Cornell and Beyond

PubMed is the new facebook

The weather here in Ithaca has taken a slightly dark turn, with icy winds taking just long enough to freeze exposed extremities so that you can rotate hand in pockets and hand getting numb holding umbrella in a 2 minute rotation. (Granted, if it’s raining it’s not freezing, but windchill is a scary enemy of any Northeasterner.)

What does this weather indicate, besides that it’s time to go into hibernation for those of us who can shut down our metabolism?

It’s finals time! As a senior at Cornell, my finals have subsided from the garden variety, “regurgitate the information you so lovingly lapped up over the course of the semester” and have morphed into the “how would you design a gene therapy treatment for this disorder, given the following facts” or, even better “propose a fundable research project on X”.

Now, let’s talk about the latter. If you are a hard science major at Cornell, you will most likely end up writing up some sort of research proposal during the course of your upper level courses. (No pun intended.)

This may sound like a break from the lengthy 30 page exams that shatter your self esteem, but I can promise you, they are not. (Ok, I have never experienced a 30 page exam that shattered my self-esteem, but I’m sure some professor at Cornell must delight in such a ghoulish task.)

For example, let’s reenact my thought process in coming up with a research proposal for one of my neuro classes:

Me: Ah, I like the BigRed membrane protein*. I’ll do my proposal on that. Oh wait, I know about a .01% of the total knowledge base surrounding the BigRed protein. (And that would be generous.) Let me do some background reading.

-(5 review articles, 5 primary research articles skimmed later)-

Me: Ah, this looks promising. They talk a lot about how the BigRed channel is gated by a large number of student tuition checks inflowing into the cell cytosol, but they don’t discuss where on the protein this interaction occurs. I know just the experiment I could propose that could test this! That would be a great topic! Let me look more into it!

-(30 seconds into the PubMed search)-

Me: Jimminy cricket, looks like it was already done, with pretty conclusive results. They published in Science too. At least that makes me feel smart, even if I am back to square one. Well, let me read their paper.

-(5 minutes later)-

Me: Well, they do discuss that they don’t know whether modulation of the West subunit allosterically inhibits the C-T0wn subunit or if the tuition checks directly act on C-T0wn. I guess I could do that.

-(30 seconds later)-

Me: Hm. It seems I have no idea how I would ever go about experimentally testing that. Does this mean I need to pick another channel? (30 seconds later) Hm. My 6 page paper is due in a week, and all I did was clutter my desktop with an inordinate amount of saved PDF’s. Interesting. I think I’ll go watch an episode of Heroes.

Well, things are not that bad, and I should be grateful for the preparation. Writing a grant proposal is probably more of a life skill (for a future scientist) than knowing how to answer multiple choice questions. However, I’m good at answering multiple choice questions. After all, I’ve had 15 years of practice. I guess it’s only fair that I learn a new skill set.

I guess the real hurdle is just writing something coherent about a topic that you don’t necessarily have any first-hand experience in. Is that a concise conclusion for the long winded narrative I bored you with? I’ll say…yes.

*This is not a real channel. If I ever discover a new protein, I just might call it that. That would mix things up in the field. I wonder how they normally get their names? (Ion channel nomenclature can be a bit soporific. Although nobody said it wasn’t.)

happy (late) gobbles!

I think getting back to Ithaca after Thanksgiving Break is over can be as exhausting as leaving in the first place.  This is because unlike when the student body leaves and scatters into the greater expanse of the entire nation, when everyone gets back, the student body converges on little old Ithaca.

Because I don’t drive, I took a bit of a circuitous route back to Ithaca.  Train to Philly.  Bus from Philly to NYC. Bus from Port Authority to Ithaca.  Total Journey time:  8 hours.  This was actually not bad at all, considering the longest leg of the journey, NYC to Ithaca, only took 4.5 hours.   (To put this in perspective, freshmen year this took 9 hours by bus.)

Somehow my bus managed to miss all the traffic, because 3 hours after settling back into my house in Ithaca, my housemates started stumbling back in one by one.  Two of them, who had both left NYC/NJ respectively around the same time as me, and were driving by car, had just gotten back.  This translates into 7-8 hour STRAIGHT car rides.  Normally, the trips shouldn’t take more than 4 hours.

But, the main point is, we are BACK! Now time to hit the books, so I can enjoy the last few days of my last full week of classes in my last Fall semester.  (There certainly are a lot of lasts ever since Senior year rolled around!)

Welcome winter!

Chunky snowflakes and coooooold temperatures mean winter is finally upon us here in Ithaca.

I’ll regret saying this 2 months from now, when -20 degree weather and blizzard like conditions take over, but it’s about time!
Welcome winter!

The Thursday Fix

Tomorrow evening I will be leaving for an interview, and that means I’ll be missing Thursday at Cornell.

Thursday at Cornell is not particularly more exciting that Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday at Cornell, but there is one thing that makes it stand out for me.

I know that every Thursday I will get a good dose of laughter with the best edition of the Cornell Daily Sun: The Thursday Edition.

This is because the Thursday edition contains several “make me laugh out loud in the silent library and embarrass myself” columns. What are these exceptional columns?

~Overheard~

Readers submit via e-mail conversations that have been overheard around the campus, dorms, and Collegetown. From the satirical to the just plain dumb, this column makes eavesdropping OK.

Here is an excerpt from the September 6^th column accessed online:

Guy on cell phone: Yeah, I’m at the Library … [pause] … Yeah, Uris … [pause] … yeah, a while, I’ve got a lot to get done tonight.

-Bathroom, Dino’s [Collegetown bar]

~10 Questions~

This columnist has finally made me start reading the sports section, if only for the fact I know I’ll have a really funny 15 minutes in my day while reading it. Various Cornell athletes are interviewed informally (think late night talk show style) and the result is one of my new favorite columns. It might even be overtaking Overheard in the laugh factor. (And that’s saying a lot.)

~Awkward Turtle~

I usually use this column as a “cool-down” because it’s drier, more subtle humor with more of the feeling of a funny short story than stand-up comedy. Plus, it’s easily relatable to, since we are all awkward turtles at heart.

~Mr. Gnu~

Mr. Gnu is the standard in Cornell comics and is probably not just in Thursday editions, but I thought I’d add it anyway. Many times the reading of Mr. Gnu will be followed by a 5 minute discussion on wherein the joke actually lies, but hey, it’s Mr. Gnu. What can you do?

I don’t know about you all out there, but when I was in high school, the distribution of the school newspaper was quickly followed by the disposal of the school newspaper, which was lucky if it made into the recycling bin and not the hallway floors.

Not so in college (or at least this college) so if you’d like to read more:

Cornell Daily Sun Website

I can’t believe I just spent an hour making that

This past Friday I took a 4 hour bus ride to NYC where I met with an old friend from high school. Together, we continued on our journey to NJ to watch our friend featured in his orchestra concert, playing Weber’s concerto for Bassoon. I took the bus back the next day on Saturday to make sure I was back in Ithaca in time for my shift at the Cornell Annual Fund and Biochem center the next day.

Besides having re-realized that I have amazingly talented friends, I also realized that it was good to see non-Cornell friends in a non-Cornell setting.

School can be stressful what with the hunt for a life after college, doing all that needs doing for my honors thesis, studying, preparing for interviews, working and TA’ing in the Biochem Center. Granted, many Cornellians have at least this much on their plate (just in different distributions), but it still makes senior year a little more caffeine filled than I would have liked.

One thing that has been great was that we got an extra hour this weekend with Daylight Savings Time. There are so many ways I could have been productive with that hour, but I ultimately chose to make, duh duh duh, My Life in Pie.

What was the point of all this, besides paring down my life to a single pie-chart, that, because of my inability to size items correctly on Paint, is barely readable anyway? To show that sometimes, when things get tiresome and so cut and dry, it’s nice to see old friends, family, and escape the good ole 607 for a little R&R, and hopefully even some rejuvenation.

the surreal cornell halloween

What day of the year is it when:

• A tomato serves you your morning coffee?

• A vampire serves you your evening coffee?

• A frog and a fairy are laughing over dinner?

• A transformer is checking ID’s at the bar?

• Spongebob and Patrick run into your class, whip out speakers and break it down, only to run out just as quickly leaving your professor befuddled, laughing hysterically, or attempting to carry on lecture over the shenanigans?

• You see Death chasing an old man through campus?

• Greek gods are bent over books studying in the library?

• A scuba diver walks out of the convenience store, looking quite serious?

• A lobster is walking through the streets of Collegetown?

• The ILR faculty have morphed into the characters from Toy Story?

• Betty Rubble is dancing with a life sized bottle of Heinz ketchup?

• The tower grins down at you, with a slightly odd jack-o-lantern grin?

Halloween of course! It is more fun than it ever was in high school, and it doesn’t matter how old you are. Cornellians have surely made it one of the best holidays of all year. People go all out, and you see some amazing things on Halloween. Good thing it was in the middle of the week this year, so that we could have a full 7 days of spooky fun!