The semester is over. So, why do I still feel so crappy?

I had two final exams this week: cell biology on Wednesday and molecular/biochem today. My end-game strategy was to devote pretty much all of my resources to getting a decent grade on the cell biology test. As many of you know, I bombed the last two exams, so I really needed to pull my head out of my ass for this last one. I feel like I did reasonably well on it, but my gut feeling on these sorts of things has been way off for the entire semester. Very unsettling.

With all my time spent studying for cell, there were only 24 hours left to prepare for molecular. Initially, I didn't have a coherent strategy for it. I've done well enough (mid-80% range) on each of the previous three exams, so I knew that I had some wiggle room on this last one. The topics included 3 hours of bioinformatics, 2 hours of protein synthesis, 5 hours of glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, glycogenesis, glycogenolysis, hormones of metabolism, and diabetes (types I and II), 4 hours of electron transport chain and ATP synthesis, 1 hour of modes of genetic inheritance/pedigree analysis, 2 hours of epigenetics in health and disease, 2 hours of genetic testing and complex disease - Alzheimer's, and 1 very lame hour of cancer genetics. 20 hours of instruction; one stupid test.

I did a lot of fruitless panicking over this exam and a whole lot of number crunching to see how poorly I could do and still probably pass. I say probably because the pass/fail line has not yet been determined. I think it depends on the class cumulative exam average and the standard deviation. If your test average is below the standard deviation of the class average, you're in danger of failing the course. This is what I've pieced together from cryptic emails and conversations with higher ups who aren't telling me everything. I think I may have done more number crunching and analysis of "what if" scenarios than I did actual studying.

The strategy that I finally settled on was one that I've never really put into action before - a plan to selectively fail. I decided that the module on diabetes, hormones, and sugar metabolism that normal people don't give a shit about - was unlearnable. The PowerPoint slides and textbook chapters may as well have been written in cuneiform script as far as I was concerned. I figured that it was better to cut off the rotten limb than to sacrifice the life of the individual. I tried to devote what little time I had left to the topics I thought I could remember long enough to regurgitate onto the exam. There were still some things that I just didn't have time to adequately review - cancer genetics (only worth 10 points, so fuck it), genetic testing (didn't stick in my head well and I didn't care much), and pedigree stuff. I was totally unconcerned with pedigree analysis since genealogy has been a hobby of mine since before the internet came along and made things easy. I can take a five-second look at a plot of circles and squares connected by a bunch of crazy lines and point out who is your second cousin once removed and which one of your great-grandparents married their first cousin and had a couple of messed up kids as a result of some autosomal recessiveness. At least I've got that skill to be proud of, I guess.

I completed the test to the best of my ability in 2.5 hours and left with no sense of relief or accomplishment - only the notion that I was glad to be leaving without having to come back until next year. I crawled along in bumper to bumper traffic with all the other people trying to flee Detroit before dark, and went straight to the Corner to meet Mary. We didn't really get invited to go camping with the rest of the GA/lecturer "cool" crowd who likes that kind of punishment (a whole lot of people in a bare bones cabin that's supposed to sleep 8. In the middle of December. In Michigan. I'm not that kind of masochist, but I can't really begrudge the people who are - too much). Mary and I had an "anti-camping" party at the bar and it was fun.  And I'm sure that was way more fun for everyone involved than having me pout and bitch about how camping sucks all night. Such a humanitarian, I am!

Is this all my own fault?

Tonight I had someone whose opinion I greatly value insinuate that my problems acclimating to life at Wayne State are primarily of my own creation. "You're just having a brain fart over there for some reason," was the approximate statement that I recall. Initially I totally discounted this idea, but as I drove home I kept thinking about it and it really started to eat at me. Could this be true? Is he right? If so, what do I do now?? He says I have the intellectual ability to get through a PhD there. I have finally (mostly) come to believe that this is true. Paradoxically, despite my two failed cell biology tests - which are highly uncharacteristic of me - the difficultly of the courses is not the problem. Not at all. I could learn the hell out of the material if I wanted to. That's the key phrase - if I wanted to. The problem is that I don't. I don't have to be the best in my classes; I don't even really have to be good in my classes. All I have to do in order to move on is pass. But why should I want to move on when I hate what I'm doing? My passion for bench work is gone. I'm questioning everything I thought I wanted to do with my life now. I don't have any program cohorts to study with or confide in or complain to. The graduate coordinator is awkward as all get out, so talking to him did not help. I don't belong to a lab either. I'm in a no man's land that is not of my own creation. What do I do? How do you socialize if there is no one to socialize with? How am I supposed to deal with being thrown into a completely different culture with people I only tangentially interact with and have no classes or labs or anything in common with? I deal by going back to what I know and the people who have been my surrogate family for the last several years - at Eastern. But I'm beginning to feel like I don't belong there either. Because really, I don't. I should be bonding with my new peers at Wayne, but I'm not. How can I? Is this all my own fault? Is it simply circumstance? Should I have applied to U of Toledo? Does any of it really matter now?

The great (departmental) divide

The Immunology & Microbiology Department at Wayne State, to which I now ostensibly belong, is having a Christmas party this Thursday at noon in the department lounge/library - complete with a "White Elephant" gift exchange. Given only the facts I have just laid out for you in the previous sentence, I did not need to be informed by the very gossipy secretary that the party would be pretty lame, though I did appreciate the validation of my gut feeling. First of all, it's being held on Thursday. In the middle of the day. With no alcohol allowed. A "party" in the middle of the day on a Thursday without booze just screams lameness. I'm very grateful to have Brenna's thesis defense at 3:00 that day as my out.

All of that aside, the secretary also confirmed my assessment of the department that I had gleaned just from sitting back and observing how the other students and faculty interacted - or didn't - during seminars. Students and faculty apparently don't mix. Even during the new student welcome lunch thingy near the beginning of the semester, faculty segregated themselves to one side of the room, while students went to the opposite side - and never the twain shall meet. She said that Dr. N (whose lab I just finished rotating in) was one of the good faculty and I got an idea of which faculty members did not impress her with their graciousness, to put it nicely. She said she was telling me all of this because, "you're one of the nicest graduate students and I like you." A few weeks ago, she was talking with me about different TV shows she likes and mentioned how she would never talk about that kind of stuff with "the doctors" because I guess she felt as though they fancied themselves too highbrow for things like TV. That was a big red flag. If the department secretary doesn't feel comfortable talking to many of these faculty members, in my opinion, there's a serious problem within the department. I suppose that everything she told me could simply be her own paranoia at work, but I highly doubt that. This woman doesn't have a shy bone in her body, and I find her likable and quite pleasant. She may be a person that an introvert like me can only take in small doses, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I'm trying not to let my imagination run wild with worst case scenarios (which is extremely difficult for me), but this whole departmental dynamic worries me. I'm also very concerned about finding the right mentor and lab environment (slim pickings since hardly anyone has funding), but I realize it's kind of early to get too worked up about it. I also recognize that I will probably get too worked up about it too soon in spite of myself.

As for how I'm doing in my classes, I'm doing okay in molecular biology, but not so hot in cell biology. I scored a 68% on each of my last two exams - and there are only four exams in the course, so I freaked out thinking that I was going to get kicked out of the program. I emailed the graduate coordinator, who told me that I wasn't doing as badly as I thought I was. He said that usually the pass/fail line is somewhere in the low 60% range. Since my mean exam score is 75%, while I have room to improve on the final exam, I should be fine overall. Instantly, I went from feeling like a moron who probably deserved to be given the boot to being disgusted by how low the program standards are. It would almost be funny if it wasn't true. What the hell is wrong with me?! Why can't I just be happy that I'm probably not going to fail and stop there? Nope, I've got to muddle it all up with some horror sprinkled with disgust. Christ, I should just be shot and sent off to the glue factory.

Somebody revoke my "(Marginally) Sane Member of Society" card, please!

I hate Christmas music. When I worked in the pathology labs at UM, we always had the radio playing in the background. Unfortunately, we listened to a station that switched over to All-Christmas-Music All-the-Time beginning immediately after Halloween. I do not recall the choice of radio station being a democratic decision. After having listened to a third of a year's worth of the same 20 Christmas songs 8 hours per night, 5-6 nights a week over the course of two years, I just can't do it now; not even 12 years after the fact. This background should make what I'm doing right now highly disturbing, even to me: I'm listening to Christmas music and liking it. Actually, it's only one Christmas song played over and over again - "All I Want for Christmas is You" by Mariah Carey. Somehow this is the only song that escaped my eternal disdain even though I'm pretty sure it was in heavy rotation on the radio back then (translation: this is the only Christmas song I like).

 I normally can't read while listening to music, especially not if the music has lyrics, but here I sit, reading up on the generation of NADH and ATP with comprehension (!) AND listening to the One Sanctioned Christmas Song AND swaying from side to side in time with the music. Simultaneously! This is no small feat here, people. Holy shit!! What else requires near-maximal brain power?! This may be one of the rare times the stars have aligned for me and I actually have most cylinders not misfiring, so lemme at it! Maybe I can solve some crazy-ass mathematical theorem (the goal of world peace is just too cliché) and credit the miracle to Mariah Carey's magical voice! Perhaps I should just settle for passing my upcoming final cell biology exam. I've got one pass and two pretty spectacular fails under my belt (go big or go home, right?), so I could really use a miracle of any sort at this point, lol! At the present moment, however, I'm just grateful for this tiny glint of joy in the otherwise barren landscape that has been my life this semester. It's a start in the right direction, isn't it? It's gotta get better soon because I'm staking the last of my sanity on it. In any case, I'm so thankful for my wonderful friends who have stuck by me through this tough time and haven't given up on me; you inspire me to keep going- "I don't want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need / I don't care about the presents underneath the Christmas tree / I just want you for my own, more than you could ever know / make my wish come true, all I want for Christmas is you..."

Sourpuss begone!

I'm not gonna lie - I've been very depressed lately - for a number of legitimate reasons. So much so that I'm actually starting to really annoy myself. That's bad. I feel like a useless, floundering, beer-guzzling, pie-eating, sedentary chunk of Kobe beef, to put it bluntly. In a desperate no-holds-barred attempt to cheer myself up, I'm sitting in front of my seasonal affective "happy" light bank, typing up future exam questions, and totally rocking out to The Monkees. Yes, The Monkees - my first musical love, my first concert, and my go-to "cheer the fuck up, already!" music. From the time I was Elliot's age through adolescence and early adulthood, up to the present day - I have always adored them. Even I can't be depressed listening to these lyrics: "I have no more than I did before / but now I've got all that I need / for I love you and I know you love me / yes, I love you and I know you love me..." I can't explain it, but this almost never fails to lift my mood. All I need now is a marathon of the original Star Trek (with Captain Kirk - swoon!). Two of the best childhood memories ever - summers spent watching The Monkees and Star Trek, sitting a foot away from the TV so I could reach the dial to change the channel, lol! Ah, I was born far too late!!

I'm all out of clever titles today. Sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

I feel guilty that I've only had time to write once a week lately. This sentence implies so many pathologies I'm not even sure where to start with it. I guess the first assumption is that anyone still reads what I write - I mean, if you think about it, it seems pretty egotistical for me to assume that there are people out there in the "blogosphere" awaiting my next blog post with baited breath. Or any other kind of breath, for that matter. Another thing is why on earth do I feel guilty for not doing something as banal and nonessential as compiling a list of grievances? That's just dumb. I feel guilty for not writing a blog post as often as I think I should, but there's really no appreciable amount of guilt associated with not studying enough or not wanting to do any lab work or any one of the number of things that I really should be doing right now instead of this!!! I blame it on the extensive training I've had in Catholic guilt. Extraordinarily effective, those crazy-ass Catholic nuns are. They have the power to fuck with people's heads like nothing I've ever seen before. The government really should exploit this abundant untapped resource we have for counterintelligence. But I digress.

School is pretty [heavy sigh] "meh", as usual. I had a molecular biology exam yesterday evening that took me the entire 3 hours, from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. I'm not going to say how I think I did, because it doesn't seem to be a factor in how I actually do on exams. I've said in the past that I felt like I failed a test, then learned that I got one of the highest grades in the class. I've also said that I didn't think a test felt "too catastrophic" only to fail beyond even my worst expectations (which is pretty bad, because I really set my expectations low). So with that background, I can't honestly say that I have any idea how well or how poorly I did on this exam. What makes me nervous is that the exam was based on 20 hours of lecture material from 5 different faculty: 5 hours on DNA replication and repair, 4 hours on DNA recombination/chromosome structure, 4 hours on prokaryotic transcription, 5 hours on eukaryotic transcription (2 different profs split this 2:3), and finally, 2 hours on RNA processing. Sadly, only one of the instructors was any good and he only had 3 hours of lecture time. One thing I have learned is that I am terrible at designing assays to look for the evidence or existance of pretty much anything scientific. I think one reason for that is that the instructor didn't fucking teach us how to design any kind of assay!!! Helllloooo!!!!! I think once you reach a certain level of knowledge, and especially if your primary job/interest isn't teaching, you tend to forget just how difficult some things were for you in the beginning. It's not enough to briefly flash some overcrowded PowerPoint slides and say that some group decided to do A, B, and C, and from those experiments clearly deduced X. It may be clear as day to the guy putting this shit together as a presentation, simply because he's done these assays for years himself, but it is clear as fucking mud to the 1st-years. Or at least it is to me, which I find worrisome. [another sigh]

In the midst of all this turmoil, the powers that be want me to register for next semester's classes. I have to sign up for six classes this time, instead of the two that I'm taking now. I know, right?! I did neglect to say that it's the same number of credit hours that I have currently: 10. Five of the classes are required - Fundamentals of Immunology (2 cr.), Molecular Biology of Viruses (2 cr.), Molecular Mechanisms of Bacterial Pathogenesis (2 cr.), Research Conferences in Immunology and Microbiology (fancy name for "Journal Club"; 1 cr.), and Seminar (1 cr.). In addition to those, I need one 2-credit elective. I want to take Functional Genomics and Systems Biology because it sounds like a pretty relevant area of science, but it requires a co-requisite AND it's from like 6:00 to 8:00 pm. Two things immediately come to mind here: one is that I'm all about NOT taking more classes than I have to (I learned that lesson after finishing a 124-credit bachelor's degree with over 170 credits...), and the other thing is that it's dark and fairly deserted in Detroit at 8:00 pm. There have been several armed muggings in the area lately - exacerbated by the fact that many of the street lights don't work because they are on the oldest electrical circuits in the city (installed about the time my dad was born - 100 years ago!). There is something to be said for achieving your 15 minutes of fame, but I don't think being featured as an assault or homicide victim on the 10 o'clock news is the way to go about it. I guess this will have to be food for thought because it's now Sunday and I have officially spent WAY too much time on this. There goes another perfectly good Saturday night. Oh well. Until next time...

Not enough time

I wish there was more time for me to record my thoughts - unfortunately, my thoughts all seem to be varying shades of negative. This afternoon I made the decision not to quit school until the end of my first year. If I'm still as miserable and depressed at that time as I am now, I'll give myself permission to quit and just find a job somewhere, I guess. Yeah, I want a PhD, but not as much as I want my life to stop sucking. I'm just not sure that it's worth it. I haven't had a break in well over a year, my thesis won't be done in time for me to graduate from Eastern this year, the first anniversary of my father's death is two weeks from today, and I've lost interest in everything I'm supposed to be doing. I don't know how to make this better, and it scares me.