ASU Tempe Symposium

I’m not gonna lie. I totally forgot to make this post. We’ve been working on putting together the poster for the ASU Tempe Symposium. Everyone of us made it to the conference! Go us. I think it was a good conference. The key speaker had a lot of specialized knowledge about FTIR, so that was super exciting. She’s actually been part of working on 3D FTIR! We talked to her a bit about it, and it turns out that while FTIR is really exciting, it’s much more complicated than we are probably capable of interpreting really well especially given that our samples are biological and there are so many ingredients that might be contributing to the different peaking. She suggested GCMS or gas chromatography mass spectrometry, so maybe that’s something that we’ll consider as we begin the experiment again over the summer with the longer time frame. If we do, then we’ll just have to make sure to co incubated a larger number of plastic disks as the samples are destroyed in GCMS. I would be excited to have some addition quantitative data. We also saw some former PC science students! They told us about the LEAP program which sounds like a great program for students interested in conducting research that don’t qualify for S-STEM or TRAIN. I’ll definitely keep it in mind. MNT was really neat this week. We looked at the membrane inside an egg which Totally didn’t look how I expected, and we got to see our nanoparticle silver solutions. The larger particles formed an almost iridescent looking film on the glass tube. Rho Pi won a ton of awards for their activities this last year. I’m excited about participating in our future activities. We have quite a few super interesting things on the calendar related to financial wellness.

Roller Coaster

I had a really wonderful and entirely unproductive spring break. We took one of the grandkids (Jacoby) and Liam to Castles N Coasters for Jacoby’s birthday. He’d never been before, so that made it extra wonderful. I guess I did get some things done around the house. I got to relax too, so I suppose that you could say that I worked on my biochemical health which I’m sure is completely screwy thanks to my constant worry combined with my amazing skill in procrastination. Which brings me roundly to the state of this week, where I have put upon one of my very favorite instructors by asking for not one but two extensions in the same week. I have to write a scientific paper for a lab. My chem instructor has begun to talk about scheduling the next test. I’m not doing nearly as well in chemistry as I’d like. I haven’t managed to finish any more of 5 star. That’s totally on my to do list. Oh! Over break I did get the opportunity to meet with my research group, so I was feeling much better about that. I do worry that we’ll continue to struggle to find time to get together, but we’ll figure it out. I’m really feeling like at this point, I’ve just got to put my head down and get it done.

Liam’s first roller coaster. Totally worth it. :-D

Ask me about PTK

This week has been insanely momentous. There was a position open in PTK for regional officer for development and recruitment, so I ran for it. I don’t think that I really had an appreciation for what I was doing. I decided to run for it a couple of days before the convention. I was woefully underprepared especially in the context of how hard the people running for the other positions appeared to have worked on their campaigns. Really, I just thought, “This is a good thing. I’m going to do it.” At this point, I’m pretty sure that’s how I’m am approaching life anymore. Anyway, I ran unopposed, so I did win. Everyone was super nice about the lack of my campaign materials. My head is still spinning from figuring out the potential importance of winning the position, but I really want to do a good job. I’m not even sure what a good job is. What do I consider a good job of my position? I’m going to start by completing Competive Edge because it sounds like an amazing program, and I want to encourage all our members to do that. Then, I’m going to Catalyst because I should be able to talk about some of the opportunities to our members better after that. I feel like this should be bulleted. Maybe I’ll make this list somewhere that I can mark it up and adjust it as necessary, but you get the idea. It’s important. I’ve got work to do. I’m also freaking out about going to conferences and presenting our stuff. I’m so discouraged at how little time my research team is spending together. Our schedules are crazy, but because each of us is doing some part of the experiment very nearly completely by themselves, it’s really problematic. There’s got to be a way to divide the experiment better so that each of us has an idea of what’s going on with every part of the experiment. Instead none of us really knows what to do with each others’ stuff. There’s a lot of “I don’t know. So-and-so is doing that.” I hate it. On top of that, I do not know how to interpret IR spectra. I’m not getting any more comfortable with it, and I most definitely do not feel comfortable presenting it at conference. I’m committed to the project, so I’m going to just have to work around this stuff. I’ve just got to figure it out. Also, I’ve got two new papers to write. Yay me!
Oh man, I didn’t even say anything about the regional conference other than about me! It was good. I learned a ton about PTK! Really, I had no idea. The break out sessions were really helpful, and there are so many amazing and different kinds people in PTK. This is getting lengthy though, so ask me in person!