Seis de Mayo Monster Mash

As I type this, there is a Bigfoot expert recounting his tales of Bigfoot tracking to the museum's programming director. "Picture a gorilla about 8 feet tall...They're very crafty...The best sound recordings come from the Sierra Nevadas...This redneck woman kept feeding him blueberry pancaked with syrup!" It's my last day at the museum and I am going to miss this place.

As of today, I have finished up both my presentation and my proposal. I'm due to present my proposal to Ama in a few hours. This week at the museum has been extremely busy. Everyone is preparing for the spring fundraising gala, which is happening this evening. The point of the event, titled Seis de Mayo Monster Mash, is to release the topics of the museum's Sunday lecture series, Mixed Taste. It's going to be insane! There will be Bollywood dancers, King Kong, Godzilla and several strong men lifting up a smart car, along with several volunteers representing topics handcuffed together. Tickets cost upwards of one hundred dollars, but I get to go for free and don't even have to do any work (because it's my last day).

I can't wait to come back to Tucson and see all of you soon! By the way, if any of you are looking for a good summer read, I would highly recommend Daniel Dennett's Conscioisness Explained. It's absolutely mind-blowing. And what's even more mind-blowing is the fact that I might be taking a class from him sometime in the next four years!

The Attractin Gene

This week, I am continuing to focus on my presentation. I also hope to meet with Mr. Johnston and make any necessary revisions to my research paper. After communicating with my post-doctorate mentor at Professor Nachman’s laboratory, I further obtained additional, valuable information concerning my experiment. During my experiment, I combined the Armendaris and Carrizozo, New Mexico, specimen. This was possible because, not only are the two populations in close proximity to one another on their respective lava flows, a previous study demonstrates that the two populations are actually one population of interbreeding animals; thus, the geographic separation between the two locations has not led to speciation with respect to the rock pocket mice located in these regions. There is always more to learn regarding an experiment and I am eager to continue to gain knowledge to better analyze my data.

The Pace Quickens

Last week I felt pretty good about how quickly I could run through a batch of RT-PCR. That was nothing. Instead of running each genotype on separate days, I had to run all the different mops in one day, because this is my last week, and Mario needs these results for his presentation at the lab meeting this Friday. These genotypes are color coded in the picture with mop1 as black, mop2 as blue, and mop3 as red. 84 tubes full of PCR product, and 12 tubes full of cDNA are what I have to show for my 10 hour day at the lab

I will be running the gels of these tubes tomorrow, but after that the only thing that is certain is that I will be writing.

So Much to Say and So Much to Write

With revisions and possibly more paragraphs to add into the paper as well as all of the things I want to mention during the presentation I've still got some work to do. It is nice that the paper is not as limited as the presentation but I also wouldn't want to go on for too long in the paper. 20 minutes is quite the short amount of time to speak about all of the things I've learned and experienced during the project but I guess I'll have to get lucky on how I present. Hopefully I can practice enough so that I don't make the same mistakes that were in previous presentations throughout the school year. It's the last push and I've got to be ready to give it my all.

They changed my life, one hair color at a time...

So last Friday was officially my last day at the Resource Center. Dear god it broke my heart to walk out of that office, away from the group who i'd spent every week with for the past 3 months. Of course I couldnt just end our relationship there, so I agreed to help Megan with the Gadagirl Model search May 1st and 8th. (By the way, any of you 18yr + girls out there want to audition to be a cover model for Tucson Lifestyle Magazine and be used in a Gadabout ad, as well as help out some local charities, feel free to come to the Oracle Salon next Saturday from 10am-2pm).

I guess it's time to start crackin' the whip and get a move on with my presentation. It's coming along, slowly but surely. I can't believe graduation is less than 3 weeks away!

Is it sad to say that I already miss my desk in Megan's office? I do.

Birthday Wishes

So much of my work this week was on my paper since Dr. Chua was in the OR most of the week. I did work with him on Wednesday which was fun. He is now having me read the scans before him and tell him what I see. Thankfully we didn't have as many patients with herniated disks (it gets old after awhile), we had a woman with a tethered spinal cord. Your spinal cord should descend from your brain stem and nerve endings should filter down your spine, but it isn't connected to the bottom it just hangs. Hers because of a birth defect was fused, this can cause kidney and bladder problems, and although there is a surgery that can fix it it is so risky (because of the specific complication she had as a baby) that no doctor specialises in that surgery.

Wednesday we also got to have cake because Dr. Chua and I both had birthdays on Friday. April 30th is clearly a good day to be born =).

Next week should be very interesting (for me at least) because he is in the office every day except Tuesday. He says my suture knots are looking really good and my speed with them is picking up, although my suturing itself needs improvement. He looked over the parts of my PowerPoint that talk about my time with him to check my work and said he was very impressed. If any BASIS kids want to work with a a neurosurgeon in the coming years I highly recommend him, not only is he a great teacher but he really likes BASIS now.

Dessert Week at the MCA

     As I reflect back on this week's work at the museum, what instantly comes to mind is dessert. On Wednesday, a new baker in town brought a huge sample platter to the cafe in hopes of becoming a supplier. Since there were so many pastries (which were all vegan), the whole museum staff was invited to taste the pastries and give their input. My personal favorites included a cherry almond muffin and a chai cupcake with ginger icing. Continuing with the desert theme, Thursday was the birthday of the museum's cafe manager, so we all gathered in the cafe and had Boston creme pie and champagne (well, everyone but me) in celebration.

    As far as my project goes, I am finalizing my proposal and working on my power point presentation. I'm a little worried about how I will manage to condense my experience at the museum into twenty minutes. There is so much to talk about! 

    On Thursday evening, I went to an amazing performance at the museum. The piece, performed by local artist Michelle Ellsworth, was essentially a response to recent scientific research indicating that the Y chromosome is becoming increasingly obsolete. Did you know that the Y chromosome is loosing genes at the rate of 4 every 1 million years? Pretty intense. Anyways, in her performance, Ellsworth presented some of the archival work she's doing to preserve the memory of men when they no longer exist. She also displayed some apparatuses she'd invented to represent men, my favorite being a large, unblinking eye representing the male gaze. Overall, it was hilarious and an excellent performance.