Orientation

Yesterday was my orientation day for graduate school and it went pretty well overall considering I had to wake up at 6:30am (I honestly can't remember the last time I woke up that early) and then proceeded to sleep through happy hour. Orientation consisted of a general orientation for all the incoming grad students for the all the biomedical sciences programs and then afterwards I had my microbiology department orientation.

The general orientation was just a bunch of deans and professors giving us their pearls of wisdom (all the things they claim they wish someone had told them when they were in grad school), telling us we don't really need to do well in classes because no one cares about your grades anymore (just get a B was the takehome message), and reminding us that we're not in college anymore. I'm not gonna lie, it was a little scary. I mean I never thought getting a PhD would be easy but now I have fears of:(1) how do I decide what an important problem is?, (2) how do I keep myself from getting frustrated around my 3rd year when nothing is working and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel?, (3) what if I can't think critically enough to be, not just a good scientist, but a great scientist?, and (4) what if I'm in grad school forever (and by forever I mean longer than 5.5 yrs)?

However, besides scaring me a little, orientation also made me realize what I'm doing is important. When I finish my PhD, I will have done original research and discovered something that currently is unknown and will be an "expert" on that topic--that's pretty awesome. The icing on the cake of course would be if my work can somehow be applied to alleviating human disease since I'll probably focus on bacterial or viral pathogenesis.

Also one of the deans speaking to us gave us an example about thinking about hypotheses I'd like to share just because I had never thought about science in that way before. So he basically told us that you must always remember that we can't ever really prove a hypothesis, only support it with data. However, while it's important to try to support your hypothesis, you should try to disprove it as well--that way you might save yourself some time chasing windmills if you can disprove it quickly and you also may get your critics to respect you (there's always going to be someone trying to prove you wrong so you might as well beat them to it). And to support his advice he told us a story about swans. If your hypothesis is that all the swans in the world are white, you can spend the rest of your life counting white swans but the easier and more practical approach would be to look for the one black swan. (Let it simmer for a while...)

Lastly, we had our department orientation. My program is only six people including myself--there are three other normal first years like me (one's a transfer) and two MD/PhD students. It's a pretty small but everyone seemed nice so I hope we bond pretty quickly but we'll see how that goes in the coming weeks, otherwise I'll have to settle on being the weird loner girl.

An early New Year's Resolution

So I lived through my first tropical storm. It actually wasn't too bad where I was--just a lot of rain and wind. I wouldn't have thought it was more then just a thunderstorm. Although I guess a little south of where I live, there was a lot more damage and a ton of people lost power, etc so, all in all, I was pretty lucky!

I've had a lot of downtime this week before school actually starts and I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future in general. One of the epiphanies that I had today was that I think too much about the future--to the point where I don't enjoy what I have in the present. While I still think it's important to be cognizant of the future and have an outline of what you want, your goals, who you want to become, etc, you can't forget about the now which I've been pretty bad about lately. I've become absorbed in worrying about what's to come that I haven't been thankful for the moments that have been passing me by everyday. I forget that we can't predict the future, maybe influence it with our daily actions but even still we'll never know what's to come--things will work out the way they're meant to be in due time.

It's always easier to find a million things to complain about than to focus on the good but overall I have a pretty good life. I have a wonderful family, awesome friends, a great boyfriend, and a plethora of opportunities that I should take advantage of. I remember in middle school, one of our daily English assignments was to write down three things we were grateful for that day and I think now maybe that assignment wasn't such a waste of time. So I'm going to try to enjoy today and appreciate all the things I take for granted before I wake up one day to find that some of it is gone.

Bienvenidos a Miami

I just arrived in Miami this past Thursday after a horrendous experience at the airport (my mom and I sat on the plane on the runway for 3+ hrs before taking off). I started moving into my apartment and pretty much have everything set up in terms of furniture and decorating except for food. I like my apartment more and more as I see it coming together a bit more everyday--I just want it to be cozy and an escape from the stress of school and the lab though I'll have to resist the urge to over-decorate since I'll most likely be looking for another apartment for next year. I also realized very quickly that I am the youngest tenant in the 30 apartments in my complex since everyone else is pretty much a retiree which means I'll have a bunch of new grandpas/grandmas. Two of my neighbors have already told me I can knock on their doors if I ever have a problem (i.e. needing to borrow a cup of sugar or use their phone if a hurricane knocks out cell phone reception) probably because I remind them of their grandchildren. To explain the overrepresentation of the elderly, there's actually a clause in my contract that says that at least one of the occupants of the each unit must be at least forty (and to think I thought I didn't look a day older than about 15). But the condo association already approved me so I hope they don't try to throw me out.

There is also a hurricane threat in affect for southern Miami as I write this entry. It's just my luck that I would arrive here and within three days there's a preemptive state of emergency declared. Tropical storm Fay should make landfall sometime tomorrow afternoon and may become a category 1 hurricane but the native Floridians don't seem to worried so I guess I shouldn't panic--everyone's saying it'll just seem like a really bad thunderstorm. At least I'll be getting my first "big storm" under my belt; hopefully there aren't any Andrews or Katrinas looming in the near future (knock on wood).

Here are some overall first impressions of my new home. I should preface this my saying that I came here expecting the worst (I've developed a glass half empty complex for various reasons about starting grad school) so that should explain things if my thoughts seem a little negative.

-It's really, really humid!! I mean my glasses fog when I step out of the car and for the most part maintaining straight hair would be a nightmare. It's a good thing I've gone back to my curly hair.

-There are lizards everywhere. I have a habit of developing irrational fears just for fun and one of my new ones is that my new apartment will become infested with little lizards. I know they don't bite but anyone that knows me knows how much I would freak out if I were to let's say come face to face with one in the shower.

-I feel like I'm in South America. Granted I knew Miami was 2/3rds Spanish speaking but it didn't really hit me until I was in WalMart yesterday and I swear I didn't hear a word of English the entire time I was there and it took three salespeople to explain to me where to find an umbrella in English. It was a little uncomfortable but it made me realize that I'm going to need to start really practicing my Spanish. There's such a disconnect though between what it sounds like in my head and then what it sounds like coming out of my mouth. I can write you a 20pg essay about autorepresentacion de la identitad indigena (self-representation of the indigenous identity) but sound like a 5yr old when I speak. But hopefully people will find my broken Spanish endearing and want to help me.

-Lastly I feel like I don't belong. It's strange because I've been to Miami so many times in the last four years visiting Ansel (I mean I'm living two buildings down from his old apartment building) so I get this weird sense of deja vu being in the same places we used to go together. It feels like that since we're not together anymore that I shouldn't be here. The feelings are hard to explain but I know I'm going to have to try extra hard to make everything my own and build my own life because being here without him made me realize that he really was my only friend here so I'm going to have to focus on not feeling isolated.

All in all, moving in has been stressful and hectic but it's been nice spending time with my parents and extended family that live in Florida. The past couple days has given a ton to think about in terms of what I want the path I take to be like (school, career, relationships, etc.). Well if I survive Fay, I start orientation on Friday which should be interesting and will probably be decisive in whether I decide to like it here or not, so wish me luck.

I dunno about all this...

So I've jumped on the bandwagon and decided to start a blog about my life now that I'm moving to Miami and starting graduate school aka underpaid slavery.

I don't really know how I feel about blogging and whether I'm writing this for myself or just to let friends (and maybe eventually a handful of stalkers) know what's going on with me since I have a tendency to fall off the face of the planet. I mean my life isn't, and probably never will be, very interesting or glamorous but I guess it's always good to put one's musings down in a more permanent form and hopefully provide some entertainment in the process. Who knows, maybe this will serve as the foundation for my future autobiography when I win my Nobel prize for curing some dread infectious disease that was threatening the very existence of mankind (at least a girl can dream...).

I hope this doesn't become a diary where I complain about how I have it so hard and no one loves me (insert any other whiny comment you've heard me utter here) but I can't promise this since according to my ESFJ personality profile I just have a lot of feelings.

But yeah, we'll see what happens and how long I keep this up for...