What bothers me about Cell Biology

Well, friends, I said I'd keep in better touch and do a better job of updating my blog.  And one easy way to write a post is to complain about something.  So, here I go!

Right now, I am in a cell biology class.  As a graduate student, most of my time is dedicated to research, but I have to take 3 or 4 classes.  That's OK, because graduate school classes aren't like undergrad classes- they're more about critical thinking and learning than they are about regurgitation and mind reading.  Or at least, they should be.

Enter cell bio.  This class feels like they took an undergraduate cell biology class and said "how can we make this harder, so it's a graduate level class, but not change our lectures at all?"  Some of the ideas they came up with were kind of remarkable.

One way they make the class harder is to have it team-taught.  That means that we have a new professor every couple of weeks.  So, if there is a problem with the course, we can go to the professor who is currently teaching who will say "look, I've only got a lecture or two left, let's just tough it out," or the previous one who will say "I'm not involved in that course any more, sorry!" or the head professor who will say "you know, I only supervise and don't have any real power over problem X.  You should talk to someone else."  I've heard each of those, either directly from the professor or from another student who tried to get help.  So, that's frustrating. 

Another way they make my life difficult is by asking terrible questions.  This is one of my big pet peeves, and I work hard to ask good questions when I teach.  The bad questions come in two types: The Fish and The Detail Guess. 

The Fish is where you ask a very vague question with a very specific answer in mind.  Like "What makes Hitler a bad person?"  "No, it's not what he did to Poland.  No, I don't mean killing the Jews.  No, not abuse of power and manipulating people.  That's right, I was looking for 'Killing Gypsies.'  Hitler was bad because he killed Gypsies."

The Detail Guess is where you ask a broad question, and want a very specific amount of detail.  "What do you do when company comes over?" You can answer this question saying "I would vacuum my living room."  Then, if they want more detail, they say "Where did you get the vacuum?  Do you use electricity to vacuum?  Do you move the furnature or just vacuum around it?"  But if they want less detail they say "all I wanted was "clean up the house."  The key elements of the information guess are one, they penalise you for giving the wrong level of detail (either too much or too little) and two, they make no attempt at telling you how much detail they wanted.

Anyway, I'm frustrated with the class, as you can tell.  Will I survive? Yes.  Will I be sending any of the TA's a Christmas card? Probably not.

Bored

So, here I am, sitting in the Maddock lab at UM, avoiding the grant proposal I should be writing.  I've checked a couple blogs, I've read the news, and I just can't make myself write the last essay I have to write.  I'm out of blogs and other fun things to do. 

And if you give a mouse a blog, he'll remember that he hasn't updated his own in a while.  Or something like that.

I'm not sure what in my life is exciting enough to update you on.  My science is being...less than successful at the moment.  I'm writing a big proposal to the NSF to get them to fund me (3 years of solid funding plus a raise...it would be very nice).  Kate is doing most of the fun wedding-planny stuff. 

Anyway, that's probably enough rambling for now.  But for my fans out there, I am still alive.  Just been busy.  I'll try not to neglect you so much in the future.

Meetings

Hey, folks.  Another rambling post about things nobody cares about.  Except me.  I care about them a lot.

Today I was thinking about something in church. In my ward, someone gets up every week to announce that if you are new to the ward, the Bishop and "Transition Committee" (a group that helps with new move-ins) would love to meet you, so there will be a brief meeting before Sunday school for all the new people and a few people they should meet (Elders Quorum, Bishop, etc).  But this always sounds a bit weird to me.  A meeting.  I don't know about you, but when I hear "meeting" I picture this.

Or maybe this.

Is there a reason we have to use that word?  Especially with people who are new to the church, I feel like our calling everything a meeting (Sacrament meeting, Elders Quorum meeting, and then if you're lucky you have a committee meeting of some sort after church) is kind of strange.  Maybe it's just me, but I would feel kind of weird about "let's have a meeting with the transition committee," but I'd be totally OK with "let's meet up" or "let's get together."

Is that weird?

Blank Time

Time for a rant, friends. 

Right now it is 12:03 (it will probably be later by the time this gets posted, but at this exact moment, it is still 12:03).  There is a department seminar today at noon.  3 minutes ago.  But everyone knows that it doesn't start till 12:15.  It is the noon seminar that starts 15 minutes after noon.  And then since nobody shows up till 12:15, it doesn't actually get going till 12:20 or 12:30.

Folks around here call this "Michigan Time."  One of my classes starts at "10:00 AM," which of course means 10:15.  It is just understood that things are supposed to start late, and if you actually want things to start on time you have to make a huge deal about it.  Like last week when we were taking a bus out to a departmental retreat.  The bus was leaving at 10:00, which was not on Michigan Time (the departmental email actually said that). 

This has made me think lately.  I am (spoiler ahead!) a Mormon.  We, as a people, have the bad habit of being late to things.  So much so that some of us use the term "Mormon Standard Time" to mean 15-20 minutes late.  When I worked at JCVI, formerly TIGR (said "Tiger"), everyone talked about "TIGR time" meaning 20-30 minutes late.  When I was a missionary to the Spanish-speakers in Orange County, people talked about "Latin Time."

It seems to me that this is a ubiquitous problem that every group of people wants to claim as their own.  We all want to say "I'm late because I'm at UM" or "I'm late because I'm Mormon" and never "I'm late because I'm bad at managing my time."

So, have any of you seen this?  Do any of you belong to some group that is late because of Group Name Time?

Brandon Sanderson

So, for the information of anyone who doesn't know this yet, I'm a huge nerd. I can admit it. Brandon Sanderson, one of my favorite authors, recently put out a nerdy book.




I went back and forth over and over about whether or not I wanted to get a numbered autographed copy on opening night.  I finally decided not to, partly because I missed the pre-order deadline.  Then I get a call from my old roommate Travis the day before the book came out. Travis accidentally pre-ordered two copies.  I said I would buy one of them off of him.  So Travis asked me what I wanted the personalization to say, since he would be going to get it from Brandon that night and could have anything I wanted written in the front.  I didn't really care so I just told Travis to make it something "cool and Brandon Sandersony".

A week or two later, yesterday, I get the book in the mail.  When I opened it up, I saw the autographed title page:

How awesome is that? Travis apparently told Brandon Sanderson that I was getting married soon, so I now have a congratulations on the title page. Maybe that's just cool to me, but I think it's pretty darn cool.

Pie graphs

I was going to just have this image with no explanation, but I guess I can at least say where it comes from. I was watching a presentation the other day with lots of scientific data presented in pie-graph form, and I couldn't help but think how much I hate pie graphs. That's all.

Cookie dough

Well, friends, I made cookie dough last night. I am a big fan of chocolate chip cookie dough. A really big fan. I love the stuff, raw eggs and all. But everybody says it's bad for you to eat raw eggs. So every year or so when I am making cookie dough, I think "I should look for a recipe that doesn't have eggs." And I do. And I'm always disappointed. I made this one last night.  Does anybody have a good one?  Anybody? I'm probably going to stick with eggs for a while, but I'd love to hear if anybody has a better idea.