organic chemistry - midterm

So it's a little later than mid-term in Ochem, but I thought I'd provide a "how its going" post so I can come back once its all over ... and be thankful its all over. Yes, it's interesting stuff. Yes, it's probably important that I know what's going to react with what and how. But holy crapsticks batman. There's a lot of material here. And it's intimidating material. And they tend to ask you the most difficult questions when it comes time to answer questions.

There are people in my class who are doing exceptionally well. I have no idea how they are pulling that off. This all seems like a "cross-class skill" (D&D reference for the nerds in the audience) for me, and I have to spend twice as much XP to get it. OChem lab tho? I totally have that. My lab reports dance and sing and have figures and tables... and regularly receive 96% A+'s... I can swirl things that don't mix together into a chromatography column without spilling a drop, work with 10M acid without getting nervous, and distill with the best of them.

Apparently, I can apply things into practice, but I have trouble visualizing them abstractly. It's just that... well, sure, I understand how and when an SN1 reaction will take place, but... I personally think I don't study enough. If I could study five hours a day, I'd probably understand everything and be able to perform better on the exams.

But gosh darnit, pre-med involves a lot of "other" stuff... stuff that takes up all that time that I could be studying. And I'm not talking about tv or other such related pursuits. I literally work my butt off every single day of the week. Saturday and Sunday I work at the hospital as a transporter, gaining valuable patient contact experience and paying the mortgage. All week I have classes, Tuesday and Wednesday classes are all day. Thursday and Friday I work in the research lab for most of the day. Monday I only have one class, but that's also the day I write lab reports, do laundry, go grocery shopping, make phone calls, pay bills...

I'm not whining. Well, ok, I guess I am. A little bit. I'm just saying I wish I had more time. Or that I could somehow go without sleep like most of my colleagues. All-nighters are not a good idea at this stage in the game... I can't just sleep all day the next day, I need to stay sharp every single day so I can do my best.

Anyways. I guess my point is that I can do one or two things brilliantly, a bunch of things pretty well, and a lot of things kinda crappy. That being said, I'm doing pretty ok at Organic Chemistry, wishing I could do better. Three more weeks of this term, after which I'll be a certified EMT, which will open up some really cool volunteer opportunities. The only thing left to figure out is shadowing, and hopefully I'll meet some docs in my job or volunteer experiences.

research

I may or may not have updated that I was accepted as an undergraduate researcher into a cancer research lab, but hey! I was accepted as an undergraduate researcher in a cancer research lab! My PI specifically studies how double DNA breaks are repaired, created, etc, and how this relates to cancer. Pretty wicked cool stuff.

Since I have virtually no lab experience (besides what I learned in Bio & Chem Lab) it was incredibly cool of her to take me on since, with my arrival, there are now three people in the lab including her, me, and her tech. There's also a guy who moonlights during the summer. Anyways, I'm very appreciative for the chance to learn about the research process and get to learn awesome science along the way.

My first project is to genotypically identify 800+ strains of yeast for the gene of interest using PCR. For those of you without a science background, here's a fairly good approximation of what I'm doing using a metaphor:

We have 800+ cookbooks. We need to figure out which cookbooks contain recipes for stew. Of the ones that contain recipes for stew, some of them are vegetarian and some of them are not. Unfortunately, we can't just open the cookbooks and look for the recipes. So, we're using a "find" command that looks for the word "Stew". When it finds the word "stew" it then displays whether or not meat is called for in the recipe. If meat is called for, it's considered "normal" or, "wild type" and if no meat is present, it's considered "not normal" or "mutant" (no offense to my vegetarian friends.)

For those of you with a science background, it's giving me a chance to really work on basic research skills - breaking out strains, pipetting, PCR, enzyme digestion, running gels, reporting results, etc. In addition, we also sometimes get to help with the research grants. (Ok, we get to help come up with titles to the research grants, but hey, that's still helping.)

I genuinely enjoy the experience and look forward to lab days. It's also given me a chance to work on "thinking scientifically" which, as I'm learning, I've been doing all along. Well, at least as long as I was a technical project manager. Science and project management are somewhat similar... at least theoretically speaking. Both have to solve problems that don't have clear answers. Both involve testing a variety of methods before finding the best way (or one of the best ways) to accomplish the goals. Both involve the agony of things not working, and the ecstasy of things working. However, the environments are vastly different...if things didn't work at "work" I was chased around with torches and pitchforks... If things don't work in lab, I sit down with the tech or the PI and we discuss what might have gone wrong, and additional things we can do to improve the results...

It's a nice environment to work in while you're fretting about organic chemistry. And in that vein... off to study.

playlist

I'll admit, I haven't encountered a lot of "you're insane, it will never happen" attitudes as I make this journey. Mostly I've been met with "that's amazing!" "good luck!" and "wow"... which is all very nice and good. However, I think the biggest naysayer is the internal monologue. That little voice inside that will sometimes say "this is crazy, and it will never happen."

I have a playlist that tends to shut the little voice up... and here's what's on it:

Lady Gaga - Born This Way

India Arie - A Beautiful Day

Mary J Blige - Each Tear

Glee Cast - Loser Like Me

Pink - Fucking Perfect

Katy Perry - Firework

Wicked - Defying Gravity

Eminem - I'm not Afraid

Eminem - Lose Yourself

It grows as I learn about new things, but I'm happy I've found something that works for me. The message is a resounding "Screw the world, be you, and be the best you that you can. You got this." Although in my case it doesn't seem like the world that's against me, its mostly just me.

And on that note - off to study OChem. I promise a resounding post of how it's going soon, along with the agony and the ecstasy that is PCR...

random stream of consciousness...

So lots of things are due. I haven't made a payment on the explorer since July, but I still intend to make payments on it, I just don't have any money to do so. I'm waiting on student loans so I can pay the mortgage. I'm leveraging how long I can make people wait until they shut things off. I write to an administrator last night about when, oh when, are my student loans going to credit? And she tells me I'm not signed up for enough credits to actually get any sort of aid. So I have to sign up for more credits to make the "aid cap" in order to get the money to keep paying my bills while I chase this crazy dream...

So when am I going to fit in two more credits? I have no idea. I am, actually, signed up for the EMT class, and I could take that through the college for credit, but it would cost $2544 in addition to the $125 that I already spent to take the class, but I need a permission number to sign up for the class. So I call the people to get the permission number, hoping that they will give me this little five digit number which will cost me $2500 but will end up giving me $6000 so that I can live for the next four months. I wonder how I'll handle a 6 credit load next semester too, since I've decided that I want to continue on and take the paramedic class since you can't actually work for the city unless you're a full blown medic... I sometimes wonder if I'm being too brash, too bold, too assumptive, in believing that I deserve this, that I have the right to actually follow this yearning, to chase this dream at all. Shouldn't I just grow up? Shouldn't I just graduate and get a job, and stop being so needy?

But then I think of all those days that come after this, and this is just a bump in the road, a little bureaucratic exercise meant to test my faith, my resolve, and my ability to continue on against circumstances beyond my control.

organic chemistry - at the outset

Had my first organic lecture yesterday - it went well. Sure, it was the syllabus day and that tends to go well regardless of how poorly the rest of the semester goes. The thing that made it actually awesome was the professor's ability to get us excited about the subject. He talked about synthesis problems as if they were puzzles waiting to be unlocked. He discussed the more esoteric points as being nothing more than whether or not you could count to eight.

All in all, I'm pretty excited to actually get started. (Despite the fact that I'm blogging instead of upstairs actually doing.) I'm looking forward to teasing out the answers, and hoping that they won't elude me. He said that one of the keys to success is to be obsessive... and well... yeah, I know how to do that. I just have to apply it to the subject now.

The new plan...

Summer did not kill me, although there were certainly times I thought it might. I survived with a "B-Variety Pack" of a B-, B, and a B+. Not what I wanted, but in the grand scheme of the world, perhaps a lesson can be learned about not biting off more than you can chew and the importance of starting early.

I also got surprising news right around my birthday that pretty much wrecked the rest of my semester, so I should be happy I pulled B's in those courses anyways. My 14 year old son decided he wanted to go live with his father, and instead of tell me about this, he let his father sue me for custody. Le sigh.

Everything eventually worked out, but there were a couple of rough weeks before things were settled. I have mixed feelings about that - one the one hand I am incredibly sad and just miss him pretty much all the time. On the other hand, this will give me a chance to focus on the other things going on, not the least of which is getting ready to apply to med school.

In that vein, I just finished up with my year of gen chem and my year of gen bio, leaving me with a year of physics, a year of organic chemistry, calculus, human phys, and neuroscience. Having learned the lessons offered this summer, I've decided to take less classes at once in order to get a better school/life balance. This does stretch out my timeline a bit, and I am somewhat dismayed at how long its going to take to actually get there, but I'm trying to make the journey more enjoyable along the way.

The current plan is to start med school in 2015. Dear god, I'm going to be so old by that point. I'm really hoping I can combine some things in order to decrease the timeline, while still leaving time for things to be enjoyable. It's really only another two years of classes, but the premed adviser is giving me a year to prepare for the MCAT and committee and a gap year. I'm hoping I can combine MCAT studying with finishing up classes and then somehow avoid a gap year altogether. We shall see.

In the meantime, I accepted a position in a cancer research lab as an undergraduate unpaid researcher, and am working on getting into a hospital as a patient transporter. It is awfully difficult being an adult and not working, even just a little bit, so I'm trying to find a job that lets me further my goals while still earning the mortgage money. Additionally, I'm taking an EMT class this fall that will bring a little more excitement and interest to my volunteer experience. All in all, I've been told that I'm "fine" as far as planning goes, so now it's just a matter of doing the work, passing the classes, and scoring some more A's.

getting excited about organic chemistry

Over the holiday weekend, I had a friend tell me that Chem 2 was really just a "preview of all the chems to come" which somehow made it better. It somehow disconnected all the chapters from each other, and made the cumulative effect seem less important. I didn't really understand acid-base chemistry, but I sure did figure out thermodynamics and electrochemistry. Next week we move into organic chemistry... which I'm taking in the fall.

It's a bunch of esoteric stuff, organic chemistry. Lots of rules about what's an yne and an ene and an ane, and how many double bonds there are, and what something is called, and which name goes first. I'm actually looking forward to it. I like esoteric stuff. It's part of the reason I want to go into medicine... which is probably one of the weirder reasons, but everyone gets to be a unique snowflake, so there.

Anyways, I'm two weeks away from finishing up gen chem 2, and from starting bio 2. Things are progressing. Until then, I'm buried in my chem book hoping to absorb enough to get much better grades on the upcoming exams...