My last entry had to be pretty disappointing for the devoted readers out there. I apologize. I just wanted to let those of you who don't see me every day in class know that I'm still alive.

I recently wiped all the songs off my iPod. It had become clogged with songs that I was crazy about briefly, but which didn't stand the test of time. Skipping every third song that came up on shuffle got old, so I purged. Then I went through my music collection and handpicked a few hundred (it's only a Nano) of my absolute favorites (and yet I complain about not having free time?). This was a good move, and has increased my overall happiness level.

Continuing in that vein, I've decided to do two things to try and make cubicle time more tolerable, yet less unproductive than sitting here writing in this thing.

First thing: Pandora, AKA the best way ever to find new music. It's a good source of music that isn't the same as my study playlist. Cubicle time might have been depressing me so much because I was listening to my study music, YET at the end of the day I'd accomplished nothing useful for my future in medicine.

Second thing: Study sheets, in the form of brief outlines, flow charts or drawings (Neuro!!!). I can look over them between periods of data entry. Hopefully this, plus the act of making them itself, will help me master the material. More importantly, it'll make me feel like I'm not wasting my life here.

Emphasis update: Data collection is finished! I have 43 complete interviews. The goal my mentor originally set for me was 40, so I'm happy. I'd kinda been hoping to reach 50, but I'm not heartbroken. I had 95 interview attempts, so that's a 45% response rate. Pretty good, considering the population. And I must say, some of the interviews I had to file under 'Incomplete: Dementia' were FAR more interesting than the ones I'll actually be using in my data analysis.

Alas, we've done only 10 family member interviews. As my mentor has pointed out, a lot of times the reason these people live in nursing homes is that they don't have family members who are involved in their care. So a lot of times, these poor elderly people are all alone in the ER. That's sad. It can be a scary and confusing place when you have all your wits about you. I can't imagine what it's like for someone with all the complicated issues of the elderly, or with something like dementia.

First, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate Kathryn on escaping from med school waitlist hell today!! Being a first-year is a different, much more fun kind of hell.

I spent today doing a bunch of reading, to prepare myself for tomorrow morning's meeting with my new Emphasis PI. Apparently the guy in charge of my Emphasis area is one of the most brilliant healthcare research people out there, so I feel like I should take advantage of this and soak up as much info and knowledge as I can. As of now, I'm pretty sure I don't want to make a career of the whole research thing. (If I did, I wouldn't be in med school, I'd be doing something awesome like theoretical physical chemistry.) However, I realize that to make myself the best residency applicant I can be, research will help. And if I decide to do a fellowship (likely), research will help make me a better fellowship applicant. And then, all the fellowships I'm interested in so far (meaning peds GI and adult GI) involve at least a year(!!!!) dedicated to a research project. So I might as well get used to it. Besides, a couple of years ago I was pretty gung-ho about getting a PhD in chemistry. I changed my mind about that, so maybe I'll change my mind about my future in research. Don't worry, I'll keep you all posted.

I've officially changed Emphasis projects. Why?? Because it quickly became clear that the project I was originally working on, while still cool, isn't the best for the Emphasis program timeline. Who can do meangingful work in the area of Healthcare Research and Management in 8 weeks? Not many people. Unless you do a survey!!! So my official thing is now a survey project, which I was going to help with on the side anyway. It still has to do with geriatrics and quality of care, so I'm happy. Even better, while I'm still in nursing homes, I won't ever have to go to Murfreesboro, and my schedule is now more flexible. That means I should be able to do some shadowing! Adult GI! Colorectal surgery! Endoscopies! Colonoscopies!! And possibly some other things. Joy of joys!

My dear Aunt Louise just bought me a pair of Crocs. I wore them around the nursing home today. Those things are like walking on clouds!! Hideously ugly, clunky clouds that make my feet look like boats. But clouds! I won't ever think they look good. I will still look in scorn at the people who wear them as actual fashion. I will still stare in contempt at people who wear them without socks, because those things have GOT to make feet grosser than feet already are. All that aside, I have definitely been converted. I am a crocs-wearer.

Oh my God, "National Bingo Night" has been on my TV for two whole minutes, and I already want to kill myself. There is no reason to get so excited about bingo, Miss "IT'S MY LUCKY BINGO BAG!!!!" lady. I'm going back to the college baseball I was originally too depressed to watch because Vandy is no longer playing.

I got back to Nashville on Tuesday. Liz picked me up from the airport and we went straight to trivia, walking in just as the second question was being read. In fact, I texted David an idea for our team name before I called my mom to let her know that I arrived safely. Priorities, people.

It was great to play trivia without having to study or read for Topics. And as annoying as it was to have a waitress who took forever to do anything, it was really exciting to know that I didn't have to go to class the next day. Super exciting. I was positively giddy.

My final exams were waiting for me in my mailbox when I got back to campus. 3 classes, 3 passes, and I'm officially done with all that VMS I foolishness.

Now I have Emphasis foolishness! Today was my second day of work, and I've decided that geriatrics is like pediatrics on crack. You have patients who often can't communicate, won't cooperate, and don't really know what's going on. Only they're a lot bigger, and usually (in nursing homes) don't have family members there to speak on their behalf. Which is sad, in a different way than sick kids are.

And now it's time for "So You Think You Can Dance."

First order of business: I fixed the link in my previous entry. Please, click your little hearts out.

Second: Baseline data collection for Emphasis has begun, and is going well. The only problem is, the PI I'm working with isn't very understanding of the fact that the two afternoons a week I have to devote to Emphasis, are just that. Two afternoons a week. Because I am actually a student in a school that has classes, and those classes are in the morning. Luckily, I'm not going to class anyway, and I haven't been using the time to study. I might as well go do Emphasis work during class time. Productivity is productivity. Another lucky thing is that the actual research team I've joined is made up of super-nice people. They also have trouble understanding just how time consuming med school is, but at least they're trying.

Third: Fun times of the recent past. Yesterday was the Wellness Class Cup, pitting all the classes against each other in feats of strength. Of course, it ended up being just the second years against the first years, because the upper two classes have to actually work in the hospitals. I was signed up to play softball, but because of the horrible weather (it snowed!!) we ended up playing wiffle ball in the gym. And then I played kickball. My class won both games, thanks to my awesome skills of striking out and hitting into double plays.

Also, today was a certain delinquent water user's birthday, so there was a celebratory cookout! It was super fun. There were like, five kinds of cake.

I need to be on site for Emphasis stuff at 7:30 tomorrow morning, so I'm going to head to bed.

Thanks to everyone who expressed concern about my well-being/stress level over the past few days. School stress by itself is barely tolerable; outside worries seem to make it a thousand times worse. However, it looks like things are starting to work themselves out. Sorry for the crypticness, but I don't want to jinx myself and have everything get all screwed up again.

In other news, something that has totally worked out. The masterpiece of computational theoretical chemistry I spent two years "working" on has finally been published. Journal of Chemical Physics, and I'm lead author. Super-exciting.

We started a new unit in Biochem today. Lipid metabolism, taught by Dr. Marnett. I really like him so far. If he throws in a few more random historical and pop culture references, he'll be tied for my favorite biochem lecturer. At one point this morning he mentioned something about lipid micelles being used for drug delivery... There was a bit of a fuss because that topic came up during Monday's exam, and apparently we weren't taught the information. I couldn't say for sure, since I was only there for two days of the section. However, word in the bathroom* is that it was noted on one page of the first packet of notes we got from that section's lecturer. I'll buy that...I'm the type of student who finds it much, much easier to believe that I just slept through/ignored/missed some information, as opposed to a professor maliciously testing me on something he didn't teach. And let's be honest, among all the metabolic pathways and signaling mechanisms, the "What is a phospholipid?" packet didn't get much of my attention.

That exam question did throw me, by the way, but I put 'micelles' when I couldn't think of anything particular we'd learned this semester. After all, I spent the past two years of my life using "drug delivery systems" as the default real-life application for my computational research on the thermodynamics of micelle aggregation. Which brings the grand total of times my project has been useful to...one.

*There is no word on the street during first year. We do our chit-chatting during our ten minute bathroom breaks.


I interviewed at Vandy a year ago today. The first impression was not the greatest, but I'm happy I came here and I'm five hundred percent sure I picked the right school for me.

Friday was my last day of thesis-related stuff! I woke up earlier than usual that morning, because I wanted to stop by Dr. Kindt's office before Human Phys. A combination of the earliness, and the fact that some classes had already ended, meant that I was the only person up in the apartment. I'm used to seeing at least two of the roommates in the morning, so it was weird to feel like I was the only person around. It felt so wrong, that when I walked into the empty kitchen, my first worried thought was, "Is today a day?" I actually turned to go back into my room and check. Dunno what I was going to check, just that I needed to make sure that it was, in fact, a day.

Once I got all that sorted out, I went to the chem building and had Dr. Kindt sign the preliminary pages of my thesis. Then I went to Human Phys, where we learned stuff as always. Then I went over to White Hall and turned in my thesis. I was convinced that the coordinator would find something wrong with my margins or my formatting or something, and I'd have to fix it and I STILL wouldn't be done. She measured my margins, flipped through all the pages, and said "You're good. Congratulations!" And that was that. The thing that had taken over so much of my life, over and done with. I had the biggest grin on my face as I left the building.

I then went to the Revenge of Slack-a-Thon, or whatever they were calling it. Since it rained on Wednesday and they had to shut it down, it was held again on Friday. There was actually free food the second time, so that was nice. I meant to stay and collect money for maybe half an hour, but I ended up staying for almost three. After all, I didn't have any thesis stuff to work on!

It feels good to be a senior!

I was pretty tense last night, and I didn't sleep very well. For the first time in a long time, I was awake enough to press 'snooze' instead of turning off the alarm and oversleeping by 20 minutes. Today's Human Phys lecture was about a fairly important pathway that I wanted to understand, so I went to that class. I wore pajamas, OF COURSE. Then I went to participate in the Slack-a-Thon, this charity fundraising thing. I couldn't truly slack, though, because my mind was on my thesis. So I came back here and forced myself to listen to music and do nothing until it was time to get dressed and head over to the chemistry building.

I was soooo nervous about the presentation (sweating like CRAZY!), but it went well. JK was cool, and Dr. Soria didn't say a whole lot. Dr. Family was the wild card, since I didn't know him, and he's pretty much an expert on the stuff. However, he seemed more fascinated by the project than eager to rip it apart. And so after my little presentation, they deliberated for a few minutes, and I got highest honors! At normal schools, that'd be summa cum laude. But at a normal school, the whole honors thing would only be based on GPA and I'd probably be a level lower, so no complaints here!

Right after that I went to a little goodbye party for one of the Emerson Center's system administrators. There was cake with whipped icing! And after that there was the Chemistry Department's senior banquet and awards ceremony. I got the Excellence in Chemistry award, which I wasn't expecting at all.

I went straight from there to Exec, and after that, was FINALLY able to get out of my dressy clothes. And since then, I haven't been able to do anything but sit and stare blankly at my TV or monitor. Fun!

Highest.

Today was the last day of defense prep. JK recommended that I learn the chemical structure of this phospholipid that kind of exhibits the behavior I've been simulating all this time. This frustrated me for a while, because I am SPOILED by the internet. I couldn't find the structure anywhere. Then I slapped myself upside the head, and remembered that I could just find the IUPAC name, be a chemistry major and figure the thing out myself. I did that, no problem.

From there, I went on to reviewing all the theoretical stuff. Namely, being able to derive the equations I use. As of now, I can start with an empty lattice, fill it with polymer molecules, and go from there to end up with an equation for entropy of mixing that's about as long as I am tall. None of the sources I use bother to go into the nitty-gritty of simplifying that equation. I've tried semi-valiantly, and I just don't have the algebraic skills to do it. Hopefully, I'll be able to turn to my audience and say "And now let us agree, as chemists do, that this simplifies like so," then move on. That's if I'm even asked to derive the equation in the first place. I might have gone through all the trouble for nothing.

I have a couple more things to do. Off I go!

Last night was a lot of fun. Kathryn, Casey, and I went out for Mexican to celebrate Kathryn's survival of the MCAT. Then Casey had to go back to her room to do RA-type stuff, so Kathryn and I watched "Jurassic Park 3" and "What a Girl Wants." We're equal opportunity mockers. And then when Casey was done being an RA, she came over and we watched 3 eps of first-season Grey's Anatomy.

When I got up this morning, I knew I had a long day of thesis-related stuff ahead of me. So I put on my gray Vanderbilt med school shirt, just as a reminder of what's really ahead of me. It's quickly becoming my favorite shirt.

After DUCbrunch (I won't be saying that many more times) I came here to my lab, looked at basically everything I have, and put together my defense. I'm satisfied with it now, but I'm sure JK will find some things to change.

I went to the last pledge meeting, which wasn't nearly as sad as I thought it would be. Maybe because I'm just not as close to this semester's pledges. No way they get individual letters this year.

I have so much stuff to do, I don't even want to think about it. Aren't finals soon?

Today was uneventful. I thought this was my last Thursday of class, since Dr. Miller had some thing next week. Turns out the thing was this week. I found out when I checked the syllabus to see which book chapters and articles I'd be pretending to have read. Since I was already up, I went to lab and worked on some thesis presentation stuff. You see, writing the thing isn't enough. I have to give a talk and then answer all these hard questions. This will be my fourth or fifth presentation of the project, so I'm not very nervous about it. It's just another bothersome thing to do. So after lunch with LB, I came back here to nap, but I didn't. I practiced deriving some of the equations I use in the ol' thesis, since I'm sure I'll have to do that during the defense.

Then I wasted time in a variety of ways until it was time for trivia! Danielle, Kathryn and I had a pretty bad first half, an okay second half, and got the final question wrong. Yet another failure! Tonight's halftime question was in a category of its own. The announcer began by saying it was a science question, specifically gemology. I was a bit skeptical, but I had my whole geologist stage as a kid, so I thought it'd be okay. The announcer told us to write down the following four colors: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red. At this point, I figured we'd have to match up gemstones, like Tanzanite and Tourmaline. When the question continued: "Identify what causes diamonds to be these colors," to say my confidence plummeted would be an understatement. It was like in quiz bowl, when you buzz in early on a question, at the exact moment the reader says something that makes you realize you don't know the answer at all. We got zero points on the question, unsurprisingly.

How is tomorrow already Friday?

Went to the pool again today. I was there for about an hour and a half, but only half of that was actual swimming. Now, I can swim, and I know perfectly well that I can swim, but I just don't do it that often. It's been years since I've been in water that was deeper than I am tall. And I've always had just a little bit of fear of deep water. It goes away once I've been in the water for a while, but..yeah. I had to spend a while proving to myself that I could do stuff like tread water and start swimming without anything to push off from. Once I got my confidence, I went at it. It was quite fun, but I feel like my shoulders and back are going to have something to say about that tomorrow.

I also spent a bit of time hanging out on the quad with a group of people. It was mostly people I know from Scholars stuff, so the talk was mostly about theses. Who has defended, who still hasn't defended, who got highest honors, etc. Apparently that stuff gets through the grapevine really quickly. I can't be entirely sure, but I think people found out about my ridiculously late defense date before I did.

Speaking of the ol' thesis, it goes to my committee members tomorrow, FOR REAL. Looking back to when I originally thought it was done, and comparing it to what I have now, I can only say that I can be quite the moron sometimes. What I had before was utter crap. What I have now is still somewhat crappy, but it's about twenty times more informative and coherent. I suppose JK was onto something with his relentless suggestion-giving. Also, the other thesis writer in my group? Defends the day after I do, not a week earlier like I thought. So he'll have even less time for final revisions than I will. As we all know, my mind is at ease when I can at least compare myself to someone in a worse situation than I am. So I've gone from frustrated about the whole thing, to feeling AWESOME.

AWESOME!

( (semi)-Spoiler Alert! )

All these schedule conflicts keep popping up among the members of my thesis committee. Well, among two of the three members. Dr. Soria, God love him, just told me "Tell me when to be there and I will be there." It's the other two who have meetings and seminars and blah blah blah. Do they not realize that motivating myself to do this in the first place is an uphill battle? And then it turns out that Dr. Kindt had many more extensive comments on one of my earlier drafts. I ignored those comments because they DIDN'T SHOW UP on the file he sent back to me. Why didn't they show up? Because MACS SUCK IN EVERY WAY IMAGINABLE AND THEY WILL ALWAYS SUCK AND ANYBODY WHO THINKS MACS DO ANYTHING BUT SUCK CAN, QUITE SIMPLY, KISS MY BUTT. So I get to go back over this thing I thought was finished and make all these corrections that I didn't know I had to do!

Oh well. You know what? 35 days.

So, the first round is over. Of the 32 games, I got 8 wrong. Unfortunately, I had Kansas going all the way to the Final Four. I don't know why I am always so enamored of the Jayhawks. I think it's the really bright blue uniforms they sometimes wear. Or the "Rock chalk Jayhawk" chant. One way or another, I've been brainwashed, and they always end up failing me. Next year, I'll know better, and will pick them to lose early.

Of course, I've just guaranteed that the Kansas Jayhawks will be the 2007 national champions.

In thesis news, the 12 pages of data analysis I did today, plus the 8 from yesterday and the 11 pages of stuff I'd written before, puts me in pretty good shape. I think. I finally feel good about meeting with Dr. Kindt. We'll talk about what I can do with the stuff I have, make a plan and I'll get 'er done. I just want this thing to be over with!

Last weekday of Spring Break. I think I accomplished what I set out to do. At least now, I am basically at the same point as the other thesis writer in my research group. This makes me happy, because life is good as long as I can compare myself to someone else. I have all these graphs of my data, and all these equations that describe my data...but what do I do with it now? Just keep making more graphs and deriving more equations, you say? Okay! Just turn in a bound copy of my opening 11 pages, with all the graphs and equations attached? Okay!

Last night, while I was sleeping, I came to the realization that my thesis is in very bad shape. I was pretty discouraged when I woke up. I knew that it was past time for me to start finding ways to describe and tie together all of my data. I'm still at the data-collecting stage, so that's kinda sucky. I moped around for a bit, mad at myself for slacking off all this time. But then I realized, just because the stuff I have isn't sufficient for the original focus of my thesis, it could be good for something else. So I buckled down and worked really hard all day, running some simulations and analyzing the results I do have. I'm going to say something that would probably make my sophomore-year self die of shock: Mathcad made my day worthwhile. I was making best-fit curves like a mofo.


My mood was also boosted when I checked my mail today. In it, I found an envelope from Vanderbilt's student health services. It was basically a bunch of health forms that I have to fill out and send back, immunization records and the like. What brought a smile to my face was the fact that the accompanying letter started out, "Dear Vanderbilt medical student,". Not "Dear student who's way behind on her thesis," not "Dear slacker who is doing work that should have been done months ago." They aren't concerned about that stuff. To them, I'm just one of their incoming medical students, so maybe I should be a little less hard on myself about this thesis, hmmm?

The first four paragraphs of my thesis:

Equilibrium polymers are formed from the reversible self-assembly of monomers into chain-like aggregates of arbitrary lengths. The reversibility arises from noncovalent association, which in physical systems may include hydrogen bonding, pi-orbital interactions, and other transient associations. The formation of aggregates is susceptible to change with variations in system conditions such as temperature, concentration, and solvent composition.

A wide variety of systems exhibit equilibrium polymerization. Networks of the proteins actin and tubulin assemble and disassemble to form cellular scaffolding. When placed in solvent, amphiphilic molecules such as phospholipids aggregate into spherical micelles, which in turn reversibly form cylindrical (worm-like) macroaggregates.

Reversible formation of chains is one of the simplest and most representative types of self-assembly, and understanding this phenomenon could lead to advances in the fields of biological science and materials science. Processes such as detergency, oil recovery, and lipid transport in the bloodstream all involve systems that exhibit reversible self-assembly. Micellar solutions are a particularly interesting example of this behavior. Like other complex fluid systems, micellar solutions exhibit a mesoscopic length scale, intermediate between micro- and macroscopic. The length scale arises from the properties of the smaller particles from which the monomer units themselves are formed. Characteristic properties that arise from the mesoscopic length scale include: BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Because bonds can form, break, and re-form freely, the chains in equilibrium polymer systems are not of fixed length. Instead, there is a polydisperse distribution of chain lengths about an average value. As system conditions change, this average value also changes in order to minimize free energy. The phenomenon of chain formation arises from the short-ranged bonding interactions between monomers. Meanwhile, the longer-range attractive interactions between the particles of different chains lead to the phenomenon of phase behavior. Specifically, one sees a transition from a dilute low-density phase to a high-density, or condensed, phase. If nonbonded monomers experience no attractions, this condensation transition is not seen.

The third and fourth paragraphs are okay, I think. (Except for the "BLAH BLAH BLAH", currently placeholding until I figure out the characteristic properties of mesoscopic length scales.) The first two paragraphs need to be fleshed out quite a bit more, and paragraphs five through two hundred are all crap. In fact, next to me I have a list of the details I should be adding right now, and corrections I should be making at this very moment. But I just returned from a workout, and I need a little time to cool down before I jump back into the chemistry. So I decided to post here and make you all insanely jealous of me. I know you wish you could be writing about simulated polymer systems. Don't hate!