maybe a tad overboard.
Once all was over, they told me that I passed and that I did a good job - but I need to work on my writing. I knew going in that my proposal was a festering turd of a writing exercise and I thought I could get away with it. So uh, so far I am 0 - 1000 in trying to get away with subpar shit. You'd think I might have learned something by now, but no. I fucking hate scientific writing. As a lover of writing it pains me to say that, but I really do. Fuck passive tense!
It feels so fucking good to be an official PhD candidate - to know that there is just one more major hurdle to getting my PhD. It felt good immediately, and I still feel good about it. Several times, I've mistakenly thought that a milestone would give me some validation. For example, I thought that successfully passing all of my classes would make me feel different somehow. It didn't. This totally did, and it's fucking great.
I was worried going in, because I was absolutely certain that one of my committee members hates me and another gets bored easily and lashes out with impossible questions. Dr. Impossible Questions did not disappoint - I spent the first twenty minutes of the defense explaining to him why my research is important. He just kept saying "Who cares?" Finally, another committee member came to my rescue, said word-for-word what I had said, and Dr. Impossible was satisfied.
Now my presentation differed in that I had data. I turned in my proposal three months before I defended it - and I wasn't just sitting on my arse the whole time. Halfway through my presentation of my first specific aim, they stopped me and said they didn't want to see any more data. In fact, they told me to forget about the presentation and just started firing away with questions. I tried not to look crushed that they were dismissing a presentation that took me two weeks of hard work to put together.
Now since I am a person who writes things like this little blog for fun, I try to make what I write sound good. One thing I do not like is repeatedly using the same word over and over (and over!). As a result, my committee spent ten minutes making fun of me for using "I believe" instead of "I hypothesize." I totally get why they harped on me for it, but the ten minutes were maybe a tad overboard.
Once all was over, they told me that I passed and that I did a good job - but I need to work on my writing. I knew going in that my proposal was a festering turd of a writing exercise and I thought I could get away with it. So uh, so far I am 0 - 1000 in trying to get away with subpar shit. You'd think I might have learned something by now, but no. I fucking hate scientific writing. As a lover of writing it pains me to say that, but I really do. Fuck passive tense!
It feels so fucking good to be an official PhD candidate - to know that there is just one more major hurdle to getting my PhD. It felt good immediately, and I still feel good about it. Several times, I've mistakenly thought that a milestone would give me some validation. For example, I thought that successfully passing all of my classes would make me feel different somehow. It didn't. This totally did, and it's fucking great.
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